Edward S. May is better known to the public under the pseudonym Baron Bodissey. The American author edits the online blog Gates of Vienna. He writes mainly about the dangers of Islamization, cultural Marxism and other phenomena that today threaten the future of the Western world. He gives interviews very rarely.
Please tell us when and under what circumstances did you first became politically active, how would you describe your views, and which authors and thinkers influenced you the most?
I’m not really politically active; I just edit and write for a blog that posts some political content. Its primary focus is on the danger posed by Islam.
My late wife and I started the blog in October 2004. After I got laid off from my job in 2006, I became involved with it full-time.
I am a conservative with libertarian tendencies, without any allegiance to a political party. On the issue of Islam, I was greatly influenced by V.S. Naipaul (his book Among the Believers) Srdja Trifkovic, and Maj. Stephen Coughlin. On more general political issues, I would cite Thomas Sowell and Mark Steyn as major influences.
Can you tell us a bit about your blog »Gates of Vienna? Its purpose, main topics, number of authors, and the story behind its name?
The mission of Gates of Vienna is to propagate reliable, comprehensive information about Islam and the Islamization of the West. In order to do this thoroughly, it has to deal with other cultural and political issues, in particular the Frankfurt School’s »long march through the institutions«, which is what has enabled and supported Islamization for the past fifty years.
I concentrate on Europe, because that’s where Islamization is the most advanced. France, the U.K., and Sweden are the farthest down the road towards becoming Islamic states. The authors at our blog were originally just my late wife and myself. However, we gradually accumulated a number of guest-posters and correspondents, including Fjordman, El Inglés, Seneca III, H. Numan, MC, Paul Weston, Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff, Michael Copeland, and numerous others.
The name of the site is a reference to the Second Siege of Vienna in 1683, when the Ottoman Empire was driven back from the gates of Vienna, which was its furthest incursion into the European continent.
Do you participate in any other similar projects or movements and organizations?
In the past I have been involved with various groups, including ACT! For America, the International Free Press Society, the International Civil Liberties Alliance, the Center for Security Policy, and several others. In 2013 I attended and spoke at HDIM sessions of the OSCE in Warsaw. At the moment, however, I spend the bulk of my time working on Gates of Vienna and collaborating with Vlad Tepes on translated subtitled videos, which we consider very important as a means to spread valuable information about what is happening.
Blogs such as yours are often targets of the leftist hacker attacks. Did you ever had any such problems with the Left Wing and what is your opinion of the modern Western leftist movements also known as »Cultural Marxists«?
Yes, I have been the subject of a number of DDoS attacks, and there have been many attempts to hack the site. Fortunately, I have a good system of protection, which is expensive, but worth it. For obvious reasons, I prefer not to give any further details about site security. The worst time for such attacks was in the months after the massacre committed in Norway by Anders Behring Breivik in 2011. In recent years things have calmed down.
There are currently race riots going on in the U.S. spreading into different cities, due to the death of George Floyd. What is your opinion about this whole situation?
The situation is being manipulated and inflamed by various groups that are paid to demonstrate and riot, some of them funded by George Soros. I assume the main political goal is to stop Donald Trump’s re-election in November. The BLM violence is also designed to damage the social country’s fabric and demoralize the citizenry, in furtherance of Marxist/progressive ends.
How do you view the recent COVID-19 epidemic and what is your opinion about the various »conspiracy theories« that surround it? How would you assess the measures taken against it, and what do you think will be its long term consequences?
I don’t know about any actual »conspiracies«, but the coronavirus crisis has clearly been manipulated for political ends. The evidence is incontrovertible.
I can only speculate about what the political ends might be. However, it once again seems clear that stopping the re-election of Donald Trump is a big component of what is happening. The appearance of the »second wave« of the virus seems timed to do maximum damage to his re-election campaign.
We are currently witnessing a sort of »clash of civilizations « due to mass immigration in the West. You have also written about this on your blog, and especially of the dangers of Islamisation. Could you tell us what do you believe are the goals of the globalist elites that are opening our borders to the third world masses and what are the biggest problems that arise from importing Muslim populations into western countries?
There are overlapping interests among the various groups and alliances that are promoting mass immigration.
The process began in Europe during the 1970s, after the first oil crisis. The EU (at that time the EEC) struck a bargain with the Gulf Arab states: in return for a guaranteed steady supply of oil at a moderate price, they would facilitate immigration from Arab countries, which helped relieve population pressure and decreased political unrest in those countries.
At the same time, Western governments looked at the demographic projections for their own countries, and saw that in 30-40 years’ time an aging population would stress the welfare state while decreasing the tax base necessary to support it. They deemed it necessary to increase immigration of a younger demographic to maintain the system. However, the idea of mass immigration from the Third World was not something that seemed appealing to the populace, so the ideology of Multiculturalism was introduced and succeeding generations were indoctrinated with it. The new ideology turned immigration into a moral necessity, so that anyone who opposed it would tend to feel guilty, and could be called a »racist«.
Unfortunately for the European elites, the indoctrination has not been fully successful. The average person is still opposed to mass immigration, so that the techniques to force people to conform to the will of the state have become openly totalitarian. There is no free speech in Western Europe for those who oppose mass immigration. State-enforced immigration is what has allowed Islamization to proceed mostly unchecked. Evidently the political leaders consider it a small price to pay for being able to import the younger people they consider a necessity for propping up the system.
It turns out that the newcomers, especially those from Islamic countries, are not by and large productive citizens. They tend to be a net drain on national economies, consuming more social benefits than can be paid for by their taxes. However, they are also needed as consumers – advanced Western economies need customers for their products to keep the system functioning, and allow the upper classes to increase their wealth. By using the ECB to create »fiat money«, and the process of »quantitative easing« to maintain the welfare state, the system of production and consumption can just barely be held together, for a while.
Globalists have their own reasons for promoting migration. A coherent nation-state is antithetical to their goal, which is to produce a borderless world society where production and labor may be shifted around as needed.
Breaking down national identities also demoralizes the masses, and makes them less resistant to total control by the state.
How would you assess the presidency of Donald Trump and what are your predictions for the U.S. elections in November?
Donald Trump has done more good than any past Republican president ever has, even Ronald Reagan. His appointments to the federal judiciary alone are reason enough to re-elect him. His successes at deregulation have also been a real boost for the economy. And, despite massive resistance from the political establishment, his efforts against mass immigration have made a difference.
At this point I’m not willing to predict whether or not he will be re-elected. He’s very popular with ordinary Americans, but the media, the academy, and the entire political establishment are fighting desperately to stop him. The Democrats will engage in as much electoral fraud as possible in their efforts to keep him out.
What do you believe the Western countries can expect in the near future, and what would be your advice to people who want to oppose the current trends of globalization and mass immigration?
Once again, I’m reluctant to make any definite predictions. The political situation is becoming increasingly chaotic (in the mathematical sense of the word), and the chaos is accelerating. By its very nature, a system in a chaotic state is inherently unpredictable.
Any unusual event – a major disaster, a mass terrorist attack, a catastrophic storm – could trigger a panic and/or a collapse of the currency in a system that is so unstable. So all bets are off.
My advice to younger people is to turn off their TVs and ignore social media, so that they are no longer bombarded with leftist indoctrination 24/7. However, there is virtually no chance that they would heed this advice if they were ever able to hear it.
Thank you very much for the interview, do you have any last words for our readers?
Yes. Those of you who are childless, or whose children are grown and on their own, should consider possible ways you can become actively involved in the defense of Western culture. There may be a price to pay – people who stand up for the culture lose their jobs, are physically attacked, and in some cases are arrested, depending on what country they live in. But it’s a job that someone has to do.
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Biography
Edward S. May, better known by the pseudonym Baron Bodissey, is an American author and editor-in-chief of the online blog Gates of Vienna, which he founded and ran with his wife since October 2004. Eventually, they were joined by other conservative authors, and Edward S. May took over the entire running of the blog after the death of his wife in 2019, who posted on the blog under the pseudonym Dymphna. May writes primarily about the dangers of Islamization, cultural Marxism, and other phenomena that threaten the future of the Western world today. In his youth, he lived in England, where he attended high school, and in the early 1970s, he graduated from William and Mary Public University in Williamsburg, Virginia. He is one of the key figures in the so-called anti-jihadist movement, which operates in Europe and the United States and includes several authors and organizers. Within this movement, he worked with various groups. Among other things, he was also the coordinator of the International Free Press Society in 2009-2010.