Given how important GOV [Gates of Vienna] was in the early days of the 9/11 dissident right, especially as a place where people came together to toss around ideas and evidence with relative freedom, I believe this is of interest to Chechar at the very least. Certainly some of Chechar’s (and others’) arguments that were made in GOV comment threads were very important in shaping my own way of thinking.
That the owners of GOV themselves were never persuaded by certain arguments doesn’t negate the value of the discussions they fostered.
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Editor’s comment:
GoV’s commenter Conservative Swede taught me to think a lot about axiology and Christianity ten years ago. What you say is absolutely true. In fact, these days I have thought exactly the same about white nationalism in general and MacDonald in particular.
Baron Bodissey’s GoV focuses on Islam and when I was a fan of that site I used to be a counter-jihadist.
MacDonald’s TOO focuses on Jewry and when I was a fan of that site I used to be a monocausal anti-Semite.
Now I know better but both were very useful stepping stones in my crossing the psychological Rubicon. It is always interesting to revisit our previous steps while crossing the river and this, of course, included Gates of Vienna in my own path.
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Speaking of our intellectual adventures a decade ago, today I re-read the longest entry ever I’ve posted. It is a 33, 500-word collection of comments that in 2010 I posted in the old incarnation of this site: a bitter discussion between Trainspotter and Hunter Wallace. The latter favoured doing immediate activism, and working within the system through FAIR, Glenn Beck, NumbersUSA and the political mainstream.
It was precisely my epigraph in that post quoting Rollory, the author of the above obituary, what throws light about that huge entry in a single paragraph. Obviously, this was posted before Trump and Charlottesville:
“Activism at this stage doesn’t matter. There needs to be a critical mass of the general white population that is receptive to a potentially revolutionary message before anything of the sort will make any headway. That requires much greater social problems and disruption than are yet present: ordinary people need to be feeling it regularly at the dinner table, and more immediate concerns than American Idol or X’s Got Talent. The iron is not yet hot, striking it now won’t accomplish anything.”
