From Counterjihad to Ace of Swords:
Why „As der Schwerter“?

2,200 words

Editor’s Note:

Ace of Swords (formerly Counterjihad)  is one of my favorite German websites. They have translated many articles from Counter-Currents. Here blogger Deep Roots explains the blog’s history and change of name. Ace of Swords is a concrete example of how Jewish-dominanted false opposition can be defeated through the dedication of writers like Kevin MacDonald, Tanstaafl, Chechar, and some of us here at Counter-Currents.

After Tanstaafl’s post “Fjordman Fallout” has drawn the attention of readers from the Anglosphere to our blog it is appropriate to provide some explanation to those readers about the origins, development and goals of „As der Schwerter“.

This blog was originally started by Manfred Kleine-Hartlage, who runs the blogs Korrektheiten (in German) and German Views (in English), as an archive for translations of Fjordman’s essays (hence the original name „Counterjihad – Fjordman auf Deutsch“ and the original URL). As Manfred couldn’t dedicate as much time for the new blog as he had hoped, it was mostly myself and my comrades „Thatcher“ (who goes now by the name of „Schattenkoenig“) and „Before Dawn“ (who left our team in 2011) who did the translations and administered the blog.

Initially we translated lots of further essays by Fjordman, mostly from Gates of Vienna and The Brussels Journal. But as we delved deeper and deeper into the issues of Islamization, Multiculturalism, Political Correctness and Globalism we took a similar path like that of Tanstaafl, who in his post Committing PC’s Most Mortal Sin wrote:

I started blogging a little over two years ago with only a vague awareness and revulsion at politically correct dogma and a mild curiosity about its origins and rationale. What I have discovered, slowly, is shocking, and it only gets more shocking with each day’s news.

It began with the recognition that the West’s education and mainstream media are biased and has progressed to the understanding that they are in fact engaged in mass brainwashing, an indoctrination with PC dogma under the cover of deliberately inverted language such as „free thought“ and „fairness“.

It began with the recognition that this PC dogma interferes with the West’s ability to recognize and properly defend itself from the threat of Islamic jihad and has progressed to the understanding that it denies the even larger threat posed by the immigration invasion, which is flooding the West with impoverished, uneducated, dangerous people, including Muslims.

It began with the recognition that PC dogma is something believed and propagated by moonbats and progressed to the sad realization that elements of the Right, supposed conservatives, specifically the neocons, are working in concert with the Left in an unholy union called either Globalism or Universalism.

It began with an assumption that Jews are white, civilized, and on my side, and has progressed to the tragic and most un-PC of all conclusions that they are indeed my enemy, because their collective words and deeds are destroying my past, present, and future.

We began reading sites like Age of Treason, Counter-Currents Publishing/North American New Right, Fair and Delightsome, Kevin Alfred Strom, Mangan’s Adventures in Reaction, Taki’s Magazine, The Occidental Observer, The Occidental Quarterly, The West’s Darkest Hour, and VDARE, and we did more and more translations of their articles. We became more and more racially aware and jew-wise, and as this was not Manfred’s agenda, and he didn’t want to be identified with it, he decided to hand the ownership of the „Counterjihad Blog“ over to me and to leave the project.

He explained this step succinctly in his post Mein Abschied vom “Counterjihad” („My Farewell to the Counterjihad“) at „Korrektheiten“, which I have translated here for you:

Those who have been reading here for a while will probably remember that late in 2008 I started the blog „Counterjihad“, where I initially posted translations of articles by the Norwegian essayist Fjordman. I had hoped then that I would find time enough to translate further important articles from the English-speaking blogosphere and to publish them there.

Alas, it didn’t come off; I didn’t have the time, and so the „Counterjihad“ probably would have gently passed away were it not for others who had taken care of it, e. g. Thatcher, Kairos and Before Dawn. But especially Deep Roots with his great commitment and the proverbial diligence of a bee has made the project what it is today, namely a unique platform of information for anybody who is interested in the topics of the anglophone right-wing blogosphere but lacks the time to sift dozens of British and American blogs and who prefers to read in German rather than in English.

As I myself didn’t contribute too much to it, I had the guilty conscience of an uncaring mother who leaves her child to be reared by nannies.

This was one reason why I departed from the „Counterjihad“ already a while ago, in an amiable way, and handed the blog over to Deep Roots. The other reason was that the „Counterjihad“ of course strongly bears the style of Deep Roots, to whom other issues are important than to myself:

Deep Roots has largely expanded the original core issue of „criticism of Islam“ to other issues, e. g. racial issues. Well, I think it’s completely legitimate to address such issues, particularly if it’s done on such a high level as the Counterjihad mostly does; I reject the old-maidish, timid way such issues are addressed – and above all: not addressed – in Germany, and whatever one thinks of America and the Americans: What Freedom of Speech can mean, one can learn in America’s blogosphere at any rate more easily than in the local one, which toddles around in a narrow playpen with taboos for walls.

Nevertheless those issues are not my issues. Especially the frequency and harshness with which the Counterjihad criticizes Judaism and Jewry is inappropriate from my point of view. I do think that it should be possible to express this criticism, and I am far from condemning it morally as something „evil“. But I just do not share it, I cannot identify myself with it, and above all I do not want to be identified with it.

The „Counterjihad“ has been renamed now in „As der Schwerter“ to signify this shift in focus. For me this is the occasion to publicly declare that I have not been responsible for the content of the blog for quite a while.

This is not a renouncement, it’s just the clarification that the chick „Counterjihad“, now „As der Schwerter“, has spread its wings long ago and flies where it wants. I wish good luck and success, and don’t lose your way!

Yes, that’s true; we parted in friendship, Manfred still comments at „As der Schwerter“ now and then, and we keep linking to especially interesting posts at „Korrektheiten“.

On May 1st, 2011, after Kairos had joined the team, we renamed the blog in „As der Schwerter“ („Ace of Swords“). Let me explain the symbolism of the „swords“ as we use it:

Most of us started as readers and fans of the now defunct blog „Acht der Schwerter“ („Eight of Swords“), whose owner „Eisvogel“ („Kingfisher“), a female blogger from West Germany, had translated a lot of the Fjordman essays that were later used to start the „Counterjihad blog“. For us this was the first door on our way out of a system of sick lies, and Eisvogel, who has retreated from blogging several years ago, had a unique way of interpreting the cards of the Rider-Waite Tarot, totally outside of any „classic“ or „official“ interpretation:

The woman in the „Eight of Swords“, she explained, represents Europe; she’s been tied up by the European Union, the blindfold represents Political Correctness, the castle in the background is our European heritage, and the swords represent Islam. (Add. Deep Roots: To make this symbolism complete she’d also have to be gagged.)

The Rider-Waite Tarot offers outlooks for the future, the first of which is presented by the Nine of Swords:

The man in the Nine of Swords is the future Europe that Eisvogel had wished for. He wakes up from deep slumber, he is neither tied up nor blindfolded, and all he has to do is to take his hands from his face to see the swords on the wall. His gender represents a Europe turning to manly values again instead of smugly persisting in „female values“.

But there is a second option for the future: „If we fail to follow the path that lies beyond the Nine of Swords we’ll inevitably get the Ten of Swords.“

After we had realized that the „Counterhijad“ is but one frontier in our greater, broader struggle for the continued existence of our white nations, and that the Muslims’ stealthy immigration jihad is but a secondary infection after we had been weakened by an AIDS infection that ultimately also originated in the Middle East, we decided to give our blog a new, more appropriate name: „As der Schwerter“ („Ace of Swords“):

The „Ace of Swords“ is a new and more comprehensive symbol for our struggle against our enemies. There’s a very appropriate „official“ interpretation in the Rider-Waite Tarot:

„This card indicates decisive ability and cutting through confusion, taking a radical decision or standpoint and the ability to see through deception, and expose it.“

 As Guillaume Faye wrote in “Mars & Hephaestus: The Return of History,”

the twenty-first century will be a century of iron and storms. It will not resemble those harmonious futures predicted up to the 1970s. [….] It will be a century of competing peoples and ethnic identities. [….] The beginning of the twenty-first century will be the despairing midnight of the world of which Hölderlin spoke. But it is always darkest before the dawn. [….] When one defends one’s people, i. e. one’s own children, one defends the essential. Then one follows the rule of Agamamnon and Leonidas but also of Charles Martel: what prevails is the law of the sword, whose bronze or steel reflects the glare of the sun. The tree, the rocket, the sword: three vertical symbols thrust from the ground towards the light, from the Earth to the Sun, animated by sap, fire, and blood.

In that sense the sword is a very fitting symbol for the spirit that shall inspire us in our future struggles.

After this new beginning  we continued our work, soon supported by Osimandia, who joined the team a few months later. We are now five people from Austria (myself) and Germany (Kairos, Osimandia, Sternbald and Schattenkoenig), supported occasionally by guest contributors „nino“ from Switzerland and „Jörn Uhl“ from Germany. Apart from translating articles we also write posts of our own, dealing with various topics from history to crisis preparedness to MSM propaganda. Examples for the latter can be found in our series Star Dreck, where we analyze the propaganda dreck delivered to us by means of TV and movie stars.

Due to our even stronger emphasis on racial issues and criticism of Judaism we translated less and less of Fjordman’s articles, though we still considered him a well-meaning ally. We had no idea then that he was part Jewish (a fact that didn’t become publicly known before the aftermath of the Breivik case). In fact he had expressed some cautious critique of the Jews’ role in our predicament in some of his comments at Mangan’s early in 2011, e. g. in „How the Israel Lobby pushed the Iraq War“- http://mangans.blogspot.com/2010/03/how-israel-lobby-pushed-iraq-war.html -, where he even posted a link to  “Who Runs Hollywood? C’mon!” by Joel Stein in the LA Times. At this time he very rarely wrote for „Gates of Vienna“, so I thought that maybe he had seen Chechar’s lightning too and just didn’t dare to voice such opinions under the watchful eyes of Baron Bodissey and Dymphna. Maybe, so I thought, he didn’t dare to come out of the closet as an „Anti-Semite“ because he had met some Jewish luminaries at various „Counterjihad summits“ who might inform Muslim extremists or the Norwegian authorities about his true identity. Boy, was I off base!

Two weeks ago we were told in the name of Fjordman that he wouldn’t tolerate the use of his name for purposes he does not endorse, and that he demanded us to change the blog’s URL as to not contain the name „Fjordman“. We then worked out a way to simply change the URL, but the consequence of this would have been that a lot of links in a book published by Manfred Kleine-Hartlage („Fjordman: Europa verteidigen“) would have been invalid.

We eventually managed to solve this problem too, and quicker than we had hoped for, and thus „As der Schwerter“ got a new URL while the old „fjordman“ URL was reused to create an archive exclusively for the Fjordman translations we have completed up till now. The name: “Fjordman auf Deutsch”.

I must say, though, that we were very disappointed and angered by the rude way Fjordman and the people around him handled this issue – and this after all we’ve contributed to spread Fjordman’s work and after we have defended him several times in the past! Therefore we have decided to translate no more of Fjordman’s essays.

Source: http://schwertasblog.wordpress.com/2012/01/26/from-counterjihad-to-ace-of-swords-why-%E2%80%9Eas-der-schwerter/