Pamphleteers and Samizdat

"Samizdat was the clandestine copying and distribution of government-suppressed literature other media in Soviet-bloc countries. The Idea was that copies were made a few at a time, and anyone who had a copy would make more copies, often by handwriting or typing, because copy machines were guarded by what Mikhail Bulgakov called "the secret service."

In a sense this is what some bloggers do. We find and distribute information to a limited audience until linked to a well-read blog.

The popular blog GatesOfVienna often sponsors the Scandinavian blogger Fjordman that also posts at Little Green Footballs and JihadWatch, other popular, well-read blogs.

Fjordman, called "the Dark Prophet of Norway," has been informing us about the slide into dhimmitude and the Islamization of Scandinavia. His courageous information would not have been read outside of Scandinavia if it weren't for the blogsphere and without the cooperation of other cooperative blogs that either linked or sponsored his posts.

Here's what the Baron at GatesOfVienna has to say about Fjordman and the effect of the blogsphere:

His posts invite extended comments from all over the world. People come and talk back and forth amongst themselves for days or weeks on a Fjordman thread, and important ideas emerge from these subsets of the conversation.

In the comments to Fjordman’s most recent post, Charles Martel said:

Fjordman has, for over a year, quietly and persistently highlighted the problem of Western abrogation. He has, unfortunately, been largely ignored by the Western press. But slowly his voice is being amplified by the fledgling, but increasingly more powerful blogosphere. Fjordman gives voice to the inchoate feeling of rage felt by a growing minority of citizens in the West.

And so he does. If the blogs weren’t there, Fjordman’s voice would be heard by very few people. His family and friends would always be rolling their eyes and saying to each other, “There he goes again! Listen to him rant and rave!”

But his words would never be published. In today’s PC dystopia they are anathema, perhaps even criminal. Fjordman would remain unread.

When he posts here, however, and when Little Green Footballs gives him a link, his essay is seen by at least 30,000 readers. That’s more than it would get if it were published in a medium-sized magazine. And most of those are serious and careful readers — after all, they are following an LGF link to get here.

This process is a change in the public discourse that is so revolutionary that its scope is hard to measure. We are in the midst of an enormous shift in how information is collected and purveyed. Like the Great Vowel Shift of the 15th century, it will defy analysis and understanding until long after it is complete.

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Yeah, team. Keep up the good work!