Today, February 20 2015, is exactly ten years since the first time I published an essay under the pen name Fjordman. The first essay I published as Fjordman was about the very high number of rapes in Sweden, and how this may be tied to mass immigration. I no longer write about this subject as much as before, but the number of rapes in Sweden is at least as high ten years later.

I was among the first to discuss in English the problems caused by Muslim immigration in Malmö, Sweden’s third largest city. I was often accused of exaggerating or making things up. Meanwhile, Malmö has evolved from stabbings to car bombings. Unfortunately, many of the problems I deal with in my essays have worsened, all over the Western world.

My first blog post got quite a few comments and thousands of readers. That is because it was linked to by Little Green Footballs (LGF). It is hard to believe now, but when I launched my Fjordman blog in February 2005, I got a lot of help from LGF. Back then, Charles Johnson’s LGF was still a large and relevant website. It helped point readers to myself, Gates of Vienna and many other writers such as Robert Spencer and Pamela Geller.

I recently visited LGF, which I had not done for a very long time. Charles Johnson still posts. On Google, he is now called a “political blogger, center-left provocateur.”

Those who have followed my writings since the beginning will recall that the period of the LGF Wars was one of the nastiest events I experienced as Fjordman (until Mr. Breivik showed up). That was when Charles Johnson decided to suddenly switch sides and attack all of his former allies in the nastiest and most dishonest manner possible.

In hindsight, we clearly won this conflict. Today, Mr. Johnson is completely irrelevant, whereas I, Gates of Vienna — and for that matter Robert Spencer at Jihad Watch — are still publishing and actually being read.

The moral? Have patience, and continue stating what you believe to be true based on factual evidence. This will not always be pleasant in the short run, but it will eventually pay off.

Looking back, my view is that the most positive development that has taken place over the last decade is that awareness about the Islamic threat among the general public is now much greater than it was some years ago.

Unfortunately, this knowledge still has not led to any significant change in policy among Western ruling elites. They continue to promote mass immigration and open borders, no matter how many terror attacks occur or how much insecurity our societies suffer from. U.S. President Barack Hussein Obama is arguably an even worse appeaser of Islamic aggression today than he used to be seven years ago. Alternatively, perhaps he is just showing his true colors, since he does not have to worry about being reelected anymore.

Furthermore, the darkness represented by Islamic sharia and Jihadist barbarism is spreading and deepening. That is a sad fact. One only has to look at the videos of mass beheadings produced by the self-proclaimed Islamic State (ISIS) in the Middle East to realize this. These videos are now watched with great enthusiasm by militant Muslims in cities across the Western world.

I did not know the film director Theo van Gogh when he was murdered by a militant Muslim in the streets of Amsterdam in 2004. More recently, however, Muslim terrorists have been targeting people whom I know and have met multiple times, also in Scandinavia. Since 2005, I have joined the rapidly growing number of people in Western Europe who can no longer have a publicly listed address or telephone number. The threat seems to be getting closer every year. It is no longer abstract.

I have experienced many ups and downs over the past decade. Needless to say, being dragged into the events caused by the deranged mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik in 2011 easily constitutes the low point of my adult life so far. I was forced to evacuate my home and go into forced exile from Norway due to the extremely negative and largely baseless media exposure I received because of this case and Breivik’s so-called manifesto. The weeks after the deadly July 22 attacks is the only time that I have ever seriously considered giving up writing. After a while, I decided to continue. Yes, I lost the protection of a pen name. However, many people write under their real names, even if they face harassment for it. I see no reason to do less than they do.

The most positive thing that has happened to me in the past decade has to be all of the wonderful people I have met. This may sound like a terrible cliché, but I really have been blessed to meet many courageous, funny, smart and wonderful individuals while doing this work. They are one of my main sources of inspirations to keep on going. I am eternally grateful for their company.

co-published with Gates of Viennna