Ned May from the anti-Muslim blog Gates of Vienna spoke to a “counter-jihad” conference at the European Parliament a few days ago, desperately spinning the outright bigotry and hate speech in which he traffics in an attempt to distance himself from Norwegian mass murderer Anders Breivik, and he brought up … yours truly: Gates of Vienna: OIC-Sponsored Fratricide.

The answer, of course, is that the sense of similarity was prompted by what occurred right here in this auditorium at the European Parliament almost five years ago. The participants in the 2007 conference had no idea that they were about to become victims of a carefully coordinated series of left-wing attacks prepared well in advance of the event.

Most of those who attended that year’s conference will remember the aftermath, when a series of slurs orchestrated by the then-popular blogger Charles Johnson caused so many of us to duck for cover. We were subjected to the same sort of mud-slinging that is even now aimed at us — we were “neo-Nazis”, “fascists”, “haters”, “racists”, “xenophobes”, and on and on and on. You all know the litany.

Mr. Johnson was fed his material — a mixture of disinformation and distortions — by several left-wing groups here in Europe, including the notorious “anti-fascist” outfit Expo in Sweden. Regardless of whether he believed everything he published, he appeared uninterested in fact-checking any of it, provided that it served to damage those Europeans who love their countries and want to preserve their cultures from destruction.

Why, sure. That’s why I renounced Gates of Vienna and their disgusting gang of bigoted fellow travelers — because I hate free Europeans who love their countries!

In fact, what happened is very simple. Yes, that 2007 conference was a real turning point for me, because I realized that bloggers like Ned May, Pamela Geller, and Robert Spencer were beginning to make alliances with extremist European groups (like the Vlaams Belang, Sweden Democrats, and the English Defence League) that were not just “right wing,” but had roots in outright fascism and xenophobic nationalism.

I wanted no part of that. Period. That’s the real, honest reason I renounced Ned May and his bigoted companions, and I’ve always been completely up-front about it.

In response to my posts on these groups and their disturbing connections to the worst kind of hatred, May and Spencer and the rest launched a series of incredibly vicious character assassination attacks against me — but I had absolutely no doubt that I was doing the right thing.

As for fact-checking — every single claim I ever made about them, and about Geller and Spencer, was carefully fact-checked. These people associate with violent bigots and outright neo-Nazis, and they’ve only gotten worse since 2007.

And I stand by every word I wrote about them.