Edward S. May

|300px|thumb|right| Baron Bodissey, Google Images, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/legalcode
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::Europe can wake up now, or it will be jolted out of its slumber later by a knock on the door. Waiting on the other side is an armed man in a uniform, a man of firm purpose, having no qualms and no scruples. He is ready to act at a moment’s notice, and with absolute ruthlessness. Baron Bodissey, October 2006.Baron Bodissey, The Shape of Things to Come in Europe, Gates of Vienna, 14 October 2006.
Edward S. May is a director of the Center for Vigilant Freedom (CVF). He is also the Outreach Coordinator for the International Free Press SocietyBoard of Directors, International Free Press Society, accessed 2 September 2009, using Ned May as his alias. Under the pseudonym, Baron Bodissey, May runs the Gates of Viennahttp://gatesofvienna.blogspot.com/ Gates of Vienna blog which, along The Brussels Journal blog (run by fellow IFPS director Paul Beliën), serves as the CounterJihad Europa website's blog and news services. 
==Identity as "Baron Bodissey"==
May uses unspiek@chromatism.net as the email address on his Gates of Vienna blogThe "Fitna" Translations Gates of Vienna, 31 March 2008, accessed 2 August 2009. This domain was purchased by Edward S. May from a local Internet provider in Virginia, US, in 2001Chromatism.net Whois Record DomainTools, accessed 25 August 2009. 
:"The mailing list for the 2007 Counterjihad Conference in Brussels lists as organiser: "Ned May (Baron Bodissey)" - and also gives his e-mail address as unspiek@chromatism.net. The website chromatism.net itself gives the owner's name and address as: Edward S. May."Exclusion order on Edward May ('Baron Bodissey') State Ethics, 23 June 2009, accessed 27 August 2009
In July 2010, Gates of Vienna announced that Baron Bodissey would begin blogging under his real name at Andrew Breitbart's Big Peace.Dymphna, Gates of Vienna at Big Peace, Gates of Vienna, 5 July 2010. May's bio at Big Peace confirms he is the proprietor of Gates of Vienna.Ned May, Big Peace, accessed 29 September 2011.
==Background==
May's father was an employee of the National Security Agency.Baron Bodissey, Synergy and Synchronicity, Gates of Vienna, 8 September 2006. May has written of him:
::My father worked for Signals Intelligence as a cryptographer during World War Two and the Cold War. He always took his security clearance seriously: he never discussed the content of his work at home. Neither his wife nor his children knew what he did for a living until after he retired and the NSA gave him a cryptography award. Finally, I knew what my dad did for a living!Baron Bodissey, Whiskey on the Rocks — 25 Years Old, Gates of Vienna, 9 November 2006. 
May lived in England for a period in his youth before attending college.Baron Bodissey, Kepiblanc Weighs In, Gates of Vienna, 28 October 2007. 
He states on one Gates of Vienna thread that he attended Harrogate High School:
::I lived in Harrogate, Yorkshire, for four years, 1966-1970. Back then it was in the West Riding. I attended a grammar school, and took my O-levels and A-levels there.Baron Bodissey, Comments 2 and 4, Gates of Vienna at Big Peace, Gates of Vienna, 5 July 2010.
Given his father's profession, one may perhaps speculate that this involved a connection with the NSA base at Menwith Hill, near Harrogate.
May graduated from the College of William and Mary in the early 1970s.Baron Bodissey, The Thing Without Feathers, Gates of Vienna, 13 November 2006. 
May was based in Howardsville, Virginia from at least 1999.The Outdoor Arts Show - 1999 Festival, Heart of Virginia, accessed 16 August 2011. In a 2002 campaign contribution filing, May was listed as a self-employed computer analyst and artist.Edward May Political Campaign Contributions 2002 Election Cycle, campaignmoney.com, accessed 16 August 2011. In a similar 2004 filing he was listed a systems analyst for Apex Inc.Edward May Political Campaign Contributions 2004 Election Cycle, campaignmoney.com, accessed 16 August 2011.
He left his Richmond, Virginia-based job in mid-2007:
::What I didn’t fully anticipate was how hard it is to find jobs in my field in the Charlottesville/Lynchburg area. I’m a computer programmer, but with a fairly narrow specialty. In the high-tech corridors around Reston or in the West End of Richmond there are plenty of jobs in my range. But it turns out that around here such jobs are few and far between.Baron Bodissey, For Just Pennies a Day, Gates of Vienna, 6 November 2006. 
May is a member of the Episcopalian Diocese of Southern Virginia, and helped to develop its website, according to a diocesan periodical which stated:
:: Ned and his wife Ceara live near the very small town of Howardsville, in the far northwest corner of this diocese.FROM THE STANDING COMMITTEE, The Jamestown Cross, The Episcopal Diocese of Southern Virginia, Volume 70, No.3, May 2006, p.10.
An October 2000 version of May's website would appear to indicate he married Ceara Sullivan in 1980.Who Were All Those Skinny People? - Wedding 1980, Ned May, Luna.moonstar.com, 27 August 1997, archived at the Internet Archive, 14 October 2000.
==Gates of Vienna blog==
The first entry on the Gates of Vienna blog was a post by Baron Bodissey on 9 October 2004. It claimed that the "Global War on Terror" should be seen as "GIJ3W: The Great Islamic Jihad, Third Wave":
::The thesis of this blog is that, like it or not, we are in a religious war. We do not define the terms but we should take careful note of them. We are mistaken if we think the Enemy wants merely to kill us. Once again, Jihad offers two choices to the West: conversion or death. Jihad exists in order to annihilate unbelief. Christians, Jews, Hindus, atheists, or Wiccans, it is all the same to him.Baron Bodissey, The Newest Phase of a Very Old War, Gates of Vienna, 9 October 2004.
==Pajamas Media==
May attended a Pajamas Media event at the National Press Club in Washington in September 2006, along with a number of other bloggers.Baron Bodissey, Name-Dropping from the National Press Club, Gates of Vienna, 28 September 2006. A month later, Pajamas Media published May's report on filtering of political websites on the Department of Interior's internal computer network.Baron Bodissey, INTERIOR DIALOGUE: AN INVESTIGATIVE REPORT, PoliticsCentral, 16 October 2006, archived at the Internet Archive on 18 November 2008.
==Counterjihad summits==
May helped organize the first UK and Scandinavia CounterJihad Summit, the 2007 CounterJihad Brussels conference, the smaller CounterJihad Vienna 2008 and the CounterJihad 2009 meeting, which according to May, could be the last of his CounterJihad organising.
:"Given my imminent unemployment and reduced circumstances, Counterjihad Copenhagen 2009 will likely be my last such event for the foreseeable future"Slouching Towards Copenhagen Gates of Vienna, 23 May 2009, accessed 28 August
==Views==
In an October 2006 response to Fjordman, May/Bodissey accepted Fjordman's thesis of a coming European Civil War:
::This process is beginning already, as the recent election in Sweden shows. The parties that have up until now been marginalized by these élites as “right-wing extremists” — the British National Party, the Vlaams Belang in Belgium, the Dansk Folkeparti, and the Front National in France, for example — have grown increasingly popular in recent months, despite the opprobrium of the cognoscenti.
::Eventually, when the situation gets bad enough, one or more of these “extremist” parties will gain power, either through an outright majority or through a majority within a center-right coalition. At that point the nationalist party gains the right to appoint its members to the key Defense and Interior Ministries (or their equivalents within a particular country).Baron Bodissey, The Shape of Things to Come in Europe, Gates of Vienna, 14 October 2006.
He went on to suggest that the "ruling elite" would not cede power to the "renascent nationalists" without violence:
::We all hope this doesn’t happen. We hope that those in the entrenched ruling class will place the interests of their people above their own hold on power. But history holds out scant reason for optimism in such situations.
::Europe can wake up now, or it will be jolted out of its slumber later by a knock on the door. Waiting on the other side is an armed man in a uniform, a man of firm purpose, having no qualms and no scruples. He is ready to act at a moment’s notice, and with absolute ruthlessness.Baron Bodissey, The Shape of Things to Come in Europe, Gates of Vienna, 14 October 2006.
===On Muslims===
Bodissey wrote in December 2006:
::Sound strategic doctrine would argue for allying with truly dissident non-violent Muslim groups, both here and abroad.
::Some of them might indeed hate Jews. Some of them might smile if America were destroyed.
But that just makes them the Josef Vissarionovich Djugashvilis of the Counterjihad. We deal with Uncle Joe now, while we need him. Later, after all the mujahideen have earned the 72 black-eyed ones, our relationship with the remaining Muslims may have to change — after all, they do revere the Koran and the Hadith — but, for now, we’re in the same fight together.Baron Bodissey, Changing the Venue, Gates of Vienna, 12 December 2006.
===On Islamophobia===
Bodissey wrote in February 2007:
::we are Islamophobes — but with good reason. You’re bound to be an Islamophobe if you watch what’s happening in Beslan or Sydney, in Rinkeby or Clichy-Sous-Bois, in Leeds or Dearborn, in Thailand, Kashmir, Lebanon, Gaza, Nigeria, Sudan, Indonesia, and the Philippines.
::Islamophobia is a rational response to current events. If you’re not an Islamophobe, you’re not paying attention.Baron Bodissey, Political Naïveté, Gates of Vienna, 13 February 2007.
===On the left===
In September 2006, Bodissey wrote:
::We agree with Fjordman and many others that the Jihad is just a symptom, and that the enemy lies within. This war is a civil war within the West, between traditional Western culture and the forces of politically correct multicultural Marxism that have bedeviled it for the last hundred years. It is being fought in the back halls and cloisters of the culture, with untenured nobodies like me wielding a salad fork against the broadswords and maces of the fully-armored knights of the media and the academy.Baron Bodissey, The Emperor is Naked, Gates of Vienna, 4 September 2006. 
However, in a December 2006 post he wrote:
::I’ve been saying for a while now that it’s wrong — and counterproductive — to write off the entire Left. Christopher Hitchens and Nat Hentoff are not the only ones who understand what’s important.
::Anti-jihad leftists are in the same bind as “moderate” Muslims — they are vilified, ostracized, and threatened because of their heresy. A heretical leftist may get to keep his head, but he will likely find his property destroyed and his career ruined because of his apostasy.Baron Bodissey, On the Barricades, Gates of Vienna, 9 December 2006.
===Buoyed by the 'whiteness' of Warsaw===
In a blog about the Counterjihad Warsaw 2013 conference, Bodissey wrote of feeling 'buoyant' at the 'whiteness' of the city of Warsaw and the lack of what he called 'third-world immigrants':
:'The most surprising thing about Warsaw — and here’s where I get really politically incorrect — was its “whiteness”. There was no significant evidence of mass immigration in the Polish capital, in refreshing contrast to major Western European cities. Poles drive the taxis, bus the restaurant tables, clean hotel rooms, work the cash registers at convenience stores, run construction equipment, and mow the grass. Mind you, some of them may be Lithuanians or Ukrainians — I’d never be able to tell — but they were distinctly not third-world immigrants.
:By and large...Warsaw resembles London or Amsterdam or Oslo as they appeared fifty years ago, when I first moved to England. It is a European city populated by Europeans, who fill all the necessary societal niches. I had forgotten what such a place looked like — it made me so buoyant that I wanted to tip the cab drivers and waitresses extra, just for being Poles.'Slouching Towards Warsaw, Gates of Vienna, 6 October 2013
==Affiliations==
*Center for Vigilant Freedom/910 Group
===Political Donations===
*$500 Goode for Congress - Republican 16 January 2002 (Primary)Edward May Political Campaign Contributions 2002 Election Cycle, campaignmoney.com, accessed 16 August 2011.
*$250 Goode for Congress - Republican 14 April 2004 (Primary)Edward May Political Campaign Contributions 2004 Election Cycle, campaignmoney.com, accessed 16 August 2011.
==References==
May, Edward SMay, Edward S