An Ambiguous Victory for Wilders
The news just in that Dutch prosecutors have changed their mind about prosecuting Geert Wilders for the Orwellian crime of “discriminating against Muslims” and “inciting hatred” is prima facie a victory for free speech and all that. In fact it is not nearly as good as it may seem.
The establishment is scared of continuing to hound the leader of the third-largest political party in the land. The fact that their legal minions are forced to eat humble pie is gratifying, but the trouble is that they are dropping this particular case while keeping all the pernicious laws used against him. They have come up with the ridiculous argument that the politician’s comments about banning the Kuran can be discriminatory, but because Wilders wants to pursue a ban “on democratic lines,” there is no incitement to discrimination “as laid down in law.” As for his comparison of the Kuran with Mein Kampf, the prosecutors now say that the metaphor was “crude, but that did not make it punishable.” While some of his comments could incite hatred against Muslims if taken out of context, they concluded, on the whole Wilders seems to be opposed to the growing influence of Islam and not hostile to Muslims as such.
A clear victory would have been for the Dutch state to declare that it was mistaken in pursuing a case of any kind against Wilders; but that would have meant the end of the Dutch state as we have known it for the past forty years.
In the event the oppressive laws are there to stay. Ordinary Dutch citizens, less visible than Wilders, can be maliciously prosecuted – and convicted – for saying the same things he has said, but with far less fuss. In the same manner some well known East European dissidents were relatively protected from the Comrades’ fury in the 1970s, but arbitrary and oppressive laws were then applied with an even greater ferocity against the anonymous multitudes.
For as long as Holland’s and other European countries’ ridiculous “hate” laws remain on the statute books, the threat of prosecution hangs above everyone’s head – and no conviction is required to make people think twice about expressing themselves frankly and meaningfully about “prophet” Muhammad’s ideology of war and hatred.
I suspect that Wilders himself would have preferred a highly publicized trial and conviction, followed by an appeal that would test the constitutionality of the laws used against him. That is the kind of battle that requires courage, money, and media attention. He is the ideal man to give it one more try.
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Supposedly the head of Shell Oil was very supportive of the Nazis and fascists in Holland in the 1930's. I can only wonder how much support the muslims and these hate laws in Holland are the result of oil companies who drill and are supplied oil from muslim countries.
I meant to say "...the result of the political influence of the oil companies..."
Wilders isn't out of the woods yet. The judges must agree with the prosecutors before all the charges against him can be dropped. The prosecutors didn't want to prosecute him initially but were forced to do so by the appeals court. I remember visiting London 25 years ago. Whichever pub I'd go into you'd find frank and spirited discussion about the effing yanks, or the effing micks, or the effing wogs, etc. Not very pleasant if you were one of the targetted groups but if you had a sense of humor you could get some of your own back and more. I suppose that must all be gone now.
A Dutch commentator, Ian Buruma, was saying that people like Wilders are a problem not because of their beliefs, but because they are one-issue politicians.
Once they get in power, they have absolutely nothing to offer, because they are ignorant in law, education, trade, business, crime-and-order, and public services. Meaning that they got in because of one useless populist issue and have to be a liability and a distraction in the parliament. Other Dutch commentators have also said that he flipflops on other issues, and is useless in any other capacity.
While these laws do stretch the basic limits of use of force and decency, it would seem that the case against him is just to put him in the sidelines and keep him away. It's sort of like how dissident newspapers in India find the income tax authorities visiting them too often. The benevolent tyrants don't want anybody arrested, but just left irritated and frustrated in the dissident crusades.
Buruma instead suggested that he should be showered and overburdened with responsibilities rather than kept away from them, just so it could be seen if he had something meaningful to offer and could do serious work.
How is that for an ambiguous victory for both sides?
"Orwellian" is right!
@4 "Once they get in power..." "They," plural? Like where exactly, pray? I must have missed Messrs Griffin, Le Pen, Strache et al proving their incompetence.
Geert Wilders said: "I do not insult, I do not incite to hatred, I do not discriminate. The only thing I do and will continue to do is to speak the truth."
"Will continue to do so" good.
"I do not ... discriminate" bad.
Discrimination is civilization at its base. Its absence is regression towards barbarism -- the way the West is headed. Check out Th. Dalrymple's "In Praise of Prejudice: The Necessity of Preconceived Ideas" (2007).
'They' meaning several of the solely immigration issue parties that have come up across Europe recently. Nick Griffin never had much to say on matters other than demographic invasion, for example.
#8 does not respond at all to my #6.
"Once they get in power, they have absolutely nothing to offer, because they are ignorant ... Meaning that they got in because of one useless populist issue" -- Once again, *where* and *when* did it all happen.
The poster is perfectly entitled to assert that "if they were to get in power they would have absolutely nothing to offer... Meaning if they were to get in..." etc.
That "one issue" is "useless" and "populist" to some, literally a matter of life and death to others.
The woman who founded the Danish People's Party had worked in politics for decades, before founding the party, and had absolutely nothing to show as an achievement, and even after founding the party and getting the election victory, she has done next to nothing.
And what about Austria's Wolfgang Schussel - recent reports in Spiegel just showed that his coalition with the now notorious Jorg Haider produced the most corrupt politicians in an once relatively clean country.
'Once they get in power, they have absolutely nothing to offer, because they are ignorant in law, education, trade, business, crime-and-order, and public services"
Well it seems obvious to me that Wilders "one issue" encompasses all of the above issues in one way or another...
I agree, and I agree that letting the wrong kind of foreigner walk around your country could be a dangerous move, but UK's Conservative Party took care of all these problems without ever making a loud noise about it. They have started a gradual tightening of immigration, removed petty hate speech laws, brought back deportation on crime,.etc.
Except they did it without making it a central issue during elections like Sweden Democrats or Danish People's Party did. They didn't even bring up the issue at all. So could it be that such groups are about public spectacle made by failing career politicians? I'd say it is - considering Wilders jumped from pro-welfare-state to an anti-tax, anti-regulation position in a short time.
The U.S. needs to invade Holland to restore freedom.
Hate crimes! Hate crimes! Hate crimes! This is one of the most asinine, pacifist-generated terms I've ever heard! In all seriousness . . . is there a "nice" crime????
You're right doc . . . Geert Wilders is the "ideal" man for this battle. I firmly believe there are select people born into this world to "battle" such insane establishments, and by far, Wilders is one of those patriots. Despite this living hell, Wilders fought an unyielding battle with complete substance, class, and integrity, where most would have folded. As far as I'm concerned, he's Superman.
However, it's people such as yourself doc - - - who continue to write about the course of events - - - that help this man remain visible. Danke!
@ 4, 8, 10, 12 (Prateek):
With all due respect . . . ??? You lost me, bud.
#13. Good one! We should institute the Joe S. "phrase of the week" award.
I'm very pleased to find Dr. Trifkovic posting in the Chronicles again. His valuable insights are always worth reading. I have read and re-read his books and would recommend them to anyone who wants to understand the dangers that jihad poses to Western civilization.
ST: "That “one issue” is “useless” and “populist” to some, literally a matter of life and death to others."
Agreed.
Opposing Third World immigration is vital for the survival of Europe and hopefully we'll see more political parties that make this their main focus.
"UK’s Conservative Party took care of all these problems without ever making a loud noise about it"
David Cameron’s Con-Job On Immigration
By Derek Turner
http://www.vdare.com/misc/101015_turner.htm
#15
I am just saying it's all empty rhetoric and about no meaningful action.
MAR, that editorial piece focuses too much on TWO words spoken by Cameron, which were pure casuitry in a long summarising speech.
Cameron is by all means a quiet Tory, who knows what the sentiments of many powerful interests in his country are, and while he will not engage them directly, he has quietly made the first steps to tightening immigration policy in UK in 14 years.
As it is, the word immigration never came out of Cameron's mouth during the entire election, and the man has kept a promise that he never made - that's quite the opposite of what American Republicans do, no?
@13 We won't invade until they actually throw Muslims out and make attempts to restore Christian values.
@13 John Seiler
And I know a little cafe by a canal in Utrecht where I can park my canoe and conduct business as the Coalition of the Oh So Willing's quality control inspector of Dutch chocolate.
I am surprised that Angela Merkel declared the death of multiculturalism in Germany the other day. For the sake of German Christians I pray that it isn't too little, too late. They'll have to shut down Muslim Immigration, revive the birth rate, and restrict suffrage if they want to survive.
@Chesterbelloc: I'm not surprised. The electorate is outraged and people are starting to cry for blood (i.e., vote for right-wing parties). That declaration was a joke and a grandstand. Merkel is a phony, just like every lying shill from "Christian" Democratic movements all over this continent.
My attorney in the United States, a dual U.K.-U.S. citizen of Jewish origins raised agnostic, sent me that article in an e-mail. Here was my response:
... and then in the same breath she cites Islam as "a part of Germany" and calls for unassimilable immigrants to integrate...
What Merkel hopes her idiot constituants don't realize is that immigrants in Germany ARE required to learn German, and at their OWN expense (unlike in France, where immigrants who so need can get French classes at taxpayer expense). And yet they STILL have integration problems.
But what do you expect? "Christian Democratic" parties neither adhere to a Christian ethic, nor represent the will of the people. Bruno Gollnisch, MEP from the Front National in France, said to one of his Christian Democratic colleagues in Brussels that, while the Christian Democratic movements in Europe were founded at the behest of the Popes in the hopes of Christianizing democracy, they "have succeeded only in democratizing Christianity."
And nowadays you can count the UK Conservative Party as just another "Christian Democratic" organ. The but of these parties is to sell Euro-subsidization, demographic swamping, sexual libertinism and indeed the destruction of Christianity to Christian voters. The only reason they survive is that European Socialists have been exposed in an even more dramatic fashion. Once Communism was the biggest enemy to Europe; now, the biggest enemy is the center-"right."
Further down the conversation, we discussed the place of Jews in U.K. society and how many of them, hoping to achieve assimilation, were happy to go to Christian schools and sing Christmas carols, et c. (My lawyer is a choral singer herself [as am I, incidently], is a huge fan of Christmas and English back bacon, and sang at Saint-John-the-Divine Cathedral.) This led me to discuss the problem of "citizenship," which is improperly confounded with "nationality":
(I mention here Britain as a prototype. However, what I say could well be said [with some modifications of detail] of France, Germany, Belgium or Holland as well--and increasingly of Italy, Denmark, Norway or Spain.)
Well, the thing is this: in the 19th century, if you were non-Christian and wanted to be a part of mainstream, say, British society, there were two options:
1. accept the fact that your religion was a minority religion and adopt at least some of the customs of the majority religion (Christianity), or
2. work to dis-establish Christianity and make British citizenship less meaningful.
At the time there was still enough religious sentiment in Britain to make (2) a non-viable choice for all but the most virulent leftist intellectuals.
But the leftists succeeded. Nowadays the British see the Muslims coming in and demanding, on the one hand, full citizenship and on the other hand, full respect for their Islamic traditions, including Sharia courts.
Moreover, the elderly make up an increasing share of the British electorate due to the sexual revolution and the pill, and they are not going to vote for reductions in their pensions. They want young brown Muslims coming in to work and pump money in. They'll be dead before the tidal wave hits and heck, they didn't leave any children: why should they give a damn about Britain's future?
(Of course anyone who truly thinks that way--and I submit there are more of that kind of person than we would like to believe--should definitely give a damn [pun intended] about the bad surprise that awaits them after death. I've met enough people like that to know that either there has to be such a thing as hell, or "justice" does not exist.)
For their part, the British have just enough vestigal collective memory of a Christian identity that they see there is "something wrong," but they have stripped their civic space of so much of their religious identity (it is not enough to have the trappings and ceremony if the substance and the morality are not there) that they are incapable of articulating an adequate justification for the exclusion of Muslims and, especially, of Islam from a full share in their civic space.
Britain therefore has three options:
***
1. Return to a Christian identity and make it clear that Christianity is a part of the British identity and that they wish for it to remain so. Those who will not accept the Christian faith may participate in the public sphere, with the understanding that they will end up participating in a space that has a Chrsitian character. Those who wish to have nothing to do with Christianity are free not to participate.
Those who wish for the right to be tried in Sharia courts must give up their British citizenship: Islam not only is a non-Christian religion, but also claims the right to legislate over civil matters as well as religious ones. Logically it is therefore incompatible with citizenship in a non-Islamic state.
2. Define "British Citizenship" as coterminous with "British Nationality." This would mean that to qualify for British citizenship, one must be able to prove lineage from a white English, Scottish, Welsh, Irish (northern six counties), Manx or Cornish ancestor.
Apart from the obvious White Supremacist conotations, the problem with this solution is that it would necessarily grant the right to British citizenship to about half the populations of Canada and Australia as well as anywhere from 25 to 35 percent of the population of the United States.
This last case is the most worrisome, and would probably spell the end of the monarchy: most Americans care not one whit about the Windsor dynasty and many Americans of British descent, since the War for Independence, are openly hostile to it.
To avoid that problem, this solution would probably entail just another arbitrary, artificial, apocalyptic top-down épuration of society and therefore be more leftist than traditional, despite appearances. Britain would quite possibly be in the same place after 50 years.
3. Give it up. Accept an Islamic and non-white future for the British Isles. Tell young Britons they should prepare to retire to North Pakistan.
***
Which one of these three options reflect's Britain's likely future? We are at the beginning of the twenty-first century and much is still up in the air. There is a lot of sentiment for all three and it looks like we will see elements of each attempted. One of the solutions will have to prevail, and my money is that, the second one being un-viable, it will be either the first or the third. If Britain is to come out of this at all she has to come out with a high morale or she is done for anyway.
Meanwhile, though, much mischief will be done, many resources wasted and--possibly--a fair amount of blood shed. That, especially this last part, is what gives me worry vis-à-vis the morale issue.
@Andrew G Van Sant: Agreed. When has the U.S. ever intervened and successfully restored anything Christian?
@ NGPM
I can't add much to your analysis. I do think it is a little promising that leftists like Merkel, Cameron, etc. are talking about the issue. The issue was forbidden ten years ago. I don't think they care about the future of their countries, but perhaps they are beginning to realize it is in their selfish interest to slow immigration. The danger, or course, is that they will slow it just enough to prevent a populist uprising, but not enough to save Europe. But if even the DUTCH are are getting their act together, there is cause for hope.
Rather than restrict suffrage based on race and religion, it would probably be better to require citizens to trace their ancestry in the country back to a certain time- in Germany, 1950 would work. This might be a bit more palatable in a society that has been indoctrinated in secularism for decades. You could call it "polity stabilization" or whatever you want. If Germany is going to be Christian again, this must come from civil society rather than legislation.
Good thing we invaded Iraq after 9/11 and solved all these problems.
So it seems that we are going to spend this century on religious discussions also......poor Atheists will start praying in order to be left alone.
I have no clue who this Mr. Wilders is nor what he stands for. If I understand correctly he was about to go to jail for saying something against Islam. I learned that some others went to jail for saying things against Jews in recent years. Of course that our jails are so overcrowded. Luckily, nobody will be jailed for talking against some Serbs or any other Christian subject. Seems fair. I hear it's legal too, although I often have an urge to check the map and a calendar in order to confirm Where and When I am at the moment, also pinching myself to make sure this is not just a very long, boring, bad dream.
This idea of selecting white guys with long, pure ancestry for citizenship is excellent, although sounds familiar somehow. I suggest that rejected ones be send to some electric-fenced compounds, provided with lucrative job opportunities and sophisticated heating system.
While searching for some more idiotic topic, let's continue debating the issue of Political Correctness of Modern Jihad. Read more about it in: "To Kill on not to Kill en masse: Jihad Then and Now".
Islamists must be having a ball, at the moment. We over-regulated our societies so ridiculously bad that we choked our own existence. Next step - retaliation by breaking all the laws.......by violent means, of course.
I cannot help wondering Who or What whispers all that evil to them and us simultaneously.
Under British law you are not a citizen of the UK but a "subject" of the current king or queen. That makes Queen Lizzie the head of state while Cameron is the head of government. Rather like the pre-wwII Japanese with their emperor/god to whom all reverence was paid while the real power was firmly in the hands of the warlords.
And I'm not so sure of Cameron's quiet sagacity vis-a-vis immigration. After all, within days of gaining office, he was loudly calling for Turkey's admission to the EU.
@27
Someone brings up the possibility of partially restricting Islamist voting rights and you equate it with genocide. In the next sentence you condemn the political correctness surrounding Islam. Care to explain that contradiction?
@28
Cameron is a fool and a coward, of course. But when even he is cutting back (somewhat) on non-European immigration there is cause for hope! The worst thing about liberals is that they are convinced cowardice will save them. That may work for a generation or two, but eventually the chickens come home to roost. They will have to become rationally selfish again, or give up their elite position to the ethnic and religious blocs they have encouraged.
@29
Many of us, Serbs tend to be very cynical. We also tend to read as written.
Although officially Her Majesty's subject living last half of my life as Citizen of Canada, I have no roots within Dominion therefore prospective Lager in this scenario would be my home.
Monsieur Milisevic, if you'll kindly reread my post, I specifically referred to "White Supremacist connotations" as a problematic aspect of a race-based citizenship/subject test. A Christian kingdom must welcome friendly refugees. The problem is that over the last 50 years we have accepted mostly just unfriendly freeloaders. Personally, I do not sense that you are one of these latter.
As for Islam, there are many non-racial ways to restrict or rid ourselves of it. These options should be exploited. That they will have the dramatic but still secondary effect of "whitening" the populations of Europe is a convenient carrot with which to shut up the Odinists.
Also, just to clarify, being a "subject" of Her Majesty is not tantamount to being a "citizen" of Britain, or else all Canadians would have E.U. citizenship. That is decidedly not the case.
Some time ago, a certain Slobodan Milosevic revoked some Constitutional Rights to Kosovo Province resulting in losing that territory forever.
History tends to describe events according to results. This one sentence will stay as the fact while the event remains much more significant. Essence of it was the attempt to right some wrongs however too late.
I understand that we are talking about something very alike here.
Serbs lost Kosovo due to laws of ethnic rights. What the others are going to lose due to their own need for generosity remains to be seen.
@13, Mr. Seiler, thanks for the laugh.
Surprised no one has brought up recent public comments by Merkel that multi-culturalism has "utterly failed". To do what, I'm not sure. What again was the goal in all of this?
(Google Merkel and multi-culturalism, and you'll find a host of lame articles about it.)
Europe may be waking up, the question is if it is already in the deathgrip of a stranglehold. Too many of my friends regard the comments of Merkel to be extreme and somehow related to an unhealthy fear that similar sentiments may be alive here.
Sorry, just now got to Mr. Buchanan's article.
Thanks for the post - interesting read.