Enough is enough!

Six months ago, he said that those Muslims who want to stay in the country must “rip out and throw away half of the Quran ”. Today, in an opinion piece in a Dutch newspaper, he went further:

Enough is enough. Let us stop beating about the bush with political correctness. […] The core of the problem is fascistic Islam, the sick ideology of Allah and Mohammed as laid down in the Islamic Mein Kampf: the Quran. The texts from the Quran do not leave much to the imagination.

In different Suras, Muslims are called upon to suppress, persecute or kill Jews, Christians, believers of other faiths and non-believers, to hit women, and to rape, and to establish a worldwide Islamic state with violence. Suras call upon and instigate Muslims to death and destruction.

Ban that book like Mein Kampf is also banned. […]

How ashamed I am for the Dutch politicians. Their naivety and sickly strive towards the utopian moderate Islam, which will only bring our country hell and doom. How ashamed I am of those in and outside of the Cabinet and Parliament, who refuse to stop the Islamic invasion of the Netherlands. […]

The Hague is full of cowardly people. Scared people who are born cowardly and will die cowardly. Who believe and advocate that Dutch culture will be founded on a Judeo-Christian-Islamic tradition. […] Who [ignore] the interests Dutch population and cooperate in the transformation of the Netherlands into a Netherarabia as a province of the Islamic superstate of Eurabia.

I have had enough of Islam in the Netherlands: no more Muslim immigrant. I have enough with the worship of Allah and Mohammed in the Netherlands: no more mosque. I have had enough of the Quaran in the Netherlands: ban that fascistic book.

Enough is enough.

Strong words. Provocative words. Insane words from a raving Parliamentarian with a great big shock of dyed blond hair called Geert Wilders. He and his Part for Freedom (Partij voor de Vrijheid) managed to gain 9 seats in the last elections with (most notably) calls for a complete stop to immigration and the rooting out of Islamic elements in the country. To him the cause of crime and nuisance is Moroccan and Turkish “street-terrorists” who behave and think in ways that are at odds with Western ideas of liberalism democracy. Whether on the issue of treatment of women, homosexuals or fundaments of democracy, his warned that “tsuanami of Islamisation” is beginning to swamp the Netherlands and before you know it this will be a country governed by oppressive Sharia law. We must firmly reassert “the dominant Dutch culture”, he says, and no more mosques should be build, because he claims he’s “going crazy with all those mosques”.

Crazy indeed, but was he ever sane? All this preaching and threatening tones about Islamic radicalisation and creeping fundamentalism doesn’t help at all to the growing misunderstanding and divide between large segments of Dutch society. Instead, Wilders’ cheap rhetoric echoes those tried and failed populist insinuations and stereotyping that stirred the entire country when Fortuyn-fever swept through the country a few years ago. Two high profile politically motivated murders, a heightened state of alert, and a continuing wave of Islam-phobia later, and Wilders still wants to provoke and beat the already battered corpse of xenophobia and feelings of them-against-us.

Funny thing is, within the last six months the contents of the Quaran has not changed at all. If anything changed, it’s Mr. Wilders, who has become the very hardened extremist and militant raving village lunatic that he has been warning people will ‘invade’ this country and lead us all to ‘death and destruction’.

The Quran is but a book, a holy book with special meaning to over one million Muslims in the Netherlands. Admittedly, it does contain passages and words that are incongruent with this age and place, but it is not the book that kills and radicalizes. People kill and radicalise, people commit murders and rapes and incite hatred and others towards violence and revenge. It is people who hijack the Quaran, just as people have hijacked the holy Bible or Tora or any other religious text, to justify actions that defy all the teachings of love and compassion contained in the same books all in the name of ‘religion’.

Wilders’ allusion to Mein Kampf is telling. Some sixty odd years, millions of deaths and untold suffering caused by that infamous book penned by Hitler later, Wilders wants to ban a book in a free and democratic society where the freedom of press and belief are fundamental rights of every citizen regardless of race or creed. Who is the fascist now?

Thank goodness no else one in Parliament supports Wilders and his rants, and already a civil suit has been filed against Wilders for inciting hatred between racial groups.

Wilders was right about one thing though…

“Enough is enough”!

Far-right in EP

First, after numerous concessions, and turning a blind-eye to economic and social woes of the two new members of the European Union, Bulgaria and Romania were allowed to (limp) in.

And now it appears the new members will be bringing some ‘contribution’ to the EU:

The European Parliament looks set to have the first far-right grouping within its corridors by mid-January, with MEPs from new member states Bulgaria and Romania helping to make the formation possible.

Under EU rules, there need to be at least 19 MEPs from five different member states for a political group to be formed.

[…] the group is likely to have at least 20 members and will have a "minimal consensus" programme being broadly against immigration, against Turkey's EU membership, against the EU constitution for its "tendencies...towards a central government."

The loose programme marks the disharmony between the different national elements with one of their main motives for forming a group being to get more say in the European Parliament.

"It is more a technical than a political group," Alessandra Mussolini, grand daughter of the facist Il Duce, told APA.

"We are mainly getting together out of necessity. Survival is only possible in a political group," she added, referring to the fact that groups have a right to more funds and political positions in the European Parliament, something non-attached MEPs do not have.

And I thought one of the fundamental conditions of EU membership was to eliminate racial discrimination and respect human rights and freedoms in the aspirant member state.

The far-right parties of Bulgaria and Romania are set to join other parties across Europe, including the French Front National and Belgian Vlaams Belang, and the UK’s (far-right) British MP Ashley Mote. The latter recently had this to say about how, in the light of the fading true meaning of Christmas, Britain is losing its identity because:

This may be Christmastime, but I bring you a bleak message. And it is too important to ignore.

In a nutshell, it is this: the indigenous population of this country will be in a minority within fifty years, unless huge changes are made, and fast.

The Britain we know and love, and our way of life, faces destruction. The threat comes from within.

[…]

We have a responsibility to pass our inheritance on to our children, and to their children. We surely don’t need reminding of the millions of lives laid down to protect and preserve these precious rights and freedoms, which today are our birthright as British subjects.

There is much to do, and no time to lose.

Our only claim to the British Isles is that we are here. Our forebears settled and developed it. We now control it – at least for the moment – and we must defend it or lose it.

Worrying.

• See “Far-right MEPs set to join forces”
• Report on Bulgaria and Romania’s compliance with EU acquis (standards).

Post-Pim Fortuyn Syndrome

(Volkskrant 18 08 2006)

In the wake Pim Fortuyn’s rise and fall, a number of parties have sprung up in the Dutch political landscape. Fortuyn’s own LPF (Lijst Pim Fortuyn) splintered again and again after the spiritual and worldly leader of a new breed of right-wing populism was murdered in 2002. Many of old party members have gone on to set up their own copy-cat parties, each with a very similar hard-line approach toward immigrants in general, and Muslims and the Islamic religion in particular. So now there is the:

• Partij voor de Vrijheid (Party for Freedom, or put translated another way, sounding conspicuously with the ‘Freedom Party’). This party, led by ex-VVD parliamentarian Geert Wilders, aims “for a better, more sensible Netherlands, that is proud of its own dominant culture”.
• Eén NL (One NL) party, founded by Marco Pastors, the Rotterdam alderman who famously claimed that Muslims use Islam to justify indecent and anti-social behaviour.
• Partij van Nederland, which wants a total ban on the Islamic headscarf and abolition of religious schools, led by Hilbrand Nawijn who was the old faction leader of the LPF.

These parties seem to have weak political agendas, and have much more in common than they claim to be different.

“Strength [resoluteness] is an important theme with [the] small right [party]. Doing what you promise. […] Let’s look at how the promises of the small right have degenerated. There was, and still is, the call for more discipline, security, and decency. Order is interesting in this respect. There was once a movement, the LPF. That party may have its name changed and will receive competition from the ‘Partij voor Nederland’, the ‘Partij voor Vrijheid’ and ‘Eén NL’. Seldom in the parliamentary [formation] has such an indistinct group been seen together.

Decency is also notable. Grievances are rarely exchanged within these parties, let alone resolved. Rather, they are preferably fought out in public. And most of the time it is not even about the big topics which is being bickered about.

[…] And then another pet topic of the small right: unity. The country is much too divided, too many different groups do not think the same way, too many people also who do not want to adapt [to the culture]. The Netherlands would have to become one Netherlands again. But if division reigns anywhere, it is then on the right side of the political spectrum. If you cannot even get it together to politically unite more or less likeminded people in one party, how is it every going to succeed to weld unity in the Netherlands?”[1]

Another commentator argues that the call for unity, discipline and decency is scarily reminiscent of the dark old days of authoritarianism:

“[I surprised myself] about the names of the new right-wing parties. Nawijn’s ‘Partij voor Nederland’ and especially Marco Pastors’ ‘Eén NL’ [One NL]. That last one was probably meant as a promise, but I find it [is] a clear threat. Who wants that the Netherlands be ‘one’, what a kitsch idea, it is the shortest way to the abolition of democracy. Communists and fascists always dreamt of that unity, and the political Islam in that regards is a worthy successor [of that]. Whoever takes freedom seriously (and that say all those conservative splinters) can not speak out for ‘unity’ at the same time, because freedom means difference of opinion, ‘we agree to disagree’, that is the democratic core, and whoever promises more is on course toward a one-party state.”[2]

The fact that the origins and leaders of these small splinter parties all hail from Fortuyn’s legacy underscores the fact that they all want to be boss, all want to lead, and all claim to represent the people’s will. But in reality they weaken themselves and their chances of any real electoral success:

“The populist leader derives his authority from ‘the will of the people’, which he claims to represent. The people is in that sense a homogenous community with a divided culture and its own identity. Because the populist leader, a man with charisma, pretends to directly understand the voice of the people, he would want a direct mandate from the voters and thus has no need for the representative democracy with all its intermediary organs, like parties. The problem with the heirs of Fortuyn is that so many among them see themselves as the best translator of the people’s will. How vulnerable populism is toward egomania appeared in the past few weeks in the inability of Pastors, Wilders, Nawijn, Herben and Van As to [accommodate one another] for the sake of bundling power together.”[3]

About the names of the new parties: ironically, Eén NL, which claims to champion Dutch culture as the ‘Leitkultur’ and opposes all forms of immigration, chose the tulip as its logo. Tulip, as well as being the national flower of the Netherlands, was in fact an import, from none other than Turkey:

“At those right-populists you [can] continue to laugh. […] While they cannot agree among themselves and do everything to sigmatise whole population groups, the new party calls funnily calls itself Eén NL. With as logo: the tulip. ‘A real Dutch flower’, says [party leader] Marco Pastors.

But does Pastors know that the tulip is actually a real immigrant, from Turkey as well? In Turkish, the flower was named ‘tulipan’, because the form is makes one think of the turban. In the 16^th and 17^th Century these were taken over here en masse and some inhabitants of the Netherlands became stinking rich from the trade.

A pleasant similarity with what happened since the 1960s, when many cheap Turkish labour forces were taken over here. […]”[4]

And the obsession in emphasising the Netherlands in the name of the new parties is not in any way reassuring to the public, but worrying:

“How uncertain you must actually be, would you in this country establish a party with the explicity mention of the Netherlands [in the name]. I always thionk: if someone repeatedly and without being asked reveals that he is ‘a real man’, then I would start to distrust [him].”[5]

It’ll be interesting whether the intelligence and integrity of the average Dutch voter will be swayed by these (weak but nonetheless dangerous) attempts to seek self-interested political gain under the mantle of representing the ‘people’s will’.

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[1] Roland van der Vorst, ‘Klein rechts’ [Small right], p95, 2 September 2006, Vrij Nederland

[2] Stephan Sanders, ‘Echt’ [Real], p96, 2 September 2006, Vrij Nederland

[3] Marcel ten Hooven, ‘Democratie staat Pastors maar in de weg’ [Democracy only stands in Pastors’ way], p21, 2 September 2006, Vrij Nederland

[4] Reader’s letter: Michiel de Wit, het Betoog, p7, 26 August 2006, De Volkskrant

[5] Stephan Sanders, ‘Echt’ [Real], p96, 2 September 2006, Vrij Nederland