A misleading headline

EUObserver, usually quite reliable, has come up with something problematic: Extremists pose challenge to Danish democracy screams the title but the story unfolds in a somewhat misleading fashion.

The "extremists" of the title are right-wing politicians from the Golden Dawn, a deeply unpleasant, authoritarian and racist Greek party to Geert Wilders, whose mostly main stream opinions are seen as beyond the pale because of his insistence on the need for immigrants to adapt to European values and for immigration to be controlled.

Far-right European politicians, Golden Dawn from Greece and Geert Wilders from the Netherlands, are attending a festival (Folkemodet) on the Danish island of Bornholm on 11-14 June.

The open-air political festival features prime minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt as a main speaker as well as most of the government, opposition party leaders, business representatives, trade unions, media and cultural celebrities.

Folkemodet is a Danish counterpart to the famous Swedish Almedalveckan, which each year draws up to thousands of visitors to the Swedish island of Gotland.

So far, so unthreatening to democracy.

As many as 100,000 participants are expected to attend the Baltic sea island Bornholm event but this year's first-ever attendence by far-right politicians will prove a challenge to Denmark's tradition of openness and freedom of speech.

The presence of Wilders – who has received scores of death threats over the years for his anti-Islamic views – will also mean a large security upgrade at the popular festival.

The press freedom organisation, Trykkefrihedsselskabet, invited Wilders to speak.

Georgios Epitideios, a former general and Golden Dawn member of the European Parliament, has also confirmed his participation. Golden Dawn, from Greece, is considered to be a neo-Nazi party.

Epitideios was invited by ’The Danes’ party’, a small ultra-right party, which has no elected representatives at the national or local level.

"We have chosen to debate, among other things, what we want in Europe. And it is natural to invite a party that is really big," head of the party, Daniel Carlsen, told Berlingske Tidende.

The news has already caused several politicians to cancel their participation.

"There will be so many police on the island that it will spoil the whole mood, and it will ruin my experience," Liberal member of the Zealand Regional Council, Claus Bakke said.

So, let me get this straight. Certain politicians have been threatened by other people and will, therefore, need increased security; certain other politicians have, therefore, pulled out of the event either because as they blandly explain the atmosphere will be different or, as is much more likely, because they are scared; and it is the politicians who are being directly threatened that "pose challenge to Danish democracy" not those who issue the threats and are, as we know, prepared to carry them out or those who are virtually blackmailing the organizers by refusing the attend. Logical, it ain't.

An international alliance of eurosceptic parties?

The Financial Times is somewhat sniffy about the proposed electoral pact between Geert Wilders' Dutch Party for Freedom (PVV) and Marine Le Pen's National Front (FN) but that is to be expected. In fact, it is rather sniffy about the parties themselves, not bothering to differentiate much between them and calling them extreme right-wing and all anti-EU parties "nationalistic and xenophobic". Why is it, asks one rhetorically, that all parties, regardless of other political ideas, who prefer their countries to be independent and self-governing as well as have more accountable governments, are described as extremist while those who campaign for greater European integration (not a very popular idea across the member states of the EU) as moderates?

Anyway, back to the electoral pact.

Marine Le Pen and Geert Wilders, two of Europe’s best-known far-right leaders, vowed to fight side by side in a coalition of nationalist parties in next year’s European Parliament elections to bring down the “monster in Brussels”.

The anti-EU alliance between the French National Front party (FN) and the Dutch Party for Freedom (PVV) will seek to attract other eurosceptic groups as they try to capitalise on the economic misery and high unemployment plaguing the continent.

Pretty bad, eh? Fancy trying to capitalize on the fact that certain political decisions have made the economic situation across Europe considerably worse than it would have been otherwise. Shockingly bad behaviour.

The two party leaders intend to campaign together next year in the European elections and to form a group with, they hope, other parties in the European Parliament, thus shifting somewhat the debate or what passes for debate in that institution. Among parties that they hope will join them is our very own UKIP but the Dear Leader has remained aloof, claiming with justification that certain past political pronouncements by the FN and its then leader, Papa Le Pen are incompatible with UKIP's stance. Indeed, it would be an excellent idea if the FN would distance itself from those anti-Semitic and Holocaust-denying comments. Mr Wilders has also spoken of Belgium's Vlaams Belang and Italy's Lega Norda as possible allies.

Other anti-EU parties that could consider joining forces in next year’s European polls include the Danish People’s party, Finland’s The Finns, Austria’s Freedom party, Germany’s Alternative für Deutschland and Italy’s Five Star Movement.

However, eurosceptics have often had divergent views, ranging from ending the EU to quitting the euro or simply forming a looser union. The divisions have often outstripped points in common. For example, Alternative für Deutschland and the Five Star Movement, led by comedian-turned-politician Beppe Grillo, would find it difficult to form an alliance with a neo-fascist party like the FN.

Nevertheless, analysts said the FN-PVV alliance had potential because the two leaders agree on several issues, including reducing EU powers, imposing tougher immigration laws and reinstating border controls. The two remain divided on gay rights, openness to Islam and some socioeconomic matters.

Covered by the BBC and the Washington Post that is a little less biased than our own media, perhaps because it is all so far away for them and they cannot  imagine the EU ever breaking up. 

European values victorious?

Over and over we have been told that the purpose of the European project is to consolidate and spread European values which are, for the purposes of this argument, democracy, liberalism, freedom of just about everything (unless the EU says otherwise) and suchlike extremely admirable concepts. Of course, European history shows quite clearly that other values come to the fore quite frequently but those are the ones the European project wants defeated and destroyed. To put it as succinctly as possible, the European project intends to use European values to defeat European history.

How is that project working out? Not so well in Greece, where the twists and turns of the Golden Dawn saga merit a posting all of its own. Not so well in some other countries, according to latest reports.

EurActiv informs us that the far-right Front National is doing rather well in the opinion polls in France.

France's far-right National Front could top European Parliament elections next May, pulling ahead of the two big mainstream parties for the first time in a nationwide vote, a poll showed on Wednesday.

Some 24% of those surveyed by for the Nouvel Observateur magazine said they would back the anti-immigrant party, compared with 22% for the centre-right UMP and 19% for the governing Socialist Party.

The party has acquired a respectable look under the leadership of Marine Le Pen and

knocked out left-wing rivals and pulled far ahead of the UMP in the first round of a local election in southern France this week.

The party's next major political test will be municipal elections in March, in which Le Pen says she wants the party to build up a strong local base by winning control of hundreds of seats in local councils.

A strong showing in that ballot could set the party up for further gains in the European Parliament elections, where Eurosceptic and nationalistic parties often do well.

That, of course, is the problem. The European project expects European values to transcend boundaries and eventually overwhelm the electorate across Europe particularly in elections for the European Parliament (a. k. a. Toy Parliament). This seems not to happen and, as the EUObserver points out, things could get worse next May:

Anti-Islam politician Geert Wilders, who PVV party advocates withdrawing from both the euro and the EU, remains a major force in the Netherlands.

It has been polling top in the domestic scene in recent weeks amid frustration with the current government's economic policies and amid rising euroscepticism among the Dutch.

Both Wilders and Le Pen have mooted the possibly teaming up to campaign ahead of the elections.

The eurosceptic, anti-immigration UK Independence Party, came third in local elections in May.

It is currently polling at 11 percent, ahead of the junior governing party, the Liberal Democrats, but is tipped to exceed the 16 percent it claimed in 2009, while party leader Nigel Farage has himself predicted an "earthquake" next year.

The National Front poll is set to heighten fears - already alive in Brussels - that the elections to the European Parliament will result in large gains for extremist parties.

Let us accept that some parties that oppose the cosy political consensus that is the European project will do well in the European elections in May and might do well in various local elections. (In fact, have done relatively well in the case of UKIP.)

Before we start worrying about extremism, though, would it not be a good idea to define it? Is it extremism to point out that the euro was a monumentally stupid idea that has not done any good to anyone and is doing active harm to many? So extreme as to be off the accepted political scale?

Is it unspeakably extreme to oppose the European Union, which is, by its own admission an undemocratic body, ever less popular with the people and whose accounts have never been signed off by its own Court of Auditors?

Is it extreme to say as does Geert Wilders that there should be a moratorium on the immigration of people who not only do not share but actively oppose and try to destroy the accepted liberal (and supposedly European) values of the Netherlands?

Do those much-vaunted European values not include opposition to the current establishment?

Geert Wilders again

Geert Wilders, the highly memorable Dutch politician whom neither the Islamists nor the political establishment can silence, has written a book, entitled Marked for Death: Islam's War Against the West and Me. FrontPage Magazine has an article on him and his long fight against the Western political classes and media as much as anything else.

Sanity in sight?

As predicted, Geert Wilders has been acquitted of hate speech and discrimination (whatever that may mean). Lots of links but here is an American one that is relatively objective. Bloomberg mentions in the first paragraph that this farce has lasted for three years. Mr Wilders's comments "fell within the bounds of legitimate political debate", according to the judge. And so I should think. Ed West is absolutely right: the mere fact that this trial took place is a disgrace. One can only surmise that the Dutch legal system has nothing else to deal with.

Are they going to draw a line?

There is a general acceptance that Geert Wilders will be acquitted tomorrow on all charges after 29 months of legal struggle, which occasionally tipped over into black farce. Radio Netherlands gives quite a good summary of the developments here, explaining that, in the end it is the Dutch legal system that has found itself on trial.

Judicial system damaged
In the end, it was not Islam but the Dutch judicial system that came under the spotlight during the course of the trial. Three developments in particular have damaged the credibility of the judicial establishment.

First, the ruling of the Amsterdam court to prosecute Wilders was controversial in and of itself. The court made the ruling only after a special team at the national public prosecutor’s office had repeatedly decided not to prosecute Mr Wilders. This exposed an internal struggle between the district court and the justice ministry.

In that struggle, Amsterdam won the first round by forcing the trial to take place. But the justice ministry pushed back. They assigned two members of that same special team to conduct the prosecution at the trial in Amsterdam. Thus, Geert Wilders’ prosecutors were already on record as opposing his prosecution. And, indeed, during the trial they used the same argument, calling for Mr Wilders to be acquitted.

Attempt to silence Wilders
The second development was brought on by Mr Wilders’ defence. He and his lawyer have claimed that this trial is a politically motivated attempt to silence him. A strong accusation. But this claim became more plausible when the initial three judges hearing the trial were ruled to have demonstrated possible bias against Mr Wilders.

The trial had to resume with three new judges, but not before the Amsterdam district court went through an intensive process of self-reflection and public criticism.

That leaves the third development, one which again put the judicial system in a bad light: ‘the dinner’. For a few months, the trial focused on a social gathering involving the judge who wrote the decision to prosecute Mr Wilders and one of the three expert witnesses called by the defence. Allegations of witness tampering were shown to be unfounded, but the judge, and by extension the entire Amsterdam district court, came out looking naïve and amateurish.

Al-Jazeera agrees that Mr Wilders is likely to be acquitted. Their view is that the ending of this case will not end the debate about freedom of speech in the Netherlands (and, indeed, why should it?).

Whatever the verdict will be on Thursday, it seems clear that the debate about the limits of freedom of speech in the Netherlands will not be over.

Bas Paternotte, a political journalist for HP/De Tijd magazine and a frequent contributor to the highly popular right-wing shock-blog Geenstijl, argues that the Dutch political climate has shifted significantly over the past years.

"Fifteen years ago, Hans Janmaat [another extreme-right Dutch politician] was convicted for saying he wanted to abolish multiculturalism. Last week, the government said that multiculturalism has failed and that it will cut financial support for minority target groups. This is an evolution in thinking and political action and maybe the trial against Wilders is part of that same evolution."

This blog has followed the Wilders case (here, here partially, and here) as well as writing about Mr Wilders's electoral success, the attacks on him that, shamefully, included ones from the British media and his visit to Westminster to show his film Fitna to MPs and peers. Any reader who wishes to revisit those stories can follow this link.

Here we go again (and again and again)

Despite the many problems around the Geert Wilders trial for upsetting people "inciting hatred and discrimination against Muslims", it will be going ahead again. And, no doubt, again, should it fail this time.

Not guilty!

Through the Corner on the National Review website to Dutch News.nl

The public prosecution department on Friday afternoon stated that Geert Wilders is not guilty of discriminating against Muslims. Earlier on Friday it announced he should also be found not guilty of inciting hatred.

Prosecutors Birgit van Roessel and Paul Velleman reached their conclusions after a careful reading of interviews with and articles by the anti-Islam politician and a viewing of his anti-Koran film Fitna.

Why they could not have done that careful reading and viewing before, instead of trying to ban the film, I cannot imagine. Then again, Geert Wilders has acquired a great deal of political clout recently and, just possibly, this has been noticed.

Of course, he will still have to have round the clock protection as his life is still in danger.

Partial victory

I still have not caught up quite with developments in various EU member states such as the Netherlands, Sweden and France (where public sector strikes over pension reforms are in their second day). However, it is good to be able to report that there is a partial victory in the Geert Wilders case.

Through Atlas Shrugged I have found the Radio Netherlands report that informs us of the Dutch Public Prosecutors dropping the charge group defamation.

Public prosecutors Birgit van Roessel and Paul Velleman now say his comments on the Qur’an referred to Islam and its holy book, and not to Muslim people.

In explaining their call for acquittal on the defamation charges, the prosecutors also explained that statements contained in the MP’s film, Fitna, referred to Islam as a religion and not to its followers. Even though the statements could hurt the feelings of Muslims, that was not the same as defamation of the group.

On Friday we shall see whether the charge of inciting hatred and discrimination (in effect exercising free speech as Ayaan Hirsi Ali explains in her article in the Wall Street Journal) will be pressed.

Getting into a right tangle

Andrew Bolt's blog in today's Melbourne's Herald Sun is really very funny and, I think, intentionally so. This blog would agree with everything he says, starting with the title: How dare Wilders not surrender freedom to Islam. Indeed, that is a subject on which I have written on numerous occasions before.

Mr Bolt, however, goes further and quotes from an unintentionally funny article in the New York Times. The article makes all sorts of derogatory comments about Mr Wilders and sounds shocked at the fact that his party has done rather well in the elections, while alluding to Pim Fortuyn's murder and the fact that Mr Wilders has to live under 24 hour protection. Could there be a connection between those aspects of Dutch politics and the "earthquake" that seems to be sweeping through it?

The funniest part of the article, as Mr Bolt notes, is the "problem" of including what the NYT calls "extremist politicians" in mainstream politics. Really, one cannot help having all those quotation marks.

The success of Mr. Wilders highlights the difficulties faced by mainstream politicians across Europe in dealing with the rise of populists and extremists: Include them and you have to take on board their unsavory policies; exclude them and end up increasing their appeal to protest voters.

Such a dilemma would have been unthinkable here a decade ago, when the Netherlands was as renowned for the dull, consensual predictability of its politics, as for its profusion of canals.

But the 2002 assassination of Mr. Fortuyn by an animal rights activist convulsed the country. Two years later, after making a documentary fiercely critical of Islam, Theo Van Gogh, was also killed in broad daylight.

Dick Houtman, a professor of political sociology at Erasmus University in Rotterdam, said that Mr. Wilders had built on Mr. Fortuyn’s legacy, successfully avoiding the overtly racist language of far-right politicians in other countries by highlighting issues like freedom of speech, female equality and gay rights.

“That serves to exclude Muslims from the Dutch political consensus,” he said.

Is Professor Houtman listening to himself? Is he really saying that there is something wrong with highlighting issues like freedom of speech, female equality and gay rights? Is that what he teaches at the Erasmus University of Rotterdam? And does he really think that if that excludes Muslims from the Dutch political consensus then it is the consensus, which developed from ideas of enlightenment that based itself on the work of humanists like Erasmus that should change?

Whither the Dutch government?

Eighty eight per cent of the votes have been counted in the Netherlands, according to the Telegraph report this morning, and the result is promising to be very interesting. Setting aside the newspaper's mindlessly repetitive description of Geert Wilders' Party for Freedom (PVV)as being "far-right" because it wants to control immigration of people who have no desire to adapt to the country's very liberal culture, what the article tells us ought to make a lot of people sit up.

With 88 per cent of the votes counted, published partial results showed the Liberals with 31 and Labour on 30.

But the real victory went to Geert Wilders' Party for Freedom (PVV), which demands an end to immigration from Muslim countries and a ban on new mosques. The PVV took its number of seats from nine in the last parliament to 24, and could hope to enter a coalition government.

Mark Rutte, the Liberal leader may have the mandage to become Prime Minister but he will need at least three other parties to secure the necessary majority in Parliament. He can, of course, leave out the PVV but that is likely to cause a few problems. Geert Wilders said quite firmly when he was in London that he did not mind leading the largest party in opposition.

AP suggests, on the basis of 93 per cent counted, that

The most likely outcome appears to be a centrist coalition with VVD and Labor combining with two smaller parties on the left, the Green-Left and Democrats-66, who both won 10 seats.

Yet neither the top two parties will be able to form a government without major compromises on ideology.

The VVD has pledged to slash the deficit by cutting government spending and welfare programs while Labor has criticized the program as harmful to the poor.

Labor wants to preserve government social programs, raise taxes on the wealthy and make it easier for immigrants to integrate rather than punishing those that fail.
Although not as outspoken against immigration as Wilders, Rutte has also argued that immigrants who cannot contribute to the Dutch economy should not be allowed to come, and he would ban them from receiving welfare for 10 years after arrival.

In the meantime, the ousted PM, Jan Peter Balkenende stays on as caretaker Prime Minister. What a good thing that this sort of a messy situation cannot happen in Britain. Oh wait ....

UPDATE: The talk is now of a Centre-Right coalition government in the Netherlands, which would included Geert Wilders. We shall see. In the meantime, I have spotted a truly idiotic headline on Sky News website: Far-Right Breakthrough Shocks Netherlands. Remind me, how did that far-right breakthrough happen?

"We must not be afraid of speaking up for freedom"

March 5 is an important day in the history of freedom and its slow, very slow spread across the world: it is the anniversary of Joseph Stalin’s death in 1953 and, although the Soviet Union struggled on for some decades, getting itself more and more bogged down in economic stagnation and the contradictions of its own ideology, his death did signal the beginning of the inevitable end. More immediately, his death began the process of release. Tens, hundreds of thousands of prisoners who had been kept in unspeakable conditions in camps, came home to their families. This did not happen as soon as he died. In fact, the first developments were uprisings in the camps, described by numerous writers such as Alexander Solzhenitsyn and, more recently, the man I have mentioned in a previous posting, Tim Tzouliadis. The uprisings were put down with extraordinary brutality; people were still murdered and tortured and some never left the camps or not for many years after this date. But the thaw had begun. Indeed, that is how Russians refer to the period immediately after Stalin’s death: the thaw.

So, in a sense, it is right and proper that a man who is fighting what he calls a new totalitarian ideology and is, in many ways, suffering for his courage, should have finally managed to show his film Fitna, address a group of parliamentarians and their staff as well as hold a full press conference on March 5.

Readers of this blog will recall that Geert Wilders, the leader of what may well be after the coming election, the largest party in the Netherlands, was refused entry into the country by the egregious Jacqui Smith, then Home Secretary, on the grounds that other people might protest against his visit and that may lead to violence. Since then the decision was overthrown by an Appeal Court, Geert Wilders came once and was met by a demonstration of bearded freedom-loving individuals who assured us that they had our best interests at heart and to make sure that those best interests were served, they would decapitate us all if we did not submit to their ideas. All that, naturally enough, proved that they did not represent a totalitarian ideology and they were ready to murder anyone who suggested otherwise.

Curiously enough, they were not there on Friday. Instead, the police had to deal with something like a hundred (it was hard to tell as they were corralled on Millbank, just outside the garden, which boasts The Burghers of Calais as well as Mrs Pankhurst’s statue) rent-a-mob creatures who had clearly not been told against whom they were supposed to demonstrate. Whatever happened to Lord Ahmed’s threatened 10,000 warriors? Not one put in an appearance.

I cannot, in all honesty, say that Fitna is the best film I have ever seen, not even the best propaganda film that has ever hove into view in my life. (I have high standards of propaganda and have even written off Richard III, the first Shakespeare play I ever considered to be absolutely wonderful at the age of 10 and undoubtedly Tudor propaganda.) It is, nevertheless, a powerful work and I can quite understand that it has displeased many a freedom-loving individual who does not like attention being drawn to such matters as threats of wholesale slaughter, bombs going off, aeroplanes flying into buildings, women being murdered for going out without their faces being covered and other suchlike utterly unimportant matters.

The links between sundry texts in the Koran, rabid pronouncements by various Imams and actual acts by those who claim that they are committing atrocities in the name of Allah (whether Allah agrees with that or not) do create a disturbing whole, which, coupled with the obstinate reluctance by main-stream politicians and media to discuss undoubtedly serious problems in Europe, particularly Western Europe, makes it important that we should pay attention and, at the very least, talk about what is going on.

After all, as Lord Pearson of Rannoch pointed out to some not altogether friendly journalists at the subsequent press conference, there is a reason why Geert Wilders, an elected member of the Dutch parliament, leader of one of the main parties in that country, cannot walk the streets of any Dutch city (or of any British city, for that matter) freely; he has to be guarded all the time.

There is a reason why our own media, so proud, allegedly, of its history of struggling for freedom, refused to publish those Danish cartoons, whose authors are still in hiding. One of them was recently attacked and barely escaped with his life.

There is a reason why Oriana Fallaci had to live out the last years of her life in the United States, unable to return to Italy. There is a reason why Ayaan Hirsi Ali is permanently guarded. I could go on but my readers must have got the point. Lord Pearson repeated several times that the violence tends to flow from one direction and even the most hostile journalist could merely say that it was unwise to invite someone like Mr Wilders if the intention to talk to “moderate Muslims” was genuine. They would not come to a meeting if he was present. But why not? – asked Lord Pearson. That is precisely what they should do. Answer came there none.

Nevertheless, Mr Wilders’s presence in London was a triumph for freedom of speech as he, Lord Pearson and Baroness Cox, who chaired the press conference, pointed out. He proclaimed himself to be particularly pleased to be able to speak freely in what he, erroneously, called the Mother of Parliaments (it’s England that was described thus) and referred with some emotion to the time when the Dutch, living under Nazi occupation, tuned to the BBC that proclaimed the word of hope and liberty (those were the days). People risked their lives to hear the words: “This is London”. What, Mr Wilders asked rhetorically, will be heard in fifty years’ time? This is London or This is Londonistan?

It is easy with all the media hullabaloo and the personal attacks on Mr Wilders (for instance here and here) to miss what it is he is saying and has been saying for some time. Let us try to sum it up.

His main argument is that he does not consider Islam, certainly not in the form it is propagated by a number of Imams, to be a religion like others, whether Judaism, Christianity, Buddhism or such secular religions as Humanism. Islamism, which is what really meant here, is a totalitarian ideology and Mr Wilders could back that argument up by quotations from the Koran but, more importantly, fiery statements by various Islamic religious leaders. Totalitarian ideologies have to be defeated for us to live in freedom; just as Nazism and Communism were defeated (in Europe, anyway), so we must fight against Islamism in order to protect our culture and our values: freedom of speech, freedom of religion, equal rights, an open society.

None of this is particularly strange or controversial. Even those on the left and the right who think Mr Wilders is an appalling little man who says nasty things about poor persecuted minorities, cannot argue with those points thought they sometimes pretend that these are not values of any importance (except for them). Instead, they prefer not to quote him or to argue with him but to attack him personally.

Mr Wilders’s related point is the need to affirm our values proudly. We must not be afraid of speaking up for freedom, he repeated several times and the truth is that he has shown the way.

Following from that Mr Wilders would like to see the Koran banned in the Netherlands. This is something many of us do not agree with, as Lord Pearson explained to the assembled hacks. Needless to say, a blog called Your Freedom and Ours cannot lend support to such an idea. Mr Wilders’s argument is that as long as Mein Kampf is banned (something the left, misguidedly, agrees with) the Koran should be as well, since many of the ideas it produces are the same. The answer to that is very simple: Mein Kampf should not be banned either. Not now, not in any country, not after all these years. In fact, Germany seems to be coming round to that point of view. (My suggestion would be to force all would-be neo-Nazis to read that turgid text and then ask whether they still wanted to follow those ideas.)

Mr Wilders and his Freedom Party are in an interesting electoral position. They did very well in the recent local elections coming first in and second in the Hague. There is a strong possibility that they will be the largest party after the June election caused by the collapse of the government over the question of whether to continue the deployment of Dutch troops in Afghanistan. Mr Wilders’s view is quite interesting. He and his party supported the original deployment and continue to support the fight against terrorism and Islamic totalitarianism, wherever that fight may be. However, he feels that the Dutch, a small nation, have already done more than their fair share and it is time for other NATO countries to shoulder the burden. He did not explain whom exactly he had in mind since Britain, Denmark, Poland and other East European countries are there with as much strength as they can muster.

The system in the Netherlands is such that coalition governments are inevitable and Mr Wilders described himself as a pragmatic politician. His party will not join any grouping, preferring to remain independent but if they are the largest party they will have to try to form a coalition government. It is highly probable that other parties will refuse to join them, thus alienating voters even more. That does not bother Mr Wilders. He is prepared for a situation in which the largest party will be in opposition, watching the coalition government as it tears itself apart.

What are Mr Wilders’s policies? It’s worth asking that question since you will never find out the answer from the main-stream media whose denizens consider the state of Mr Wilders’s hair far more important.

He wants a complete moratorium on immigration from Islamic countries, not because he dislikes the people but because he considers the ideology inimical to what he sees as European (not European Union) values: Judeo-Christianity and Humanism. Mr Wilders is a strong opponent of cultural relativism and considers that the eradication of that pernicious attitude is of the utmost importance. Who can argue with that? Certainly not the people who proclaim the superiority of Islam and of Sharia law. They do not exactly believe in cultural relativism (or open-mindedness).

His party would crack down on crime, no matter where it comes from. It would appear that the problems the Netherlands face are not dissimilar from our own.

What of the Muslim immigrants already in place? Simple, says Mr Wilders. They have a choice: either they conform to our very liberal standards or they leave. That let’s face it, might cause problems. Those who were not born in the Netherlands can be said to have no right to stay there and try to undermine the country and society. But what of those who were born there? Mr Wilders talked of dual citizenship and other suchlike matters but it is obvious that there will be difficulties with those who are second generation immigrants and ought to be Dutch Muslims but prefer to see themselves as Muslims who are out to subvert Holland. That, as Mr Wilders pointed out, applies only to a minority of Muslims, which is true in Britain as well but, so far, only individuals (and very brave they are, too) have accepted the situation and have turned against Islamism. Mr Wilders’s party intends to put surveillance on all the mosques (I suspect quite a lot of that in place already) and close down madrassahs. Will they close down all Muslim schools, even if they accept the curriculum others teach? Will they even be Muslim schools if they accept that curriculum and the duty to teach girls and boys equally? There are many problems here but the general outline is clear. The question is, will the Freedom Party’s opponents argue these matters openly. If they will not, where will the vote go?

On some matters, as Mr Wilders pointed out, his party tends to be somewhat leftish. For example, they intend to put more money into the health service. On others, they are on the right: they believe in smaller government and lower taxes (no, I am not sure either if they have worked their figures out properly). In particular, they want to cut back on child benefit, intending to give it only for the first two children. This, too, is perceived as an attack on the Muslim families as they tend to be larger and claim far more benefits.

Asked about Turkey, Mr Wilders accepted that she is a very good neighbour, being among others, a strong and active member of NATO. However, a good neighbour is not necessarily part of the family. His party would oppose Turkey’s membership of the EU for two very good reasons. Firstly, there is the question of Islamic immigration that cannot be controlled once Turkey is a member state. The second point is a very astute one and had clearly not occurred to any of our own politicians or political analysts. The EU demands that member states should place armed forces under the control of an elected government. In Turkey, however, the army is the guardian of the Kemalist secular politics and the strongest bulwark against Islamism. Therefore, the usual rules cannot apply to her.

If Turkey becomes a member of the EU or if there is any likelihood of it, Mr Wilders will campaign for the Netherlands to leave. That strikes me as an excellent argument for Turkey’s membership as, otherwise, Mr Wilders believes in the EU being radically reformed. This, as Lord Pearson explained to the assembled hacks, is a point of some disagreement between his party and UKIP. It was not clear whether the hacks understood that.

In general, there was an attempt to bring the whole session round to UKIP, despite the fact that it was chaired by Baroness Cox, and independent peer. But bless those little hacks, their minds cannot accommodate too many ideas all at once.

So we come to the question of the legal case against Geert Wilder. As he pointed out, this is a political trial. He is, undoubtedly, being tried for his opinions. Furthermore, he is not allowed to produce adequate defence. Of the eighteen experts on the subject, whose names he submitted to the court, fifteen were rejected for no very good reason at all. The remaining three will not be allowed to give their evidence in public but behind closed doors. It is a sad day for European history when the Netherlands, one of the first countries to accept the notions of free speech and religious tolerance decides to put its politicians on trial for their opinions and to dispense with the notions of free, fair and open.

Sometimes I miss the old left

As a matter of fact, I do not feel even remotely sentimental about the death of Michael Foot. No, there was nothing fine about the man, despite that flying mane of hair, as people, even on the right, keep telling me. He was not particularly honest or honourable and, having spent decades telling all who would listen and many who would not that he would never accept a position on the front benches, would never be anything but a fiery radical, who opposed his own party’s leadership, if needs be, he jumped at the chance of becoming leader, scuppering the chances of the far more sensible and intelligent Peter Shore. The outcome is well known: Michael Foot led the party to oblivion; he made it unelectable; he allowed the widespread infiltration by Militant Tendency, which led to the prolonged and expensive struggle to root that organization out. Apart from that, Foot spoke at numerous Morning Star rallies (non-British readers: that was the in-house newspaper of the CPGB, funded by the Kremlin, until the CPGB existed) and supported every pro-Soviet cause that happened to be around.However, he and his like did have brain cells and these often interconnected. The new lot seems to have nothing. Or, as Eeyore would put it, just some grey fluff that blew in. I was convinced of this when I saw the demonstration of about a hundred people against Geert Wilders’s visit.

As we walked rather rapidly (he was bundled into a car by burly security men and was driven the fifty yards) I noted the group, corralled by the police who had arrived in vans with dogs, the latter being rather bored and pleading to be allowed to have some fun. Sternly, their handlers restrained them.

No, these were not the bearded, freedom-loving representatives of the religion of peace who were promising to put us all under Sharia law last time. None of them bothered to turn up this time. These were rent-a-mob with carefully printed identical signs that told us about the BNP and the EDL (English Defence League) being Nazi-Racist Thugs. Small problem: neither of those organizations was there. Geert Wilders has nothing to do with them and his party is a long way from being national socialist. He had been invited by Lord Pearson of Rannoch and Baroness Cox to show his film in the House of Lords and was on his way to give a press conference in another part of the House.

Did nobody tell these bozos, particularly the singularly unpleasant specimen, who was yelling “EDL are Scum” what they were supposed to be demonstrating against?

PS It has been pointed out to me that this was not a sign of stupidity merely but of a general parochialism in British politics that prevents activists on whatever side they happen to be from realizing that there is a big bad world outside their own petty considerations. Someone must have said that there was a “fascist racist” appearing somewhere in Westminster. D’uh! – they thought. Must be BNP and/or EDL. Let’s go for both of them, just in case.

Yet again, I miss the old left. Misguided and misinformed they may have been but they saw themselves as internationalists. At least, they would have heard of politicians from other countries and I don’t mean just Republican Presidents of the United States.

Geert Wilders will be back

Geert Wilders, whose trial on charges of inciting racial hatred, is continuing in the Netherlands, is scheduled to return to Britain early in March. Once again he has been invited by the Lord Pearson of Rannoch to address both Houses of Parliament and assorted hacks from the media, show his film Fitna and explain his point of view with a question and answer session.

Reuters sums up the legal situation in the Netherlands with a curious contradiction that, possibly, the author of the article did not even notice.

The case is considered to be at the heart of the Dutch constitutional state, exploring the line between the right to freedom of speech and the ban on discrimination in the traditionally tolerant Netherlands.

Wilders is not actually discriminating against anybody but, it is arguable, the Amsterdam court is discriminating against him by trying him for exercising his right to freedom of speech. If found guilty on the various counts he can face imprisonment of up to one year and three months. One wonders what will happen in the normally peaceful country of the Dutch if the leader of the most popular party is imprisoned for daring to criticize Islam after a somewhat limited trial. (The court has refused to call the murderer of Theo Van Gogh as witness, for instance.) Let us not forget that, historically, the Dutch are not that peaceable.

HMG will not be able to stop Mr Wilders from coming to the UK as it could not last time though did the time before because the Asylum and Immigration Tribunal ruled in his favour last October. Bruno Waterfield quoted an unnamed British official:

The ruling is pretty crucial here - if he did try to travel it would be very difficult for the Government to stop him entering as the tribunal made it very clear they do not support the Government's position.

Well, indeed, though why this story is being reported from Brussels is something only the editorial board of the Daily Telegraph can tell.

At the end of the article we are once again reminded that Lord Ahmed has threatened promised to bring out 10,000 Muslims in an anti-Wilders demonstration but whether that he or Mr Waterfield are recycling old threats promises or whether new ones are being made is not clear. As readers of this blog will recall, last time barely thirty heavily bearded demonstrators materialized with carefully printed offensive posters. (See above.) But, of course, it is not they who spread hatred. No, no, no.