Geert Wilders, The Euro-Left & Salafi Islam

It is getting scary," she said. "He is becoming more extreme. He has made it respectable to speak out against Muslims."

Marjina Bernard, 52 y.o. Dutch Citizen, speaking about Geert Wilders, quoted in "Dutch Divided Over Geert Wilders as Radical MP Eyes Premiership," The Telegraph, 14 June 2009

Three years ago, Dutch politician Geert Wilders broke with the major Duthch Party, the Peoples Party, over their support for ascesion of Turkey to the EU. Wilders believes that the Salafi Islamicization of Europe needs to be resisted and immigration brought under control. A fierce proponent of freedom of speech, he is the anti-Obama. Instead of ignoring the many ills of Islam and engaging in moral relativism, Wilder speaks forcefully on the unvarnished truth of what he sees. Much of his criticism is summed up in his movie short, FITNA. It is not racist, nor is it anything more than you will find on this blog, such as the post "Dear Pakistan" and "What You Don't Know About Salafism Could Kill You." And do see the autobiographical post of former terrorist Tawfiq Hamid here.

Understand also that, through immigration, Islam is rapidly taking over large swaths of Europe. The problem is particularly accute in Wilder's Netherlands and surrounding countries.

"In the Netherlands, Muslims will soon make up the majority in all major cities. “Today, we have 1 million Muslims out of 16 million Dutch,” according to Frits Bolkestein, Dutch politician and former EU Commissioner. “Within 10 years, they will have an absolute majority in both Amsterdam and Rotterdam. We are staring into the face of a shortly to be divided community.

And this from Mark Steyn:

Brussels has a Socialist mayor, which isn’t that surprising, but he presides over a caucus a majority of whose members are Muslim, which might yet surprise those who think we’re dealing with some slow, gradual, way-off-in-the-future process here. But so goes Christendom at the dawn of the third millennium: the ruling party of the capital city of the European Union is mostly Muslim.

And the attitude towards this takeover among the European left is simply mindnumbing. To give you an idea of what Wilders is up against, please see this post on the recent travails of left wing Dutch journalist and nominee for Dhimmi Of The Millenium Joanie de Rijke.

After breaking with his party, Wilders established a new political party, Party for Freedom. Many ignored Wilders or attempted to silence him. Britain's morally bankrupt Home Office banned Wilder from entering the country and he has been sued several times under the EU's hate speech laws. Yet in three years, his party is now the second largest party in Dutch politics. It is garnering ever more interest from the realists - and causing ever more consternation on the left. This from the Telegraph today:

. . . To many abroad Mr Wilders, a Dutch MP, appears an old-fashioned racist whose views put him on a par with other far-Right politicians elsewhere in Europe.

Yet in its first ever test of national electoral support among the normally tolerant Dutch, his anti-immigration Party for Freedom which he founded in 2006 won 17 per cent of the votes – making it the second biggest party. That has shaken the country to its core – opening up the real possibility that, through the Dutch coalition system, Mr Wilders could win power at the next general election.

Now, like many others in the Netherlands, the Bernards are desperately worried. "This has the feeling of what happened to Germany in the 1930s," said Alfred Bernard, 52, a lawyer. "Wilders blames foreigners for everything. People are disoriented because of the economic crisis. Everywhere there is dissatisfaction with mainstream politicians.

"After this I really believe that Wilders could become prime minister in the 2011 parliamentary elections, or at least set the political agenda."

In an interview with The Sunday Telegraph, Mr Wilders, 45, was frank about that ambition. Asked about the prospect of taking power in two years' time, he said: "That is our biggest job. We had an enormous success last week and our biggest task is to keep up momentum. I am very confident that we will have an excellent result.

"If my party becomes the biggest party, I would be honoured to be prime minister."

Sitting in his office in the Dutch parliament building in The Hague, protected from the threat of assassination by 10 armed secret service bodyguards, he summed up his antipathy to the religion of many immigrants to the Netherlands.

"Islam wants to dominate our society," he said in fluent and only slightly accented English. "It's in opposition to freedom.

"If people are offended, that's not my aim. I don't talk about Muslims but about Islam. Everything I say is against the fascist Islamic ideology."

To the charge that to many his views appeared to be racist, he responded: "If that was true, we would never have been the second biggest party in the European elections."

Why, then, did Moroccans and Turks living in the Netherlands so fear him? "As long as they don't commit crimes, it's a baseless fear," he said. "If you adhere to our laws, if you act according to our values, you are free to stay. We will help you to integrate.

"But if you cross the red line, if you start committing crimes, if you want to do jihad or impose sharia, we want you to be sent out of the Netherlands and we will get rid of your permits to stay."

An admirer of Churchill and Lady Thatcher, he is charismatic as well as combative. Holland's conventional politicians – mostly dull men in suits – have no idea how to counter his politically incorrect taunts, which outrage the parliamentary chamber but delight his supporters.

He has come a long way since the days when he could be lightly dismissed as an eccentric fringe politician with an extraordinary blond quiff, known mainly for baiting Muslims.

"Half of Holland loves me and half of Holland hates me. There is no in-between," Mr Wilders said. "This is a new politics, and I think it would have a great chance of success in other European countries. We are democrats. On economic and social issues we are centrist. We want tougher laws on crime and we want to stop Holland paying so much money to the European Union.

"We would stop immigration from Muslim countries and close Islamic schools. We want to be more proud of our identity."

He admitted that he is frustrated at his image abroad, especially in Britain, a country which he admires. He claimed to believe in freedom above all else and pointed out that he is despised by Holland's Neo-Nazis, who dubbed him the "blond Zionist" because of his links to Israel – a country which he has often visited and where he counts politicians among his friends.

He is still angered at being banned from entering Britain, where he had been invited to show his controversial 17-minute film linking the Koran with the September 11 terror attacks. Muslim groups were among those who campaigned against his admission, and he dismissed the Home Office ruling as an attempt at "appeasement" of Islam.

Dutch liberals groaned when the British Government refused entry, because they knew Mr Wilders would milk the decision to generate massive publicity at home. He is also being prosecuted in Holland for promoting hate crimes, a case which is thought unlikely to succeed but which has allowed him to pose as a martyr.

. . . Then a dreamy look of a man convinced of his own destiny came into his eyes as he launched into a fresh tirade about the threat to Western civilisation from Islam. "Samuel Huntingdon was being too positive when he talked about a clash of civilisations," Mr Wilders said. "It is civilisation against barbarity."

. . . Dutch tolerance has shaped the Party of Freedom to be quite unlike most European Right-wing movements: its election campaigning championed the victims of gay-bashing gangs of Moroccan youths, and Mr Wilders talks often about the threat from Islam to women's rights.

His success is a sign of how the political landscape has changed. Even Dutch left-wingers now have to admit that there is a problem with Moroccan street gangs are a problem, and liberals wring their hands about the failure of immigrants to integrate since the first were admitted during the 1960s and 70s – many from Morocco and Turkey. . . .

Read the entire article. It may be that Wilders is appearing on the scene too late to stop what could well turn into a bloody conflict in Europe. That said, people like Wilders who are honest and realistic may serve to head off such an eventuality. I think Obama approach articulated in his Cairo speech - to mouth half truths and ridiculous moral equivalencies - will only make such a conflict more likely.