Dutch politician Geert Wilders went on trial this past week, on charges of discriminating against a group and "inciting hatred" with his short film fitna, and yet none of those waving placards outside the courtroom calling for his death have been arrested on the same charges.One would have thought that in order to prove a charge of "inciting hatred", the prosecution would have to produce at least one witness who, after having listened to what Wilders had to say, became suddenly filled with hate toward to some group or other. Not so, for his is fundamentally a thought-crime, where the only objective evidence is the subjective 'feelings' of an offended group. Not a good precedent.
Wilders has repeatedly stated in public that he does not, in fact, hate anyone, and that he is merely disseminating information that can be found within his subjects' own ideology. And ideology is the key to understanding what the Wilders trial is all about. Dutch opposition leader Alexander Pechtold has called Wilders a "racist", a label so devoid of any meaning nowadays that the only intention of its user can be to silence all dissent.
But, as any fool knows, Islam is not a race; it is a religion. And a religion is an ideology, one that, according to our Western values - the ones that we supposedly "value" - is entirely open to criticism, and even ridicule.
Wilders has also been referred to as "far-right"; another convenient term from the tired social-democratic lexicon, perpetuating and enforcing Joe Stalin's own ideologically-driven definition of 'right' and 'left' that has persisted long past its sell-by date. Anyone who has listened to anything Wilders has said knows that he is a Classical Liberal. He claims his warnings about Islam come from his love of Western values, including tolerance of the beliefs and lifestyles of others in a free society. He has spoken out, for example, against ongoing violence toward the Netherlands' gay community - more than half the instances of which, by the way, involve young Moroccans, who make up nowhere near half the population.
This raises an issue that has long confounded me. The love affair between the Left and Islam. For Islam is an ideology that shares none of the Left's values, other than perhaps the destruction of Capitalism, and/or America, and/or Israel. How can feminists, for example, welcome the rise of a misogynistic ideology that denies a woman's right to choose anything? And yet, some feminists will hesitate to name-and-shame rapists if they are of non-Western origin.
Indeed how can Code Pink, the Leftist American organisation, continue to support the Palestinian cause, when no Palestinian women were allowed to accompany their recent Gaza Freedom March?
And what of Europe's Jews? Well, they're leaving, as violence towards their community has increased substantially over the last 30 years, and it is not coming from neo-Nazis. It was the Holocaust that -rightly -forced us to question our culture and become as tolerant as we are today, and yet we are not protecting the very people who were almost wiped out on our continent. In Britain, anti-Zionism (the new antisemitism) became a feature of New Labour's efforts to attract the Muslim vote -which ex-Foreign Secretary Jack Straw needed to secure his election - as well as to attack former Tory leader Michael Howard.
So who is defending the victims of violence? It certainly isn't anyone on the Left, whose only response is to prosecute those who speak out against intolerance. Too ineffectual and downright cowardly to challenge the violently intolerant, they pick soft targets instead, like Wilders, while those who threaten his life remain unpunished.
Looks like it's Conservatives who have to come to the rescue. Again.
Further reading:
Christopher Caldwell, Reflections on the Revolution in Europe, 2009
Mark Steyn, America Alone, 2008 edition.
