Geert Wilders Announces New Group: Few Details, Lots of Headlines

As is being widely reported, Geert Wilders has announced his intention to create a new anti-Islamic group, since presumably there’s not enough of those around just now. A report in the Nederlands Dagblad appears to have the most backgroun detail. It’s to be called the “International Freedom Alliance” (according to some reports, the ” Geert Wilders International Freedom Alliance”) and it will promote a “Jewish- Christian- humanist” constitution. He’s going to visit five countries, “the United States, Canada , Britain , Germany and France”, and – this should make all the difference – set up a website.

Further (this is a tidied-up Google translation):

…Wilders said he would be “only one of many founders “. What other anti-Islam activists are behind the initiative, he will not say: “I hope to announce in December”.

Wilders suggested the grouping for the first time  in early 2009. A conference in Israel on this subject was subsequently canceled… “In Israel, elections were being held then. It was not practical.”

Links with “Danish politician Pia Kjaersgaard and Italian Umberto Bossi” are mentioned, although the report notes that that their countries are not included in his list of five. Although this may look like a vehicle for Wilders (assuming its anything more than just a publicity stunt), he assures us that “It is not Freedom Party International”, but a wider umbrella.

Wilders’ attempts at a “Christian-humanist” anti-Islamic front have not been entirely successful. As I blogged here at the time, back in March Wilders backed out from attending the Los Angeles premiere of a documentary about him made by the Christian Action Network, after it became impossible to downplay the fact that CAN’s director, Martin Mawyer, was an abusive homophobe (The event’s organisers, Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer, quickly tried to limit the damage: they cancelled the screening and purported not to have known about Mawyer’s virulent anti-gay views).

(Hat tip: Unite Against Fascism)

10 Responses

  1. It’s being reported in the news today that the Christmas underpants bomber had some associates who had planned to attack New York restaurants and nightclubs last december in co-ordinated attacks.

    Everyday similar news items appear adding grist to Widler’s mill, and since jihadists will be jihadists and never hesitate to kill, there’s really nothing a leftist can do.

    My argument is very simple; how many innocent people are you willing to sacrifice before you summon the courage and humilty to see Wilder’s obvious point? Dutch voters ( but not the rancid Dutch elites) understand his views, as do greater and greater numbers of Europeans, and so you’re faced with a stark choice of either getting on the band-wagon or of finding yourself on the wrong side of history in only a few years time.

    Do you really want to be the next Chamberlain?

    The aims, agenda and methods of islamic expansionism are very clear, as clear as those of the nazis, and are actually understood quite well by ordinary people. Evoking obscure evangelicals in an attempt to divert from the growing problemes presented by islamism is utterly pointless and futile.

    A hat tip to UAF is it?

    A tinfoil hat tip, right?

    UAF’s ranks are now just stuffed with opportunistic jihadists spouting Far Right theocratic fascism and using the anti-fasicst platform they’ve so foolishly been handed as merely a vehicle to advance their neo-nazis cause and agenda.

    They’re the current incarnation of the old red-brown, Stalin-Hitler pact

    • with a stark choice of either getting on the band-wagon

      Well, at least we can agree on what to call it. But where’s the bandwagon heading?

    • Wow, so the guy who tried and failed to kill people had associates who thought about killing people and didn’t even try? Terrifying!

  2. But where’s the bandwagon heading.

    It’s moving past that tired, old, dog-eared script of multiculturalism that has served as a ‘guide’ for the last 50 years.
    It is moving beyond the self-laothing, self-hating and self negation that has characterised relations between native westerners and newer arrivals.

    It is moving into an era which will see coherent, responsable, social policies once again come to the fore.

    The political, economic and academic elites that dominate all western countries are now so entrenched and so corrupt and so pathological that a complete renewal has to come about.

    You may not have noticed, but as a culture we are still taking our marching orders as articulated by the misguided ideologues of the 60s, ideologues born mostly in the 1930s.

    Their awkward cultural gerrymandering and inept, corrupt and ideologically driven attempts at mass social-engineering have brought our civilisation to the brink of collapse

    And you know what? I write those lines as someone who’s in a positive mood this morning.

  3. To June:

    We don’t need an alliance of Christians and humanists against Muslims. Rather, we need an alliance of reasonable people, of all religions or of no religion, against religious supremacists of all kinds, Christian, Muslim, or whatever.

    Declaring war on Islam per se would serve only to unite the world’s billion Muslims against us. Do we really want that?

    Furthermore, as demonstrated by Geert Wilders’s encounter with the Christian Action Network, a Christian-humanist alliance is just not workable, at least not if the Christians are Christian supremacists.

  4. To June, regarding the link you posted:

    I agree that “multi-culturalism” can be carried too far. And I agree that governments should not attempt to do theology. However, vilifying and persecuting an entire religion is clearly not the answer.

  5. To Diane.

    I had a great video of Sam Harris , an atheist and first-rate scholar, outlining the problemes in dealing with Islam, and how even those Muslims who never commit acts of violence will nonetheless provide passive assistance to those who would. It was on You-tube only a few days ago, but I can’t find it now.

    It should be obvious by now that the only possible explanation for the radicalisation of Muslims lay not in the usual socio-economic factors of poverty, oppression and deprivation, but rather, seeings so many bombers are wealthy and educated, in the “tennets” of the faith as outlined in the islam’s core texts.

    It would be utterly redundant for us to declare war on Islam because islam has already declared war on us. It’s just that islamists don’t feel we kuffur are even worthy of being told that that is so.

    With 1000s of jihadist attacks happening every year in places as disparate as Buddhist Thailand to Uganda passing by Argentina, New-York, Madrid, London, Mumbai, Kenya etc, it should be obvious, at least to those of us who reject PC platitudes, that Islam is clearly at war with the entire world.

    Furthermore, you can go to just about any mosque bookstore, even those self-declared “moderate” ones, and pick up tons of of islamist tomes that openly state as much.

    We are dealing with an ideology of theocratic fascism that has been allowed not just to set up shop, but also to thrive and grow and expand under the guise of religion and with the benevolent, iron-clad protections afforded by western human rights, a concept Islam utterly rejects.

    Check the link in my comment above.

  6. I found this page by Sam Harris. Even he says, “Muslim moderates, wherever they are, must be given every tool necessary to win a war of ideas with their coreligionists. Otherwise, we will have to win some very terrible wars in the future.” This is very different from Geert Wilders’ advocacy of a “Jewish- Christian-humanist” constitution.

    Anyhow, on the above-linked page, see the replies to Sam Harris by “Mirza.”

  7. @Diane,

    Yes, read the excerpt by Harris, but it dates from 2006. The clip I’d seen is only about three or four weeks old. In it he responds to an ageing humanities professor ( late 60s) who claims that after 911 he felt that all we needed were open lines of communication and a lot of dialogue. Mr Harris, who’s been on quite a sharp learning curve lately, rebukes this strategy, informing the good professor that although those he dialogues with appear moderate, that moderation simply can’t be counted upon whenever a conflict between islamic and western values arises.

    Now, I get up and paruse the headlines this morning only to see that in France “youths” are once again rioting. It appears a North African duo robbed a casino in Grenoble, but were immediately spotted by police. The police gave chase, the robbers responded with automatic gun fire, the police then had no choice but to fire back, killing one of the two…a veteran criminal who already had three convictions for armed robbery….and was from a well-off family.

    Now, for having the affrontery to impede these youths in what many of them actually see as their right to commit robberies, and for the police to have had the audacity to fire back at “youths” after the “youths” had fired on them (a policeman was wounded ), the “youths” have decided to protest, burning cars and attacking tramways on order to have a go at the passengers with baseball bats and tire-irons.

    And I agree that governments should not attempt to do theology. However, vilifying and persecuting an entire religion is clearly not the answer.

    It doesn’t matter what we do; whether we vilifiy an entire “religion” or only one adherent to that “religion” What we do or do not do is irrelevant and has virtually no impact on how the vast majority of Muslims will behave.

    And why is that?

    Because the “religion” we choose to vilify or not vilify has already vilified us and, what’s more, has achored that manichean vilification in The Divine.

    I strongly suggest you read Islam’s core texts ( I bought Korans for several of my more skeptical friends last Christmas), and if you cannot see the extent to which these core texts are works of vulgar and unadulterated hatred (Sam harris certainly has), then I’m afraid we’re all lost.

    .

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