Nazi-linked flag displayed in Wilders party’s parliamentary offices

PVV flagsAn early version of the Dutch flag which became associated with the Dutch Nazi party in the run up to World War II has been removed from PVV’s parliamentary offices.

Two flags – horizontal orange, white and blue stripes – were spotted hanging in the window of the anti-Islam party’s meeting room and photographed by free newspaper Spits. However, they were removed early on Wednesday, following the newspaper publication. MP Karen Gerbrands denied on national radio that there were any flags at all, Spits said.

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Islam a threat to Western freedom, Wilders tells Toronto audience

Wilders TorontoThe presence of Muslims in Canada threatens the country’s freedoms and democracy, and only if immigration from Islamic countries is suspended can the cultural deterioration of the country be stopped, controversial Dutch politician Geert Wilders told a packed house Monday night in Toronto.

“Our Western culture is far superior to Islamic culture,” Mr. Wilders said. “And only once we are convinced of this will we be able to defend our civilization.”

The event, held at the Canadian Christian College in north Toronto, marked Mr. Wilders’ second stop on a three-city tour. The visit, his first to Canada, is sponsored by the International Free Press Society. He spoke in London on Sunday, and he will be in Ottawa on Tuesday.

Charles McVety, president of the Christian College, introduced Mr. Wilders to an ebullient crowd as a man with “a prophetic message.”

In his speech on Monday night, he said Muslim immigrants to Europe have changed the social and political landscape there. An increasingly vociferous Islamic lobby has led to the harassment of Christians, female genital mutilation and polygamy, he said, adding that with its own growing Muslim community, Canada faces the same fate.

His career has been driven by a belief that the Koran encourages violence, that moderate Islam is an impossibility and that in allowing Muslims to immigrate to Western nations, these countries open themselves up to inevitable Islamization. “We need the spirit of resistance to this evil,” he said. “That is our moral duty.”

Farooq Khan, executive director of the North American Muslim Foundation, expressed shock at Mr. Wilders’ being allowed into the country, and is dismayed by what he sees as a lack of nuance in the views of many Westerners about Islam.

“It is the political agenda of the far right, which is hell-bent on on creating an environment in which Muslims must get out of the West,” Mr. Khan said in an interview before Monday’s speech. “The Wilders event is nothing more than creating hatred.”

National Post, 10 May 2011

See also “Keep Islamic ideology out of Canada: Wilders”, 24 Hours Vancouver, 10 May 2011

Anti-Wilders protestors in Toronto
Anti-Wilders protestors in Toronto

Toronto: anti-racists mobilise opposition to Wilders

Protesters are getting ready for Geert Wilders’ first Canadian visit as the controversial anti-Islamic Dutch politician rolls into town for a private speech to local Christian groups Monday night.

The Freedom Party leader maintains that because Canada helped out Holland during the Second World War, it is only fitting to repay them by raising awareness the country is in danger of a hostile takeover and being “Islamicized”.

“Freedom is the most precious thing we have,” he said Sunday at a Toronto hotel. “(Canadian soldiers) didn’t give their lives to free Europe, (so that) not 50, 60, 70 years later we would face another totalitarianism ideology called Islam.”

Toronto’s invitation-only event is being emceed by the Sun‘s Ezra Levant, who will also interview him Monday on Sun News. London, Ottawa and Nashville are also on the schedule because Wilders said they are known as “the Bible belt” – areas with devout Christians.

“What happened in Europe will also happen here,” Wilders said. “We should wake up to the fact that Islamization means less freedom to us and our children.”

The Islamic Society of Toronto and the Canadian Islamic Congress could not be reached for comment on Sunday. However, Anti-Racist Action and the First Nations Solidarity Working Group are organizing protests in the cities Wilders is speaking in.

“As Muslims, racialized people and/or anti-racist allies, we are alarmed at this invitation extended to Wilders by the Canada Christian College and International Free Press Society Canada,” the groups said in a press release. “It is also very clear that after all the hysteria about free speech, the event has been organized so as to deter any dissenting voices or protest.”

In addition to being invitation-only, tickets cost $20 and must be purchased with a credit and proper name just to find out the location of the speeches.

Toronto Sun, 9 May 2011

Another Wilders critic is denounced by the PVV

Far-right Freedom Party (PVV) local councillors in The Hague have demanded an apology from writer Karel Kanits for comparing their party’s leader Geert Wilders to Adolf Hitler.

During Thursday’s Liberation Day festivities Mr Kanits described Mr Wilders as a “bleached Führer” – a reference to the anti-Islam MP’s trademark bleached hair.

“We are firm advocates of free speech,” said Freedom Party councillor Richard de Mos on Sunday. “But this sort of comparison, paid for out of Freedom Party voters’ taxes, is unwarranted. Of all days, on the day we celebrate the defeat of Hitler’s Germany in 1945, The Hague city council programmes a loudmouth who comes with this filthy and lowdown comparison.”

The Freedom Party councillors are demanding that Mr Kanits make a public apology and pay back his engagement fee.

In April, the annual Willem Arondéus lecture was scrapped because historian and writer Thomas von der Dunk planned to compare the rise of the Freedom Party to the rise of Nazism. The lecture is named after an openly gay Dutch World War II liberation hero and is supposed to tackle controversial topics.

The selection committee said the planned lecture was too party political, and Mr Von der Dunk refused to tone down the content. He went on to deliver the address anyway outside the provincial government building.

There were claims that provincial councillors from the ruling VVD and Christian Democrat parties had the lecture banned under pressure from the Freedom Party. The minority coalition relies on the support of Freedom Party MPs in parliament.

At a Liberation Day festival on Thursday, the organisers banned a band from performing a song describing Geert Wilders as the “Mussolini of the Low Countries”.

RNW, 8 May 2011


In addition, Utrecht University capitulated to pressure from the PVV and banned philosopher Rob Riemen from criticising Wilders in a Remembrance Day speech. And earlier this year the PVV bullied a public broadcaster into removing a cartoon that Wilders found offensive. Wilders himself, of course, demands the right to incite hatred against Mulims by comparing the Qur’an to Hitler’s Mein Kampf – but any attempt by his opponents to draw a parallel between Wilders and the Nazis is a “filthy and lowdown comparison” which the PVV insists should be suppressed.

Wilders brings his message of hate to Canada

Geert Wilders extremistGeert Wilders has made his name as one of the world’s most outspoken opponents of Islam. The controversial Dutch parliamentarian does not hate Muslims, he’s famously said, but he does hate Islam. His colourful political career has been driven by a belief that the Koran encourages violence, that moderate Islam is an impossibility, that the Netherlands is in the process of being Islamicized, and that immigrants from Muslim countries must be stopped.

Next week, Mr. Wilders will bring his message to Canada, a country he says faces the same prospects of being Islamicized as his own. On Monday, Mr. Wilders is the marquee speaker at an invitation-only event hosted by the International Free Press Society and the Canada Christian College.

“Geert Wilders has a warning for Canada, and his warning is about a lack of free speech here and the threat of demographic jihad,” said Charles McVety, president of the Canada Christian College. “We’re all for freedom of religion, but when its mission is a hostile takeover, well that’s a different story. Islam is not just a religion, it’s a political and cultural system as well and we know that Christians, Jews and Hindus don’t have the same mandate for a hostile takeover. Here in Canada there is a real, clear and present danger. And we’re not even allowed to say anything about it. That’s what Geert Wilders is going to talk about.”

Members of the Toronto Muslim community say they were unaware of any planned hostile takeover and dismiss Mr. Wilders as racist and ill-informed.

National Post, 5 May 2011

It’s a shame that the event will be restricted to Wilders’ supporters. Otherwise there would have been an opportunity to ask the Dutch racist and his hosts why the right to “free speech” they claim to be defending doesn’t apply to Wilders’ critics back in the Netherlands. (See here, here and here.)

Wilders’ PVV suppresses free speech again

Wilders supporters protestA second speech containing criticism of the anti-Islam PVV has come under fire from the party itself, the NRC reports.

Several days after a speech for Noord-Holland province was cancelled for anti-PVV content, Utrecht University officials have given assurances that a Remembrance Day speech will not mention the PVV.

Philosopher Rob Riemen is due to reflect on World War II in a speech on May 4 and has indicated he will warn of the dangers posed by PVV leader Geert Wilders, the paper says. Riemen has previously likened the PVV to a fascist movement.

But following protests from local PVV official René Dercksen, who says it is “scandalous” to use Remembrance Day for “political games”, the university issued a statement saying the party will not be mentioned.

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Netherlands: freedom of expression suppressed in deference to Wilders

Wilders as NaziWhen it concerns his own right and that of his fellow right-wing bigots to slander Islam and incite hatred against Muslims, Geert Wilders presents himself as a staunch defender of free speech. Indeed, he has won international support – including financial backing from the likes of Daniel Pipes – on the basis of that claim. When it’s a matter of his opponents’ right to criticise him, however, Wilders’ commitment to freedom of expression suddenly evaporates.

Earlier this year we saw him bully a Dutch public broadcaster into removing a cartoon (see picture) that he found offensive, because it drew a parallel between Wilders and the Nazis. And now Radio Netherlands Worldwide reports on two further examples of the PVV’s critics being suppressed in deference to Wilders.

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Attacks on multiculturalism linked to economic crisis, IRR study finds

The Institute of Race Relations (IRR) publishes today Understanding the European-wide assault on multiculturalism – a detailed analysis by Executive Director, Liz Fekete, of key speeches made over the past six months by leading centre-right politicians from Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Denmark, the Netherlands, Norway and the United Kingdom.

These speeches attack multiculturalism and immigration and link them to the economic crisis. The IRR finds that:

  • In singling out multiculturalism as a threat to national identity, the leaders of Europe’s centre-right parties are using the same kind of rhetoric and specious arguments as Enoch Powell did forty years ago. Only this time, it is not one rogue European politician carrying the flag, but the leaders of centre-right parties now replacing race and immigration with culture and religion as the watch words.
  • As multiculturalism becomes code for discussing the ‘Muslim problem’, the language, terms and metaphors used by centre-right politicians subtly (and in some cases crudely) convey a sense of national victimhood, of a majority culture under threat from Muslim minorities and new migrants who demand special privileges and group rights and refuse to learn the language.

In Understanding the European-wide assault on multiculturalismthe IRR warns that:

  • The attacks on multiculturalism are taking place at a time of economic crisis and swingeing cuts, when politicians are desperate to deflect public anger and explain societal break down. The centre Right is establishing a narrative, with some centre-left parties following suit, to justify the biggest round of spending cuts since the 1920s, blaming the current economic crisis not on the bankers and global financial crisis, but on immigration, and on Muslims.
  • As the extreme Right increasingly enters national parliaments, sometimes holding the balance of power, there are dangerous signs that the centre Right is preparing for future power-sharing with the extreme Right, as well as nativist anti-immigration parties. The fact that mainstream politicians are now speaking to the fear and hatred promoted by the extremists’ anti-multicultural platform, is giving legitimacy to conspiracy theories about Muslims and to anti-Muslim hatred.

Read the IRR’s research Understanding the European-wide assault on multiculturalism here.

IRR press release, 21 April 2011

Wilders inciting hatred trial: no new judges says legal panel

Geert Wilders trial on charges of inciting hatred and discrimination will continue in front of the same judges, a special panel at the Amsterdam court said on Monday, rejecting calls for them to be dismissed.

On Friday, Wilders’ lawyer Bram Moszkowicz called for the judges to be dismissed for refusing to investigate a witness for possible perjury.

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Hague council rejects PVV demand for ban on building mosques

The Hague council on Thursday rejected a Freedom Party proposal to ban the construction of new mosques in the city.

All parties fiercely rejected the proposal which they branded as discriminatory because the Freedom Party is not opposed to the construction of new places of worship of other religions.

Green Left leader Inge Vianen said: “They are guilty of discrimination when they suggest that the council should assist all religious people in finding a suitable place of worship except Muslims.” The Green Left politician added that “the fact that this type of statement is increasingly considered normal, does nothing to change that”.

The local party Islam Democrats said if felt discriminated against and the Hague City Party (HSP) spoke of a “provocation, pure and simple”.

Alderman Marnix Norder (Diversity) called the Freedom Party proposal “completely unacceptable”. The Freedom Party proposal was prompted by a letter from the Mayor and aldermen proposing an expansion of the number of places of worship in The Hague in the coming 10 years.

RNW, 15 April 2011