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Old Chestnuts to Mark a New Year

January 3, 2018

Old Chestnuts to Mark a New Year, PJ Media, Bruce Bawer, January 2, 2018

(AP Photo/Thibault Camus)

Only to the East could you find guts, straight talk, substance. Czech president Miloš Zeman spoke not like a parent lullabying his children to sleep but like a CEO being accountable to his shareholders: “The Czech Republic is the sixth safest country in the world…..We have the lowest level of unemployment in the European Union and also the lowest degree of income disparity.” Economic growth is high, public investment low; GDP is going up, but so should living standards. Welfare rolls and government bureaucracy should be cut; the EU must protect its external border and NATO must combat Islamic terrorism more vigorously. (Yes, he actually used the words “Islamic terrorism.”) “Nobody can dictate to us,” Zeman said, “whom we will allow onto our territory.”

Polish prez Andrej Duda also talked like a grown-up, focusing on his country’s economic growth and national security, celebrating its freedom and “the greatness of our history.” And Hungary’s Viktor Orbán was even more blunt, vowing that, unlike many peoples elsewhere in Europe, Hungarians would not “retreat behind concrete blocks” on Christmas or be “harassed in the New Year’s Eve crowd.” He emphasized the importance of protecting “Christian culture” at a time when “fundamentals of European life are under attack.” Where does Europe’s future lie? These Christmas and New Year’s speeches certainly left no doubt about the matter.

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Another year, another raft of televised Christmas and New Year’s speeches by the Western European heads of state and government who are busy whitewashing terrorism, buttressing the EU, and generally running their countries into the ground. As always, the Christmas addresses tended to be short on meaningful references to Christianity, while pretty much all the leaders skirted the harsh realities of mass immigration and steady Islamization, preferring instead to speak, in sunny, saccharine, and consistently vague terms, about community and volunteerism.

Take Sweden’s King Carl XVI Gustav. His country is racing toward its doom, but you’d never know that from his fatuous Christmas oration, which began on a religious note (“A child is born”) only to pivot to the idea that Christmas’s message of “peace, joy, and fellowship” can be grasped by everybody, no matter “where one comes from or what one believes.” Similarly, while referencing the April 7, 2017, terrorist attack in Stockholm, in which five people died, the king did so within the context of praising those who’d helped others on that day – which enabled him to leave terrorism behind pronto and begin waxing poetic about mutual respect and community service. It was as if he believed one could heal social divisions with platitudes.

In the Netherlands, which are also undergoing galloping Islamization, King Willem-Alexander observed that even as Christmas is a family time, it “connects us emphatically with each other” – a fact that should lead us to ask “What are we doing for our community?” and “How do we live with differences?” His prescription: volunteer, help strangers, show curiosity about others, and seek out similarities with them. Like his brother monarch in Sweden, Willem-Alexander spoke as if his subjects’ problems could be cured with clichés.

King Harald V of Norway seemed to be using the same hack speechwriters as his Swedish and Dutch cousins. After lecturing his subjects about the good in every person, he celebrated – what else? – volunteerism and community service and argued that building a better society means including people from every background and letting them “contribute on their own terms” (whatever that means). Harald, who has previously dismissed the importance of Norwegian culture and identity, went there again, proclaiming that “there are over five million different stories about who we are” (that’s Norway’s population) and that “we shouldn’t be surprised that different people in Norway live by different values.” Even more than Carl Gustav and Willem-Alexander, this clown has no business on a throne.

Belgium’s King Philippe is no prize either. In his annual salutation, he recalled a palace visit by a group of children, one of whom “mentioned how lucky we are to live in a country as beautiful as Belgium.” This led to a stretch of insipid rhetoric about the “rich inner beauty” in each of us “that deserves to be cultivated.” Philippe also recounted a recent meeting with some “young people of immigrant origin” who “developed social-integration projects” to cultivate their “self-esteem” and whose “beautiful” facial expressions “spoke volumes.” (Philippe spoke on Christmas Eve, but was mum on the holiday itself, even though his opening bit about those children visiting the palace would’ve made it natural to precede it with a reference to “a child being born.”)

Which one of these kings is worst? Hard to say. As usual, Queen Margrethe of Denmark outdid them all: she didn’t say anything brave or profound, but at least she didn’t say anything downright idiotic. And Queen Elizabeth was even better, perorating with refreshing candor and near-eloquence about her Christian faith at the end of a year when London and Manchester had undergone “appalling attacks.” (Unlike others, QE2 didn’t feel called upon to be religiously inclusive when speaking on a Christian holy day as head of an established church.)

Then there were the elected nabobs. Were they worse than the crowned heads or better? You decide. In France, the streets of whose major cities have become crowded with immigrant tent camps, President Emmanuel Macron promised to “end homelessness” but not mass immigration, which he framed as a moral issue. (Meanwhile, as a result of that mass migration, more than 1,000 cars were burned up across France in what has become a cherished New Year’s Eve tradition, and French cops were being beaten up by culture-enhancers, a development that Interior Minister Gerard Collomb called “savage.”)

As for Angela Merkel, she admitted that while many Germans like their country as it is – and even work with refugees – others “are worried about social cohesion,” apparently because they’re “unable to keep up with the pace of our time.” (Get it? If they have a problem, it’s their fault.) After agreeing that high crime and immigration levels are “realities” and thanking the police – who at that very moment, she said, were “protecting our country’s many New Year’s parties” (you’d think there’d have been a glint of embarrassment in her eyes when she brought up the cops, but nope) – Merkel stressed that Europe should remain “one community.” (It’s presumably in pursuit of that objective that Beatrix von Storch, deputy leader of the Alternative für Deutschland party, risks being charged with “incitement to hatred” after criticizing Cologne cops for tweeting a New Year’s message in Arabic.)

Theresa May, for her part, was brisk and businesslike, claiming to make progress toward Brexit and promising more cash for “our schools, our police, and our precious NHS.” After some predictable pabulum about “peace” (good) and “extremism” (bad), May asserted her goal of “eliminat[ing] all prejudice and discrimination” and of establishing “a public sphere where debate is constructive and courteous.” (Which, I suspect, means: we’ll keep letting in jihad preachers but retain the ban on Islam critics like Robert Spencer and Pamela Geller, and continue the policy of ignoring actual crimes while vigorously investigating and prosecuting “hate speech.”)

So much for Western Europe. Only to the East could you find guts, straight talk, substance. Czech president Miloš Zeman spoke not like a parent lullabying his children to sleep but like a CEO being accountable to his shareholders: “The Czech Republic is the sixth safest country in the world…..We have the lowest level of unemployment in the European Union and also the lowest degree of income disparity.” Economic growth is high, public investment low; GDP is going up, but so should living standards. Welfare rolls and government bureaucracy should be cut; the EU must protect its external border and NATO must combat Islamic terrorism more vigorously. (Yes, he actually used the words “Islamic terrorism.”) “Nobody can dictate to us,” Zeman said, “whom we will allow onto our territory.”

Polish prez Andrej Duda also talked like a grown-up, focusing on his country’s economic growth and national security, celebrating its freedom and “the greatness of our history.” And Hungary’s Viktor Orbán was even more blunt, vowing that, unlike many peoples elsewhere in Europe, Hungarians would not “retreat behind concrete blocks” on Christmas or be “harassed in the New Year’s Eve crowd.” He emphasized the importance of protecting “Christian culture” at a time when “fundamentals of European life are under attack.” Where does Europe’s future lie? These Christmas and New Year’s speeches certainly left no doubt about the matter.

Categories: Eastern Europe, European Union, Western Europe, Year end greetings
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Time to Drain the Swamp – Also in Europe

November 26, 2017

Time to Drain the Swamp – Also in Europe, Gatestone Institute, Geert Wilders, November 26, 2017

(Please see also, US State Department puts $700,000 into Hungarian media, demands “programming” against Orban, patriots. — DM)

Our democracies in the Western half of Europe have been subverted. Their goal is no longer to do what the people want. On the contrary, our political elites often do exactly the opposite. Our parliaments promote open-door policies that the majority of the people reject. Our governments sell out sovereignty to the EU against the will of the people. Our rulers welcome ever more Islam, although the majority of the people oppose it.

Our democracies have become fake democracies. They are multi-party dictatorships, ruled by groups of establishment parties…. The establishment parties control everything, not just the politicians in their pay, but also the top brass of the civil service, the mainstream media, even the courts…. They call us “populists” because we stand for what the people want. They even drag us to court.

We need to show that Europe’s streets are our streets, that we want to stay who and what we are, and do not want to be colonized by Islam. Europe belongs to us!

Next month, I will be visiting Prague, the capital of the Czech Republic. I have been invited to speak to a group of Czech patriots. The Czechs are a freedom loving people. In 2011, on the occasion of the 100th birthday of Ronald Reagan, they named a street in Prague after this great American president and freedom fighter.

This fact reminded me of a shameful event in my home town of The Hague, the seat of the Dutch Parliament and the government of the Netherlands. Look for a Ronald Reagan Street in The Hague and you will find none. A proposal in 2011 to name a street in The Hague after Reagan ran into fierce political opposition. Leftist parties, such as Labor, the Greens and the liberal D66 party, argued that naming a street in honor of Reagan would “do the image of the city no good.” The whole affair ended in a disgraceful political compromise. Last year, a short stretch of a local bicycle path was named the “Reagan and Gorbachev Lane”.

This anecdote is indicative of the difference between East and West in Europe. We can see the same difference in the attitude of their ruling elites towards Islam, the new totalitarianism that is threatening Europe today. In the East, political leaders oppose Islam; in the West, they surrender.

Islam has already gained a strong foothold in Western Europe. Its streets have come to resemble the Middle East, with headscarves everywhere. Parts of Western Europe, such as the Schilderswijk district in The Hague, the Molenbeek borough in Brussels, the banlieues [suburbs] of Paris, Birmingham in Britain, the Rosengård area in Malmö, Sweden, and many other neighborhoods, have become hotbeds of Islamic subversion.

Islam’s totalitarian nature cannot be denied. The command to murder and terrorize non-Muslims is in the Koran. Islam’s prophet Muhammad was a mass murderer and a pedophile. Those who leave Islam supposedly deserve death. And everyone who criticizes Islam and exposes what it actually says, ends up like me: on an Islamic death list.

In the past decades, Islam has entered Western Europe with the millions of immigrants from Islamic countries. Now, the European Union wants to distribute third-world immigrants over all the 28 EU member states. The nations in Central and Eastern Europe reject the EU plans to impose permanent and mandatory relocation quotas for all EU member states. They warn about the dilution of their identity, which is not Islamic, but Judeo-Christian and humanist — rooted in the legacy of Jerusalem, Athens and Rome; not Mecca.

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has denounced the EU’s pro-immigration agenda as a means to eradicate the culture and Christian identity of Hungary. Czech President Miloš Zeman is an outspoken opponent of immigration and the Islamification of the Czech Republic. Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico has said that “Islam has no place in Slovakia” and warns that “migrants change the character of our country.” Polish Prime Minister Beata Szydło staunchly defendsPoland’s refusal to accept the EU-imposed immigration quotas. “We are not going to take part in this madness,” she says. In the Eastern part of Europe, anti-Islamification and anti-mass migration parties see a surge in popular support.

Resistance is growing in the West, as well. This year, we have seen my party, the Party for Freedom (PVV), become the second-largest party in the Netherlands. This is a great achievement in a country with 13 parties in Parliament. In France, Marine Le Pen made it to the second round in the French presidential elections and her party, the Front National, got more votes than ever. In Austria, the FPÖ became the second biggest party. In Germany, the patriots of the AfD forced their way into the Bundestag.

Geert Wilders, leader of the Party for Freedom (PVV), casts his vote in The Hague during the Dutch general election that made his the second-largest party in the Netherlands, on March 15, 2017. (Photo by Carl Court/Getty Images)

However, the political elites in the West do all they can to keep the winners of the elections from power. Last month, in my country, the Netherlands, a new government coalition consisting of no less than four parties was formed. Because they stubbornly refused to talk to PVV, it took the political elites a record seven months to put together a coalition. They preferred to take in D66, the party which had denied Ronald Reagan his street in The Hague, and still they were only able to form a government with a majority of just one single seat in Parliament.

Our democracies in the Western half of Europe have been subverted. Their goal is no longer to do what the people want. On the contrary, our political elites often do exactly the opposite. Our parliaments promote open-door policies that the majority of the people reject. Our governments sell out sovereignty to the EU against the will of the people. Our rulers welcome ever more Islam, although the majority of the people oppose it.

Our democracies have become fake democracies. They are multi-party dictatorships, ruled by groups of establishment parties. They wheel and deal, often selling away the principles for which they have been elected. The establishment parties control everything, not just the politicians in their pay, but also the top brass of the civil service, the mainstream media, even the courts. Parties such as mine are excluded from coalition talks. They call us “populists” because we stand for what the people want. They even drag us to court.

Three decades ago, the countries in Central Europe witnessed a Velvet Revolution: Democratic, political and peaceful. They took to the streets. They decided that enough was enough. Thanks to their Velvet Revolution, they have leaders today who truly represent the people and who are not afraid to stand up for their nation and its identity.

We, in Western Europe, can learn lessons from the Velvet Revolution in the East. We, too, urgently need to make clear that enough is enough. In Western Europe, too, it is time to drain the swamp and to drive the elites from power. Peaceful and democratic, but thorough. We have to make our so-called democratic systems truly democratic again. The political actors should no longer be the professional politicians alone. The crisis is existential. It is time for every man and woman to do his and her duty. Because the survival of our nations itself is at stake.

We, too, have to make it very clear that we no longer want to take part in the madness of leaders, who sell out their country to the EU institutions in Brussels, and the madness of the EU elites, who sell out our continent to mass-immigration and Islam. That is why the PVV will demonstrate in the streets of Rotterdam on January 20th. We need to show that Europe’s streets are our streets, that we want to stay who and what we are, and do not want to be colonized by Islam. Europe belongs to us!

Geert Wilders is a member of the Dutch Parliament and leader of the Dutch Party for Freedom (PVV) in the Netherlands.

Categories: Chechnya, European Union, Geert Wilders, Islamic invasion, Islamisation of Europe, Swamp creatures, Swamp draining, Victor Orban, Western Europe
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