Defending Free Speech Against the Hard Left and Islam

Geert Wilders is fighting for freedom in Europe and there are two fronts: one is political Islam and the other is the hard Left. He is not a far right or fascist; he is one of the few true liberals left in politics in Europe.

He has an opinion piece in the Washington Post entitled: "European Free Speech Under Attack" and this is how it begins:

""The lights are going out all over Europe," British Foreign Secretary Edward Grey famously remarked on the eve of World War I. I am reminded of those words whenever I read about Europeans being dragged into court for so-called hate-speech crimes.

Recently, Danish journalist Lars Hedegaard, president of the International Free Press Society, had to stand trial in Copenhagen because he had criticized Islam. Mr. Hedegaard was acquitted, but only on the technicality that he had not known that his words, expressed in a private conversation, were being taped. Last week in Vienna, Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff, an Austrian human-rights activist, was fined €480 for calling the Islamic prophet Muhammad a pedophile because he had consummated his marriage to a nine-year old girl. Meanwhile, my own trial in Amsterdam is dragging on, consuming valuable time that I would rather spend in parliament representing my million-and-a-half voters.

How can all this be possible in supposedly liberal Europe? The Dutch penal code states that anyone who either "publicly, verbally or in writing or image, deliberately expresses himself in any way that incites hatred against a group or people" or "in any way that insults a group of people because of their race, their religion or belief, their hetero- or homosexual inclination or their physical, psychological or mental handicap, will be punished."

Early in 2008, a number of leftist and Islamic organizations took me to court, claiming that by expressing my views on Islam I had deliberately "insulted" and "incited hatred" against Muslims. I argued then, as I will again in my forthcoming book, that Islam is primarily a totalitarian ideology aiming for world domination."

This opinion of his - that Islam is a totalitarian political system disguised as a religion - is certainly an extreme opinion. But it is a reasonable point of view with a lot of actual evidence in its favor. It is not based on fantasy but on horrible violent acts and the historical record. What ought to upset every freedom-loving person is that both Islam and the hard Left both want to shut him down, silence him and prevent an open debate.

Every time the supposed "religion of peace" reacts to some provocation like the burning of a Koran or the publication of a cartoon by murdering, burning and raping, it simply adds support to Wilders' point. And every time he is hauled into court by left wing elitists or receives death threats from outraged Muslims he is proven to be right.

The world thought that the Fall of the Berlin Wall was the end of totalitarianism in Europe. How naive those who thought that look now. Wilders writes:

"My trial is a political trial. It is tragic that after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1989, political trials in Europe were not cast onto the ash heap of history. Former Soviet dissident Vladimir Bukovsky has previously referred to the European Union as the "EUSSR." One of his arguments is that in the EU, as in the former USSR, there is no freedom of speech."

Just as the Greeks were conquered militarily by Rome and yet conquered Rome in language, culture and ideas, so the ideas of Marxism are slowly but surely taking over Western Europe and pushing the ideals of liberty to the curb. The secularist, ruling elites hate Christianity so much that even Communism and Islam - the two greatest threats to European culture in history - do not scare them. Their blind, irrational hatred of reason, science, freedom and the Christianity that created these cultural goods drive them to destroy Europe's freedom in the name of Secularism, Scientism and Socialism.

In the 1930s, two left-wing groups, the Marxists and the Nazis, fought each other but united against the liberal Weimar Republic. Both the International Socialist (the Communists) and the National Socialists (the Nazis) wanted power. But the both hated liberalism and Christianity so much that they united against liberal democracy. History has a way of repeating itself until we learn from it.

Geert Wilders is not right about everything. I disagree with him on some issues. But he is a hero and he is courageous. Those who would kill or silence him reveal themselves to be enemies of mankind in so doing.

Read it all here.