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Geert Wilders is routinely characterized in news reports as a "Dutch right-wing politician."
Would any of the journalists who thus describe him care to tell us Geert Wilder's views on, inter alia, taxation? The splendors and miseries of the free market? Global warming, perhaps? Education policy, and grants for students? What about on subsidies for mass transit? On the use of fossil fuels? On the regulation of sexual behavior by the state? On the use of public funds to support artists in the Netherlands? On health insurance, and the kind of health care made available to Dutch citizens that will be paid for by the state? On the relationship of the Dutch broadcasting networks to the government? On the monarchy, perhaps? On the relations of the judiciary to legislation? On anything at all, for god's sake?
Why "right-wing"? What makes Geert Wilders "right-wing"? Is he a defender of Dickensian conditions in the workplace? A stout believer in Free-Market Fundamentalism? A believer in suppressing the rights of the middle class?
We don’t know, and no reporter tells us. The reporters who use formulaically the Homeric epithet "right-wing," need to explain to us what they mean by this.
Or is "right-wing" merely an all-purpose denigrating epithet in the Netherlands and the rest of Europe, and possibly in North America too? It is designed to tell us what we must think about, the stance we must assume toward, the heroic, and as far as any of us knows, entirely admirable Geert Wilders. Wilders’s other views and other policies remain as unknown to you and to me as they do to the reporters who always slip in this vicious little adjective in order to influence the unaware.
Geert Wilders is no more, and no less, "far right" than the late Democratic Senator Henry Jackson, or for that matter than the late Democratic Senator Hubert Humphrey, or William Proxmire, or any number of others. Geert Wilders is as "far right" as Raymond Aron, or Alexis de Toqueville, or Benjamin Constant. He is as "far right" as Jean Moulin, fighting the more obvious Fascists of the more obvious army, the Wehrmacht, in France.
Why do newspapers, or the radio, or television, permit this propagandistic use of epithets for which not the slightest evidence is presented? The word "far right" or "right-wing" should not be used, as it has been used, to blacken the name and reputation of anyone at all who happens to grimly perceive the menace of Islam. What made Pim Fortuyn, the bemused and martyred Dutch libertine, "right-wing," as he was routinely called, so stupidly, in the French, British, American press? What? There was nothing. Was Bertrand Russell "right-wing" because of how he saw Islam? Churchill -- was he "right-wing" or "far right-wing"? Spinoza? Hume? John Quincy Adams? Jacques Ellul? Are they all "right-wing" because they grasped the essence of Islam?
Geert Wilders is also commonly described as a "populist." This is more accurate in the sense that he represents the vast Dutch public, the public that is unrepresented by the elites who, in the Netherlands as elsewhere in Europe, presume to decide the fates of those indigenous Infidels who are fed up with the unchecked Muslim presence, and the Muslim crime, and the Muslim finagling, and the Muslim demands for changes in the legal and political institutions that make the Dutch the Dutch. Those Infidels would have been happy to have Pim Fortuyn, the non-right-wing "right-wing" Pim Fortuyn, be their standard-bearer, or Ayaan Hirsi Ali. But unfortunately, Pim Fortuyn was murdered, and Ayaan Hirsi Ali driven out of the country by death threats. Now there is only Geert Wilders, who is being described, quite inaccurately, as "right-wing" in order to poison minds against him. But his bravery and his self-sacrifice are now obvious. And the word "right-wing" just won't do the trick. It just won’t perform the magic that all the appeasers of Islam, in the Netherlands, think it will. He is going to re-take the Netherlands for the Dutch.
He, and those who support him and others like him, will preserve Dutch culture, Dutch traditions, Dutch institutions, including a real and not a diseased notion of "tolerance."
Posted by Hugh at April 2, 2008 9:31 AM
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The question is, is Geert Wilder more right winged than Islam?
Posted by: Elric66![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.jihadwatch.org/dhimmiwatch/nav-commenters.gif)
at April 2, 2008 9:39 AM
How about "neocon"?
That's any westerner who doesn't hate their country and culture but who comprehends that this is the 21st century AD.
at April 2, 2008 9:56 AM
Right-Wing = Boogeyman
It's the media's way to undermine someone without having to explain anything.
Posted by: kutabeach at April 2, 2008 10:00 AM
It's not surprising the mainstream media would attempt to pigeonhole someone who held opposing views with derogatory labels. Pim Fortuyn is invariably described as "flamboyant and gay" as if this had anything to do with his rational criticisms of Dutch immigration policy.
"The flamboyant and openly gay politician was shot six times in the head, neck and chest by a lone gunman outside the headquarters of Dutch national radio and television."
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2002/05/07/wfort07.xml
at April 2, 2008 10:35 AM
I know!
When the Wilders clan eats turkey, chicken or goose, Geert always demands the right wing.
Yuk, Yuk, Yuk
Posted by: tanstaafl at April 2, 2008 10:50 AM
Hugh:
Geert Wilders is also commonly described as a "populist." This is more accurate in the sense that he represents the vast Dutch public, the public that is unrepresented by the elites...
Quite right. What the articles attacking Wilders fail to mention is that he was voted Politician of the Year last year by both members of the public and political journalists in a poll carried out by the Dutch public broadcaster NOS.
There was an excellent article in January's Financial Times defending Wilders' right to free speech. It ended thus:
"Mr Wilders is something of a bogeyman in polite Dutch society now. He should not be. His perfectly legal effort resembles the kind of mischievous testing of boundaries that civil libertarians have engaged in whenever they have sought to hasten social change in the face of an indifferent or hostile electorate. In seeking to reopen such questions as, first, whether Islam is a religion, and, second, whether ancient scripture is sheltered from our laws regulating hate speech, Mr Wilders is the comrade-in-arms of those western legal activists who have agitated successfully for gay marriage, euthanasia and bans on religious display.
We have more religious pluralism than the western liberal system was designed to cope with. This does not necessarily mean that liberalism cannot handle pluralism, but certainly we are in the midst of an experiment. Mr Wilders aims to show that the experiment has failed and that one of the ingredients in our system of freedom of religion – either the liberalism or the pluralism – is going to have to go. The outcome would not have surprised Leo Strauss, the political philosopher who warned in 1953 that, for all its roots in the right to the pursuit of happiness, liberal relativism can also be 'a seminary of intolerance'."
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/dff64890-cb60-11dc-97ff-000077b07658.html
Posted by: Matamoros at April 2, 2008 11:07 AM
Labelling someone, especially a politician, 'right-wing' is used by the European MSM in a defamatory way. It is not libel, so they can't be sued, but what it means, especially if added to 'populist', is that this person is beyond the pale.
Who is usually 'right-wing'?
Precisely, the BNP, the German Neo-Nazis ... and who is a right-wing populist? Monsieur Le Pen in France.
So this label automatically devalues anything that this person has to say, for the MSM and their consumers. It also means that ordinary politicians can disregard him or her, and attack them, as such an attack enhances their own standing - alledgedly! - and demonstrates that they themselves are not right-wing, be they ever so much to the right of their conservative party.
The really odd thing is that neonazis have no difficulties attaching themselves to islamist groups - after all, they share the same anti-semitic outlook, the same ideas about the place of women in the order of things, and they regard the 'Fuehrer-Principle' as most useful.
Thus, calling Mr Wilders 'right-wing' would presuppose that he is in an alliance with islamists ...
Something wrong here, isn't it?
But then, if one's got cast-iron rules from the editor on how to report on Islam, one doesn't have to strain one's few brain cells and actually think for oneself ...
Posted by: Calon Lan at April 2, 2008 1:24 PM
Well Wilders is "right wing" from an old fashioned communist perspective.
Back in the day you had your international socialists who were considered left wing, and your national socialists (and fascists) who where ... well, nationalists and considered right wing.
Socialists all, mind you. But left wing and right wing respectively, that is left and right wings of the socialist movement
In the myopic weird world view of the hard left Wilders, as someone who dares love his country and culture is "right wing".
Also, of course, "right wing" is leftist code-speak for all things bad and undesirable. Like not welcoming sharia conquest for example.
Posted by: joeblough at April 2, 2008 6:46 PM
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