• Why Jihad Watch?
  • About Robert Spencer and Staff Writers
  • FAQ
  • Books
  • Muhammad
  • Islam 101
  • Privacy

Jihad Watch

Exposing the role that Islamic jihad theology and ideology play in the modern global conflicts

Fitzgerald: Geert Wilders, right-wing politician

Apr 2, 2008 9:31 am By Hugh Fitzgerald

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.”

Share this:

  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on WhatsApp (Opens in new window)
  • Click to print (Opens in new window)
  • Click to email this to a friend (Opens in new window)
  • More
  • Click to share on Skype (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Telegram (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Tumblr (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Pocket (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Pinterest (Opens in new window)

Follow me on Facebook

Filed Under: Uncategorized


Learn more about RevenueStripe...

FacebookYoutubeTwitterLog in

Subscribe to the Jihad Watch Daily Digest

You will receive a daily mailing containing links to the stories posted at Jihad Watch in the last 24 hours.
Enter your email address to subscribe.

Please wait...

Thank you for signing up!
If you are forwarding to a friend, please remove the unsubscribe buttons first, as they my accidentally click it.

Subscribe to all Jihad Watch posts

You will receive immediate notification.
Enter your email address to subscribe.
Note: This may be up to 15 emails a day.

Donate to JihadWatch
FrontPage Mag

Search Site

Translate

The Team

Robert Spencer in FrontPageMag
Robert Spencer in PJ Media

Articles at Jihad Watch by
Robert Spencer
Hugh Fitzgerald
Christine Douglass-Williams
Andrew Harrod
Jamie Glazov
Daniel Greenfield

Contact Us

Terror Attacks Since 9/11

Archives

  • 2020
    • December
    • November
    • October
    • September
    • August
    • July
    • June
    • May
    • April
    • March
    • February
    • January
  • 2019
    • December
    • November
    • October
    • September
    • August
    • July
    • June
    • May
    • April
    • March
    • February
    • January
  • 2018
    • December
    • November
    • October
    • September
    • August
    • July
    • June
    • May
    • April
    • March
    • February
    • January
  • 2017
    • December
    • November
    • October
    • September
    • August
    • July
    • June
    • May
    • April
    • March
    • February
    • January
  • 2016
    • December
    • November
    • October
    • September
    • August
    • July
    • June
    • May
    • April
    • March
    • February
    • January
  • 2015
    • December
    • November
    • October
    • September
    • August
    • July
    • June
    • May
    • April
    • March
    • February
    • January
  • 2014
    • December
    • November
    • October
    • September
    • August
    • July
    • June
    • May
    • April
    • March
    • February
    • January
  • 2013
    • December
    • November
    • October
    • September
    • August
    • July
    • June
    • May
    • April
    • March
    • February
    • January
  • 2012
    • December
    • November
    • October
    • September
    • August
    • July
    • June
    • May
    • April
    • March
    • February
    • January
  • 2011
    • December
    • November
    • October
    • September
    • August
    • July
    • June
    • May
    • April
    • March
    • February
    • January
  • 2010
    • December
    • November
    • October
    • September
    • August
    • July
    • June
    • May
    • April
    • March
    • February
    • January
  • 2009
    • December
    • November
    • October
    • September
    • August
    • July
    • June
    • May
    • April
    • March
    • February
    • January
  • 2008
    • December
    • November
    • October
    • September
    • August
    • July
    • June
    • May
    • April
    • March
    • February
    • January
  • 2007
    • December
    • November
    • October
    • September
    • August
    • July
    • June
    • May
    • April
    • March
    • February
    • January
  • 2006
    • December
    • November
    • October
    • September
    • August
    • July
    • June
    • May
    • April
    • March
    • February
    • January
  • 2005
    • December
    • November
    • October
    • September
    • August
    • July
    • June
    • May
    • April
    • March
    • February
    • January
  • 2004
    • December
    • November
    • October
    • September
    • August
    • July
    • June
    • May
    • April
    • March
    • February
    • January
  • 2003
    • December
    • November
    • October
    • March

All Categories

You Might Like

Learn more about RevenueStripe...

Recent Comments

  • Crusades Were Right on Muslim cleric: ‘We welcomed the takeover of ISIS because they wanted to implement the Sharia’
  • curious george on Israel At A Crossroads?
  • Crusades Were Right on Muslim cleric: ‘We welcomed the takeover of ISIS because they wanted to implement the Sharia’
  • William Garrison on The Fantasy Islam of Rice University’s Craig Considine (Part 3)
  • Vladimir on Islamic Republic of Iran: Turkey’s Erdogan champions Islam only as a tool to further his own interests

Popular Categories

dhimmitude Sharia Jihad in the U.S ISIS / Islamic State / ISIL Iran Free Speech

Robert Spencer FaceBook Page

Robert Spencer Twitter

Robert Spencer twitter

Robert Spencer YouTube Channel

Books by Robert Spencer

Jihad Watch® is a registered trademark of Robert Spencer in the United States and/or other countries - Site Developed and Managed by Free Speech Defense

Content copyright Jihad Watch, Jihad Watch claims no credit for any images posted on this site unless otherwise noted. Images on this blog are copyright to their respective owners. If there is an image appearing on this blog that belongs to you and you do not wish for it appear on this site, please E-mail with a link to said image and it will be promptly removed.

Our mailing address is: David Horowitz Freedom Center, P.O. Box 55089, Sherman Oaks, CA 91499-1964

loading Cancel
Post was not sent - check your email addresses!
Email check failed, please try again
Sorry, your blog cannot share posts by email.