Why They Hate Him

I wrote a bit the other day about the ongoing hate speech trial of Dutch politician Geert Wilders.  The Wilders trial, of course, encompasses issues broader than  freedom of speech.  There's an apparently credible allegation (I can't really judge, other than that the Dutch media is covering it in earnest) that his trial has been orchestrated by his political opponents, who hate him perhaps more than his Islamist enemies do.  Despite the fact that his party's platform on every subject but one is mainstream European social-democratic -- which is to say hard Left by American standards -- he and his party are regularly described as "far right" by their opponents and the media.  Why the disconnect? It comes down to that one subject left out: immigration, which in the Netherlands mostly means Muslim immigration.

Wilders is loathed by his political opponents because he dares to argue that European nations should be proud of their cultures and should pursue policies of immigration and assimilation that will maintain and strengthen those cultures for the future.  Why on Earth is this controversial to the point of being labeled hate speech?  Firstly, the practical matter: there is simply no other way for a nation like the Netherlands to remain anything you or I would recognize as Dutch while continuing to welcome immigrants. Secondly, being a culturally-defined nation is one half of being a nation-state, and such cultural definition is positively uncontroversial elsewhere.  The Arab League is made up of 21 countries that proudly declare themselves Arab nations and seek to maintain and strengthen their Arab cultural identity.  The Organization of the Islamic Conference consists of 57 nations that declare themselves officially Muslim and enshrine Islamic jurisprudence in their constitutions.  Is it really so offensive then for a Dutch political party to argue that the Netherlands should be proud of her Dutch culture and Enlightenment political philosophy?  If this is hate speech, Europe is surely doomed.

On Speech and Freedom Thereof

This is quite the week for the discussion of speech and freedom. The Supreme Court is currently hearing the case of Snyder v. Phelps, which hinges on the determination whether standing outside a fallen Marine's funeral with signs reading "GOD HATES FAGS" and "THANK GOD FOR IEDS" qualifies as protected speech. This, of course, is the penchant of the aforementioned "Reverend" Phelps, who with the few dozen blood relatives who make up his "church" has made an avocation of tormenting the bereaved beloved of this nation's fallen heroes, as well as those of gay victims of AIDS. The premise avowed by Phelps's Westboro Baptist Church is, as far as I can stomach to gather, that God is punishing the U.S. with military defeat in Iraq and Afghanistan for our collective sin of allowing closeted homosexuals to serve in the military under the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy. Presumably God would be appeased if we only cleansed the Armed Forces in some sort of gay-baiting witch hunt, after which our Certified Straight® military would win the War on Terror. I'll admit, I'm not exactly clear on the theology involved.

In any case, the question before the court is whether the "Reverend" Phelps, his minions, and their odious ravings fall under the protection of the First Amendment. I believe they do, and I'll be rather surprised if the court doesn't come to the same conclusion. The protest in question was held at the statutory thousand-foot distance from the funeral, and was thus unable to directly interrupt the proceedings. The remaining argument is that their protest might constitute "hate speech".

Ahh, "hate speech". We are right to be a bit queasy about limiting any speech at all, so if we are going to say that hate speech is unprotected, clearly the definition of what constitutes hate speech becomes a very important matter. Much political advocacy is hateful to its detractors, after all, so it would seem obvious that to define hate speech based on the perceptions of the aggrieved effectively grants censorship authority to the thinnest-skinned in society. Our Supreme Court seems to have recognized this, as I understand they have historically worked from an exceedingly narrow definition of hate speech.

Not so in the Netherlands (you knew I was getting to this, right?). After prosecutors chose not to file hate speech charges against the Dutch politician Geert Wilders, Muslims aggrieved by his short film Fitna took the issue to the Court of Appeals, where they succeeded in forcing his currently-running trial. There is considerable evidence that Wilders's political opponents have been involved in orchestrating his trial. In a way, seeing this trial as just another function of machine politics as usual is comforting, more comforting anyway than seeing it as part of the "legal jihad" to put criticism of Islam off-limits worldwide (as in the UN's ridiculous "Combating Defamation of Religion" resolution). European countries are increasingly embracing a definition of hate speech based on grievance, and the result of the Wilders trial will signal whether Europe continues on the road toward mass censorship by the aggrieved. Speech doesn't become "hate speech" simply because it makes someone cranky. Be thankful that our Supreme Court has upheld that narrower standard.

Blog Bomb for Geert Wilders

Geert Wilders is a Dutch politician who lives under police guard because his life is threatened by radical Islamists.  Dutch Islamists have already murdered the filmmaker Theo Van Gogh and forced Van Gogh's collaborator, the Somali-Dutch politician Ayaan Hirsi Ali, to take asylum in the US.  These three have been targeted for the same deeply ironic reason: they have all alleged that political Islam's penchant for violence makes it incompatible with Dutch society's traditional ethic of tolerance and commitment to Enlightenment values.  Not to be outdone by the Islamists where irony is concerned, Dutch prosecutors have chosen to put Wilders on trial [Correction:] after Dutch prosecutors chose not to pursue charges, the Dutch Court of Appeals has ordered Wilders to be tried in response to public complaints regarding his outrageously hateful comments about how the people who are trying to kill him are, you know, trying to kill him.  The Netherlands, see, despite her aforementioned Enlightenment history, has no freedom of speech protections that approach the weight of America's First Amendment (for what that's worth anymore).

This story needs to be told, so I was glad to hear from John Derbyshire that someone's gone and designated this Thursday to host a little blogoriot on the subject.  Parapundit's got the scoop on how this works, but short of it is this: if you support freedom of speech no matter who feels cranky when they hear it, if you think the Wilders story is something America and the world needs to be paying attention to, then you should blog about it this Thursday.  Tell your friends.

We'll Call It "Amsterdam Syndrome"

I don't think we've talked about Geert Wilders on the blog. He's a Dutch parliamentarian who believes Western civilization is something worth preserving and that, therefore, current Dutch policy of allowing uncontrolled mass immigration of vocal and occasionally violent advocates of a pre-modern worldview might need a second look. This opinion, of course, has inevitably branded him "far-right" in the eyes of the global media, and gotten him banned from British soil as a hate-mongering racist.

The latest outrage has come after Wilders compared the mindset of Europe's elites to that of the Dutch journalist Joanie de Rijke, who has spoken repeatedly in defense of the Afghan Taliban fighters who abducted and serially raped her for six days. It's a dark, dark metaphor for the future of the West.

Euromerica? Not So Much

A lot of the conservative opposition to President Obama, such as it is, likes to paint him as someone who wants to push the US to be more like Canada or Europe. If only.

On "Boycotts", Fascism, and the Israel Obsession

If liberal fascism is fascism with a smiley face, this is what liberal Kristallnacht looks like (via PowerLine):



French activists "boycott" Israeli products by clearing a supermarket's shelves of everything labeled "made in Israel". The French have redefined sabotage as a "workers' strike", and now they're redefining destruction of property as a "boycott".

I've got to admit, I don't really get the Israel obsession. Anti-Israel activists assiduously insist that it's the policies of the state of Israel they oppose, and their rage has nothing to do with anti-Semitism. But that argument is increasingly difficult to swallow. If it's the state they oppose, why do "pro-Palestinian" activists always seem to protest outside synagogues and Jewish cultural centers rather than Israeli embassies or consulates? Besides, even if we grant (and I don't!) every argument against the Jewish state, there are unconscionably oppressive regimes and persecuted stateless peoples all over the world. Pro-Tibet rallies aren't anywhere nearly as anti-Chinese as pro-Palestinian demonstrations are anti-Jewish (zombie has an interesting comparison here).

Most neglected of all, of course, are the world's unluckiest: those anonymous multitudes who have the misfortune of being oppressed by "leaders" from among their own number. I speak primarily of Africa, where colonialism never really ended, but was handed from reasonably competent foreign colonialists to incompetent local colonialists. It's crimespeak to say it of course, but even in the darkest days of Apartheid, black South Africans were better off than their northerly neighbors now are under Mugabe. World opinion rightly condemned the Apartheid regime; why are we so much more comfortable when the oppressors look like the oppressed?

Grumpy Old Brits on the Nanny State

The BBC's "Grumpy Old Men" share their dretful scorn regarding the British Nanny State (via Professor Bainbridge). Welcome to the future (PG-13 for language) :

On Schadenfreude

I posted recently that there's a reason the word sabotage is from the French. Apparently, it's also no accident that the word schadenfreude is from the German.

Ahh, France!

It's no historical coincidence that the word sabotage comes from the original French. It's a culture addicted to the strike, and if a work stoppage intended to show how invaluable and undercompensated you are falls a bit flat when nobody really notices that you're not doing your job, then you just make darn sure they do notice. The union's representative:

"We’ve been on strike for three weeks but at first no one paid any attention at all. It was only when some of the guys started cutting the electricity and gas that things got moving."

I'm sure. So what are the workers' demands? Bread and circuses, mostly. More money and de-privatization.

"Now is the moment to push back the capitalist logic which has crept into the company."

Yes, that evil capitalist logic, always asserting that money has to come from somewhere before it can be given to someone. A les barricades!