22.04.2009
April 17, 2009 (the date of publication in Russian)
Alexander Sotnichenko
THE NEW "NON-TRADITIONAL" RIGHT
Geert Wilders, a radical Islamophobe and the author of scandalous film titled "Fitna", is going to become the Prime Minister of the Netherlands
According to Maurice de Hond public opinion poll, The Party for Freedom is the most popular in the Netherlands and owes the support of 21% of citizens. The party was founded by Geert Wilders, a famous libertarian and populist, the director of scandalous anti-Islam film "Fitna". Wilders could definitely become the Prime Minister, if elections took place at present. Let us remind that during the elections in 2006 the party could only get less than 6% of votes and was represented in the parliament by 9 deputies of 150. So what could cause such a significant growth of the support of the Party for Freedom and could this be a tendency in modern Europe?
Actually, anti-Islam and xenophobic ideas expressed by Geert Wilders are spreading all over the Europe. But those, who suppose these ideas are right-nationalistic, are deeply mistaken. "My allies are not Le Pen or Haider. We'll never join up with the fascists and Mussolinis of Italy. I'm very afraid of being linked with the wrong right fascist groups", – Wilders announces. And he doesn't lie, as the ideology of his party is called right liberalism, which, according to him, means the protection of "Judeo-Christian values" of the European civilization. But as we can see in reality these values have no relation to either Christianity or Judaism.
"THE GREAT DUTCH OF ALL TIMES" ARE WILDERS'S TEACHERS
Geert Wilders and his followers have worthy teachers and precursors. He began his career as Frits Bolkestein's assistant (Bolkestein was the leader of the liberal People's Party for Freedom and Democracy and the European Commissioner responsible for Internal Market, Taxation and Customs Union issues). This person was involved in a number of corruption scandals, including the one where he was the member of Menatep's international consultative council (the bank formerly owned by Mikhail Khodorkovsky).
Pim Fortuyn, a famous Dutch politician, and Theo van Gogh, a film director, are also often said to be Wilders's precursors. Fortuyn is interesting for us as one of the first politicians who became popular with the help of anti-Muslim attitudes. In 1997 he published a book called "Against the Islamization of Our Culture", which described the incompatibility of modern European and Muslim civilization paradigms in details. What does this incompatibility include?
That's how Pim Fortuyn describes Muslim religious doctrine: "…they have standards and values that are so high that you can't humanly maintain them". And these standards are endlessly far from European culture: "…look at the Netherlands. In what country could an electoral leader of such a large movement as mine be openly homosexual? How wonderful that that's possible. That's something that one can be proud of". Of course, as any liberal politician is obliged to, Pim Fortuyn also admired the freedom of drug distribution and thought that the allowance of euthanasia, abortions and same-sex marriages are obligatory conditions of the development of modern society. That's why there's nothing amazing in the police claims, which appeared in 2005, accusing Fortuyn of taking part in homosexual orgies with boys under 18.
He was murdered in 2002 by an animal rights activist Volkert van der Graaf, who said Fortuyn's attitude to Muslims was one of the reasons of the crime. This was the first political murder in the Netherlands for 100 years.
We have to notice that Dutch society appreciated Fortuyn's attempts in protecting European values: he was chosen as "Greatest Dutchman of all time", followed closely by William of Orange (the founder of the Netherlands as a state), and his numerous sculptural portrays nowadays decorate Dutch streets and parks.
Theo van Gogh, a famous film director, was Pim Fortuyn's friend and companion and the author of many articles and movies criticizing Islam from the liberal point of view. His most famous movie titled "Submission" has become a prototype of Wilders's "Fitna" describing intolerable state of a woman in Islam. The movie made van Gogh notorious and brought him a quick death from a gun of a religious extremist in 2004. In addition to gender inequality in Islam the film director was also interested in such traditional topics for liberals, as the problem of same-sex love and its legalization, Islam reformism and use of drugs, which is illustrated in his numerous bibliography and filmography.
Geert Wilders is a worthy successor of his precursors' business. After graduating university, he decided "to see the world" and went to Israel to work in kibbutz. Using the territory of Israel as a base and always coming back there, young Wilders traveled all over the Middle East. To all appearances, his political views were formed right there and so they're really close to views of Israeli right, who are characterized by extreme intolerance to Arabs and Muslims.
Beginning his own political career, Geert Wilders has chosen a dangerous way of negative consolidation of society against Islam, European integration with Turkey and migration from non-European countries, which promised a quick growth of popularity, though. He created his own People's Party for Freedom, which announced libertarian and at the same time conservative mottos.
WHY DO MIGRANTS STRIVE FOR EUROPE?
The ideology of the People's Party for Freedom is very much congenial to the sentiments of a considerable part of Europeans, who want to save such Western, European values as positivism, individualism, liberalism and secularism in their most extreme forms. Adepts of such an approach don't think at all that these values have become the reason of physical degeneration of Europe, and a huge lack of labor force formed as the result, which has in its turn caused migration from economically problematic regions. On the contrary, the world outlook and values formed in modern Europe is said to be universal, even a top of human evolution, which everyone else must long for. From that point of view, a migrant becomes some kind of a barbarian, who doesn't want to join the team of universal welfare lovers and suddenly breaks a comfortable living of a European with his actions, which cross the borders of individual freedom.
A few words should be said about some sociological aspects of the EU migratory processes. Muslim migration to Europe has its own peculiarities. Often social-economic reasons are not the only factor favoring mass movement of citizens of North Africa and Middle East to the Netherlands, as an example. Many people choose Europe because of the freedom in relations between sexes, the use of drugs and secularism, which govern there. Hardly will the true Muslim believer leave his traditional surroundings for the world full of temptations (Muslim isn't supposed to live in regions of different religions). So the major part of migrants seems to escape from Islam, but not bring its values to the EU countries.
On the other hand, the spreading of various extremist ideas is forbidden in most countries of the Middle East, many Islam organizations having political aims are discriminated. That's why members of these Islam movements have to leave their countries and hide in Europe, where liberal laws don't almost measure their propagations, but even encourage building of mosques, different cultural and educational centers (a well-known fact that Chechen radical separatists hiding from Russian tribunal, are allowed to live in some EU countries is a great example of that). The policy of tolerance and multiculturalism doesn't let governments put a veto upon the activity of these organizations, so they not only exist, but also find new followers among immigrants, who became disappointed in Western world's freedoms. And they occur to be numerous.
People in Egypt, Pakistan and Algeria often judge Western life according to TV-shows and Hollywood-made movies. But after coming to the West, many of them face the danger of losing identity, vague future for their children growing in unpleasant surroundings, and become even more active Islam adepts, than they used to be. As the result, native EU citizens mostly have to face two types of immigrants: relative majority is represented by overfree youth, not willing to work and closely connected with criminal world of suburbs and drug business; and relative minority – people not willing to adapt to the new situation, who visit mosques actively and have negative attitude to European civilization.
Of course, there are immigrants, who are acceptable for Europeans – they immediately give up of their native culture and try to adapt themselves to "universal" Western one. But there are only few of them. The most obvious example is extremely low popularity of so-called "Euro-Islam" (pay attention to the fact that there are no articles about the phenomenon in any language of Middle East in Wikipedia).
"SCAPEGOATES" AND "NEW EUROPEAN VALUES"
Unfortunately, most people lack the ability of objective thinking. So it's natural, that an ordinary liberal-minded European from a small comfortable country has no liking for crowds of swarthy hairy drug-sellers, thieves and beggars, playing their barbaric music at nights. The first comparison to this, which occurs in the head of the European, is Islam, because a mosque has been built near not so long ago, and now every morning the European wakes up at 5 AM because of muezzin's adhan. That's why all the immigrants are thought to be Muslims, and all the Muslims, thanks to colorful news from the Middle East and to Manhattan 9/11/2001, are thought to be terrorists. But hardly will the average European ever think about close connection between his present style of life and the emergence of immigrants. One of the main liberal freedoms is the freedom of movements. But it turns to be good only when Europeans want to spend holidays in other countries with no visas made; but it is really bad when barbarians use this freedom. Most Europeans, who spend holidays abroad, are pleased to meet barbarians, who can speak European languages, and complain, when a waiter couldn't understand an order or when they are reproved for wearing clothes, insufficient to the country's standards. But at the same time Europeans protest against the very barbaric people coming to their motherlands and establishing barbaric ways of living.
This European double standard in attitude to non-Europe is well-known in history, brightly described by philosophers and political scientists. Edward Said in his book called "Orientalism" supposed that the negative attitude to the Middle East is a basis for European culture. But it is also quite clear, – if during XVIII-XIX centuries Europe had means and strength to prove its superiority and impose its point of view on Eastern nations, then now these abilities vanished. Europe has chosen comfort, euthanasia and homosexuality, but still doesn't want to accept such consequences of this way of living, as migration, for example. The popular ideology of national conservatism is born against the backdrop of it all.
The bloodshed is also often used as the best propaganda. Geert Wilders has intentionally chosen the way of his dead precursors, hoping to have a higher popularity, when he shot scandalous islamophobic film "Fitna" and put famous caricatures of Prophet Mohammed on his web site. But if killing Pim Fortuyn and Theo van Gogh was relatively simple – they didn't use bodyguards, the new idol of libertarians pretends to be haunted by whole Muslim world. That's how Spiegel magazine described hard working days of a famous politician: "His bodyguards move him to a different location every night. He sees his wife once every week or two". Bodyguards, who follow Wilders even to a toilet, were given to him by the government after various threats directed against him. Wilders willingly demonstrates those threats to journalists in audio and video format and, undoubtedly, that is the most important part of his pre-election campaign. It's impossible to find a more colorful person in the Netherlands – and it is no mere chance that journalists declared him "politician of the year" in 2007. Not so long ago Geert Wilders promised his voters he won't let them relax. His plans for the nearest future include the creation of another anti-Islam film, a scandal around which is supposed to reach its climax in 2011 when the parliamenary elections will take place.
Will Wilders and politicians like him be able to get the EU citizens' favors? It seems like right now all the conditions for that have been created. The present time is often compared with the Great Depression epoch in the beginning of the 30s of XX century. That time economic crisis had also contributed to appearance and popularization of politicians, who created programs based on negative consolidation of people against something, supposed to be responsible for bad economic situation. And the movement, which united people to fight against Jews, communists and Slavs who had "infringed on" Aryan values, won in Germany in 1930s. Of course now aims are corrected a bit, and so-called Muslims (and in reality all the representatives of other cultures from foreign states) play the part of Jews.
In fact, now a new right-wing political movement is being formed in Europe and the USA to take place of self-discredited right conservatives. Old men like Le Pen, Patrick Buchanan, dead Haider and the New Right movement were keeping the line of the traditional Right of XVIII-XIX centuries. Conservatism as they understand it consists of traditional relationships between sexes, unification of people based on the idea of nation and state. Read "The Death of the West" by Pat Buchanan, the "Bible" of right-wing conservatives. All the virtues of the European nation, praised by Wilders and others, are said to be signs of coming catastrophe. Postmodern Age has already deleted the traditional conservative Right from the list of actual politicians, and new untraditional, anti-traditional Right came up to take their place. And the main European values for those new politicians are legal rights to smoke cannabis and arrange homosexual weddings in churches. And migrants, chosen to be scapegoats of the new political power, will have to take responsibility for all the negative consequences of this way of living.
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