National Review Online
Friday, December 09, 2016
A month ago, the Dutch politician Geert Wilders was
considered likely to become the country’s next prime minister. On Friday, he
was convicted on hate-speech charges — and became slightly more likely to
become the president’s next prime minister.
Wilders is a longtime fixture in the European circles
described in the American press with fear and loathing as “far right.” He and
his party wish to reduce immigration, especially the immigration of Muslims from
Morocco and the Middle East; they want the Netherlands to maintain its national
character, which is secular and liberal, and lament the “Islamization” of their
society; he is allied with Marine Le Pen in European affairs but also has
worked to distance his Freedom party from what he calls “right-wing extremist
and racist” parties, such as the anti-immigrant parties in Germany and Hungary
that share some of his views.
He has adopted the slogan “Make the Netherlands Great
Again,” for some indication of his substance and style.
Wilders was convicted of inciting discrimination and
giving group offense, two “crimes” that are observed in much of Europe but that
are not properly the stuff of criminal offenses in a country with free speech.
While it is worth keeping in mind that Wilders isn’t a consistent defender of
the free-speech rights he complains are being here violated — he has advocated
banning both the Koran and the building of new mosques in the Netherlands — the
laws he has been convicted of violating are absurd and have no place in a
civilized, liberal society such as the Netherlands. They are an example of what
happens when what we call political correctness is allowed to harden into an
unchallengeable orthodoxy and given the power of law. And we ought to keep in
mind that our own so-called liberals are eager to enact such “hate speech”
laws, and to use them to suppress political ideas they find unpalatable.
The Netherlands has a large and poorly assimilated
minority population of Muslim immigrants. They are mostly Sunni, mostly in the
cities, and come from a variety of backgrounds: Turkey and Morocco, former
Dutch East Indies colonies, Bosnia, Afghanistan, Iraq. They make up about 5
percent of the population, and their numbers include many high-profile figures
such as the current mayor of Rotterdam. And they have proved to be a source of
social friction: In 2006, the Dutch justice minister inspired a public panic
when he suggested that the country might incorporate sharia law if a growing
Muslim population supported doing so; the assassination of anti-immigration
politician Pim Fortuyn by a Dutch leftist angered at his “scapegoating” of
Muslims intensified tensions, as did the jihadist murder of Theo van Gogh for
criticizing Islam, and the subsequent controversy surrounding the immigration
of Dutch parliamentarian Ayaan Hirsi Ali many years earlier.
The Netherlands, in short, has a great deal to talk about
when it comes to Islam, immigration, and the future of Dutch society. It is not
the only European country having such a discussion.
Rational discussion is not possible where free speech is
suppressed — which is what is happening in the Netherlands. Driving the
discussion underground only ensures that the immigration debate is dominated by
irresponsible parties rather than responsible ones, more Jörg Haider and less
Pim Fortyyn. The Netherlands has a free-speech tradition older than the country
itself (when Galileo’s work could not be published in Florence, it was printed
in Amsterdam), a cultural triumph of which it is and deserves to be intensely
proud. To abandon that tradition out of the fear that a frank discussion of
immigration, culture, terrorism, crime, and religion might hurt some feelings
(how could it fail to?) would be to uproot an important part of the Dutch
patrimony.
Geert Wilders has something to say. More than a few of
the Dutch people are interested in hearing it. A just society protects the
rights of minorities, whether they be a minority of 5 percent, like the Dutch
Muslims — or the minority of one man with ideas that make people with power
uncomfortable. There can be no right to speak where there is a right to not be
spoken about or where “giving offense” is a crime. That Dutch culture has
reached the point where Islamic habits cannot be criticized without fear of criminal
prosecution makes Wilders’s case for him at least as well as he ever has made
it for himself.
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