Although the Turkish riots in Rotterdam-and despite media portrayals of poor, victimized Muslims, that’s precisely what they were-were intended to help Recep Tayyip Erdoğan consolidate power within Turkey, they have had a corollary effect. Namely, serving as the best single advertisement for Geert Wilders becoming the next Prime Minister of The Netherlands. Can there be a greater indictment of the decades-long failed experiment in multiculturalism and Islamic immigration than what just occurred in Holland, which was witnessed by the entire world?

The fatuousness disguised as intellectualism peddled by frauds like Ian Buruma has turned a beacon of religious and political freedom into a place where ordinary Dutch men and women are menaced by violent Islamic mobs. Where a state-bankrolled “watchdog” says its permissible to send gay people death threats if you happen to be a Muslim. Where parliamentarians such as Geert Wilders himself are censured because they express disapproval of certain ethnic and religious groups. The notion that liberal, Enlightenment values can be reconciled with a retrograde, 7th century Arabian ideology is preposterous, and the only people who still believe in this fantasy are endangering the future of Europe.

Europeans did not resist Ottoman aggression for centuries merely to invite their enemies into their countries and submit to their whims. What happened in Rotterdam yesterday was not an aberration. It was a foretaste of what is to come.

With Marine Le Pen’s formal declaration, it’s fitting that we reflect upon how Europe arrived at this point. BPS vividly describes how the tyranny of the European Union-with its commitment to coercive multiculturalism, open borders, and erasure of sovereignty-has led to the popularity of Le Pen, Wilders, and the like. It’s worth watching this video in its entirety, especially for those of you who are curious where the nationalist backlash to Europe’s ruling class comes from and where it’s headed.

Two recent articles are worth reading in light of the conviction of Geert Wilders for voicing uncomfortable truths. One is an interview with the EU ambassador to the United States, David O’Sullivan. It’s worth noting his final answer, which unequivocally rejects the idea that another member state will sever ties with the European Union-despite the this year’s election results in the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and Italy. Whether this is simply another case of wishful thinking, a la Jean-Claude Juncker, remains to be seen. However, the idea that what was once inconceivable will remain so indefinitely is a particularly bad mental tic cherished by our ruling class-something my friend Todd Seavey has refuted using several concrete examples, the most prominent among them being the unanticipated and rapid dissolution of the heretofore indestructible Soviet Empire.

Another worthwhile piece is Eugene Volokh’s blog entry questioning the assumptions of anti-Trump, open borders  critics. As loathe as I am to post a link to the Washington Post, the fake news paper of record, Professor Volokh’s observations are always worth noting. Not only does he reject the oft-repeated liberal canard that a proscription on Muslim immigration would violate the Establishment Clause, he raises the intriguing question of whether Muslim immigration in general is a wise idea. The conviction of Geert Wilders, the exile of Oriana Fallaci and Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the assassinations of Pim Fortuyn and Theo van Gogh, and the persecution of countless European dissidents who run afoul of current year thinking, illustrate how consequential the decision to welcome millions of Muslim immigrants into our nations can be.

This is a choice that will have far-reaching consequences for all of us, and one of the most important results will be the delimitation of what we can and cannot say. We are surrendering our freedoms without even getting a vote on whether we should relinquish them. The problem isn’t so much Islam as the totalitarian thought police who exercise power at every level of our civilization and want to suppress dissent, however muted, to their grand project. Salman Rushdie was the canary in the coal mine, but we are now witnessing what our refusal to defend free expression, and to reject illiberal, undemocratic immigration policies, back then has sown.

Update: Kraut and Tea explains how Austria got here, and offers another possible explanation for Hofer’s loss. 

Renzi resigns. 

Landslide rejection. You can view the live results here. 

Exit polls, for what they’re worth, suggest the Italian constitutional referendum is headed towards defeat. 

In a depressing sign for the future, women voted for the Van der Bellen to the tune of 60%. 

Norbert Hofer has conceded defeat. It looks like Austria will be led, nominally, at least, by the far-left Green Party. 

The people of Italy, as well as their Austrian neighbors, make a momentous decision this week which will impact the future of Europe. While Italian voters will decide whether to invest their unelected, Europhile president with even more power, Austrians will decide whether they should elect someone who wants to preserve their heritage. Like the forces arrayed against Brexit and Donald Trump, those opposing the sovereignty of European nations are pouring everything they have into cementing the status quo.

To understand why these battles are so important, you need only look at some of the latest headlines to come out of Europe. One news story, in particular, is worth examining. The brutal rape and murder of an EU official’s daughter-who also helped care for displaced migrants-illustrates the extreme form of masochism embraced by the current European ruling class. The people who control Europe are willing to let their own children be sacrificed in order to maintain their increasingly untenable ideology.

This young woman’s death was a direct result of Europe’s failed experiment in multiculturalism, and she is far from the only victim. In fact, she’s not even the first idealistic European refugee worker to be murdered by one of these desperate migrants. This is a story that we will have to read over and over again unless and until Europeans assert their sovereignty and reclaim their birthright. It’s not the white man’s burden to save the third world any more than it’s his burden to intervene in endless sectarian conflicts in the Middle East which cause this unwanted exodus.

Today sees an extremely important referendum take place in Hungary, one of several nations in the Central European bloc committed to maintaining its traditional European character. Earlier this year, Brenda Walker wrote a fantastic summary of what’s at stake in this vote, including in her piece a transcript of the speech Prime Minister Orban delivered in defense of fundamental Enlightenment values. The primary one being, of course, the freedom to speak the truth fearlessly.

For it’s not only the character and culture of the West which is under relentless assault, but the very idea that one can speak honestly about the reverse colonization of Europe. If nations like Hungary and Poland do not stand up to the global effort to subjugate them to the rule of multiculturalism, then their people will find themselves in the same position as the English and the Germans-who now must fear midnight raids at the hands of a 21st century Stasi for merely speaking out against their nations’ destruction.

Of all the values under attack, this is the single most important-the cornerstone of the West and what distinguishes us from the replacement population the ruling class views as the New Europe. It’s no surprise that the nations once enslaved within the Iron Curtain, whose freedom was so hard-won and of so recent a vintage, would esteem it most highly and fight most tenaciously to preserve it.

Listening to BBC coverage of this referendum this weekend was absolutely sickening for anyone with even a rudimentary understanding of contemporary European history. The doublespeak required to portray patriotic Hungarians-the children and grandchildren of those who stayed behind after the Soviet vivisection of their nation-as heartless, reactionary xenophobes is simply staggering. Even as they portrayed the country as a terrible monoculture deficient in vibrant diversity-scandalized by the lack of “Islam” as a religious option on the Hungarian census-the imam interviewed by a correspondent, as well as the anchor himself, admitted that there was plenty of diversity within Hungary.

Slovaks, Germans, Bulgarians, Gypsies, Armenians, and Slovenes all call that country home, as do Greek Catholics, Roman Catholics, Calvinists and Jews. The problem is that this is not the type of diversity the powers that be desire. To them, diversity is simply a synonym for the dilution (abolition) of European and Western culture, not a word which has any inherent meaning connected to its standard definition.

This is the sort of lie that must be combated and defeated if we harbor any hope of preserving Western civilization. Hungarians have lived for too long at the mercy of larger, more powerful foreign powers. The monstrosity that is the rapidly eroding EU is simply one more authoritarian superstate intent on stripping them of their freedom. For all his many faults, Viktor Orban deserves credit for standing up in defense of his countrymen and more broadly speaking, Europe itself.

Say what you will about Donald Trump, it’s hard to conceive of any other Republican candidate whose surrogates include the greatest conservative Brit since Maggie Thatcher. Footage courtesy of Right Side Broadcasting.

I have some thoughts on the Republican ticket, one of them slightly unconventional, but will save them for another day. It’s worthwhile spending a post on what’s occurring in the UK, which has important implications for the West going forward.

Peter Hitchens sums up the surreal political dynamics at work within post-Brexit Great Britain. A nation which voted decisively to sever its ties to the unnatural, dysfunctional European superstate, yet now finds itself led by someone who wouldn’t look out of place at the European Commission. In fact, the former chair of the EC, now holding a lucrative sinecure advising Goldman Sachs, could serve as the model for Ms. May once she retires from 10 Downing Street. It truly is remarkable that the Conservative Party is now led by a full-fledged social justice warrior, with a concomitant dedication to militant feminism, sharia compliance and utterly meaningless political cliches. Someone who believes there’s a direct correlation between a fire department’s efficacy and the percentage of its employees who aren’t white.

It seems fitting that someone without the courage to campaign on behalf of her professed beliefs has become Prime Minister of the United Kingdom without the consent of her party’s voters. As Hitchens and other genuine conservaties have pointed out in the past, the people who ostensibly represent the British public are merely ciphers for special interests who could care less about the welfare of their constituents, so it’s perfectly reasonable for them to cut out the middlemen, i.e. Britons. Even the decision to give ordinary voters a chance to determine their country’s future is anathema to these folks, as countless post-Brexit op-eds lamenting the stupidity of David Cameron’s decision to hold this referendum make clear. The contempt the British elites and their accomplices among the rabble have for any potentially negative feedback or resistance to their aims is simply astonishing.

Another illustration of the disconnect between the managerial elite and the individuals they presume to rule is the Pavlovian response of feminists, among others, to innocuous remarks made by Theresa May’s former opponent about motherhood, which were naturally taken out of context by the likes of The Guardian. Even if Andrea Leadsom had questioned the commitment of May to the future of Great Britain because of her family’s lack of children, so what? Why is this is an illegitimate question at a time when the childless ruler of Germany has become the matriarch to millions of Muslims that are rapidly effacing a country which has been free and united for less than 3 decades? This reaction is particularly ironic coming from people who have spent the last half-century investing  every personal choice with political consequences.

Whether or not Theresa May will put the final nail in the coffin of the European Project-and it should be noted that her initial cabinet choices have won praise from some genuine conservatives, including Nigel Farage-remains to be seen. However, even if Brexit means Brexit, there is a larger question: where is the West headed? Civilization is under threat on multiple fronts, but the biggest challenge is internal. The picture postcard French Riviera is a jihadist breeding ground. Bavaria no longer means beautiful women dressed in dirndls or the Maibaum but being policed by people who come from countries like Egypt and Syria. The lovely river Thames flows through a city which would be unrecognizable to its former inhabitants. BTW, it’s not racist to discuss this diaspora, no matter how much it offends the sensibilities of Guardianistas.

This is not reactionary, anti-immigrant demagoguery or outlandish conspiracy theory, it’s reality. Remaining on the same path, with one or two cosmetic changes, is not prudence or enlightenment, it’s collective suicide. Once we’ve recognized that as a culture, we will have begun the process to preserve our world.

Update: Brilliant. Simply brilliant. 

For me, Nigel Farage, as well as tens of millions of people throughout the world, EU tears are a thing of beauty. Something to be relished. The European Project has failed and there’s absolutely nothing the army of myopic Eurocrats in Brussels can do to nullify that reality, although they are trying their damnedest. Conceding that your life’s work has been a complete and utter waste is undoubtedly a psychologically brutal decision. Until then, enjoy the lyrical voice of the man who broke the EU.

It’s difficult to keep track of developments on the Brexit front, as news seems to be breaking nearly every minute. However, I’d like to provide you with some of the more useful observations about what has occurred in the UK and across the globe since Thursday. One of the most important questions, of course, is what happens next. As others have pointed out, this was a non-binding referendum and there is theoretically nothing preventing a Europhile political class from simply ignoring the will of the people. In fact, that is precisely the course some Labour MPs are suggesting Westminster take. Although these sentiments won’t be voiced publicly by many, the contempt the Labour Party’s political representatives  have for the people they purportedly represent is unmistakable. Nothing illustrates this more vividly than the campaign to sack Jeremy Corbyn for being insufficiently supportive of an institution that over 17 million Britons detest.

And while Hillary comforts herself by repeating the mantra that America is not the United Kingdom, the truth is that political fallout from Brexit will be felt throughout the globe, which includes the United States. What occurred in Great Britain is a stunning, remarkable defeat of the global left-one which everyone on the right, wherever you live, should rejoice in-but it’s even more significant than that. It’s a defeat for the political philosophy of globalism, the insidious idea that we would all be better off as deracinated cosmopolites stripped of our cultural patrimony-including our God-given right to speak our minds, even if it offends the religion of grievance.

Those who’ve profited from this philosophy are rightly terrified, and their hysteria will only increase as they realize that they are completely unequipped to roll back this revolution. A revolution that, as both Peter Hitchens and Daniel Greenfield have pointed out, was led by a new coalition that consists of disenfranchised Old Labour and Conservative voters. Individuals whose will has been, and continues to be, ignored by their representatives, but who have finally found their voice. Perhaps that voice is unsettling to toffs like Owen Jones because it sounds like Tommy Robinson-or a close approximation thereof-but it’s the voice of Great Britain and it needs to be respected.

This is a country which has just accomplished something extraordinary. It has begun to crack the foundation of soft totalitarianism which has governed Europe for nearly half a century. It started the restoration of freedom and self-government which has been the hallmark of the United Kingdom for nearly 8 centuries. Even those who left the UK when the European Project appeared invincible can take pride in what their countrymen have accomplished. This is an historic moment, and it cannot be wasted. The British have reaffirmed their heritage, it’s time for the rest of the world to follow.

But not London, evidently.