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.

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.

It’s been said that hate speech is any speech leftists hate, and never has this statement been more true. In the wake of  a verdict convicting the courageous dissident Geert Wilders for “insulting” Moroccans, it’s worth remembering that  the concept of free speech did not originate in the Maghreb. Freedom of expression doesn’t come from the Sahel, or the Levant, or anywhere on the planet once or now ruled by Muslims. It is a thoroughly and implacably Western concept, which has been suppressed in every region where Islam flies its banner.

Now that this ideology has planted its flag in Europe, Australia, and North America, we are subject to the same proscriptions on speech as those living in Middle Eastern backwaters. The ruling class has used the vast pool of Muslim immigrants and refugees as an excuse to pursue its campaign to ban dissent, which the  latest decision to come out of The Netherlands demonstrates. The fact that Wilders was convicted for insulting Moroccans in Holland proves how corrupt and debased those who control Western societies are. Even as they implicitly acknowledge that these people do not belong in that country, they persecute those who explicitly state that incontestable truth.

While this decision might temporarily boost the support of the aptly named Party for Freedom, we shouldn’t be under any illusion that this is the last assault upon free thinkers in Europe and the West. It’s simply the latest salvo in an unending war against those willing to stand up in defense of their heritage and the integrity of their countries. As Geert Wilders says, The Netherlands has become a sick country, but this sickness can be treated. Let’s hope the Dutch people are willing to embrace the cure.

That is not the timber rattlesnake with which we’re so familiar, and which symbolically represents this website, but the common European adder. A viper which is not dangerous, and which only bites when threatened or disturbed. Much like the normally placid British, who only strike out when they are left with no alternative. Their stunning rejection of continued abasement at the hands of the EUrocracy this week is perhaps the most striking manifestation of this tendency we’ve seen in recent times.

One of the main takeaways from the EU Referendum is the chasm which exists between the British electorate and the people who purport to represent them in Westminster. To get an idea of what this looks like, you need only glance at the list of MPs who opposed Brexit, which includes nearly every single Labour member of the House of Commons, and compare it to the electoral map of UK on the day after the vote. Even if the hatred of ordinary, working class voters expressed by the BBC is muted in the monologues of Labour politicians, the antipathy for their values and concerns is unmistakable. George Orwell exposed the hypocrisy and venality of these sham socialists brilliantly in The Road To Wigan Pier-a location that voted to leave, BTW. And like the objects of Orwell’s criticism who learned absolutely nothing, Owen Jones, Laurie Penny, Polly Toynbee and the rest of the detestable lot now castigating their social inferiors refuse to even entertain the notion that they’re egregiously, catastrophically wrong.

The main lesson they’ve drawn from the overwhelming support for Brexit in Rotherham-notorious home to the Pakistani Muslim rape gangs imported and given criminal immunity by successive Labour governments-is that white, Christian Britons are intolerable racists. They’ve responded to incandescent rage from the backbone of Britain with contemptuous sneers and invincible arrogance. Like their counterparts on this side of the pond, these brilliant political philosophers have decided that the best response to collective, widespread outrage at unrelenting 3rd world immigration and debasement of law by demanding more of the same!

Conservative politicians, at least those on the losing end, are even more openly disdainful of the peasants who’ve effected this historic victory for British sovereignty and independence, spitting on the little people who are purportedly afraid of migrants, i.e. want to preserve their national identity. The truth is that these little people are the ones who make Great Britain great, even as its basic freedoms have been undermined for decades by EU bureaucrats, Guardianistas and globalist politicians infatuated with altering the composition of historic Britain. Regardless of what the future holds, Brexit represents a victory of Great Britain over Brussels, which wants to rule Europe even as it is besieged by those who seek to transform it into an Islamic state.

This week saw the awakening of a people, the first stirrings of what will hopefully be a revolution which will envelop the entire continent of Europe.

Even as his party rides a wave of popular disgust at the Islamization-facilitated by the institutional bureaucracy of the EU and his own government-of his nation to the top of the polls, Geert Wilders is once again facing imprisonment for dissent. Simple, honest words which reflect the current reality of a country under siege. While Belgian police are busy excavating the terror network created by the logistical coordinator of the Paris terror attacks, recently apprehended within a warren of Islamism, The Netherlands is busy prosecuting a man accused of speaking discomfiting truths.

For the full video-and description-of the preliminary phase of this show trial, go to Gates of Vienna, which has been at the forefront of exposing the encroaching dhimmitude within Europe.

Even as Islamic tyrants and terrorists and their progressive enablers attempt to suppress free, honest speech throughout the Western world, there are those intrepid souls who continually defy authority in order to spread a message of truth. One such man is the great Dutch parliamentarian Geert Wilders, who broadcast to the globe that which many-including the sharia brigades on Youtube, evidently-would seek to suppress at all costs. Much like Pamela Geller, Bosch Fawstin, Robert Spencer, and Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Mr. Wilders is someone to whom we all owe a debt of gratitude. At least, those of us who cherish the liberties which are slowly being stripped away in the name of diversity, i.e. fear.

One of my heroes-and an inspiration for anyone around the globe fighting for humanistic, Western values-is Ayaan Hirsi Ali. A woman whose life is actually in peril for espousing her beliefs-unlike some media martyrs-Ms. Ali personifies courage in our modern age. She’s currently promoting her new work, Heretic: Why Islam Needs A Reformation Now, by making the rounds of cable chat shows, even deigning to visit Comedy Central’s repository of Koranic knowledge, Jon Stewart.

Even if you decide not to purchase her book, I would recommend watching the brief interview above, as well as some of her other recent media appearances. She articulates, with more clarity than any of the talking heads opining on the why and wherefore of global jihadists currently decamping for the Middle East, the reasons why multiculturalism as a governing political philosophy has failed, and why it needs to be wholeheartedly rejected by all rational individuals. The notion that we should accept an obscurantist, retrograde ideology based upon 7th century Arabian beliefs in 21st century Europe and North America is absurd, and it is one that needs to be consigned to the ash heap of history.

Even as people from around the globe have commemorated the Shoah, marking the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Europe’s Jews from the clutches of Nazi subjugation, there were those who decided to revel in their personal hatred of this world’s universal scapegoat. Pat Condell continues to expose the stunning hypocrisy of European leaders who beat their chests and proclaim never again even as they flood their own countries, ostensibly, with millions of immigrants whose opinion of the single worst atrocity in European history range from dismissal of the suffering of European Jewry, to denial that six million jews were systematically murdered, to regret that Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany didn’t finish the job.

As he makes clear in the video above, you can’t purport to love Jews while at the same time importing their tormentors.

The latest issue of Charlie Hebdo has finally hit the streets of France, no doubt displeasing genocidal Islamic sociopaths and their culturally Marxist, Islamophilic SJW sympathizers alike. The depth of fear of the poisonous, warped ideology which has paralyzed the gatekeepers of power is on full display, as the contemptible reaction of this Sky News anchor demonstrates. As James Kirkpatrick so succinctly puts it, this comes down to either identity or extinction.

It’s readily apparent which side the Kultursmog has chosen in this debate. One need look no further than a pathetic, cringing New York Times article praising the foresight of the overseers of the Appellate Division Courthouse, who removed a statue of Mohammed at the behest of a group of third world, Islamic backwaters during renovations in 1955. Reading that piece reminded me of nothing so much as the craven nature of the townsfolk in the classic episode of The Twilight Zone It’s A Good Life, who are cowered into submission to the will of a deranged, sadistic child with supernatural powers. 

Thankfully, the people who are bombarded by these messages have retained both their dignity and their hostility to an ideology responsible for a host of outrages both past and present. The most welcome development in this respect being the grassroots, spontaneous East German civic movement known as Pegida, which has drawn character assassinations from even the current chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany. Just like their slightly  more earthy counterparts in the anti-Islamization movement, these men and women are revolting against the totalitarian mindset which animates both Islam and the state-worshipping EUrocracy which has colonized public life on the European continent.

As exasperating and predictable as the reaction by the Mesozoic news media has been, we can’t ignore the organic, courageous response of individuals like those who comprise the membership of Pegida, or the steely determination of the writers and artists who continue to publish Charlie Hebdo, even as lickspittles and cowards who pose as journalists try to silence them. My faith in humanity dictates that these truth-tellers are the ones who are writing the first draft of history.

Update: As promised by Brit Hume, Fox News has republished the offending cartoons. If you’re waiting expectantly for other drive-by media to follow suit, don’t hold your breath. There’s only one religion in contemporary society whose mockery is verboten. 

Mark Steyn, as usual, cuts to the heart of the matter. The refusal by almost every North American media outlet of consequence-with one glaring exception-to republish the cartoons of Charlie Hebdo-like their choice to ban the Jyllands-Posten Mohammed caricatures, is an example of cowardice. This is a decision motivated by base, craven fear, masquerading as a sop to Muslim sensibilities. That said, the decision by most European newspapers to republish those same satirical cartoons shouldn’t be seen as an indication that the continental media have any firmer grasp of what’s at stake, as the  groupthink denunciation of grassroots anti-Islamization campaigns, as well as of those political figures who’ve criticized the multicultural ideology that contributed to Wednesday’s massacre, makes clear. The consistent obfuscation of who is responsible for the series of horrific anti-Semitic violence being but one example of how muddled the Fourth Estate’s evaluation of Islam’s relationship to the West is.

Unfortunately, I think that Steyn has hit upon a difficult truth to digest. The journalists who were assassinated by jihadists in Paris were not simply irreplaceable in terms of their unique talent for clarifying the relationship described above. They were irreplaceable in a much more immediate, practical sense. There are only so many people willing to place themselves in the crosshairs of the perpetually aggrieved religion before our reserve of martyrs is exhausted. And then, notwithstanding the faux solidarity of people who posture as journalists, the terrorists really will have won.
h/t Gates of Vienna.