October 31, 2012 By Fjordman Comments (13)
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I paid a visit to southern Sweden on October 27, 2012. The occasion was a visit to Malmö by a fellow notorious Islamophobe, the Dutch politician Geert Wilders. He had been invited there to speak by Ingrid Carlqvist, the leader of the newly established Swedish Free Press Society. This is a brave but difficult initiative in a semi-totalitarian society, where the mass media are infamous for their crushing left-wing, multicultural and pro-Islamic consensus.
Malmö was historically one of the first Christian cities in what is today Sweden. It is currently set to become the first Muslim-majority city or town in the Nordic countries, but perhaps not the last. What once was a safe Scandinavian city has in recent years been plagued by a wave of armed robberies, rapes and bombs.
The performance of the Swedish police was a mixed bag. From my personal experience, they did a reasonably good job, but they apparently let through a few things that I didn’t see. Katrine Winkel Holmof the Danish Free Press Society reported about physical assaults on some of those who simply came peacefully to listen to Wilders’ speech. Holm criticized the police for giving violent left-wing thugs too much leeway to intimidate and attack people in the streets, trying to block them from entering, or bombarding them with eggs while calling them “Nazis.”
Upon arrival we noticed there was already a heavy police presence. To invite perhaps the most famous Islam-critical politician in Europe to speak in the most heavily Islamized city in Scandinavia was a slap in the face, not just to Muslims, but at least as much to their enablers on the far Left. Predictably, those leftists showed up in force. Not just from Sweden; they even imported violent left-wing thugs from neighboring Denmark to assault people.
They may unfortunately have managed to scare away a few potential listeners. For the most part, however, the heavy presence of the Swedish police, complete with horses, helicopters and armored vehicles, managed to keep the totalitarian thugs at bay. They were shouting slogans and carrying banners, as usual. Most people paid little attention to them, since everyone already knew what they were going to say. These people haven’t substantially changed their slogans for the past 80 years, since the time of Stalin’s purges in the 1930s. Everybody who disagrees with them is a “Fascist.”
They can be very violent when they want to, and for years have physically attacked critics of Islam or mass immigration in Sweden while the authorities looked the other way. The AFA, or “Anti-fascists,” are remarkably similar to actual fascists, although that irony would be totally lost on them. They are what they claim to fight. These left-wing thugs seem to believe that we would be living in a socialist, multicultural paradise had it not been for the stubborn resistance of evil racists and Islamophobes, who must be stamped out at all costs. Sweden is expected to receive 50,000 asylum seekers in 2013, a very substantial number for a small Scandinavian nation, but for left-wing thugs, the natives cannot be turned into a minority in their own country fast enough.
All things considered, however, they were tamer this time around than might have been feared. The main reason for this lackluster performance was no doubt the heavy police presence, but partly also because it was a bit cold. These are revolutionaries of the PlayStation 3 era. Yes, they want to smash the capitalist system and beat up the fascists pigs who uphold it, but not today. It’s too cold, and mummy has some warm meatballs for them at home.
Once inside, I sat down in a room packed with TV cameras and journalists, and not just from Sweden. Norwegian TV2 and others have accused me of “hiding” from the press. They’ve wanted to interview me for more than a year. Well, this time I was sitting openly in a major Scandinavian city smack in the middle of a crowd full of members of the press. Even though my photo has been widely circulated in Norway, a team from Norwegian TV2 passed me by just a few meters away on multiple occasions and never noticed my presence.
Not too bright, these journalists.
To my great joy, I was allowed to meet Geert Wilders before he gave his speech. His security apparatus was very elaborate, as it should be for a person living with a constant threat of having his throat cut, but I’ve been told that it has been even more extensive in the past. Perhaps it varies according to specific credible threats. I knew that Wilders had heard of me even before the Breivik case, but we had never actually met before. I was delighted and honored that he wanted to meet me, and of course accepted immediately. Geert Wilders is a symbol of resistance, not just for the Dutch but for the whole of Europe and for Western Civilization.
Wilders found it very odd that I was forced to flee Norway, despite having never done anything criminal and never having met the perpetrator. We also talked a little bit about the losses suffered by his Party for Freedom (PVV) at the Dutch elections in September. He hoped that this setback would be temporary. In just a few years they had gone from zero to being the third-largest political party in the Netherlands, and had to train many inexperienced MPs. Wilders had also been personally harassed with a ridiculous show trial for racism and Islamophobia. Even so, he judged that the long-term prospects for the Party for Freedom were still very good, what with the problem of Islamization increasing year by year.
Geert Wilders is a forceful man, and one strongly feels his presence, not just because of the security guards who are always nearby, but also because of his personal character. He has real charisma, which is necessary for a successful politician. I noticed that some of the female members of the audience seemed quite enthralled by him. Yet he is also a powerful public speaker who addresses real and profound political issues.
He gave an eloquent and impassioned speech in Malmö about the threat of Islamization and the ongoing loss of freedom of speech in Europe. Wilders extended his focus beyond Islam alone and talked about limiting mass immigration in general, confronting cultural relativism and restoring a healthy pride in our civilization and our national cultures. He also emphasized that all of this is exceedingly difficult to achieve as long as the European Union, and not its member states, controls policies. The EU is thus at the heart of many of Europe’s problems.
Overall, it was a good meeting and a good speech. The event was met by the predictable outcry from hostile Swedish mass media, which refused to talk about the actual problems mentioned by Wilders, and merely focused on his alleged “hate.” Symptomatic of the response was an op-ed by the columnist Oisín Cantwell, who was present at the speech, in the newspaperAftonbladet. He attempted to mock Geert Wilders and his audience without actually addressing any of the issues raised by Mr. Wilders. Mr. Cantwell apparently also thought it was funny that writer Ingrid Carlqvist no longer feels safe in her own home, in Sweden.
However, Wilders’ otherwise good speech repeated the claim that the Benghazi attacks in September 2012 on the US diplomatic mission to Libya were triggered by an anti-Islamic movie. It has now been well-established that this was merely a cover story. The CIA indicate that this was a regular and carefully planned Islamic terror attack, possibly by groups tied to al-Qaida, carried out on the anniversary of the September 11th attacks in the USA in 2001. It was not a spontaneous riot in response to some obscure movie. This claim is false.
It was later revealed that the administration of President Obama misinformed the public about this, and that Mr. Obama refused requests for more support and back-up to the US ambassador Christopher Stevens, who was murdered by Jihadist Muslims. This claim should not be repeated by Wilders or his staff in the future.
The “turbulent blond” Geert Wilders is the leader of the third-largest political party in the Netherlands, was once denied entry to Britain, and had his visit to Australia sabotaged by authorities who are more than willing to let militant Islamic preachers enter the country. He has to live with constant death threats due to his criticism of Islamic culture and around-the-clock police protection in Western Europe, possibly for the rest of his life. Wilders and others like him show great personal courage and integrity in standing up for what they believe in and confronting the forces of violent totalitarianism head-on. That stands to their credit.
The big question, however, is: Why should they have to?
Why should increasing numbers of politicians, artists and writers in Western Europe and elsewhere in the Western world have to live as virtual prisoners in their own homes, surviving only because of constant police protection, while we continue to import en masse members of the hostile tribes and backward cultures who are behind such threats?
It is criminal negligence by Western so-called “leaders” to promote open-border policies and continued mass immigration, including Muslim immigration, as sections of our cities sink increasingly into anarchy, our freedom of speech gradually vanishes and our cultural heritage is erased from our school curricula.
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Filed Under: Daily Mailer, FrontPage Tagged With: european union, free press, Free Speech, Geert Wilders',Immigration, Ingrid Carlqvist, Islam, Malmö, Norway, speech, Sweden
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