<div dir="ltr"><h2 style="padding-top:0px;margin-top:0px;text-transform:none">From Paradise to Bolshevik Thought Police</h2>
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by <a href="https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/author/Giulio+Meotti"><span>Giulio Meotti</span></a><br>
<time class="gmail-nocontent" datetime="2016-12-11T05:00:00">December 11, 2016 at 5:00 am</time></b></p>
<p class="gmail-nocontent" style="margin:0px 0px 10px"><b><a href="https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/9537/dutch-death-spiral">https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/9537/dutch-death-spiral</a></b></p>
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<p>A country whose most <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/03/world/europe/dutch-filmmaker-an-islam-critic-is-killed.html?_r=0" target="_blank">outspoken filmmaker</a> was slaughtered by an Islamist; whose <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4986418.stm" target="_blank">bravest refugee</a>, hunted by a <i>fatwa</i>, fled to the U.S.; whose <a href="http://www.forbes.com/forbes/welcome/?toURL=http://www.forbes.com/sites/abigailesman/2011/12/27/radical-islam-claims-another-gregorius-nekschot-rip/&refURL=https://www.google.it/&referrer=https://www.google.it/" target="_blank">cartoonists</a>
must live under protection, had better should think twice before
condemning a Member of Parliament, whose comments about Islam have
forced him to live under 24-hour protection for more than a decade, for
"hate speech." Poor Erasmus! The Netherlands is no longer a safe haven
for free thinkers. It is the Nightmare for Free Speech.</p>
<p>The most prominent politician in the Netherlands, MP <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/12/09/anti-islam-dutch-mp-geert-wilders-found-guilty-discrimination/" target="_blank">Geert Wilders</a>, has just been convicted of "hate speech," for asking at a really if there should be fewer <a href="https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/4271/moroccans-netherlands" target="_blank">Moroccans</a>
in the Netherlands. Many newly-arrived Moroccans in the Netherlands
seem to have been responsible for a disproportionate amount of crime
there.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.dutchnews.nl/news/archives/2016/12/98817-2/" target="_blank">Paul Cliteur</a>,
Professor of Jurisprudence at Leiden University, who was called as an
expert witness, summed up the message coming from the court: "It would
have been better if the Dutch state had sent a clear signal [to
terrorists] via a Dutch court that we foster a broad notion of the
freedom of expression in the Netherlands."</p>
<p>Here are just a few details to help understand what Wilders
experiences every day because of his ideas: No visitors are allowed into
his office except after a long wait to be checked. The Dutch airline
KLM refused to board him on a flight to Moscow for reasons of
"security." His entourage is largely anonymous. When a warning level
rises, he does not know where he will spend the night. For months, he
was able to see his wife only twice a week, in a secure apartment, and
then only when the police allowed it. The Parliament had to place him in
the less visible part of the building, in order better to protect him.
He often wears a bulletproof vest to speak in public. When he goes to a
restaurant, his security detail must first check the place out.</p>
<p>Wilders's life is a nightmare. "I am in jail," he has said; "they are walking around free."</p>
<p>The historic dimension of Wilders's conviction is related not only to
the terrible injustice done to this MP, but that it was the Netherlands
that, for the first time in Europe, criminalized dissenting opinions
about Islam.</p>
<p>The Netherlands is a very small country; whatever happens to this
enclave is seen in the rest of Europe. The Netherlands refused to
surrender to the Spanish invasion. It was from Rotterdam, the
second-largest Dutch city, that the Founding Fathers left to create the
United States of America. It was to the Netherlands that some of the
most brave, original European philosophers and writers -- Descartes,
Rousseau, Locke, Sade, Molière, Hugo, Swift and Spinoza -- had to flee
to publish their books. It is also the only corner of Europe where there
were no pogroms against Jews, and where Rembrandt painted Jesus with
the physical traits of Jews.</p>
<p>Take Leiden: "Praesidium Libertatis" ("Bastion of Freedom") is the
motto of the Netherlands' most ancient university. Leiden was the
university of Johan Huizinga, the great historian who opposed the Nazis
and died in a concentration camp. Leiden was also the university of
Anton Pannekoek, the mentor of Martinus Van der Lubbe, the Dutch hero
who torched the Nazi Parliament in 1933.</p>
<p>In Leiden today, you meet brave intellectuals such as <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/11/10/AR2005111002046.html" target="_blank">Afshin Ellian</a>,
an Iranian jurist who fled Khomeini's Revolution in Iran and who also
now lives under police protection for his observations on Islam.
Ellian's office is close to the former office of Rudolph Cleveringa.
When the Nazis invaded the Netherlands and called on Dutch public
officials to fill out a form in which they had to declare whether they
were "Aryans" or "Jews", everyone but Cleveringa capitulated. He
understood the consequences of such commands.</p>
<p>Twelve years ago, the Netherlands was again plunged into fear for the
first time since World War II. In Linnaeusstraat, a district of
Amsterdam, Mohammed Bouyeri, a Muslim extremist, ambushed the filmmaker
Theo van Gogh and slaughtered him, then pinned on his chest a letter
threatening the lives of Geert Wilders and Ayaan Hirsi Ali. Before that
murder, Pim Fortuyn, a professor who had formed his own party to save
the country from Islamization, was <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/netherlands/1425944/Fortuyn-killed-to-protect-Muslims.html" target="_blank">shot to death</a> to "defend Dutch Muslims from persecution."</p>
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<td style="max-width:600px;border-width:1px;border-style:solid;border-color:black"><img src="https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/pics/2117.jpg" width="600" height="345" border="0"><p style="font-size:82%;margin:4px 6px">Twelve
years ago, Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh (left) was assassinated by an
Islamist who pinned on van Gogh's chest a letter threatening the life of
Geert Wilders (right). Today Wilders, the most prominent politician in
the Netherlands, lives in hiding under round-the-clock protection.</p></td>
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<p>Fortuyn had <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/netherlands/1393260/Simpson-on-Sunday-Hollands-anti-Islam-dandy-is-lost-for-words.html" target="_blank">said</a>, "We have a lot of guests who are trying to take over the house."</p>
<p>Since then, many Dutch artists have capitulated to fear.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.foxnews.com/story/2008/05/03/iranian-artist-fights-to-have-muhammad-art-displayed-in-dutch-museums.html" target="_blank">Sooreh Hera</a>,
from Iran, submitted her photos to the Gemeentemuseum Museum in The
Hague. One of these works depicted Mohammed and Ali. After many threats,
the museum proposed that it would acquire the photos without publishing
them and that one day, perhaps, when the situation was calmer, they
might show them then. Hera refused: it would have been self-censorship, a
sad day for the West. Rants Tjan, director of Museum Gouda, bravely
offered to exhibit her censored images, but that event was later
cancelled, too. Hera was forced to go into hiding.</p>
<p>Paul Cliteur, a critic of multiculturalism, <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/theobserver/2004/dec/05/1" target="_blank">announced</a>
that he would no longer write for Dutch newspapers about Islam, for
fear of reprisals: "With the murder of van Gogh, everyone who writes
takes a certain risk. That is a scary development. What I am doing do is
self-censorship, absolutely...."</p>
<p>Then a columnist, <a href="http://vorige.nrc.nl/krant/article1638782.ece/Spunk-columniste_Hasna_stopt_vanwege_bedreigingen" target="_blank">Hasna el Maroudi</a>, from the newspaper <i>NRC Handelsblad,</i> stopped writing, after receiving threats.</p>
<p>The Dutch artist <a href="http://www.forbes.com/2010/08/05/liberal-democracy-islamic-extremism-opinions-book-excerpts-abigail-r-esman.html" target="_blank">Rachid Ben Ali</a>, irreverent about Islam, no longer satirizes Muslims.</p>
<p>Amsterdam, a city famous for its exuberant cultural life, had already
lived through threats to artists: the occupation by the Nazis during
World War II.</p>
<p>Several artists still refuse to mention Theo Van Gogh, so as not to "contribute to... divisions", according to the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/02/arts/provocateurs-death-haunts-the-dutch-.html" target="_blank"><i>New York Times</i></a>. Translation: They are afraid. Who would not be?</p>
<p>In the Oosterpark, a steel sculpture by the artist Jeroen Henneman,
dedicated to Van Gogh, is entitled "De Schreeuw" ("The Scream"). But it
is a scream you hardly hear in the Dutch society.</p>
<p>What you do hear is the defiant protest after the conviction of a
brave MP, Geert Wilders: "I will never be silent. You will not be able
to stop me... And that is what we stand for. For freedom and for our
beautiful Netherlands."</p>
<p>Before being slaughtered, clinging to a basket, Theo van Gogh begged his assassin: "<a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/profiles/ayaan-hirsi-ali-my-life-under-a-fatwa-760666.html" target="_blank">Can we talk about this?</a>"</p>
<p>But <i>can</i> we talk?</p>
<p>Ask Geert Wilders, just the latest brave victim of Europe's Bolshevik thought police.</p>
<blockquote><p><i>Giulio Meotti, Cultural Editor for</i> Il Foglio,<i> is an Italian journalist and author.</i></p>
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