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In a liberal democracy, it's crucially important that a person's right to be a total douchebag not be limited by the state (I think it's in our Constitution somewhere). So while I think he should be ostracized -- shamed -- by reasonable people everywhere, it warms my heart that there are no widespread calls* for the Dutch government to censor the latest stupidity from xeonphobic Dutch wingnut (is there another kind of Dutch wingnut?) Geert Wilders …
As The Observer reported last week:
The Dutch government is bracing itself for violent protests following the scheduled broadcast this week of a provocative anti-Muslim film by a radical right-wing politician who has threatened to broadcast images of the Koran being torn up and otherwise desecrated [Ed: It's since been put on hold until March].
Cabinet ministers and officials, fearing a repetition of the crisis sparked by the publication of cartoons of Muhammad in a Danish newspaper two years ago, have held a series of crisis meetings and ordered counter-terrorist services to draw up security plans. Dutch nationals overseas have been asked to register with their embassies and local mayors in the Netherlands have been put on standby.
Geert Wilders, one of nine members of the extremist PVV (Freedom) party in the 150-seat Dutch lower house, has promised that his film will be broadcast - on television or on the internet - whatever the pressure may be. It will, he claims, reveal the Koran as 'source of inspiration for intolerance, murder and terror.'
How loathesome is the film? Even Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the Right's favorite professional former Muslim apostate and self-proclaimed "liberal" champion of Western Values -- no stranger to a bit of Muslim-fundamentalist-baiting herself -- panned it:
From her self-imposed exile in Washington, Hirsi Ali last week criticized the new film as 'provocation' and called on the major Dutch political parties to restart a debate on immigration that has split Dutch society in recent years, rather than leave the field to extremists.
Recall that the infamous Danish cartoons were published by hard right-wingers -- Heiko Henkel called them "a bunch of reactionary provocateurs" -- in order to create a reaction among their nutty "values voter" counterparts within the Muslim community -- a minority who gleefully play yin to their reactionary yang.
When called out for intentionally inciting violence, these provocateurs always fall back on a pure red herring: they claim that they're exercising their right to free speech, providing a stark example -- a civics lesson -- of liberal "Western" values at work. Steven Gash, a Brit with the far-right group Stop Islamisation of Europe, explained his support for Wilders to the Observer, saying “It’s all about free speech.” Various right-wing outlets are buzzing with stories of liberal fascism, with and assorted “Dhimmis” caving to the MuslimoComuNazis’ intimidation of a member of the Dutch parliament.
But the simple fact is that the Dutch government has at every opportunity affirmed Wilder’s right to make the film. The government’s line is that his right to speak is absolute, but that he’s using the right “irresponsibly” — an assertion that’s difficult to refute. On the sidelines of an informal EU meeting to discuss the possible ramification’s of the film’s release, Luxembourg’s Justice Minister, Luc Frieden, told AFP: "It is our moral duty to call upon everybody, to make people aware, so that they do not abuse their fundamental rights" to free expression.
Contrary to the shrieks of censorship arising from all corners of Greater Wingnuttia, that’s been the official line since the start of the Danish cartoon controversy. Recall that in the aftermath of that kerfuffle, a group of diplomats from several Muslim countries requested a meeting with Danish officials to discuss the issue. Danish PM Anders Fogh Rasmussen refused to even sit down and hear them out, writing back to the diplos: “"The freedom of expression has a wide scope and the Danish government has no means of influencing the press. However, Danish legislation prohibits acts or expressions of blasphemous or discriminatory nature. The offended party may bring such acts or expressions to court, and it is for the courts to decide in individual cases.” He later added: “Even a non-judicial intervention against [the publishers] would be impossible within our system."
When the simple fact that governments haven't tried to censor this idiocy is pointed out, the provocateurs simply move the goalposts, saying, 'oh, no, we were talking about self-censorship' -- ostensibly the self-censorship of squishy, politically correct liberals too wedded to their multiculturalism to see Islam's perfidy. The problem with that argument is that it's impossible to distinguish between “self-censorship” — as they’ve defined it — and “not being a complete prick.”
While censorship was never a real issue in these stories, the Right's cries are necessary; without them European Muslims would appear to be just what they are in fact: a vulnerable minority group facing spiraling discrimination since 9/11/01. It's all part of the larger Right-wing strategy to portray themselves as victims -- brave truth-tellers hobbled by a naive and overly idealistic liberal state. It’s the same in the U.S., where the Right maintains that the only group that can legitimately claim to be persecuted in this predominantly white, Christian country are in fact white Christians — everyone else is just indulging in the “politics of victimhood.” Keep in mind that Geert Wilders -- the self-proclaimed champion of liberal Western values -- has called for the Koran to be outlawed in Holland. Freedom of expression and worship for me, but not for thee.
Once you get past the free speech distraction then the question becomes this: if you're standing in a puddle of gas and you choose not to throw a lit match into it, are you exercising some minimally good judgment -- just using the common sense the Good Lord gave a pig -- or are you doing the human-immolation equivalent of "self-censorship"?
It's the heart of the issue. Because that free speech red herring obscures the fact that these people are A) dangerously stupid, and B) just as extreme as their crazy Muslim counterparts. People like Wilders know that it's possible --perhaps even likely -- that people will die as a result of his latest publicity-whoring project and they don't care. Worse, it's their point.
The two sides of what some melodramatically call the "Long War" need one another to thrive. Immediately after the murder of Dutch film-maker Theo Van Gogh -- Geert Wilder's fellow traveler -- by an Islamic extremist, polls showed Geert's PVV could win 29 seats in the Dutch legislature. Eleven months later, after the story was no longer as fresh, the PVV won 1 seat. After the Danish cartoon outrage, that number tripled. The same can be said for a George W. Bush, who won re-election in 2004 with a platform of defending our women from the dusky foreign hordes despite being quite unpopular, or a Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who has maintained legitimacy despite a rash of domestic problems in large part by invoking the dangers of what he terms the West’s “crusades” against Islam.
Let's also consider the context in which that liberal "self-censorship" is taking place. Tensions have been running high between "East" and "West," in no small part because Western Powers have invaded and occupied two Muslim countries, causing the deaths of hundreds of thousands, in response -- supposedly -- to a single act of terrorism that killed 3,000. It hasn't helped that our own dim-witted extremists have been running around writing books about how Islam is a dirty gutter religion and warning of the impending invasion of the West by wild-eyed Muslim hordes.
Recall, too, that while Western observers made much of the MuslimoNazi uprising that followed the Mohammed cartoons' publication, the reality was somewhat different from the breathless reporting. European Muslims, in open societies, reacted with largely peaceful protests. They were angry, they chanted, and that was not only entirely predictable, it's also what people do in liberal countries. In countries with poor governance, repressive governments and security forces, a weak rule of law, etc., it was a very different picture, also as one might predict. For decades, those countries where things did get ugly have been nurturing Islamic fundamentalism as an antidote to various left-leaning ideologies -- Pan-Arabism being the obvious example -- and the point of the exercise was to provoke a violent reaction among extremists in those tinder-box countries that were ready to blow. Security forces opened fire on rioters in a few instances, and about 100 people died. And while it was supposedly all about religion, and while insults to Mohammed were certainly the spark, the violence was not anything one hasn't seen in predominantly Christian, Hindu or whatever countries that don't offer their populations political space for peaceful protest. About that number were killed in riots in mostly Catholic Bolivia, to name just one example, in 2002. Recall, too, the deadly riots in mostly Hindu and Buddhist Nepal last year.
That whole story may repeat itself with this latest "provocation." Again and again, we see small groups of right-wing Muslim, Jewish and Christian extremists trying desperately to foist a Clash of Civilizations on the rest of the world, and profiting politically from whatever fear they sow. But there is no "Clash of Civilizations," only a Clash of Extremist Assholes, with the rest of us caught in the middle. Most people around the world understand this point.
The incentive for this stupidity is pretty clear, and that’s why these games are so dangerous. The rest of us — reasonable Christians, Muslims, Jews and secularists — need to reject this crap from all directions, forcefully, before it gets beyond our control.
*No need to go Googling; when I said there aren't widespread calls for censoring his views, I meant just that -- I'm sure someone's called for it, but it's not the subject of debates among Dutch law-makers or a serious proposal being discussed among the pundit class.
Also, to be clear, a good argument can be made for censoring some of this stuff based on the principle that you don't have a right to scream 'fire!' in a crowded theater -- your freedom ends when you start endangering my life or limb. I think that's a slope that's too slippery for me to be comfortable walking on when it comes to political speech (much more comfortable regulating commercial speech) but I'm very much sympathetic to the argument.
Tagged as: dutch politics, geert wilders, muslim cartoon controvers, stupidity, extremism
Joshua Holland is an editor and senior writer at AlterNet.
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