Typing bravely through their tears at al-Reuters,
…. after rejecting a draft constitution for Europe four years ago, delivered a solid bloc for anti-immigration politician Geert Wilders to take to Europe’s parliament, exit polls showed Thursday.
Underscoring skepticism over further European integration, Wilders’ right-wing Freedom Party appeared set to win four out of 25 contested seats in elections for the European Parliament being held over the next four days.
With the gains, the PVV will become the second-biggest Dutch party in the European parliament. More from the WsJ;
No politician exemplifies establishment fears more than Mr. Wilders, a charismatic orator whose platinum-blond hair has been compared to Mozart’s wig. He is a polarizing figure in European politics who has been banned from entering the U.K. under hate-speech laws. He travels with bodyguards and keeps where he sleeps a secret.
Mr. Wilders, 45 years old, has sat in the Dutch Parliament since 1998. In 2004, he left the conservative People’s Party over a dispute about whether Turkey should be allowed to join the EU. (It isn’t a member but has applied to join.) He founded the Party for Freedom and discovered a knack for tapping into Dutch xenophobia.
The Netherlands has 800,000 Muslims, mostly Turks and Moroccans, in a population of 17 million. Mr. Wilders has progressively ramped up his anti-Islamic rhetoric, calling the Koran a “fascist book” and making a movie depicting Islam as inherently violent. The British government cited the movie, “Fitna,” as grounds to ban Mr. Wilders from visiting the U.K. earlier this year.
Mr. Wilders added a strong anti-EU plank to his platform during a 2005 Dutch referendum on a new EU constitution. He helped defeat the measure, effectively scuttling the project.
His party, known by its Dutch acronym, the PVV, won nine of 150 seats in parliament in the 2006 national elections. Polls now show that roughly one-fifth of Dutch voters support Mr. Wilders, making the PVV the most popular political group in the country and its leader a long-shot candidate for prime minister. The next general election, however, isn’t until 2011.
So not all Europeans are eurotards in the long run?
More from the Reuter’s diatribe
“Despite its long history of tolerance, the Dutch have turned inward in recent years on concerns over Muslim immigration, the growing level of influence in liberal Dutch laws from Brussels and taxpayer money being contributed to the EU budget.”
Yah, that’s it – its not about corrupt policians, crashing economies, or muslims killing prominent critics or anything.
Oh wait, I guess the killing part is implied in the muslim immigration – who knew reuter’s was so accurate??
When forced to look over the edge of the precipice, people generally push back. Looks like common sense is kicking in. The question time will answer: too little, too late?
Maybe Hirsi Ali will want to move back to Holland in 2011 – she would make a great immigration minister!
Great news indeed!!
The icing on the cake of this is that Jacqui Smith the brit home secretary who banned Wilders from the UK has had to resign her own seat. Something to do with her husband buying porn and putting it on the taxpayers tab…
Don’t count the chickens before they hatch. Right wingers over there seem to have their political careers ended rather abruptly when they become inconvenient.
So not all Europeans are eurotards in the long run?
Similarly not all Americans (nor Canadians) are leftards. Probably not even a real majority. It just seems to be difficult to motivate the people that hold rational conservative views. But inertia works both ways, so once the movement starts it will be very forceful.
It just seems to be difficult to motivate the people that hold rational conservative views.
~glasnost at June 5, 2009 11:42 AM
Not difficult at all.
What is difficult, is to get some real Conservative politicians, with courage, to run on real Conservative values.
Only +or- 60% of eligible voters exercise their franchise. The leaves 40% to be represented who aren’t being represented. The Liberals, NDP, and Greens are all lying socialists/communists.
The CPC is a somewhat honest socialist lite. That means a substantial portion of that 40% who can vote, but don’t, are probably conservatives who don’t feel represented. If the CPC would act like real Conservatives they might get 1/4 of that 40% and that means a majority. Instead, the CPC is competing with the Liberal/NDP/Greens for voters with Leftist sentiments and having the Conservatives who do vote for them casting their vote grudgingly because the CPC is the best of a bad lot.
They will form a “cordon sanitaire” around him, and the left and centre parties will unite to block Wilders from getting any real power.
That’s how it was done in Belgium to disenfrachise the Flemish nationalists.
Then the people of Holland will have to decide in the next election if this so outrages them that they will give him even more votes, or whether they give up on the PVV.
The battle is just beginning. Until now it has been a cakewalk for the Euroleftards.
Not so off topic, but, the election results so far in Britain have Labour being humiliatingly crushed. BNP has picked up at least one seat.
As per the Brussels Journal today:
Wilders’ party has become the largest party in Rotterdam, a traditional Socialist stronghold, where it received 22.5% of the votes, while Labour declines from 31 to 15%. Rotterdam has a large population of Muslim immigrants. It seems the native voters have flocked en masse to Wilders, whose party has even become the biggest in Capelle aan de IJssel, the home town of Prime Minister Balkenende.
The Dutch electoral map shows that the PVV (pale blue on the map) has become the largest party in parts of the southern province of Limburg, Wilders’ home province, which is traditionally Christian-Democrat, in the eastern corner of the northern province of Groningen, which is a communist bulwark, and in the major cities and suburbs of the West, which traditionally tend to vote Labour (inner cities) or Liberal (suburbs). This indicates that the PVV appeals to the whole spectrum of the Dutch indigenous population, from the right to the left, with its program against the Islamization of Europe, its outspoken support for Israel, and against the transformation of the European Union into a European superstate.
It’s gratifying that Home Secretary Jacqui Smith who blocked Wilders entry into Britain was disgraced in the expenses scandal and is gone.
Cultural values and nationalism not a muslim exclusive…..Modern Europeans will not be bullied by troglodites from a 7th century culture.
too bad he couldn’t remove every muslim from his country.
those Dutch sure are a bunch of xenophobes.
stark contrast to the french surrender monkey (still at it) xenopatsies.
Oh sweet is Gerts victory.
I am I see viewing Penny@2:31 comments not alone in hoping that Sunday proves that the remaining in the UK can do the same and get an overwhelming result for UKIP.
Then we can get rid of the EU and start to reform this basket case of a third world country.
Hell Sunday is a long time to wait for a result, meanwhile apart from Jackie Smiths resignation its getting to be an hourly event about who has resigned next from this pathetic of all governments.
At this time of night its now becoming probable that Gordon might not make it over the weekend.
Pray for us guys and girls we might just make it yet.
Mr. Wilders did not make a movie “depicting Islam as inherently violent” he made a movie that let the “Islamists show how inherently violent” they are. To me there is a large difference between the two statements. I also feel we can do very well without any of them here in Canada.
h/t to Gates of Vienna for this revelation posted on a European public affairs site:
“It seems that Geert Wilders, champion of freedom and advocate of Western Civilisation, will soon reach the pinnacle of political power in the Netherlands. People in Holland are realising that all the establishment parties want to strip them of their rights and their culture, Many now realise that if they want to have a true democracy in the Netherlands with the right to speak one’s mind and have Dutch culture preserved then the only thing to do is vote for Geert Wilders’ Freedom Party. A recent report on radio Netherlands shows that the writing is on the wall and the traditional political classes know that they will soon have no power and no influence in that country. The Dutch elite is rattled and desperate and trying to dream its way from the edge of political oblivion.
The international elite have, up until now, found ways to manage our democracies through the established political parties. Parties like the Freedom Party in the Netherlands are showing the people the way back to political significance. For too long the voice of the majority has been managed and manipulated so that it can be ignored.
The days when the elite can place a list of unsatisfactory candidates on a ballot form and have it pass for democracy are well and truly coming to an end. ”
Score one for the European common class.
To use the words “Dutch” and “xenophobia” in the same sentence demonstrates an ignorance that shocks history itself. Does the author truly not know that Amsterdam is their capital?
Sadly, Adrian, I don’t think that this election will deliver a resounding big win for UKIP. But, the Tories have basically won the next general election. You’d think the Labour losers would have the graciousness to just go now, they are so clueless and corrupt even as they fade from the stage.
Cameron isn’t Thatcher and if he plays the American RINO game he won’t last long. I think the Brits are galvanized to get out of the EU, far away from Blair’s legacy and all that the lefty elites have taken from them.
This is starting to remind me of the ill-fated Russian coup attempt back in the day, except that they were suicides rather than resignations.