The British government has banned Geert Wilders from entering the UK. This is the result of an initiative by a few elements in the British parliament. The ban meets with a lot of disapproval, from people all over the world, including the Brits themselves.
I am not a friend of anyone who holds an entire population-subgroups responsible for the social problems in our society; like crime, violence and ethnic tensions. Our Court Jester, Geert Wilders, certainly does this, and I find many of the things he says utterly stupid.
On the other hand: I happen to agree with Wilders’ idea that the Muslim faith is inherently violent and I think that we should try to get a check on all the flavours of faith who may be aiming for world domination.
It is pointed by Wilders that Muslims are trying to implement a global Theocracy. His statement might be accurate. However, I have a problem with Wilders’ simple solutions, and with the fact that he discriminates only the Muslims. The Christians and the Jews are, for some funny reason, exempt from his analysis: he does not seem to see a threat in them. I definitely see that threat, though. In my book, all major religions pose a threat.
I have an even bigger problem with something else: a government that is trying to protect the sensitive ears of its population against dissonant politics, or against anyone who thinks he has something inconvenient to share with the rest of the world for that matter. That constitutes censorship of free speech, and I thought that our forefathers went great lengths – in their bloody revolutions to change Europe from a feudal continent to a democratic one - to get rid of a world where this was the norm.
I am boycotting products from Thailand, for instance, because of the way the Royals of that country think they can keep the popular voice at bay. Thailand’s King is regarded as [almost] sacred, and many people are in jail for “insulting” him; including at least one foreign journalist. An Australian – British Commonwealth – subject, if I remember correctly. And this is in 2009….
But we don’t need to go to South-East Asia to find such censorship revival. The British government is now barring Dutch PM Geert Wilders from getting into their country because of his ideas about Muslims. What were the English sentiments again, about the Russian censorship, which makes it almost impossible for the opposition to organise its ranks, let alone make a significant wave in the domestic political landscape? Right. Britain considers itself as a democracy, where personal freedom is a great good.
Not any more. The mechanism which prevents Wilders from entering the UK – some law or regulation originally intended to prevent the “proliferation of hate” – was originally designed to ban and prosecute potential radicals. But lately it has increasingly been used to crack down on any persons or groups, who are perceived to be a threat to the British powers that be. Like Anarchists, Animal Activists and Neo-Nazi’s for instance.
There is no way around it. If England get away with this, we have a new anti-democratic state in the making in our European midst. It looks as if England is heading the same way as Italy, Russia and the USA (with its Patriot Act). Luckily, the Britons themselves don’t really want to be a part of the European Union anyway, so why don’t they withdraw? We certainly don’t need them.*
While we’re at it: we might ban specific Brits from our territories, like those drug tourists, these halfwits who are crawling all over our capital in their silly clothes, while smoking up our public areas with ganja and making A LOT OF NOISE in the process! They happen to be a direct threat to our safety!
Democracy comes with people or groups who say stupid things. We must accept that to maintain the democratic “metier”. Noam Chomski pointed that out long ago. It doesn’t make any sense to attempt to silence dissonant politics by silencing its promoters. Apparently, this is not a common insight in the UK, on the parliament level.
I understand that even in the UK there is a lot of opposition from the common people, AND from some more sensible politicians, against the Wilders ban. As it seems, some common people are more democratic than their representatives.
* We actually don’t really need anyone. But the bigger the party, the better… England is welcome to join the club, of course. They’d be very happy with the Euro and the metric system.
