Europe: Fear and Hope

Diana West reports on the concerns and recent visit to the US of representatives from the conservative Belgian political party, Vlaams Belang.  If you are concerned about the Islamization of Europe, if you are concerned about intolerance, if you are concerned about the future of Western thought and way of life, you ought to read this. Some in Europe see the truth and are trying to do something about it.  West writes:

Before I met Vlaams Belang's Frank Vanhecke and Filip Dewinter in Washington, I believed Europe's rush to Islamize itself was a stampede, its transformation all but inevitable. Now, I think these men have at least earned Europe the benefit of the doubt. Studying their various statements and interviews, I found no evidence to support the crude slanders to which they are continually subjected in the media for being a right-wing party opposed to the massive Islamic immigration now transforming traditional European culture. Indeed, their statements on Israel are more supportive than any European party I know of. As Vanhecke put it in a recent speech, "They call us 'intolerant' because we oppose intolerance. They call us 'fascists' because we oppose Islamo-fascism.

They call us 'the children of holocaust perpetrators,' because we oppose Islamists who are preparing a new holocaust against the Jews.' " America must start paying attention to Europe. And to Vlaams Belang.

Comments

[AndyJ]

Bret Stephens at WSJ wrote last week about the growing closeness of the Islam-O-Fascists and the historical European Socialists.

Islamosocialism
March 13, 2007; Page A22

"It is a profound truth,' declared the British Socialist Party in a 1911 manifesto, "that Socialism is the natural enemy of religion." Not the least of the oddities in the subsequent history of progressive politics is that today it has become the principal vehicle in the West for Islamist goals and policies."

He finishes "-the stakes today are different. At question for Europeans is not the prevailing view of a distant country. The question is the shaping of their own. Europe's liberal democrats were able, sometimes with outside help, to preserve their values in the face of an outside threat. Whether they can resist the temptations of Islamosocialism remains to be seen."

There is also a current of thought that says that the Europeans have a history of sudden violent rage that is quite majestic and awful. This rage may turn against all Muslims much as it did in Spain.

Could the Islam-O-Fascist movement find friends among our more Liberal and Socialist parties? If they could deliver the votes, the party with no conscience would welcome their platform...

[Gail]

"Could the Islam-O-Fascist movement find friends among our more Liberal and Socialist parties? If they could deliver the votes, the party with no conscience would welcome their platform..."

Sadly, I think you are right. As I look back on my changeover from the political left to the right, the defining moment, the moment that I was "mugged by reality," was the moment when I first saw anti-war protesters marching alongside of ANSWER folks who were holding signs calling the Israelis racists and nazis. The picture was complete for me at that moment. I saw the poison in their agenda and have never looked at the left the same way since. As far as I am concerned, principles, values and morality are all on the right. The left is a wasteland - exactly as you said, without conscience.

That they can't see the greater evil in the world as being with the fundamentalist Islamists as opposed to the US and Israel is mind boggling.

It is good that at least some in Europe, as West points out, are able to see the truth. As a group, however, I don't see them turning on anyone in a violent rage. They bungled handling Hitler in the past, and they are bungling handling the Middle East today.