Ghost of a flea

When Dutch sociologist-turned-politician Pim Fortuyn was murdered it took little time for the mainstream media to sneer that he was a racist. The reason for this grotesque lie? When a gay man speaks the truth about an ideology that labels him as subhuman and targets him for murder he is going to be held responsible for his own death. Fortuyn's murderer was an activist "who felt it his duty to protect weaker groups in society." All too many of his nihilist fellow-travellers in Western establishment circles have expressed the same sentiment over and over again these last few years. It is difficult for me to express the blind fury I still feel when I think about it. Those feelings were brought back in force with the assassination of Dutch film-maker Theo Van Gogh by the same forces of Satanic hatred, ironically, notes The Economist, on his way to finishing a film about Fortuyn.

Andrew Sullivan sums it up:

And all the Dutch Prime Minister had to say was the perfectly ludicrous pronouncement that “Nothing is known about the motive” of the killer. On the contrary. Jihad has been openly declared on the Netherlands (Peaktalk carries the full text). When three in ten Dutch react to the assassination by expressing a desire to flee the country it is all too easy to imagine an enervated Europe that has lost the spine to fight.

I think the danger of this Islamic fascism, however, is still greater to Muslims living peacefully in Europe. Three in ten Dutch may wish to flee but one in five of the French voted for an overtly neo-fascist, racialist candidate in their last presidential election. This is hardly surprising given de facto French apartheid, a breeding ground for hate and extremism the French government has thus far attempted to divert toward the United States, Israel, the Jews of France and most brutally toward young French-Muslim women who are abandoned to their fate. When the history of this time is written the French establishment's sheer cynicism, greed and sly collaboration with (yet another) fascism will be shocking enough. It is all too easy to imagine the horrors that may yet await us. Anyone who believes the arm-bands and the death camps are a thing of the past learned nothing from the horrors inflicted in Bosnia and Kosovo by France's Serbian fascist clients.

Some will insist Theo Van Gogh was murdered for his racist views and as a consequence will implicitly or explicitly condone it and side with the jihadist. Charles Johnson refutes this view directly:

Quite right. The only racism at work is that of those who believe the Muslims of Europe - be they Arabs or Turks or some some more distant place - are somehow incapable or undeserving of the freedoms of the Netherlands. These include the rights of gay-Muslims and feminist-Muslims and secularized Muslims in the full spectrum of human hope and folly. For the love of the freedom and toleration that have made Amsterdam a sanctuary for artists and intellectuals those same artists and intellectuals must commit themselves to the defense of those values even when the fascists who threaten them are Muslims. Those Muslims who are the first victims of this neo-fascist poison must join that fight unequivocally and for the same reason. If the democracies of Europe cannot muster the will to the armed defense of their liberty I fear a future dominated by the men who will come to power under the pretense of such defense.

Theo Van Gogh's film Submission can be downloaded here (via Just Between Us Girls).