He Doesn’t Look a Thing Like Jesus

Quoting a cheesy Killers song would seem to be the only appropriate response to Geert Wilders, whose messiah complex has led him to formulate this marvelously incoherent set of principles for “saving” the West:

1. Stop cultural relativism. We need an article in our constitutions that lays down that we have a Jewish-Christian and humanism culture.
2. Stop pretending that Islam is a religion. Islam is a totalitarian ideology. In other words, the right to religious freedom should not apply to Islam.
3. Stop mass immigration by people from Muslim countries. We have to end Al-Hijra.
4. Encourage voluntary repatriation.
5. Expel criminal foreigners and criminals with dual nationality, after denationalization, and send them back to their Arab countries. Likewise, expel all those who incite to a ‘violent jihad’.
6. We need an European First Amendment to strengthen free speech.
7. Have every member of a non-Western minority sign a legally binding contract of assimilation.
8. We need a binding pledge of allegiance in all Western countries.
9. Stop the building of new mosques. As long as no churches or synagogues are allowed to be build in countries like Saudi-Arabia we will not allow one more new mosque in our western countries. Close all mosques where incitement to violence is taking place. Close all Islamic schools, for they are fascist institutions and young children should not be educated an ideology of hate and violence.
10. Get rid of the current weak leaders. We have the privilege of living in a democracy. Let’s use that privilege and exchange cowards for heroes. We need more Churchills and less [sic] Chamberlains.

Should we reaffirm our Judeo-Christian and humanist impulses? I suppose there are elements from both traditions that are deeply embedded within Western culture, but surely there’s some tension between bolstering religious faith and a school of thought that denies the significance of transcendental religious revelation. And surely there’s something fundamentally skewed about simultaneously enhancing free speech protections while unilaterally shutting down mosques and Islamic schools. And surely it’s downright bizarre to decry a “totalitarian” religion while insisting immigrants sign binding “assimilation contracts” and loyalty oaths.

Maybe Geert Wilders is simply confused. Maybe the Western political tradition in Europe has been so bastardized by wave upon wave of Islamic immigrants that he no longer knows what he’s fighting for. Maybe, as Alex Massie puts it, he really does think we have to destroy the Western liberal tradition in order to save it.

Or maybe he’s just a bully. Someone who’s willing to use anything – from appeals to ethno-nationalism to high-minded paeans to human rights to straightforward racism – to bludgeon Islamic immigrants into submission. I’ll leave it to you, dear reader, to divine which is more plausible.