Geert Wilders’ Speech in Washington, DC : “We are all in the Same Boat”.

Geert Wilders at Washington, DC Conservative Opportunity Society

April 29, 2015

Geert Wilders, leader of the Freedom Party in the Netherlands, is in Washington, DC and spoke today a Congressional group at the Conservative Opportunity Society. Dutch opinion polls show his Freedom Party (PVV) as potentially the biggest in the Hague Parliament.

Prior to his arrival in Washington, Two Muslim Congressmen, Keith Ellison (D-MN) and Andre Carson (D-IN) sent a letter on April 23, 2015 to Secretary of State Kerry and Homeland Security Secretary Jae Johnson , requesting that Wilders be denied entry to the US. In their letter they referenced provisions of the International Religious Freedom Act barring foreign leaders for alleged violations of religious freedom. Wilders , while vindicated of such charges in an Amsterdam District Court case in 2011, is currently facing similar charges in investigations by the Public Prosecutors at The Hague. In their letter, Congressmen Ellison and Carson said: “Mr. Wilders’s policy agenda is centered on the principle that Christian culture is superior to other cultures.” Clearly, other members of Congress like Louie Gohmert (R-TX) prevailed.

Wilders , like Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, are looked up by many conservatives in the West as masters of Churchillian cadences endeavoring to bring a warning of the collapse of the West in the face of Islamization reflected in the rise of the Islamic State Jihadism in the Middle East, Iran’s nuclear threat and the surge of illegal mass Muslim immigration from across the Mediterranean. Many consider both Wilders and Netanyahu as the contemporary leaders of the free world, given the abdication of that role by the Administration of President Obama. Wilders’ speech comes on the occasion of the 70^th anniversary of the liberation of Dachau by units of the US Seventh Army. He quotes one of the US liberators: “Since we saw this camp, we understood that we were not engaged in war against soldiers and officers, but against criminals.” Wilder then goes on to say:

After the Second World War, our leaders vowed: Never again!

Never again will we tolerate anti-Semitism, political assassinations, mass murders, oppression, and slavery. And they vowed that they would never forget and always remember the lessons of history.

Here is one of these lessons:

When confronted with evil, do not put your heads in the sand, but act before it is too late.

In the 1930s, most politicians in Europe had looked away. They tried to appease evil, hoping that it would react to appeasement by growing moderate. What fools they had been! And what a terrible price the world had to pay for this foolishness. Neutrality in the face of evil is evil.

But appeasement is downright suicide.

And here we are today.

Despite all the promises that we would not make the same awful mistake all over again, many Western leaders are doing exactly that. Looking away and appeasing evil.

The immediate focus of Wilders’ speech to the Conservative Opportunity Society is on the current illegal migrant crisis occurring in the Mediterranean that the European Union has held emergency meetings to address. That crisis is addressed in an article in the May 2015 edition of the New English Review, “Stemming the Surge of Deadly Illegal Migration across the Mediterranean.”

Wilders said:

The floodgates of immigration are wide open.

Last year, a record 218,000 immigrants reached Europe by boats across the Mediterranean Sea.

Those who made it were the lucky ones. Many of the boats sink and the immigrants drown.

A human catastrophe is unfolding. The Mediterranean is becoming a Sea of Death.

At this very moment, there are up to 1 million immigrants, mostly Islamic, waiting in North Africa to cross the Mediterranean in shabby boats. They take the risk of drowning because they know that Europe is not sending them back once they have made it. That is why ever more people try to cross. This situation must stop.

The European Union has decided to send navy vessels to pick up the immigrants and transport them to Europe. This policy is stupid. It will encourage even more people to attempt crossing the sea. What Europe should do is to follow the example of Australia. The Australian navy pushes boats with immigrants back, out of the Australian waters. If the boats of the immigrants are too shabby, the Australians provide them with new boats with food and water, but they do not allow one single illegal immigrant to enter their country. The Australians results are excellent: fewer people try to reach Australia by boat, fewer people drown and the criminal human traffickers lose their income.

The boats also constitute a huge security risk. ISIS is using them as a gateway to Europe. ISIS recently boasted from Libya: “We will conquer Rome with Allah’s permissions.” The British Quilliam Foundation saw an ISIS document revealing that jihadis are about to sail across the Mediterranean posing as migrants on people trafficking vessels. They want to attack what they call “the Crusader states” in Europe.

The UN plan to resettle 1 million immigrants in Western nations will provide jihadis an opportunity to infiltrate Western countries, including the US. It will give terrorists the opportunity to settle in our countries without the extra scrutiny involved in obtaining a visa or a residence permit.

We should not do this. The vast majority of the European citizens disapprove of the way their governments are handling immigration. Moreover, there are plenty of other safe countries where immigrants bound for the West can go to, including the wealthy Gulf States that have almost zero asylum-seekers today.

Immigration, especially Islamic immigration, had devastating consequences. It has made our countries less safe. What this means, we witnessed last summer in my home town, The Hague. Sympathizers of the Islamic State paraded in the streets. They carried swastikas; they carried the black flags of IS. They shouted “Death to the Jews.”

It was a truly frightening sight, bringing back memories of the darkest period in our history.

It indicates how much a once so peaceful and tolerant society as the Netherlands has changed as a result of Islamic mass immigration.

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Our duty is clear. In order to solve the problem, we have to stop mass immigration to the West from Islamic countries. And we have to get rid of the cultural relativism.

Wilders concludes:

My friends, we are all in the same boat.

And we must do our duty.

We must speak the truth about Islam, so that our electorates are aware of the danger.

We must protect our Judeo-Christian civilization, so that their children can leave in peace and prosperity.

We must defend our borders, so that our families are safe and our nation’s identity preserved.

We must stand with Israel and all the free nations threatened by Islam.

And above all, we must be brave.

As the great Ronald Reagan said: The future does not belong to the fainthearted.