PVV leader Geert Wilders: We have to reclaim our streets!

Geert Wilders is the leader of the Partij Voor de Vrijheid (PVV) (Party for Freedom) and Vice-President of the Parliament of the Netherlands. He contributed this article to Breitbart News. The emphasis in the final paragraph is Walt's.

Following a football match, rioters in Paris went on a rampage in the French capital, looting shops setting cars on fire, attacking, even firing at police officers. 

Videos and television footage showed that many rioters had an immigrant background. It is a scene Europeans have become all too familiar with – not just in France, but all over the continent. 

In the past decades, Europe’s ruling elites have allowed millions of immigrants from Africa and the Islamic world to settle in our midst. Some of them hate their host country to the extent that they want to destroy it. They loot and vandalize, assault and rape, and even murder.

Leading politicians – such as Emmanuel Macron in France, Rob Jetten in my own Netherlands, Ursula von der Leyen in Brussels, and many others in their ivory towers – think that people do not notice what is going on. But they do notice, and they are deeply worried. They want the chaos to stop. They also realize the root cause of our societal break-down: Mass immigration by people who contribute absolutely nothing to our societies and reject our cultural values. 

While our cities begin to resemble war zones, our governments continue their march of folly. In my country, the authorities want to force literally every municipality in the Netherlands to house a quota of asylum seekers. These fortune seekers, many of whom are young men, are being lodged in hotels, holiday resorts, former schools, former army barracks, even on cruise ships.

I have called on the Dutch people to resist – firmly, but always in a non-violent manner – the establishment of centres for asylum seekers in their neighbourhoods. I have recently begun a nation-wider resistance tour, visiting local communities where the authorities are planning new asylum centres.

The response has been overwhelming. The mainstream media do not report on the protests because the demonstrators are peaceful and law-abiding. It is not our people who go rampaging in the streets, ravaging their neighbourhoods! We are not conquerors like the thugs in the streets of Paris; we defend our homes. We do not destroy our communities; we love them. 

We do not loot our neighbours; we protect them. We do not harass and attack our women; we stand up for them. It all boils down to the culture of love that drives the patriots defending Europe, versus the culture of hatred that drives those eager to to destroy it.

Societies cannot exist without a shared set of moral values. Since the 1970s, governments, aided by supranational organizations such as the EU and various UN bodies, have begun to impose a doctrine of relativism and multi-culturalism, opening Europe’s doors to literally millions of foreigners who have little in common with us. As a result, Europe has slowly transformed into Eurabia. 

No one can deny that the neighbourhoods with the largest concentrations of Islamic newcomers are the most prone to violence. Mass immigration by people from cultures that have not been shaped by the basic forces of European civilization has eaten away at law and order, the foundation of our free societies.

Mass immigration has also created a new electorate for political parties. The “mainstream” parties actively search for the Islamic vote. This phenomenon has become increasingly important because the Islamic population has continuously grown, thereby becoming a power broker in elections. 

Political parties compete with each other by giving in to Islamic demands, such as an anti-Israeli foreign policy, the prosecution of so-called "Islamophobic" individuals, and the abandonment of entire neighbourhoods to Islamic gangs, which the police are instructed not to "provoke."

It is urgent that patriotic politicians organize a national wave of peaceful resistance. We demand an immediate asylum stop, encouragement of remigration, and compulsory remigration of criminal migrants. Europe is still ours. If we want to keep it that way, we have to rise up en masse. Non-violently but firmly and with determination, we have to reclaim our streets. If we do, we can still win. The time to act is now.

Charlie Kirk, RIP

In April, conservative activist Charlie Kirk, posted, "Assassination culture is spreading on the left." Sadly, that proved to be prophetic, as an assassin took Charlie's life yesterday while he was speaking at Utah Valley University. He was only  31 years old.

Charlie Kirk's time as a Republican influencer in the new right was much too brief. Kirk founded Turning Point USA when he was just 18 years old and spent his media career making the argument for conservatism in a generally hostile media ecosystem. 

That’s what he was doing Wednesday afternoon when he was fatally shot in the neck. In the moment before the loud snap of a gun could be heard and a gushing injury appeared on his neck, he finished a sentence about "violence".

So far two suspects have been arrested and then released. As is customary these days, police say the shooting is still under investigation and they have no clue (duh!) as to the shooter's identity or motive. 

Still, it's impossible not to make any connection to politics and the growing wave of societal derangement. Mr Kirk was one of the American right's top conservative influencers. Now, after years of the progressive left preaching about revolution, about words being violence and about President Donald Trump being the second coming of Hitler, he's been "cancelled". RIP.

Charlie Kirk was reviled by the left not just because he was a Trump supporter, but also because he was so effective. He founded a media organization that, along with a handful of others on the right, played a key role in shattering the monopoly of ideas held by the left-leaning mainstream media. 

But he famous mostly for his debate-style "Prove me wrong!" videos, in which he sat with a microphone, listening to a long diatribe from a progressive audience member attempting to prove him wrong, and afterwards replying with a firehose of counterpoints. His style was sharp and humorous. It was a golden formula for engagement on Youtube, and no doubt an outlet for closeted young conservatives and disillusioned liberals who rarely get to see these beliefs expressed in the wild.

Charlie Kirk was a Christian*, a firm believer in the gospel of Jesus Christ. Just last week, he quoted Psalm 34:18, "The Lord is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit." A few days ago, he posted, "Jesus defeated death so you can live." Eternal rest grant unto him, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon him.

* On his vlog Return to Tradition, Anthony Stine reveals that, shortly before his death, Charlie Kirk and his wife began attending Holy Mass once or twice a month at St. Bernardette's Catholic Church in Scottsdale AZ, and was very close to coming into the Church.

Liberal academic surprised and saddened by truth about diversity

Dr Robert D. Putnam could well be called the archetypal liberal academic. He is a social scientist, and Professor of Public Policy at Harvard. Until recently his best-known work was Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community (Simon & Schuster, 2000).

The good doctor is, by his own admission, pro-diversity, one of the "useful idiots" who believe that immigration is good for us because, in the words of Canuck Prime Minister Junior Trudeau, "diversity makes us strong". (Ann Coulter is one of many who disagrees. See "Diversity does NOT make us strong, sez Ann Coulter", WWW 28/11/17.) For years after writing Bowling Alone, Dr Putnam studying the effect of ethnic diversity on a community's well-being, striving to prove that he was right and that "nativists" like Ann Coulter (and Walt!) are wrong.

In 2006, Dr Putnam won the Johan Skytte Prize in Political Science, given by the eponymous foundation at Sweden's Uppsala University. His lecture at the award ceremony was entitled E Pluribus Unum: Diversity and Community in the Twenty-first Century. In his lecture Lecturethe good doctor had to admit that he was wrong, after all, and that diversity makes us weak, not strong. Contrary to his expectation -- and desire! -- his study showed that the greater the ethnic diversity, the less people trusted their neighbours, their local leaders, and even the news.

People in diverse communities gave less to charity voted less, had fewer friends, were more unhappy, and were more likely to describe television as "my most important form of entertainment". Dr Putnam did not find that people in diverse communities trusted people of their own ethnicity more, and other races less. They didn't trust anyone! The difference in neighbourliness between an ethnically homogeneous town, such as Bismarck ND, and a diverse one, such as Los Angeles, he said, is "roughly the same as" the difference in a town with a 7% poverty rate compared with a 23% poverty rate.

Most of the data on which Dr Putnam relied were collected around the same time he was doing the research for Bowling Alone. But he didn't publish his study right away, because he didn't like the results. As a "liberal academic whose own values put him squarely in the pro-diversity camp," said the New York Times, he had hoped to find some other explanation. He reran the numbers, accounting for differences in crime rates, age, income, marital status, home ownership, education language, mobility, and every other factor he could think of. But no matter how may variables he took into account, he kept getting the same result. Diversity damages social cohesion.

Further reading: E Pluribus Unum: Diversity and Community in the Twenty-first Century, The 2006 Johan Skytte Prize Lecture by Dr Robert D. Putnam, in its entirety (38 pages), published by the Nordic Political Science Association, 2007.

Credit where credit is due: Although I knew of Dr Putnam and Bowling Alone, which I've read and recommend, I wouldn't have known of his later work had I not read about it in Ann Coulter's Adios America!, from which this post was adapted.

Cabinet minister says mass immigration is damaging Britain

One might think that Theresa May, Minister of the Interior of Once-great Britain, would be due for a carpeting* from her boss, Prime Minister David Cameron, after telling the ruling Conservative Party's annual conference that mass immigration is damaging British society.

One would be wrong. Mr. Cameron says he agrees with Ms May's politically incorrect speech, clearly designed to ease British voters’ concerns that the government is failing to control the island nation’s borders.

Ms May called levels of immigration seen over the last ten years "not in the national interest.... When immigration is too high, when the pace of change is too fast, it’s impossible to build a cohesive society." She added that mass immigration strains public services like schools and hospitals, drives downs wages and pushes some people out of work.

Net migration into Britain reached a high of 330,000 people in the year to March, far above the level of 100,000 previously promised by Prime Minister Cameron. The high rate of immigration has fuelled support for rival parties, -- including the United Kingdom Independence Party feared by British liberals and the chattering classes -- and is seen as a factor that may persuade Britons to vote to leave the European Union in a referendum to be held by the end of 2017.

Walt wonders if any politicians in North America, other than Donald Trump, are paying attention. There may be some, like Canada's Stephen Harper, who agree in private but wouldn't dare say so publicly in an election year. In North America, political correctness trumps reality every time!

Further reading: "Theresa May: Cohesion 'impossible' with high migration", on the BBC News site.

* Note from Ed.: When Walt writes "carpeting", readers in Zimbabwe and other formerly British bits of the world may be left with the impression that Mr. Cameron and Ms May will be shagging in the shag. Not so. "Carpeting" means a verbal tongue-lashing, dressing-down, reprimand -- as in "being called on the carpet".

Western and Muslim societies "irreconcilably different", poll finds

Here's a real news flash for you. Western and Muslim societies are different. They have different religions, different customs, and different value systems. And, according to polling data being discussed at the Metropolis Conference of the Association for Canadian Studies, most Canadians -- Muslim and non-Muslim alike -- think the differences are "irreconcilable".

Whether it’s the rise of Islamic State zealots, the killing of free-speech advocates in Paris and Copenhagen or disputes over niqabs, the polling, done by Leger Marketing, shows Canadians share in the growing global anxiety about sectarian conflict. 63% of Canadian Protestants, 62% Jews, 60% of Catholics and 46% of the non-religious believe Western and Islamic societies cannot be reconciled. Even 42% of Canadian Muslims believe the contrast between the West and Islamic cultures is too great to be bridged.

Jack Jedwab, vice-president of the ACS which commissioned the Leger polls, called the findings "a huge blow to interfaith dialogue". He said the belief of a majority of Canadians that the West and Islamic society are locked in inevitable antagonism echoes the thesis of Harvard political scientist Samuel Huntington, author of The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of Political Order. Way back in 1992, Prof. Huntington predicted -- correctly, as it turns out -- that people’s cultural and religious identities would be the primary source of conflict in the post-Cold War world.

The Pew Research Center keeps track of such things. Its new report -- "Latest Trends in Religious Restrictions and Hostilities" -- confirms that worldwide social hostilities involving religion reached a six-year peak in 2012 and have remained basically stuck at that level.
Almost three in four global citizens, Pew reports, live in countries where religion-fuelled conflicts run the gamut from vandalism of property and desecration of sacred texts to violent assaults resulting in deaths and injuries.

What are the worst countries in the world for sectarian conflict? According to the Pew index, India shares that distinction with... wait for it... Israel. Next on the "Very High" list are the Palestinian Territories, Pakistan, Nigeria, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Syria, Somalia, Afghanistan, Tanzania, Indonesia, Egypt, Central African Republic, Iraq and Kenya.

What is the link which connects all the countries -- saving perhaps Sri Lanka -- on the list of "Very High" social hostility index? No prize for guessing that they all have Muslim majorities or large Muslim minorities.

What should we in North America learn from all t his? The polling done for the ACS revealed Canadians' concern about religion-related conflict is leading many to yearn for tighter border restrictions and less immigration from Muslim countries such Pakistan, Nigeria, etc etc etc.

Asked whether governments should deal with security concerns by "making it more difficult for people to come across national borders," 68% of Canadian Catholics agreed. So did 62% of Canadian Protestants and Jews, as well as 51% of the non-religious. Even 42% of Muslims agreed.

The two Leger polls of 2000 Canadians, including 500 born outside the country, were conducted in 2013 and 2014. They have an accuracy of plus or minus 2.9% 19 times out of 20. In general the polling results did not show marked differences between the responses of native-born Canadians and immigrants. Even the new-comers know a problem when they see one... even when they're part of it.