Though Cowards Flinch

The vaguely ridiculous figure of Geert Wilders will be no stranger to those on the internet who keep an eye on the politics of our continental cousins. Wilders, leader of the Dutch Freedom Party, has been informed by the government that he will be denied leave to enter the UK under the laws which permit EU member states to deny any citizen entry on the basis of danger to public security. Whatever that means.

His film “Fitna” caused a stir amidst right and left wing circles when it was released last year. I got a chance to watch it last year and frankly I can’t see what the fuss is about. It shows quotes from the Koran and from Islamic fundamentalists besides images of 9/11, the 7/7 bombings and various other attacks by terrorists. Now he has been invited to show it in the House of Lords by (who else?) a UKIP peer.

Whether Wilders should be permitted to come to the UK, whether he should be permitted to show his video and whether or not the thesis of his video is correct are three different matters. To answer these questions, we must begin by categorizing him; is he racist? A fascist? “Just” anti-Islamic? I find the last troubling since I am anti-Islamic, and anti-all organised religions myself, but in no way similar to Geert.

Wilders wants a vast and vigorous extension of state controls to halt immigration and crack down on expressions of the Islamic faith within Dutch society. He has advocated that all Muslims be offered money to return to their own countries, much like our very own home grown Fascists, the BNP, have. But Wilders has said he should not be lined up with Jorg Haider or Jean-Marie Le Pen.

I beg to disagree. It is the nature of fascist parties to declaim against some mythic ‘enemy’ and to call for the cleansing of society by the expulsion of these elements. Nor is it unusual for these parties to call themselves libertarian whilst simultaneously demanding harsher penalties for criminals and a bigger state justice apparatus. They are only libertarian when it comes to expanding the private sector – say closing public television.

Of course, that’s only some fascists; the last item in particular can give way to a corporatism that still allows for private profit and individual greed. It does, however, nail Geert Wilders firmly down as a fascist. We have no idea what a Europe “purified” of Islamic elements would then turn to do to the Balkans or the Middle East – but thankfully, since Wilders is something of a crank, we don’t have to find out.

Should the government have the right to expel fascists? No doubt the far-right are complaining about how this good and Christian man is being refused entry to the UK while the Muslim Brotherhood /Abu Hamza / Clerics of Hate (delete as appropriate) are permitted to preach their message of death. Bearing in mind that the messages of all of these people are little different, if we’re deporting one bunch, we should keep out the other.

Does that mean, however, that the government should be trusted to this task? Deportation and denial of entry was a tactic very commonly used by European governments in the past. They used it to deny any number of famous revolutionary figures access to their countries. If we’re prepared to let Wilders be banned from entry, we have to know this is a tactic the government will find ways to use against socialists.

Obviously that’s not a factor right at the moment, since socialism is only gradually re-emerging to challenge capitalism once more, but free movement within Europe should be a general principle that we uphold. Thus I think that we would be wrong to demand that Wilders be kept out, and right if we insisted that he be permitted to enter the UK. But what about showing his video in the House of Lords?

That’s a different question – one which I would like to see the House of Lords called to vote on. In terms of what is permitted and what isn’t, the House of Lords should self-regulate – and I suspect and hope that they would vote down the showing of the video on the grounds that it is a shameless caricature of the Islamic religion, not to mention over-simplistic as regards the causes of terrorism.

Serious questions require serious debate – and neither Geert Wilders or his UKIP sponsor seem in a position to provide it. This is central to the argument; Wilders, a figure who wants free speech for himself and those who think like him yet thunderously demands the banning of the Koran and the kicking out of Muslims, is a hypocrite. Moreover, his argument (see here for example) is Idealist twaddle.

It’s an undeniable fact that Islam is the ideology which has motivated terrorist attacks on the West, but what about corresponding force demonstrated by that West? I doubt that even Wilders is so naive as to believe that European and American imperial occupation of the Middle East has only occurred over the years since 2001 and that before that, our governments never did anything that might inspire righteous anger.

Apologist for Islamic terror I am not; the terrorists must bear the responsibility of their actions. Yet so must the policies of the West and the policies of the Asian and African ruling classes, policies which have seen capitalism run rampant through these cultures, making very rich the client kings of capitalism’s New Rome and very poor just about everyone else. Not to mention the tyrants the West has imposed.

Islamic nationalism, however populist and democratic its impulses may appear, was never and will never be the answer to that unending cycle of exploitation – neither will its variant, Islamic terrorism. Yet nor will the cycle end should Europe and America “cleanse” themselves of Islamic immigrants and restore to prominence Christianity – of which Geert Wilders laments the decline. The cycle itself is part of capitalism.

Most of the reforms of the Middle-East, to move away from the leadership of clerics, had since the 19th century been paid for by the West – not out of any belief in the values of secular democracy, but because it gave the West a lever with which to control areas increasingly under contest, as the Ottoman Empire fell by the wayside. Similarly, when in direct control, Britain, France etc showed equal disregard for their subjects.

Islamic fundamentalism has reacted against that, and in so doing, it seeks an equal and opposite purity to that which Wilders is seeking. None of this is examined in Wilders’ film; it is not even discussed. In Wilders’ speeches, all of Islam from the caliphate to the Ottomans, appear as imperialist warmongers bent on the conquest of Europe. This monolithic, anti-intellectual version of history should not be repeated.

It is as rational as demanding that our leaders run the country with astrologers as their closest advisors. There is no contribution to be made by Wilders’ film, or by Geert Wilders himself, judging by his own words. But that doesn’t mean we should tolerate the government simply banning people from coming to this country – as with all state powers, one day it is used against the far right, but tomorrow it is used against socialists.