«(...) The most excessive piece of propaganda I saw during the recent EU election period was an article on EUobserver.com about Geert Wilders’ Party for Freedom. Written by one Andrew Willis, and entitled “Netherlands embraces far right in EU elections,” the author decried the party as “far-Right” and “xenophobic.” This despite the fact that the Party for Freedom is a staunch defender of Israel, and that Wilders spent some of his youth in the
country, and still visits it regularly. Particularly troubling, however, was a photograph of a group of skinheads accompanying the text, along with the caption: “Neo-nazi youth look on as Geert Wilders campaigns in Leeuwarden, Netherlands.” The suggestion was of course that “neo-Nazi youth” are the real voters of the Party for Freedom, because the party is really neo-Nazi. Yet, nothing could be further from the truth (and curiously, there is not the slightest hint of Wilders or his party in the photograph). Although it opposes mass immigration, especially from Muslim countries, the Party for Freedom wants its immigrants to assimilate into Dutch society and enjoy the benefits of democracy and liberty. The party also ran on an essentially libertarian platform of defending women’s rights and protecting gays from street violence perpetrated by Muslim gangs (the extent of the latter problem was revealed last year after fashion model Mike Du Pree was dragged from the catwalk and assaulted by ten Muslim youths, shocking the Netherlands). Additionally, Wilders has been careful to distance himself from actual far-Right parties, for example, telling the Guardian last year that, “My allies are not [Jean-Marie] Le Pen or [Jorg] Haider, We'll never join up with the fascists and Mussolinis of Italy. I'm very afraid of being linked with the wrong rightist fascist groups.” Fascists, the far-Right, neo-Nazis and skinheads are not really fond of Israel, Jews, women’s rights, or gay rights. They are not interested in the West’s Judeo-Christian heritage, democracy, or freedom. As it turns out, they are fond of Islamism. Islamism and Nazism have had an on-off relationship since the 1930s. However, only last year Abraham H. Foxman, the National Director of the Anti-Defamation League, observed a “[…] burgeoning relationship of far-right and Muslim extremists who increasingly are working together to promote anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial.” The Holocaust is key to Islamist and neo-Nazi propaganda, and the latter has enthusiastically adopted the arguments of the former. If supporters of Israel are now portrayed as far-Right, the Jews are portrayed as the new Nazis, or “Zio-Nazis” by pro-Hamas agitators in Britain and Europe. At Durban II recently, a member of Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's entourage even accosted Holocaust survivor and Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Elie Wiesel, and repeatedly screamed “Zionazi” at him. In this applied historical revisionism - Britain’s and Europe’s politicians and media - Muslims must be portrayed as the new Jews, and Palestine as the new or real Holocaust. (...) As Wilders said about the other parties in the Netherlands recently, they like to call themselves “progressive,” but “We [in the Party for Freedom] are doing their work. Why are we the largest party (in a poll held) on the website of (gay magazine) Gay Krant? Is anybody thinking? Because homosexuals experience the consequences of Islamisation every day in their neighbourhoods.” The other parties, he said, “should be combating […] the dire position of women, unbelievers and homosexuals.” I think we can safely say, these are not the sentiments of a politician on the “far-Right.” (...)»