Now that the Cold War is over Western European countries ought to be role models for the East. What a farce, then, that Belgium has taken a cue from Vladimir Putin. In true autocratic fashion the high court banned Vlaams Blok -- the nation's most popular political party. The party has since been refounded and renamed Vlaams Belang, meaning "Flemish Interest."
Vlaams Blok isn't any party I'd want to belong to. They want to break Belgium in half along ethnic lines and completely shut down immigration. They even offered immigrants cash to leave and never come back. Still, banning a political party -- especially the one that's most popular -- is no way to behave in a democracy no matter how kooky the party in question may be. It's obviously, you know, undemocratic. And it will only make the targeted party (in whatever new form it takes) more popular than it was. Opinions can't be abolished by court order. Political grievances don't vanish just because party leaders have to slap a new label on an old bottle.
The best way to shunt the Blok's extremism off to the side is for one of the more centrist parties to adopt its moderate planks. They don't have to blacken their cosmopolitan souls in the bargain. There's a reason Vlaams Blok is rising in popularity. It's not because they want an independent state for Dutch-speaking Belgians. And it's not because the people of Antwerp have itchy fingers on the genocide trigger. It's popular because, in a country where the elite wallow in hysterical Political Correctness, Vlaams Blok is the only party willing to even discuss immigration at a time when radical Islam is metastasizing in Europe.
The party was banned as racist. I have little doubt that it is -- at least to an extent. Far-right anti-immigrant parties are always magnets for racist nuts and ethnic nationalists. The Belgian high court has a peculiar definition of racism, though.
One member of Vlaams Blok wrote a political tract denouncing female genital mutilation in Muslim countries. The high court says the tract is racist. Nevermind that "Muslim" isn't a race, the person who wrote it is not ethnically Belgian. She's a Muslim woman from Turkey.
Denouncing female genital mutilation is the sort of thing liberals and feminists recently did -- and occasionally still find the courage to do. If the European ruling class wants to relegate this view to the right-wing lunatic fringe they'll only boost the clout of the real fringe by making it look more reasonable than in is.
A liberal tolerant culture can't survive an infiltration of intolerant illiberal immigrants who refuse to assimilate even if most immigrants don't cause any problems. Decent-minded people don't like to think about this, let alone talk about it. But the problem can't be pretended away. The murder of Theo Van Gogh in Amsterdam and the vicious backlash that followed ought to prove that.
Volksrant reported that ten Muslim and five
Christian sites in the
The Dutch are
among the most liberal and tolerant people on Earth. So why was the civilian
response to terrorism so out of proportion to what happened in the
Nothing
breeds that sort of freelance violence like the perception that the duly
constituted authorities aren't willing to protect the citizenry. People in the
If
In time those
moderates and liberals may, because of the slippery workings of the political
slope, cease to be liberal or moderate. The center cannot hold if the state
decrees the center doesn't exist, that the only choice is between left-wing
fantasy and right-wing lunacy. When the pendulum swings -- and it will swing --
the ethnic nationalist parties will benefit most. And the phrase "Old
Europe" might apply more aptly than it does now.
Michael J. Totten is a TCS columnist. Visit his daily Web log at http://michaeltotten.com.
