Peter-Vincent Schuld

Hatred equals negativity. That doesn’t help anyone. Every right-thinking person wants us to treat each other in a decent way. But in order to keep our habitat pleasant, we have to protect our freedom. Then sometimes you have to stand up and say “stop this”.

The people who fell for our freedom were not driven by hatred, no, they fought it and then had to pay for it with their lives.

We have a constitution in the Netherlands. This constitution should be supported by both flanks to the left and to the right of the political centre. The Constitution is what unites left and right, despite all the political differences.

We agree that the Constitution is the starting point of our society, in which the freedom of the individual is central.

But an individual who is burdened by a religious or even a politically correct yoke is not free.

Those who protect this yoke, do not criticize it, or do not want it to be criticized, do not understand the foundations of our constitution. The Dutch constitution as we know it today dates from 1983.

The changes that have been made to the constitution in the meantime, for example, had to do with the introduction of women’s suffrage in 1922 and later with the recognition of conscientious objection to military service. The last amendments of 1983 included the prohibition of discrimination and the establishment of the protection of privacy and the inviolability of physical integrity.

But what if constitutional freedoms collide? What is the hierarchy? I would like to take you through the legal doctrine on this, but I think that this part will then become very “dry”.

In any case, you can objectively draw the conclusion that the social pressure exerted by middlemen who propagate and impose political correctness is playing a dubious and debatable game with the intention of our constitution.

In other words, those who preach political correctness are depriving others of the freedom to speak their word, even if it is substantiated, and this is absolutely contrary to freedom of speech.

You cannot and should not throw everything at “discrimination” when a minority with a certain, in this case Islamic, belief in relation to our constitutional freedoms deliberately seeks the limits of our constitution and immediately starts crying when critics start moving on the boundaries of freedom of speech just as much.

Bashing opinions that differ and dismissing them as “racist” without providing substantive counter-arguments is dangerous. This creates a culture of fear that threatens to excommunicate those who proclaim free speech. Political correctness itself must also accept a critical approach in an open society, otherwise it will become a dictatorial ruling subculture.

Can we please approach and describe developments in society with a critical eye? For us journalists, this is a duty.

But we should not be blind to the fact that a substantial number of people who have been welcomed do not have the same values and tolerant culture that we know. Where we see a hand, hug, kiss or a tender touch as a sign of compassion, acceptance or welcome, for some immigrants giving a hand is already too much.

A German policeman with a Muslim background refused to shake hands with his female colleague, which resulted in a fine of 1000.00 EURO and a conditional dismissal. Actually, that should have been an inexorable dismissal. Giving a hand, whether to a man or a woman, is considered a form of politeness for us. Women are equal to men in our society and enjoy and deserve equal treatment. This is where the constitutional freedom of religion ends.

But it’s not just immigrants who show rudeness. For example, some time ago I was at a health insurance company in Belgium to arrange some paperwork, and I wanted to shake hands with the man in question, just a Fleming, after the administrative actions were over. He replied “we don’t do that”. I pointed out to the man that I thought his answer was rude. This man, despite his service function, has not understood how the manners are. It seems as if this guy has moved on the sliding scale of the coarsened society. Openness and friendliness in dealing with takes absolutely no effort and gives so much extra energy and zest for life.

The man from the Belgian health insurance company is no better than the German policeman because of his behaviour.

In order to be able to criticize others, you have to constantly introspect yourself. Double standards are not desirable. But no matter how we look at it, our society is not only coarsening, but also polarizing to an ever-increasing degree.

Unfortunately, this polarization is largely caused by excessive tolerance towards people who do not share or do not want to share our manners, values and culture and place themselves outside the playing field in this, knowing that they are supported by facts that trivialize the politically correct mob.

At the moment I am working on this piece, I read a message that mentions the fact that the DENK party in Amersfoort proposes to pursue a policy of tolerance for Muslims who park incorrectly near the mosque on Friday afternoons.

This “act of mercy would aim at inclusivity”.
My butt, I wipe my butt with this. “Status Aparte” for Law-Breaking Muslims? Didn’t think so. The arrogance with which this proposal is being advocated. So this is deliberate segregation and therefore undermining our society.

Samuel Huntington once wrote a book that is perhaps even more recommendable than the entire oeuvres of Mulisch, Reve and Carmiggelt put together. It’s called Clash of Civilizations. A “must” for anyone interested in geopolitical relations and in particular the role of Islam and Islamic countries. An academically based book with knowledge and skills that immediately makes the one-sided “love & peace for all” thinking as small as it should be.

To have love and peace, you have to have at least two parties on the basis of equality who have this in mind.

There is no country on earth, there is no community on earth where Islam does not accelerate conflicts and outbreaks of violence. From the well-known Islamic countries to China, Myanmar, Trinidad and Tobago. I’m not making it up. No one is making it up, the facts speak for themselves.

You can close your eyes to it, you can deny it, you can look away, but all of that does not alter the fact that it is no more than the truth and only the truth.

You may agree or disagree with Wilders, but the content of his latest campaign video in which he tackles Islam is factual.

Not a word that Geert Wilders has reported in his most recent campaign video is untrue. Immediately, the out-of-tune singing chorus of politically correct Holland starts to fall over the content, the video in which Islam is interpreted with qualifications that leave nothing to be clear.

Prime Minister Rutte called it “tasteless”. That’s allowed. But that does not alter the fact that the content of the video is indeed factual. I would also prefer to see mosques converted into casinos, discotheques, brothels and shelters for free pigs that are fed up with the vinex mega stables.

The core of the message conveyed in that video is fundamentally no different from the criticism of Islam that ex-Muslims, whether prominent or not, give and who now warn the Western community not to be too tolerant because we are building our own foundations under our open and free society. But politically-correct circles bump past this without thinking about it.

The local Islamic parties NIDA, Islam Democrats and the Party for Unity have filed a complaint against the PVV. This tends to make a false declaration. After all, it is not the video that incites hatred. The video clearly shows how Islam is extremely far removed from our civilization through qualifications.

I do not quite understand what would be punishable by stating facts or we must really have ended up in a dictatorship of the skewed mind. By the way, Islam and democracy are two things that don’t go together very well.

We saw that last week when Green Left Jesse Klaver quickly retracted his remark that a left-wing collaboration with the Rotterdam Islamic party NIDA would be a good idea. Shortly afterwards, the Rotterdam branches of the PvdA and Groen Links (Green Left) cancelled their cooperation with NIDA. Repentance always comes after sin.

But the intention was to enter into a left-wing cartel with a party of which Nourdin El Ouali is the leader. EL Ouali compared the democratic state of Israel to ISIS and has a habit of showing up and getting involved with all kinds of Arab and Palestinian anti-Semitic clubs. The Iranian-Dutch professor Afshin Elian, an expert on Middle East issues, called NIDA a neo-Nazi group and we have to agree with him. The fact that broadcasters still give these kinds of people like El Ouali a stage, as they did recently at Pauw, is particularly questionable.

That we try to integrate people of foreign origin into secular society, perfect. Develop into a free-thinking and free-living human being. Derive your identity from who you are as a human being and nothing else. Freedom of religion ceases when it disrupts and destabilizes society. Islam has long since crossed that line in the Low Countries. If I want to see a fairy tale, I’ll go to the Efteling.

But more and more adherents of the Islamic doctrine and social organization, despite the fact that they are an absolute minority, try to manifest themselves politically in such a way that the organization of society as they advocate it is taken into account. That’s not how it works. These freedoms have been fought for, a huge amount of blood has been spilled for them, people have given their lives for them. These freedoms are therefore non-negotiable.

Enlightening words from German Interior Minister Horst Seehofer (CSU) who stated that Islam does not belong to Germany. Something that was contradicted shortly afterwards by Angela Merkel (CDU), who claimed the opposite. With the exception of the Ottoman occupations and the traces left as a result, European society is based on Judeo-Christian-humanist values, and anyone who denies this is denying history as it actually took place. Angela Merkel’s cultural relativism is not only stupid but also dangerous. In doing so, she stirs up sentiments that we know from the 20s, 30s and 40s of the last century that we would rather never see again.

In Antwerp, they make it very colorful. After the Second World War, collaborators, the so-called blackshirts and followers of Leon Degrelle were hunted down, but the Antwerp left in particular used to honour a notorious anti-Semite and terrorist glorifier Abu Jaja. Mr. Jaja is going to stand for election with his party “Be One”.

To my great surprise, I came across a life-size painting above the main entrance in honour of this Jew-hater in the Antwerp theatre de Roma, on the Turnhoutsebaan in Antwerp. No one, absolutely no one in Belgium, has openly opposed the glorification of this dubious figure.

It would cause quite a (justified) fuss if we were to give portraits of collaborators from the Second World War and extreme right-wing anti-Semites a prominent place.

Any ideology or underlying religion that restricts physical, mental, intellectual and moral freedom is totalitarian and does not deserve any room to develop. I think that is why we should start equating the politically correct division in our society with the extreme right and the extreme left and treat them as such. All three are totalitarian in nature, undemocratic and excluding.

All three forms mentioned are a danger to the democratic rule of law. I think that the extremist nature of political correctness is severely underestimated, in fact, I dare say that in the absence of introspection, the supporters of political correctness themselves often do not even realize how totalitarian their ideas are.