They’re going after Geert. Again.
Free-speech watchdogs will remember the founder and head of the Netherlands’ Party for Freedom, Geert Wilders, and his 2011 show trial.
Three years ago, Wilders was brought up on charges of “inciting” hatred and discrimination for comments about Muslims and certain sections of the Netherlands’ immigrant populations. He compared the Koran to Mein Kampf; he contended that Moroccan youths in the country were violent; when asked what his party, also known as the PVV, would do if they took power, he said that he would end “non-Western immigration” to the country. Despite certain authorities’ machinations, he was acquitted of all five charges.
This year, Wilders is again being charged with “insulting a specific group based on race and inciting discrimination and hatred.” But the result this time may be different.
In March of this year, Wilders appeared at a nationally broadcast rally in the Hague, where he proceeded to ask supporters if they would prefer more or fewer Moroccans in their city. “Fewer! Fewer!” they chanted. Wilders replied: “We’ll arrange that.”
More than 6,000 complaints flooded local police, many from Moroccans who said that they felt discriminated against. A short while later, in a television interview, Wilders referred to “Moroccan scum.”
In his previous trial, a court found that, while “some of Wilders’s statements were insulting, shocking and on the edge of legal acceptability . . . they were made in the broad context of a political and social debate on the multi-cultural society.” A Dutch court is unlikely to rule that “Moroccan scum” similarly advances the debate.