Hanging Separately

Last year the German politician René Stadtkewitz left the CDU (Christian Democrats) and founded a new party called Die Freiheit (Freedom). Mr. Stadtkewitz made opposition to Islamization and mass immigration a major plank in Die Freiheit’s platform. He was immediately endorsed by Dutch politician Geert Wilders, the leader of Partij voor de Vrijheid (Party for Freedom, PVV). Die Freiheit then joined the loose coalition of “Freedom Parties” founded by Mr. Wilders.

A little over a year later the honeymoon is over. It has been distressing to watch the factional fighting within Die Freiheit, and now the fissiparous pressures have become overwhelming, and the party appears to be splitting up.

I haven’t seen much news in English about the latest events in Germany, but one of our German-speaking correspondents sent us this brief summary of what has happened in recent weeks:

I guess you already know what’s happening inside Die Freiheit, but what is particularly striking is the apparent animosity of two contributors to Politically Incorrect — Michael Stürzenberger and Marco Pino, the so-called “Frank Furter”. It’s kind of like a replay of the Mensheviks and the Bolsheviks. I can only hope that the “right” party has retained control. It looks a lot like a failed putsch.


North Rhein-Westphalia party chief Andreas Pokladek, former federal secretary Felix Strüning, and Marco Pino a.k.a. Frank Furter — the last two just elected to the leadership council — resigned because they didn’t like the “direction” of the party.

Comments are mixed and at odds. The photo of Pino and Stadtkewitz says a lot.

I might add that Michael Stürzenberger publicly proposed the mass deportation of all Muslims, which is not a politically savvy move. Also, in a possibly unrelated event, the Antifas were shouting death threats at Mr. Stürzenberger when he appeared in Berlin last September.

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We all hope that René Stadtkewitz and Die Freiheit pull through the current crisis and emerge stronger as a result. But the news from Germany serves as a reminder of the pervasiveness of infighting, factionalism, intramural conflict, and political fratricide among the shifting coalitions that make up the Transatlantic Counterjihad.

Yes, factionalism is inevitable in any political movement. As soon as a leader emerges in a group, his rivals begin gathering supporters and planning to unseat him. This is normal, and to be expected.

Yet conservative organizations and parties seem to be much more prone to actual fission than Muslims — or most leftist groups, for that matter. When Muslims are in the minority, they put aside fratricidal conflict until the infidel has been properly subdued. Only then do they whet their knives in anticipation of an internal Islamic bloodletting. Even Sunnis and Shi’ites forget their differences in their common struggle to destroy the Zionist Entity.

Leftists are similarly cohesive against the common enemy. Anarchists, Communists, Greens, and other factions of the extreme Left routinely join forces in (often violent) opposition to what they call “fascists”, that is, any opponents more than slightly to the right of center.

During the October Revolution in 1917, the Bolsheviks united the forces of the Left — Communists, Socialist Revolutionaries, Anarchists, etc. — against the Provisional Government. After the Bolsheviks had finished consolidated their regime, they picked off their rivals on the Left, exterminating them one by one — but not until they had achieved absolute and undisputed power in the new Soviet state.

Conservatives, however, are perennially prone to feud with one another at the drop of a hat. This tendency is partially due to a preoccupation with absolute ideological agreement — “I can’t support him! He doesn’t believe in a return to the Gold Standard!”

This quest for doctrinal purity reminds me of an old joke:

An elderly Jew, after being stranded on a desert island for decades, was finally rescued by a passing ship. Before he left the island to return to civilization, he proudly gave the crew of the ship a tour of the place he had called home for all those years.

“This is my house,” he said, pointing to a modest hut made of tree trunks and palm fronds. “And that’s my synagogue,” he added, indicating a similar building not far away.

The captain noticed another structure just over a sand dune. “But what about that building? It looks like a synagogue, too.”

“Oh, no,” replied the old Jew, “I wouldn’t be caught dead going to THAT one!”

An ingrained insistence on ideological homogeneity is only part of the problem, however. Conservatives are accustomed to the one-down position. We have had a Leftist boot on our necks for almost eighty years, and our habits have been established around the assumption that we are permanent losers in the political game. Wielding actual power was not something we could ever realistically hope to achieve — no matter which party nominally won an election, the Socialist Progressives were always in charge of the permanent bureaucracy. So we turned our aggressive energies upon one another, since intramural battles were the only ones we could hope to win.

Changing that “loser’s mindset” is one of the most difficult tasks we face. Yet overcoming it is crucial: if we cannot learn to put aside our differences and unite against a common foe, we will almost certainly be overrun by the forces of a triumphant Caliphate.

Islam and the Left have already made their satanic pact, and have decided to postpone any confrontation with one another until after their joint enterprise has finished off Western Civilization. In contrast, Counterjihad-minded people make up a majority within the West, but they are fractured into dozens of squabbling pieces.

The hour is late, and there is an urgent need for unity in the face of an overwhelming threat. This is why Dymphna and I refuse to fight with people who are ostensibly on our side, and with whom we are in broad agreement. The sniping and backbiting are trivial, and not worth bothering about.

We need to stick together. The stakes are far too high for us to waste our ammunition on each other.