Sunday, October 31, 2010

Dishonouring the Tommies of the Past

Our British correspondent Gaia was in Amsterdam for the free speech rally yesterday. Below is her report, written while on the train on the way home to London.

Amsterdam: EDL Van #1

My Farewell Message to Mayor Eberhard Van der Laan
by Gaia


My thoughts for Mayor Van der Laan as I wend my way back home by train from Amsterdam:

Sir, you should be ashamed of yourself! The disgraceful treatment meted out to our Tommy and his friends, who came in peace to Holland to speak out about the invasion of your country by people hostile to your culture and way of life brings to my mind their forefathers, the other Tommies. In the not so distant past, those Tommies came willingly to help their Dutch brothers liberate your country from the boot of fascism, many of them dying in the process.

You are a disgrace to their memory!

But rest assured, Mayor Van der Laan: this will not be forgotten! Your time is coming to an end. The tides are changing in Europe and its people will no longer tolerate living as second class citizens in their own lands. The day of reckoning for you and your (il)liberal ilk will surely follow.

My view from the window in the autumn sunshine is of a postage stamp-sized little country where every square centimetre is lovingly tended and orderly. It brings to mind the poignant, closing paragraphs of the excellent book While Europe Slept by Bruce Bawer, who expresses it so much more eloquently than I:
As we walked around Amsterdam that March weekend, I thought about those Dutchmen emigrating to Canada, Australia and New Zealand. Unlike Muslims in Europe, they’d integrate quickly — they’d find work, contribute to society, fit in. They already spoke English. Yet what, years from now, would their children think? Their grandchildren? What, for that matter, would they themselves think when they lay in bed at night, far from home, their minds flooding with images of the small, loving tended land of their birth, with its meticulously laid-out roads and walks and bicycle lanes, its painstakingly preserved old houses, its elaborate, brilliantly designed systems of dikes and canals.

The irony was tragic: having protected themselves with nothing short of genius from the violence of the sea, having instituted a welfare system meant to safeguard every last one of them from so much as a moment’s financial insecurity, and having built up a culture of extraordinary freedom and tolerance that promised each of them a life of absolute dignity and perfect equality, post-war Dutch men and women had raised up their children into tall, strapping, healthy, multilingual young adults — veritable masters of the world for whom (they were confident) life would be safe, pleasant and abundant in its rewards. They seemed to have brought Western civilization to its utmost pinnacle in terms of freedom and the pursuit of happiness, and the road ahead seemed to stretch to the horizon, straight, flat, smooth, and with nary a bump.

And yet they’d turned a blind eye to the very peril that would destroy them.

11 comments:

D. G. Neree said...

this is not over yet. Our mayor and the press are playing dirty games. they have to be exposed for what they are and they will.

PatriotUSA said...

Neree:
I hope you all get busy
and very soon. Time is of the
essence. Europe stands on the
edge of hell with isam and the
West is not far behind.

Your MSM is as corrupt as ours
is here in the States. We know
who they back and who's butt
they kiss, and worse.

islam is truly the evil of
time.

D. G. Neree said...

A lot of us are. But the opposition is strong. We have Geert Wilders and the Freedom Party (PVV) now, but the "elite" in Holland is leftist and they are using everything they can to dicredit the critics.
But the tide is changing. I hope it's not too late

sulber nick said...

D.G.Neree said: "...But the tide is changing. I hope it's not too late."

It's not to late. The time is not yet right, but it's approaching. Europeans like to consider before they act, and maybe the Dutch like to consider more than most - that's my impression anyway.

Europe is in the process of considering. A problem has forced its way into our consciousness. Of course some pick up on things before others do, but isn't that always the way? But as the problem becomes more evident those less perceptive will pick up on it too and at some stage a tipping point will be reached. The establishment is in the process of fighting a rearguard action to halt this process - hence their persecution of Geert Wilders and Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff and anyone else who draws attention to liberal folly.

If it's too late for anyone it's too late for Europe's liberal elite. They are being undone primarily by their own hand.

They encouraged mass third world immigration as a means of securing their own power.

Blinded by their own chauvenism and wishful thinking they initially assumed 'assimilation' - clearly they knew very little about Islam. And when it became obvious that that wasn't going to work they changed tack and started talking about 'integration' - that is instead of the expectation that he adopt the host culture the immigrant was given permission to maintain his own culture within the context of Western Culture.

But immigrant numbers were so great that very soon immigrant cultures and communites in the West became self sustaining existing independently. And rather than challenge this for the dangerous divisiveness that it is, because that would draw attention to shortcomings in the liberal elite's world view, they sought to legitimise it by employing the idea of cultural equivalence or multiculturalism.

So now we have a situation in Western Europe where the liberal establishment has been caught in a catch 22 of its own making:They're unable to address the Muslim threat without drawing attention to the part they've played in empowering Muslims in the West.
Whatever they do from now on will be the wrong thing.

EscapeVelocity said...

The Leftwing biased MSM has never seen the real proles rise up as opposed to the replacement proles that have stood in since the 60s.

Ray Boyd said...

The UK stands alone in not having a legitimate voice against Islamism, the MSM and Government having persecuted and silenced those that try.

The EDL are doing their best but are suffering the same fate as those before.

What the UK needs is a new political group with a "clean skin" so to speak. Paul Weston would be a good starting point.

Many thanks to GoV for your support by transcribing Paul Weston's important speech and speeches by the EDL. I think an awful lot of information would pass us by without your help.

D. G. Neree said...

"Whatever they do from now on will be the wrong thing."

Yep, that's what's happening at the moment. They sense the danger, but they have no way to turn. every action and non=action is starting to act against them. It happened at the last elections. They can't join in the coming wave without being destroyed and they can't hold fast to their claims, for that will destroy them too.

D. G. Neree said...

And what you call the Liberal, it is mainly the social-democrats. But the liberals aided them. With Geert Wilders I hope the VVD (the Dutch liberal party) are coming to their senses now.

D. G. Neree said...

I'm talking about the situation in Holland (Netherlands).

sulber nick said...

I think the situation is very similar throughout Western Europe. There's an interesting (presumably) unintended consequence of this - it's going to unite Europe but not in the way that the liberal elites would have wanted. European peoples will see that they are all in this together. A common enemy can be a catalyst for good.

D. G. Neree said...

sulber-nick, thats what I was thinking the other day: That a real european community (or at least co"operation) could evolve in opposition against the EUSSR

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