Don't Go Wilders

Peter Hitchens writes:

I'm afraid I think he's a show-off with very little of significance to say, presumably seeking to take over where Pym Fortuyn left off when he was murdered. That's not to say I don't think he should be acquitted, because I do, and I think the decision to ban him from this country was disgraceful and pathetic. But I really don't think his attitude towards Islam is likely to achieve anything, except lots of publicity for Mr Wilders. I understand he says he's a libertarian, but he wants to ban the Koran. Excuse me? I've also heard nothing good about his famous film 'Fitna'. Paradoxically, I'm also criticised for warning against the real problem we face in Europe - the rise of Islam once Christianity is finally extirpated. I stick by this. I don't know what the Muslim population of Western Europe now is, but it's large, and significant, thanks to migration, and growing quite fast, thanks to Islam's belief in big families.

But that's not all. Islam will survive and prosper as Christianity dies out in the minds of the people, and is bureaucratically stifled by the elite state. Muslims take their faith seriously. They hope and intend to convert the entire world. And when, in the harsh times which I think are coming as the West declines, people begin to turn once again to religion, the Mosques will be there waiting for them with their very simple message, far easier to understand and accept than the complex and demanding formulas of Christianity. Christianity survived in the modern world because it was established, and built into culture, art, literature, music, education, architecture and family life - but almost all these influences are now gone, and I am not sure it is strong enough to survive three or four generations in which it is, for the most part, not taught to children.

Look at the churches which are successful in the modern world, the uncompromising ones which are not a vague mixture of social work and singing, but offer a confident explanation of the whole world and a guide to the whole of life. They are few and far between, and they are islands in a secular society. Let those who deride my prediction wait and see. I think it is at least a strong possibility.

The Wilders-Fortuyn tradition is actually the same as the sort of thing now being put out by the likes of the National Secular Society, opposed to immigration by Poles because they are orthodox Catholics, or by African Pentecostals simply as Pentecostals, rather than to the practical consequences of mass immigration as such, or to the subversion of Christendom by Islam.

Wilders is opposed to welfare provision and other public services, to full employment and workers' rights, and to the classically Christian basis of the State and of the wider culture. The Muslims are not his real target; on the contrary, both mass immigration itself and a particularly virulent challenge to Christianity are very useful to him. His real targets are the orthodox Catholics and the small but very strong conservative Protestant "pillar" (one of whose parties, though not the other, has a growing appeal among African immigrants).

He is not without his equivalents in Britain. We have been warned.