Don't Go Wilders

The Wilders-Fortuyn tradition is actually the same as the sort of thing now being put out by the likes of the National Secular (Kill The Pope) 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.

He would doubtless incite an assassination attempt if the Holy Father visited the Netherlands, just as his British equivalents consciously are doing in time September. Like them, he, in the spirit of Pim Fortuyn, is all for sex between men and teenage boys, unless it is engaged in by Catholic priests, although they would not be breaking the law if they did it in his country. So much for "co-operation with the civil authorities".

Wilders is still in favour of the war in Afghanistan, just so long as his own country no longer has to fight it. He 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.