Last week, upon arrival in Scotland, Donald Trump warned the Europeans that if they do not stop mass immigration, it will be the end of them.
“This immigration is killing Europe,” he said. When I met the American President in The Hague five weeks ago, he had told me the same. The President personally encouraged me to continue my fight for the safety and survival of the Dutch people. Donald Trump is putting America first and many Europeans do not like that, but at least he cares about ordinary Europeans, realizing how uncontrolled mass immigration is putting them in danger.
Europe needs to act if it wants to avoid becoming a Northern appendage of Africa or the Western edge of the Islamic Ummah. And it needs to act NOW! I am the leader of the Party for Freedom (PVV), by far the largest party in the Netherlands. The PVV was also the leading party in the Dutch government coalition until we brought that coalition down in June. We brought it down because our three centrist coalition partners refused to accept our plans to put an immediate stop to the influx of so-called refugees and asylum seekers.
The Dutch are by nature a welcoming people. However, fake refugees who want to enter the Netherlands from our neighbouring countries Germany and Belgium – both countries where they could have asked asylum – should not be allowed to enter and send away immediately. They are not asylum seekers but illegal migrants.
We joined the government because we wanted the Dutch borders closed: the Netherlands need an asylum stop right now. Unfortunately, the constant obstruction by centrist and leftish-liberal politicians, unelected civil servants and activist judges made it impossible for us to make much progress, while time is rapidly running out.
Hence, I felt it was my duty to force elections on the topic of immigration. This October’s Dutch general election will truly be a “Flight 93 election” for the Netherlands. The metaphor, borrowed from Trump advisor Michael Anton, refers to the plane that was headed for the U.S. Capitol on 9/11 when brave passengers seized control and crashed it into a field rather than on the American capital. The passengers were faced with the choice: either to do nothing and die, or charge the cockpit.
This also applies to other European countries, including Britain, in their next general elections. Voters must choose: Either give patriotic parties the mandate to effectively close the borders or squander their future and that of their children.
Exactly one decade ago, in August 2015, then German Chancellor Angela Merkel, followed by likeminded politicians, such as then Dutch Prime Minister and current NATO leader Mark Rutte, threw Europe’s borders wide open to fortune seekers from the Middle East and Africa. More than 10 million asylum seekers – many of them young single men with no education and no qualifications – have since entered Western Europe, as have millions of illegal migrants. All across Europe, large numbers of immigrants were imposed on communities unable to deal with them. The financial, demographic and cultural consequences have been devastating.
Dr Jan van de Beek, a Dutch mathematician and migration expert, estimates the net cost of an asylum seeker over a lifetime in the Netherlands to amount to approximately €800,000. Other countries face a similar cost, which explains why Denmark is offering €27,000 to every Syrian refugee who voluntary returns to his home country and why Friedrich Merz, Merkel’s successor in Germany, is shamelessly bowing to the anti-Western Taliban. He has given their representatives diplomatic status in Berlin so that it will be easier for the Germans to beg them to take back the more than 400,000 Afghans residing in Germany (up from 75,000 in 2014).
The cultural impact of mass immigration is dramatic. The British Islamic population, currently at 7%, will increase to almost 20% in the UK by the end of the century. In continental Western Europe, it is set to triple from the present 5 to 15% of the population by the middle of the century. If we fail to close our borders, the Christian and humanist traditions of Europe will be lost and more Islamization will be our future.
Not only do we risk losing the fruits of our Judaeo-Christian civilization – the separation of church and state, democracy, freedom of speech and conscience, equality before the law, … – but our society is likely to become more violent. Not every Muslim is an extremist – in fact, most are not – but enough of them are eager to stamp their mark of dominance on our society.
Academic studies indicate that the vast majority of European Muslims regard their Islamic rules as more important than Europe’s secular democratic laws. Significant numbers (up to 11% in the Netherlands according to the University of Amsterdam) find it acceptable to use violence in the name of Islam. I know what I am talking about. I have been marked for death simply for criticising Islam. Many fatwas have been issued against me. I have been living under 24/7 police protection for over two decades. I receive death threats every single day. I have lost my privacy and my freedom.
When asked whether Islam belongs in our society, 60% of the Dutch people say: No! Millions of ordinary people all over Europe are sick and tired of the frequent stabbings in trains and stations, the grooming of their daughters, the anti-Semitic attacks on Jewish compatriots, the vehicle-ramming attacks in streets and market squares. The softness of the ruling political elites towards newcomers importing an ideology of intolerance and hatred towards non-Muslims has to end. Our people want their freedom and safety back.
The Jewish people are the canary in the coalmine. Islamic radicals and their leftist appeasers are on a Jew-hunt again, sometimes literally as we witnessed in Amsterdam in November last year, where Israeli football supporters were chased through the streets. Europe is rife with anti-Semitism, as we saw last week when fifty Jewish children were forcibly removed from an airplane in Spain. And as we saw the other day when a Jewish father and his six-year old son where assaulted in Italy. What is happening to Europe’s Jews today is bound to be our fate tomorrow if we fail to stop this anti-Semitism. A cowardly Europe will not survive by abandoning the Jews.
It is high time to stop the cowardice. Last June, my party proposed several measures to this effect. To name a few: Let the army control the borders and turn back all asylum seekers arriving from neighbouring countries (Germany does it. So should we); A temporary complete stop of family reunification (Austria does it. So should we); No shelter for single male asylum seekers (Belgium does it. So should we); Make illegal entry and stay punishable (recently a PVV amendment to this affect was accepted in our Lower House!); Expel Syrian asylum seekers to safe parts of Syria; Deport criminal foreigners (which includes foreigners guilty of anti-Semitic acts); Deprive criminals with dual nationality of their Dutch citizenship and expel them to their country of origin.
Our centrist Dutch coalition partners dismissed these proposals. Instead of closing our borders to asylum seekers, they have just closed them to two Israeli government ministers. They criticize Israel but fail to criticize the plans of the European Commission to allow 100 million Turks visa free travel to the EU.
Next October, the Dutch people have the opportunity to speak out against the cowardice. I appeal to their courage and their sense of urgency. As Abraham Lincoln said: “You cannot escape the responsibility of tomorrow by evading it today.”
Geert Wilders MP is leader of the PVV, the largest political party in the Netherlands
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