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Militant Islam Monitor > Articles > European nationalist parties reinvent themselves in the wake of the Islamist threat

European nationalist parties reinvent themselves in the wake of the Islamist threat

The British National Party (BNP) Goes Straight
October 27, 2005

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The official EEC promotion poster depicting the tower of babel.

http://www.ck15.btinternet.co.uk/99i.html
MIM: The Islamist threat to Europe has lead to formerly crypto facist nationalist parties reinventing themselves as mainstream political forces who are in the vanguard of the struggle to preserve their country's national character. The British National Party is a case in point, but the same revamping and evaluation of the image and agendas of the 'extreme right' can be seen in groups like Front Nationale in France, the Vlaamse Blok in Belgium renamed The Vlaamse Belang, (see below for more info) , and Nieuw Rechts in Holland. (For more on Nieuw Rechts see:
http://www.militantislammonitor.org/article/id/439 )
MIM: Whether the 'make over' of the extreme right parties will lead to making common cause with groups who have the same goals, but eschewed them in the past due to their facist ideologies, remains to be seen, but as journalist Robert Locke points out:
"...This attitude is also a reflection of the fact that Britain's great religious enemy right now, Islam, is not only obviously not Jewish, but is itself an obvious enemy of Jews, and thus tends to put British and Israeli nationalists on the same side of a global struggle. And the BNP is immensely serious about fighting the Islamification of Britain..."
MIM: Nick Griffith ,the head of the BNP, told Locke that the BNP previous policies are now counterproductive because :
"At the end of the day, it's always the positive agendas that win in politics. Anger about what is being done to this country is legitimate, but mere anger just leads to hooliganism and political impotence. It attracts angry activists who can't behave themselves or articulate an agenda, and once you've milked the public's resentments, you've got nothing more to offer them and you stall politically. It's the positive vision of a restored and redeemed Britain that's the key for us now."
Locke adds that :'In the last year or so, the BNP has completed the final stages of its ideological reforms. The three big things that had to go were anti-Semitism, anti-Americanism, and fascist-socialist economics.' He also warns that the changes are not complete, and concludes that the BNP is 'not the monster it once was' and that further developments are 'worth watching'.
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THE BRITISH NATIONAL PARTY (BNP) GOES STRAIGHT

by Robert Locke

http://www.think-israel.org/locke.bnp.html

The depth of the crisis facing Israel and other Western nations from Moslem terrorism, and more profoundly from Moslem immigration, is such that some unconventional political allies deserve a glance they would not otherwise merit. The small hard-right nationalist parties of Europe are among them, if only because they are sometimes the only political forces that are serious about this crisis in nations where the mainstream left is deluded and the mainstream right feckless.

The destruction of America by mass immigration is mirrored in most Western nations. The temptations of cheap labor for the business class that dominates rightist parties, and of electoral cannon fodder for the permanent-government class that dominates leftist parties, are the same everywhere. Even Israel has been affected, in the form of a not-so-secret addiction to cheap Arab labor that has created behind-the-scenes pressures to hang onto[1] a dangerous population.

Although mainstream anti-immigration groups in most Western nations have had no particular association with anti-Semitism in recent years, this has unfortunately not been true of the political parties that have taken opposition to immigration as their raison d'être. With some exceptions, these parties -- which exist in all Western nations except Ireland and the USA -- have tended to base themselves on old-school ethno-nationalism that is at best suspicious of Jews, and at worst sympathetic to Hitlerism[2]

But this is, fortunately, changing, which may eventually make such parties useful participants in the Clash of Civilizations. Let's take Britain as our example, and look at the changes in the British National Party (www.bnp.org.uk.)[3]

The BNP's origins are utterly unpleasant. It began as something called the National Front (NF) in the late 1960's, a noisy and occasionally violent protest group known for shaven heads and combat boots. If the NF wasn't formally Nazi -- this is Britain, after all, within living memory of the Blitz -- it clearly at least sympathized with Nazism. It was correct about immigration -- for which there is absolutely no conceivable reason in a small overcrowded island like Britain -- but otherwise a colorful horror show. Its rump version (natfront.org.uk)[4] still exists, and its founder, John Tyndall, recently died, unrepentant to the last.

The NF had no lasting accomplishments, though it was at one point in the early 70's the 4th-largest political movement in Britain, after Labour, the Conservatives, and the Liberal Party. But in the late 1990's, elements of the British National Party, as a faction of the NF had renamed itself, sought to break out of fringe politics and go mainstream. They believed the country needed to be saved from immigration and the submersion of Britain in the EU[5] before it was too late.

Objectively, the immigration situation in the UK is not as bad as in the US, though deteriorating fast. Britain is currently 93% British, but decaying at about 1% per year. At present rates of immigration and demographic change, the British people will be a minority in Britain by 2050, as they already are in London. The present Blair government has done everything it can, lawfully and unlawfully, to increase immigration.

In the BNP, matters came to a head in a leadership struggle in 1999, in which the aforementioned Mr. Tyndall was ousted and replaced by Nick Griffin, a charismatic Cambridge-educated lawyer. Griffin set about reshaping the party into an organization capable of waging mainstream politics without abandoning its core convictions.

The party's core conviction has always been, in whatever incarnation, a fairly straightforward "Britain for the British" message: foreigners out, national sovereignty in. What is new is that today it is, by world standards, a fairly conventional right-wing populist ethno-nationalist party, having abandoned the fascistic trappings, tendency to violence, and weird obsessions that once characterized it.

The party's transformation is not wholly complete as of this writing. Some of the rank-and-file membership is clearly not as far along as its leadership. But, after four years of reform, the BNP seems to have managed a decisive break with its past and become a credible "major minor party," as they say in Britain. (In the UK, minor parties are considerably more important than in the US, both electorally and ideologically, though not as important as in Israel.)

The BNP's new ideological complexion is generally denied by its opponents, both on the left and on the establishment "right," which is as hostile to serious nationalism as the Republican Party in the US. But it seems to be real. The accusations of "sell-out" hurled at present BNP leadership by devotees of the old ways make this clear, if nothing else does.

It would seem, in fact, that there is no longer any basis to consider the party outside the scope of legitimate democratic politics - begging, of course, the question whether even truly noxious parties should be banned, if we take democracy seriously. Such participation is something the party's opponents, from the Blair government on down, are trying to deny it, sometimes in ways that raise questions about Britain's claim to be democratic.

When last in the UK, I interviewed chairman Nick Griffin about his party at his farmhouse in the mountains of Wales, soaking wet from opening farm gates in the rain but gradually drying out in front of his fireplace. The root change, as he saw it, was the change from being centered on hating foreigners to being centered on a love of one's own country. As he put it,

"At the end of the day, it's always the positive agendas that win in politics. Anger about what is being done to this country is legitimate, but mere anger just leads to hooliganism and political impotence. It attracts angry activists who can't behave themselves or articulate an agenda, and once you've milked the public's resentments, you've got nothing more to offer them and you stall politically. It's the positive vision of a restored and redeemed Britain that's the key for us now."

In the last year or so, the BNP has completed the final stages of its ideological reforms. The three big things that had to go were anti-Semitism, anti-Americanism, and fascist-socialist economics. To wit:

1. The BNP has now evolved to the point where it doesn't have any significant antagonism towards Jews as such, or towards Israel. Unlike the left, it has no interest in Palestinians or the larger Arab cause, and it takes the Islamic threat seriously. It has zero inclination to actively side against Israel, simply because it really wants to have nothing to do with the Middle East at all. Griffin said:

"As nationalists, our duty is to work to build a better country for our own people, not to worry about or interfere in the affairs of others. The Middle East is simply not our problem or our business."

To some extent, this attitude just reflects the fact that ethno-nationalist parties ultimately reflect, naturally enough, the national characters of the nations they represent. Britain, although snobbish, is simply not a particularly anti-Semitic culture by European standards. It has historically had, going back to Benjamin Disraeli's tenure as Prime Minister in the 1870's, a greater presence of Jews on the political right than, say, the US or France, let alone Russia or Germany. Thatcher had a lot more Jewish support in her country than Reagan had in the US.

This attitude is also a reflection of the fact that Britain's great religious enemy right now, Islam, is not only obviously not Jewish, but is itself an obvious enemy of Jews, and thus tends to put British and Israeli nationalists on the same side of a global struggle. And the BNP is immensely serious about fighting the Islamification of Britain. As Griffin put it,

"We are deeply concerned about the mainly -- though not exclusively - French elite project to morph the EU, Turkey and the Mahgreb into 'Eurabia'. Bat Y'eor is 100% right about this. If this now far-advanced scheme comes to fruition then it would in turn lead to the Islamification of the whole European continent. A generation ago the revival of the historic Islamic threat to Europe would have been unthinkable; now it is clearly destined to be the great issue and decision of our time. For us, the closely linked threats of mass Third World immigration and Islamification outweigh all other considerations.

On the specific question of anti-Semitism, Griffin said this:

"Look -- we have very serious enemies in this country, both at home and abroad. If you're going to go with that old [National Front] nonsense of Jews under every bed and responsible for all the ills of the world, then you're going to have a crazy strategic vision of who you're fighting and what to do about it. The idea that 'the Jew is the enemy' is simply over for us now, and not a moment too soon, because now we can get on with the real struggles."

He qualified this by saying:

"We insist on the right to criticize individual Jews who do wrong or Jewish groups which use the influence and power that all organized and motivated groups have to lobby, for example, for British foreign policy to take directions at odds with our national interest. But there is a world of difference between such criticism and the old fantasies about Learned Elders of Zion controlling the world, and the rabid anti-Semitism that they reflect and incite."

Clearly, this qualification is elastic, and could be abused. But one notes that it would rule out, if sincere, even a Pat Buchanan level of anti-Israelism or anti-Semitism. And the BNP does seem to have dropped the Jewish Conspiracy angle: while it opposed the Iraq war, and did complain about Jews who lobbied for Britain to fight in it, this was not generalized into attacks on the Jewish community as such and was peripheral to blaming the war on Tony Blair and the pursuit of oil.

One sign of this reformed attitude towards Jews is that the BNP not only has Jewish members, but even has a Jewish officeholder: Councilor Pat Richardson, elected last year by residents of the borough of Epping Forest, just north of London.

2. The old National Front had been suspicious towards the United States as a foreign power occupying Britain, an antagonism muted during the Cold War by fanatic anti-communism. But the BNP has now adopted a foreign-policy stance whose self-described essence is "staying out of trouble," i.e. avoiding foreign conflicts. So while it is unwilling to fight wars on behalf of the US, it has rejected doctrinaire anti-Americanism. It even suggested, in its official 2005 manifesto,[6] that it would allow American military bases to remain on British soil -- albeit, it seems, reluctantly and on account of realpolitik considerations of not wanting to provoke American opposition and needing a counterbalance to the power of continental Europe.

3. The BNP was originally, and until recently, at heart a socialist party with an economic policy based on 1930's fascist models that have largely been forgotten outside far-right fringe movements. The party's generally working-class orientation (its voters are largely alienated white working class; its leadership is generally upper-working-class with a sprinkling of the exceptionally independent-minded highly educated) made socialism natural, as did its early recognition that mass immigration to Britain was largely driven by business interests. However, Margaret Thatcher killed the credibility of socialism in Britain, so the party has since moved towards a form of economic nationalism that combines worker-owned ESOP capitalism (Employee Stock Ownership Plan) with an admiration for the paternalistic developmental economics of East Asian nations like Japan and the Asian "tigers."

Economics has not generally been the center of its message, but may become more prominent if Britain suffers a serious recession, which seems to be impending. The party has for some time been accusing the present government of selling out the nation's long-term economic future, so it probably stands to benefit from a downturn.

Despite these changes, the party is still handicapped by its past, simply because its pre-reform era remains a recent memory in the mind of the British public. Its opponents can still plausibly, if inaccurately, call it "fascist" and bring up past violent incidents of its supporters. Although it is impossible to quantify with absolute confidence, probably 10-15% of currently reported incidents are actually real, the rest being either a) ancient history, b) wholly fabricated, c) exaggerated, d) perpetrated by other organizations, e) routine working-class rowdiness, or f) speech crimes and other offences that would not be considered crimes at all in the US.

Given that the British government is known to employ agents provocateurs, given the interest of the British race-relations industry in fabricating or exaggerating incidents to justify its own power, and given the plethora of left-wing groups involved in seeking, stirring up, or faking trouble, one must apply some discount to what one hears about the BNP. Equally, one must remember that some of these stories are true. But given that the ruling Labour Party still has its labor-union thugs and the Conservatives its crooked businessmen, it is doubtful that the BNP is more indictable for lawlessness than the major parties.

The British voting public -- which is deeply dissatisfied with the mainstream political establishment in Britain and eager for alternatives to listen to, if not actually vote for -- seems to be gradually, and with due skepticism, picking up on the fact that the BNP has changed. This will take longer with the political and journalistic establishment, which has a vested interest in keeping this newly-mainstream political competitor "beyond the pale." When the BNP isn't criticizing the destruction of Britain by immigration and the EU, it is usually, criticizing the incompetence, corruption, and fraudulence of the present government and opposition, something that hardly endears it to them.

The BNP has accused Tony Blair's ruling Labour government of waging an empty war on terror. It has accused this government of ignoring supposedly effective solutions, like establishing effective border controls and ending Moslem immigration, and resorting instead to measures that either make the problem worse, like invading Iraq, or amount to mere power grabs and authoritarian posturing. It has claimed that while the government's proposed new anti-terror law will violate legal due process and the rights of the accused, this government has so vitiated the police with political correctness that it is unable to enforce existing laws with ethnic minorities. It has argued that without serious enforcement of such laws against crimes like illegal immigration, people smuggling, illegal weapons, ordinary gangsterism, and drug smuggling, any anti-terror effort is doomed from the start, because such non-political crimes are the foundation of terrorist operations.

The BNP has also opposed the government's attempts to abolish such basic legal rights as trial-by-jury even for non-terrorist cases. It has a curious de facto ideological alliance on such questions with some British civil libertarians, which extends to its opposition to national identification cards and other illiberal measures.

In the May 2005 British election, the BNP hounded the opposition Conservatives with accusations of insincerity in their pledge to reduce immigration. As this pledge has been made and broken by successive Conservative governments for decades, this seems to have resonated with the public, and the BNP probably thus played at least a small role in Michael Howard's defeat. That British voting turnouts are at record lows suggests that the BNP's main electoral effect, thus far, has been to undermine public confidence in both major parties, despite not capturing a large vote for itself.

The BNP is subject to continuous harassment by the government, which subjects it to police surveillance and other measures that are quite surprising to learn of in a democratic nation -- though similar things are, of course, done in Israel to dissident parties. Arbitrary arrests of its leadership, seizures of party literature, interference with its bank accounts, and attempts to fire its members from public-sector employment are routine. This harassment may subside in future, if the party's new-found legitimacy becomes more widely recognized, or it may not, probably depending on how much public sympathy it wins.

Most Americans are unaware that British law makes it actually illegal to say things like,

"Islam[7] is a wicked and evil faith,"

Which BNP chairman Griffin is soon to be on trial for saying, with real jail time as a possible outcome. Americans who admire Tony Blair because he consented to send Britain's tiny army to Iraq have no idea how terribly he is repressing basic freedom of speech at home. The penetration of European Union law into British law only makes things worse, based as it is on a Napoleonic tradition that lacks Anglo-American ideas about freedom of speech.

The BNP's effectiveness is enhanced by the existence of a "respectable" doppelganger, the United Kingdom Independence Party (ukip.org),[8] which began as a quit-the-European-Union movement but has morphed into a polite bourgeois imitation of about 80% of what the BNP stands for. The mainstream political establishment seems to have deliberately promoted UKIP to steal the BNP's thunder, but then the respectability of UKIP has meant that the BNP's ideas, which are mostly similar, can no longer be dismissed as fringe. And the BNP has "street cred" (credibility) with the alienated working class, which its genteel doppelganger doesn't, and Britain still being Britain, class still matters.

The EU is an aspiring superstate[9] that aims to displace America from its dominant world position, if not become the outright nucleus of a world government.[10] Recent popular votes in several European states against further EU integration have been answered by the EU establishment with plans to continue with the federal project regardless. It has been giving a billion Euros a year (roughly a billion dollars) to the Palestinian Authority, plus the legitimacy of recognition. The BNP's opposition to such funding, and to the EU itself, therefore places it in a very interesting position for anyone who cares about Israel. It is, at the very least, an interesting creature to watch, and not the monster it once was.

Footnotes

1. Locke, Robert, "Is Population Transfer the Solution to the Palestinian Problem -- And Some Others?," July 8, 2003,
"http://www.vdare.com/locke/palestinian_problem.htm

2. Locke, Robert, Rethinking History: Were the Nazis Really Nationalists?" August 28, 2001,
http://frontpagemag.com/articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=1280

3. http://www.bnp.org.uk/

4. http://www.natfront.com/

5. Locke, Robert, "Abolish The European Union," June 5, 2002,
http://frontpagemag.com/articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=1231

6. http://www.bnp.org.uk/candidates2005/manifesto.htm

7. Locke, Robert, "Islam: A Defective Civilization?" February 28, 2002,
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=1237

8. http://www.ukip.org/

9. Locke, Robert, "Abolish The European Union," June 5, 2002,
http://frontpagemag.com/articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=1231

10. Locke, Robert, "Conspiracy Theory and the National Question," July 24, 2004,
http://www.bestwriters.com/good/archives/00000031.htm


Robert Locke resides in New York City. He may be contacted at
[email protected], and his archive is at
www.robertlockearchive.com.

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Symbol of the Vlaams Belang party

MIM: After a trial which declared the Vlaamse Blok illegal the party declared that it was renaming itself the Vlaamse Belang (Flemish Interests) and accused a 'civil rights' group of waging a 'Jihad' against them. The VB said they would preserve their old website and started a new site which had a report of more legal action being taken against the new group. http://www.vlaamsbelang.org/

Translation by Beila Rabinowitz director of MIM:

"...The notorious Center voor Equal Opportunity and Combatting Racism has, under the leadership of Johan Leman, done nothing at all to contribute to the integraton of foreigners but has instead unleashed a Jihad against the Vlaams Blok. The result is that large groups of foreigners are wallowing in the cult of victimhood and that anyone who questions the dogma of multi cultural enchancement can be dragged in front of a judge..."

Het beruchte Centrum voor Gelijke Kansen- en Racismebestrijding heeft onder de leiding van Johan Leman geen spat bijgedragen tot de integratie van vreemdelingen maar heeft wel een jihad ontketend tegen het Vlaams Blok. Het gevolg is dat grote groepen vreemdelingen zich wentelen in hun slachtoffercultus en dat iedereen die het dogma van de multiculturele verrijking in vraag stelt voor de rechter kan gesleurd worden. http://vlaamsblok.be/index.shtml

MIM: On September 11th 2004 the leader of the Vlaamse Blok defiantly announced their intentions to begin again.

"A New Start!"

On the 9th of November the curtain fell on the ongoing monster trial against the Vlaams Blok. What many feared and predicted, and what others had considered to be impossible became reality. The politically motivated judgement which the court of appeals in Gent announced in April 21st of this year was upheld. With this the head of the Supreme Court has saved the face of the unjust judges and outlawed the largest party in the country.

EEN NIEUWE START!

 Voorzitter Frank Vanhecke [09/11/2004] - Op 9 november viel het doek over het al jaren aanslepende monsterproces tegen het Vlaams Blok. Wat velen gevreesd en voorspeld hebben en anderen tot op vandaag voor onmogelijk hielden is bewaarheid geworden. De politiek geïnspireerde veroordeling die het hof van beroep in Gent uitsprak op 21 april van dit jaar, werd bevestigd. Daarmee heeft het hof van Cassatie het gezicht van de onrechtvaardige rechters gered en de grootste partij van het land feitelijk buiten de wet gesteld.

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MIM: This is the 'farewell message' announcing the demise of the Vlaams Blok website:

"Thanks and until next time!"

With deep sorry we announce the demise of our web domain vlaamsblok.be. It was good while lasted. With the support of our readers we were able to build oour site up to become one of the most consulted political pary sites in Flanders.This year alone we had 1,5 million visitors. As a well known department store chain says: " You have to earn it, each day ." Now that the Vlaamse Blok no longer exists we are stopping with the website of the same name.

The site will no longer be updated but remains a trusted internet address to turn to so that our dossiers, the columns of Franke Vanhecke, and much more can be reread.

We also want to thank our permanent and temporary assisistants. And our readers. Of course we hope to see you again on the website of the new party. With your apporval we are going to drink a toast to the happy occassion. And we are going to do everything possible to make the site better.

Until then !


http://vlaamsblok.be/index.shtml

Week van 08/11/2004 tot 14/11/2004:

[14/11/2004] - Bedankt en tot kijk!

Wij melden u met diepe droefheid het overlijden van onze webstek vlaamsblok.be. 't Is mooi geweest. Met de steun van onze lezers wisten wij onze site uit te bouwen tot de meest geraadpleegde partijpolitieke site in Vlaanderen. Dit jaar alleen al 1,5 miljoen bezoekers. Of zoals een bekende warenhuisketen het zegt: dat moet je verdienen, elke dag. Nu het Vlaams Blok ophoudt te bestaan, zetten wij ook een punt achter de gelijknamige webstek.

De site wordt niet meer aangepast, maar blijft op het vertrouwde internetadres te raadplegen zodat u onze dossiers, de columns van Frank Vanhecke en zoveel meer nog eens kan nalezen.

Bij deze willen wij graag alle vaste en losse medewerkers bedanken. En al onze lezers. Die hopen wij natuurlijk straks weer te zien op de webstek van de nieuwe partij. Met uw goedkeuring drinken wij meteen een glas op de blijde geboorte. En wij gaan er alles aan doen om die site nog beter te maken! Tot kijk!

Of beter ... tot straks op www.vlaamsbelang.org!

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MIM: The new website of the Vlaams Belang explains the court ruling necessitating the dissolution of the Vlaamse Blok.

Why Vlaams Belang

Translated by Beila Rabinowitz director of MIM

It was inevitable. After the years of exhausting every juridical option the Vlaams Blok had finally succumbed to the Belgian judges and the political establishment.

The Vlaams Blok was sentenced on November 9th. (2005). This sentence comes de facto as a party ban. It speaks for itself that the party will not give up and bury the hatchet.

On the 9th of November the Vlaams Blok was aquitted by the voters. A million Flemish and Brussels natives showed their faith in us via the voting booth. We cannot and will not abandon these voters. They are depending on us.

The Vlaams Blok was always the best- and also the only- defender of Flemish interests. In this manner the choice of name was obvious.

Under the new name 'Vlaams Belang' we will continue to wage our struggle for an independent Flanders. Flemish independence is really the best guarantee for the pushing through of lawful Flemish demands, and to preserve our standard of living, our future, our Flemish interests.

The conviction of the Vlaams Blok for so called 'racism' does not mean that the Vlaams Belang will be silent over the multicultural society and failed integration.We will confront the parties who believe that coddling and appeasement will solve society's problems, and force them to carry out their responsibilities. The Vlaamse Belang party will continue to say the foreigners have to adapt or return to their home countries, in other words, foreigners are welcome is they adapt to our norms and values, and if they show respect for our laws, our culture, and democratic principals (separation of church and state, free speech, and equality between men and women.).

The Vlaams Belang remains an uncompromising proponent of a tough approach to criminality and will also continue to campaign for the traditional family.

Vlaams Belang is a democratic party which campaigns through democratic means to have their political standpoints realised in the government and in policy making.

The party emphasizes that freedom of speech is one of the fundamentals of democracy. We are going to do everything possible to protect free speech and ensure that the opinions of many nameless Flemish will be presented in the political arena.

Vlaams Belang is at your service. We count on you - you count on us!

Next meeting soon in the voter's booth!

http://www.vlaamsbelang.org/index.php?p=16

Waarom Vlaamse Belang

Het zat er aan te komen. Na een jarenlange juridische uitputtingsslag heeft het Vlaams Blok uiteindelijk de duimen moeten leggen voor Belgische rechters en het politieke establishment.

Op 9 november werd het Vlaams Blok veroordeeld. Die veroordeling komt de facto neer op een partijverbod. Het spreekt voor zich dat de partij niet bij de pakken blijft zitten of de strijdbijl zal begraven.

Op 13 juni werd het Vlaams Blok door de kiezer vrijgesproken. Eén miljoen Vlamingen en Brusselaars gaven ons in de stembus hun vertrouwen. Die 1 miljoen kiezers mogen en willen wij niet in de steek laten. Zij rekenen op ons.

Het Vlaams Blok is altijd de beste - zoniet de enige - verdediger geweest van de Vlaamse belangen. In die zin ligt de naamkeuze dan ook voor de hand.

Onder de nieuwe naam 'Vlaams Belang' zullen wij onze democratische strijd voor een onafhankelijk Vlaanderen verder zetten en nog opvoeren. Vlaamse onafhankelijkheid is immers de beste garantie voor het afdwingen van gerechtvaardigde Vlaamse eisen en het veilig stellen van onze welvaart, onze toekomst, onze Vlaamse belangen.

De veroordeling van het Vlaams Blok wegens zogezegd 'racisme', betekent niet dat het Vlaams Belang voortaan zal zwijgen over de multiculturele samenleving en de mislukte integratie. Wij zullen de andere partijen die nog altijd geloven dat pappen en nathouden de samenlevingsproblemen wel zal oplossen, blijven opjagen en op hun verantwoordelijkheid wijzen. De partij Vlaams Belang zal blijven zeggen dat vreemdelingen zich moeten aanpassen of terugkeren, met andere woorden dat vreemdelingen hier welkom zijn als zij zich willen aanpassen aan onze waarden en normen en als zij respect opbrengen voor onze wetten, onze cultuur en de principes van de democratie (scheiding van kerk en staat, vrije meningsuiting en de gelijkwaardigheid van man en vrouw).

Het Vlaams Belang blijft onverkort voorstander van een harde aanpak van de criminaliteit en zal het ook morgen opnemen voor het traditionele gezin.

Vlaams Belang is een democratische partij, die met democratische middelen zal ijveren om zijn politieke standpunten hard te maken in het parlement en in het beleid.

De partij beklemtoont dat de vrije meningsuiting behoort tot de fundamenten van de democratie. Wij zullen er dan ook alles aan doen om die vrije mening te beschermen en de mening van zovele naamloze Vlamingen verder uit te dragen in de politiek.

Vlaams Belang is er klaar voor. U rekent op ons. Wij rekenen op u.

Afspraak straks in de stembus!

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MIM: In 2002 The Dutch politician Hans Janmaat died. He had gotten a seat in the lower house and was vilified for his views on immigration and multiculturalism. A profile of him (In a mainstream Christian publication) on the occassion of his death calls him 'a tragic hero' and describes him as being ahead of his time.

Profile of Janmaat

http://reporter.kro.nl/profielartikel.asp?dossier=profielen%5Cprofieljanmaat.XML

undefinedOp 9 juni 2002 overleed Hans Janmaat. Op zijn begrafenis waren 35 mensen. Het nieuws van zijn dood was niet meer dan een één-kolommer op pagina zeven. Hans Janmaat. De man die met z'n opvattingen bijna twintig jaar lang het boegbeeld was geweest van extreem-rechts in dit land. Oprichter van de Centrum Democraten.

Toen ie in 1982 in de Tweede Kamer kwam, was het land te klein. Maar zijn politieke carrière was niet bepaald een succes. Extreem rechts bleef onder zijn leiding een politieke dwerg, amper in staat om de kiesdrempel te overschrijden. Janmaat. Van beroep: stoorzender. Geminacht door collega-politici.

Een man met een uniek talent op de verkeerde momenten de verkeerde dingen te zeggen. Een warhoofd, ook. Zijn analyses raakten zelden doel. Maar: als het gaat om kritiek op de multiculturele samenleving, dan is veel van wat hij destijds beweerde in politiek Den Haag inmiddels gemeengoed geworden. Want ook dat is Janmaat: foute timing.

Fons de Poel en Heleen Minderaa schetsen de tragische held van extreem rechts.

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MIM: One blogger commented:

http://www.bakelblog.com/nobodys_business/2005/11/unpopular_belie.html

Germans Prosecute Man for Kooky Beliefs

In 1997, rightwing Dutch parliamentarian Hans Janmaat was sent to jail for speaking his mind on immigration. He'd advocated that Holland should close its borders, and that so-called oprot-premies — "fuck-off bonuses" — were a great instrument to induce foreigners to leave the country. In those pre-Pim-Fortuyn, pre-Theo-van-Gogh days, that was a most improper thing to say. The famous Dutch tolerance broke down right there and then, and Mr. Janmaat — a narrow-minded man whose politics I loathed but whose right to speak his mind can hardly be called into question — was convicted of hate speech and sentenced to a jail term of two weeks and a 3,500-dollar fine.

But that wasn't the shocker.

The shocker was that my Dutch friends — well-educated, kind, socially progressive — just couldn't get worked up over Mr. Janmaat's prison stint. I distinctly remember two dinner-table conversations that made my blood run cold, precisely because there were no credible arguments in favor of his sentence. My friends even allowed that I was right to insist on the principle of the thing. "But," they'd say with a wink or a shrug, "he is a bit of a creep, you know." Or they'd come up with some tired truism about yelling fire in a crowded theater, as if Mr. Janmaat, then perhaps the most powerless and certainly the most isolated politician in the country, compelled armies of jackbooted thugs to beat up foreigners.

After the murders of Fortuyn and Van Gogh, it became clear that lack of free speech — not too much of it, as the prosecutors and the bien pensants had alleged — had helped pave the way for violence. Arguably, because criticism of immigration had been suppressed at the state's insistence, it was such a shock when Pim Fortuyn brought it to the surface that the lid blew off the pressure cooker — just not in the way most people had imagined. The corpses, after all, weren't those of Moroccans or Turks. It was Fortuyn and Van Gogh who had to be carried to an early grave.

For more on Pim Fortuyn see this excellent article:

http://www.limitstogrowth.org/WEB-text/pim.html

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