You are not truly a proponent of free speech unless you defend speech you dislike as fervently as speech you like.

There are many issues concerning the views of the Dutch MP, Geert Wilders, head of rapidly growing political party, the Freedom Party (Partij voor de Vrijheid, or PVV). Dutch prosecutors have charged Wilders with insulting deliberately a group of people because of their race and inciting hatred. Wilders’s trial focuses on a speech he gave, in which he asked a crowd of supports whether they wanted more or fewer Moroccans in the Netherlands. In another instance, Wilders is reported to have stated that The Hague should be “a city with fewer burdens and if possible fewer Moroccans.” Wilders admits to having made the remarks.

Geert Wilders during his March 2014 speech, where he asked “Do you want more or fewer Moroccans?” (Image source: nos.nl video screenshot)

The remarks Wilders made about Moroccans, as they target only one nationality rather than immigration in general, may sound ill-judged or distasteful to some. But do Wilders’s comments, that there should be fewer Moroccans, actually incite hatred or violence? His remarks do not suggest that people attack Moroccans or that people should hate Moroccans; they simply suggest that there should be lower levels of immigration from Morocco.

While Wilder’s comments could certainly be convincingly portrayed as preying on people’s anti-immigration sentiment, does that actually make them an insult to Moroccans, or is he simply supporting policies he thinks would benefit his country? As Wilders himself said in court last week, “What if someone had said, ‘Fewer Syrians?'”

As a society, individuals are responsible for their actions, so if someone acts upon a distortion of Wilders’s words, or is violent because of them, Wilders should not be held responsible for their actions, even if he might choose his words more carefully in the future. A line is dangerous to draw: if we start criminalizing people who have anti-immigration views, poorly expressed or not, then where do we stop?

Is it also possible that because Wilders is labelled as politically “far right,” people on the political “left,” instead of proposing counterarguments, would like to shut him up by branding him a “racist”?

Here are several more statements, none from Wilders; no one who said them has been prosecuted:

• “We also have s*** Moroccans over here.” Rob Oudkerk, a Dutch Labour Party (PvDA) politician.
• “We must humiliate Moroccans.” Hans Spekman, PvDA politician.
• “Moroccans have the ethnic monopoly on trouble-making.” Diederik Samsom, PvDA politician.

One can see that these statements by politicians of the Labour Party, which is one of the current governing parties of the Netherlands, are more inciting, condemnable statements against Moroccans than anything Wilders has said. Yet no prosecution has been initiated against these individuals.

Would it not be better to discuss a nuanced immigration policy openly, like adults, and thereby eliminate prejudice through rational argument?

Prosecuting Wilders has only emboldened the anti-immigrationists, making them less responsive to reason and discussion. Ironically, this trial has moved many left-liberals, who might be criticizing his views, instead to defend his fundamental rights.

On limiting immigration in general, some critics consider that calling for a moratorium on immigration is illiberal — often other groups such as Christians and Yazidis might be fleeing from ISIS or other extremist Islamic organizations. Basing immigration on nationality might also bring back memories of Nazi Germany, when restrictions often were based on crude religious, ethnic and national caricatures. Other critics seem uncomfortable with calls for the dominance of “Christian, Jewish and humanist traditions” within Dutch culture. How, they ask, can one effectively police a “culture” without seemingly authoritarian restrictions on those who might not fit into it?

Still other critics argue that prohibiting the construction of new mosques restricts religious freedom, and could cause further tension with members of the Islamic community, instead of working with them to solve their conflicts with the West.

But what does one do if immigrants prefer not to assimilate?

That, for example, is not an anti-immigration argument; it is a legitimate question that needs to be answered. There are also many questions that pertain to what a society might look like if there is a tectonic demographic shift, along with a tectonic shift in culture that might accompany it.

As one commentator explained, if you have an apple pie with a few cranberries, it is still an apple pie; but if you keep adding more and more cranberries, at some point it is no longer an apple pie, it is a cranberry pie. That is what the Aztecs faced when the Spaniards arrived in South America. That is what Christianity faced in Turkey when the Muslim Turks arrived. Today, in much of the Middle East, Judaism and Christianity have virtually ceased to exist.

Hard as it might be to contemplate, Europeans might at some point be faced with a painful choice: Which do they want more, the humanistic values of individual freedom or an Islamized Europe?

Whether or not one agrees, especially with the tone, this is the dilemma Wilders has chosen to face — before a transformation becomes so fundamental that it cannot be reversed.

Although he has come down on the side of liberal values, this is seen by critics as violating other liberal values, such as not to judge one culture superior to another.

But what should one tolerate, if the other culture advocates stoning women to death for adultery? Or, without four male witnesses attesting to the contrary, regarding rape as adultery? Or executing people for having a different sexual preference, or religion, or for leaving the religion? Or beating one’s wife? Or condoning slavery? Or officially regarding women as worth half a man? Is it a humanistic, liberal value to stay silent — to condemn at least half the population to that?

What if before the Civil War in the United States people had said, “Slavery? But that is their culture!” The British in India outlawed suttee — a ritual in which widows are thrown live onto their husband’s funeral pyre. Is it humanistic say “but that is their culture”?

These are values over which wars have been fought.

So even if many of the policies of Wilders might drastically differ even from those of this author, in a truly liberal, humanistic society, it is one’s duty defend Wilders’s right to express his views without fear of retribution.

If we fail to do that, what we end up with is an authoritarian state in which government agencies decide which views are acceptable and which are not. We have lived through that before with the Soviet Union, and we are now living through it again with countries such as Saudi Arabia, Russia, China, Pakistan and Iran. A happy picture, they are not.

As history shows, as in the French or Russian or Cuban Revolutions, when one person’s views are suppressed, eventually everyone’s views are suppressed. Who decides on the deciders?

If a court in a Western society decides to censor or punish Geert Wilders or others for non-violent speech, the court not only attacks the very humanistic values and liberal society we claim to hold dear; it brings us a step closer to totalitarianism. Even the idea of having an “acceptable” range of views is inherently totalitarian.

“Acceptable” thoughts, by definition, do not need protecting. It is the “unacceptable” thoughts that do. The reason the right to freedom of speech exists is to protect the minority from the majority — so we can openly, freely exchange opinions and have discussions.

If we wish to have any kind of democracy in more than just name, people need to able openly to challenge ideas that are considered unquestionable, even sacred, as well as people who are considered sacred.

Only open discussion can have a beneficial influence by highlighting problems and shaping policy. In discussing even outlandish views, we are reaffirming our right to say them, justifying why liberal values of freedom are paramount. Freedom of speech is the ultimate liberal value — and it is the first freedom that people who wish to control us would take away. As the historian Clare Spark wrote, “Most of European history, with the exception of England, repressed speech that was anti-authoritarian. One might think of Plato, the Spanish Inquisition, and the career of Spinoza for just a few examples.”

Therefore, no proponent of democracy, humanism or liberal values should call for Wilders to be punished or censored for his remarks, even if they might be thought questionably expressed. When you defend the fundamental right of another to express his view, it does not mean that you agree with the view. It does not mean that you would refrain from attacking that view if it seemed based on flawed premises — or even if it did not. Freedom of speech means opposing someone with counterarguments, not trying to silence him.

If Wilders’ views are thought to be anti-humanistic, criminalizing his right to speak freely is even more so. Criminalizing speech only harks back to Giordano Bruno, who was burned at the stake for “blasphemy,” for saying there were a plurality of worlds; or to the trial of Galileo Galilei for claiming that the earth moves around the sun; or the Scopes trial, which attempted to criminalize Darwin’s theory of evolution.

It is restrictions on free speech that are producing many of the worst mockeries of justice today, in countries such as China, North Korea, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Russia, and Iran.

Repressing speech only dangerously hinders the liberal cause. Groups that, in an authoritarian manner, call for censorship and the suppression of debate are being allowed to thrive. We are seeing this now in America on campuses and in the authoritarian attempts to prevent voters from hearing presidential candidates by disrupting speeches. When one fails to answer difficult questions or tries to silence their proponents, instead of solving the problem of prejudice, you are in reality feeding their prejudices and allowing them to grow unchallenged.

We urgently need be concerned about laws that would make “being insulted,” a criminal offense. Where does an “insult” start or stop? In addition, people who claim to be offended might just be using the law to try to silence others with whom they disagree. The culpatory aspect of these laws should probably be reconsidered, and possibly revised by the Dutch government, the United Nations in its UNHRC Resolution 16/18, and others trying to restrict free speech.

Finally, criminalizing views such as those of Wilders does not extinguish them. Yes, people might feel intimidated from raising ideas for fear of reprisals, but the suppressed ideas will continue to fester, often with an even stronger force.

It is completely understandable why many are not quick to come to the aid of Wilders because they deem him an opponent. However, if there is one rallying call to those who are in doubt of whether to support Wilders, it is this: authoritarianism is our enemy, whether it comes from Islamism, or laws restricting speech. We may not like that we have to defend people we may even regard as racists or xenophobes, but if we do not defend the rights of all, then who will be next among us to have his rights eroded?

Censorship is not a path we should wish to take. While we may rightly fear those on the political right, we would do well to fear even more the autocratic thought-police and censorship on the political left.

Wilders should not be standing trial for what he has said. Could there be a question of the case against Wilders being political? It sure looks like that.

In France last month, riots spread — not only to Aulnay sous Bois and other suburbs of Paris in Seine Saint Denis, such as Le Tremblay-en-France, Villepinte, Bobigny, Torcy — but farther, to Argenteuil (Val d’Oise), Mantes la Jolie (Yvelines), Grigny, Les Ulis, Lille (northern France), Marseille (southern France), Dijon (Burgundy) and, of course, right to the heart of Paris.

How many million euros of goods, shops, cars and buses were destroyed? Nobody knows. The daily Le Parisien published a confidential police memo saying that between February 7 and February 11, in Seine-Saint-Denis alone, 200 cars were burned, 160 garbage trucks were burned, hundreds of projectiles were thrown, 40 fireworks were fired at police, and 108 people were arrested.

Muslim Antisemitism: Hate Speech

Amid these riots, three other “explosions” took place.

Mehdi Meklat and Badroudine Said Abdallah affair. Mehdi Meklat and Badroudine Said Abdallah were until very recently, two cultural heroes. These two young Muslims were the darlings of the left mainstream media.[1]

In March 2016, they even had the honor of an article in The Washington Post:

“At 23, they are already celebrities, France’s youngest public intellectuals…. neither sees the point of a university education, and their world begins where Paris ends, which is the point of their entire intellectual project.

“Their columns for the Liberation newspaper’s Bondy Blog, their documentaries and their 2015 novel all reveal the two friends’ overarching intent: showing the world the complicated reality of the Paris suburbs where they were born and raised.”

Badroudine Said Abdallah (left) and Mehdi Meklat (right), featured on the cover of the French magazine Les Inrockuptibles, on February 1, 2017.

But in mid-February 2017, an unknown woman decided to share on Facebook some of Mehdi Meklat’s tweets:

“I am going to slit your throat Muslim-style” read a tweet threatening Marine Le Pen. Another called for “Hitler to kill all the Jews”, while a third said he wanted to “rape” former Charlie Hebdo editor-in-chief Charb, one of the victims of the January 2015 terror attacks, with a “Laguiole knife”. Meklat also tweeted that he wanted to sodomize Brigitte Bardot with light bulbs.

Meklat’s tweets were shared by around a million people on social networks. Then whole country discovered what the most “integrated” young Muslims had on their minds.

For nearly five years, it turned out (most of the time, under a pseudonym), Mehdi Meklat multiplied the homophobic, anti-Semitic, misogynist, offensive messages to certain personalities or was busy advocating terrorism. None of his tweets attacked, for instance, ISIS. The targets were all women, gay celebrities and Jews. When the scandal of his racist and anti-Semitic tweets began to explode on February 16, 2017, Meklat deleted more than 50,000 tweets in one night.

Meklat today lives outside France; he says he fears for his life.

Houda Benyamina and Oulaya Amamra: Facebook posts and tweets.

The French-Moroccan film-maker Houda Benyamina received a standing ovation at Cannes Film Festival and won the Camera D’Or prize for her film, “Divines”. In February 2017, the very politically correct Académie des Césars (the French equivalent of Hollywood’s Oscars) rewarded Houda Benyamina with a César for “Divines” as the Best First Film. The scandal is not that “Divines” might be considered a hate film against France, against public schools, against police, against firemen, against the presentation of migrants and Muslims as eternal victims. The heroes in the movie are all suffering young Muslims, targets of a French racist society; nobody understands the beauty of their souls, etc. The scandal is that Houda Benyamina shared on Facebook a cartoon saying that Israel and the United States are manipulating ISIS.

Oulaya Amamra, the young sister of Houda Benyamina, awarded by the Académie des Césars the prize for Best Young Actress in “Divines”, was pictured posing with Mehdi Meklat. Like him, she frenetically deleted dozens of racist and homophobic tweets featuring terms like “dirty nigger”.

Amamra did not apologize. She just said: “sorry, I was young”.

Oulaya Amara (left) posing with Mehdi Meklat (center).

Yacine Chaouat

On February 25, the Paris prosecutor launched an inquiry into Yacine Chaouat, a parliamentary assistant of the Socialist Party senator Roger Madec. Chaouat was suspected of sharing on Facebook some posts expressing “sympathy” for ISIS. “If the facts are true, they are disturbing. We’re very clearly about apologizing for terrorism”, said a source close to the investigation at the weekly L’Express. In Le Parisien, Chaouat replied he was the victim of a smear campaign.

In 2015, Chaouat had to resign from a nomination to be a member of the National Secretary of the Socialist Party: some of his colleagues suggested that Chaouat was justly condemned, because he had severely beaten his girlfriend.

Not all but…

Of course, not all Muslims living in French suburbs are anti-Semitic, violent, racist or homophobic. More importantly, the Mehdi Meklat and Houda Benyamina tweet scandal highlights the responsibility of mainstream media of the Left, who have chosen to turn a blind eye to their “protégés”.

The French writer Pascal Bruckner, speaking about Mehdi Meklat, wrote in Le Figaro:

“For years, Le Monde, Liberation, Les Inrockuptibles, Télérama praised the great vitality of this kid from the suburbs, so funny, so smart that he proposed, through the voice of his “double evil” [a pseudonym of Meklat] to kill Jews, to sodomize Mrs. Valls [the prime minister’s wife], spit on Charb [murdered in the Charlie Hebdo terrorist attack], to break the legs of Finkielkraut [noted philosopher]… The media wanted to deny the violence of kids from the suburbs or try to make it seem the natural expression of an oppressed minority. We forget, by the way, that for a significant proportion of the Muslim community, homophobia, anti-Semitism and misogyny are part of their cultural background.”

All of this happened while, in January 2017, the great, Moroccan-born historian Georges Bensoussan appeared in court for having said on radio that anti-Semitism was transmitted in many Muslim families with “mother’s milk”.

It is to the credit of the French court that last week, Bensoussan was acquitted of “hate speech”. Not surprisingly, the prosecutor has announced that the state will appeal the verdict.

Read also: France: The Taboo of Muslim Racism and Anti-Semitism – Part I

Yves Mamou is a journalist and author based in France. He worked for two decades for the daily, Le Monde, before his retirement.