November 14 is Day of Respect Day in Holland. It’s a kind of cultural diversity thing got up by the Day of Respect Foundation, a leftwing group subsidized by the Dutch government. On November 14, students in two thousand Dutch schools were to be told that Geert Wilders was comparable to Adolph Hitler and Wilder’s film Fitna would be the worst thing to happen to the Netherlands since the Nazis went ‘klompen’ across the land the Little Dutch Boy saved from the North Sea. Viewing Fitna would be like reading Mein Kampf. Sig Heil! A booklet that included an attack on Wilders and the Dutch Freedom party would be passed out to the students along will other relevant information.

Geert Wilders as Adolph Hitler; Fitna as Mein Kampf; the Dutch Freedom Party as the National Socialist German Workers Party? Could Muslims be the Jews of the 21st Century? This was the intimation. Ridiculous? Of course! Only in the cross-pollinated mind of someone sunk to the neck in political correctness, self-loathing and spineless dhimmitude could such an idea take hold. Unfortunately there are many of that type in today’s Holland.

Nazism—that’s the charge that is made whenever someone tries to plug the hole in the immigration dike that has flooded the Netherlands with mosques, anti-Western attitudes, rapes, assaults on the freedom of speech, the freedom of religion, the freedom of association, the freedom of being. Pim Fortuyn tried to stem the tide. He took a look around one day and wasn’t pleased with what he saw. Maybe it was two days. He identified the problem as Muslim immigration. He would restrict it—perhaps put an end to it. It wasn’t because he was afraid of hijabs and nikabs. It was what they represented. He was gay and as far as anyone knew he wasn’t a cross dresser. What troubled him more than anything else were the debates in the radical mosques about what to do with homosexuals—should they be thrown from the tops of buildings or should they have the buildings collapsed on them. Pim felt he would not be able to survive either. Maybe if he were Hulk Hogan and the buildings under discussion had been one-story tarpaper shacks—perhaps, but the Imams had other ways to make life miserable for people like Pim. They were hanging gays in Iran.

Pim got involved in politics. He had been a Communist and then a Social Democrat. He was nominated by a new party, the Leefbaar Nederland Party (Livable Netherlands Party) to stand for election to the Dutch Parliament in May 2002. But when he came out in favor of ending Muslim immigration Leefbaar tossed him from the party. Undaunted, Pim created his own organization, the LPF (Lijst Pim Fortuyn). And he continued to speak out.

Fortuyn told the Rotterdam Dagblad, “I am also in favor of a cold war with Islam. I see Islam as an extraordinary threat, as a hostile religion.” How could he see something so clearly that has escaped the notice of George W. Bush, John McCain and Barack Obama? Well, for one thing he was gay and he was living cheek to jowl with Islam. Actually that’s two and should be more than enough to satisfy just about anybody except maybe Dennis Kucinich and Jon Corzine.

In an interview with Volksrant, Fortuyn was as blunt as he could be. “I don’t hate Islam,” he said. “I consider it a backward culture. I have traveled much in the world. And wherever Islam rules, it’s just terrible. All that hypocrisy.” He said he wanted to keep the Netherlands something to be proud of, “thank you very much.”

He wasn’t Shane calling Wilson a “dirty lowdown Yankee liar; he was Thomas Jefferson telling the Redcoats to get back on the boat, they were no longer welcome in the land of freedom, “thank you very much.”

Fortuyn was assassinated on May 6, 2002, by Volkert van der Graaf for—among other things—‘exploiting Muslims as scapegoats.’ Van der Graaf was an Environmentalist. Nine days later, Fortuyn’s party won 26 seats in the Dutch parliament.

Then came Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Theo van Gogh. They would try their hand at plugging the immigration dike. Hirsi Ali was a former Muslim, a brilliant woman’s rights activist on the order of Lucretia Mott and Lucy Stone who was cold-shouldered by the Gloria Steinem crowd when she visited the United States. For shame! Van Gogh was a movie producer with an unsavory reputation. Using a script written by Ms Ali, van Gogh produced a ten-minute movie called Submission. The film infuriated Muslims far and wide though few if any took the time to actually view the film.

Pay attention now, Mohammed…and you too, Mahmoud. The film is full of naked ladies. They are on their knees praying to Allah. Their only coverings are quotations from the Qur’an unfavorable to women. On November 2, 2004, Mohammed Bouyeri murdered van Gogh in Amsterdam. Pim Fortuyn was one of the few Dutch politicians that were not critical of van Gogh. To Fortuyn van Gogh was the “divine baldhead.”

A few years ago, Bruce Bawer wrote an article for the Partisan Review. Bawer, a homosexual, had immigrated to the Netherlands in 1998 to enjoy the sexual freedom of the lowlands. Islam was a rude awakening. It hadn’t been covered in the Baedeker. Bawer would have to learn on his own—and learn he did. In his article for the Review, he put his finger on the problem.

“The disinclination of social-democratic leaders to properly address such matters,” he wrote, “has doubtless contributed to the recent growth of conservative parties in many European countries. In the Netherlands, where gay bashings by Moroccan and Turkish youths have been on the rise, and where the government cracked down in February on the teaching of anti-Western hate in state-supported Muslim schools (one of which was raising money by selling calendars featuring a photo of the New York skyline ablaze), a Rotterdam politician named Pim Fortuyn gained widespread support by speaking frankly about the threat that fundamentalist Islam poses to Western liberties. ‘In Rotterdam,’ he (Fortuyn) told the New York Times, ‘we have third generation Moroccans who still don’t speak Dutch, oppress women and won’t live by our values.’”

“Fundamentalist Islam, ”continued Bawer, “is not a race or an ethnicity; it is an ideology. It’s critics are not racist any more than critics of Nazi or Stalinist ideology are racists…those…that…are unwilling or unable to adapt…must be sent home…at stake in all this ultimately, are the basic freedom of all Westerners…including Muslims and former Muslims who wish to live in a place where they can be themselves. At stake, indeed, is Western civilization.”

Yes, indeed.

Yesterday, the Dutch Cabinet, under pressure from the Freedom Party, forced the Day of Respect Foundation to withdraw the offensive matter—it amounted to one page—from their booklet. One page—it doesn’t sound like much. Replacement pages are being sent to the schools. Will they get there in time? Will the teachers use them? What will they do with the no-longer authorized pages? Will they throw them out or save them as souvenirs—perhaps use them later? One wonders. Dhimmitude is a terrible disease.

In the debate in the Dutch parliament, Martin Bosma of the Freedom Party accused the Day of Respect Foundation of being a leftwing multicultural organization set up to re-educate the Dutch people.

It was a victory for the good guys—a small one, but nevertheless a victory.

“In the end,” wrote Bawer, “Europe’s enemy is not Islam or even radical Islam. Europe’s enemy is itself—its self-destructive passivity, its softness toward tyranny, its reflexive inclination to appease, and its uncomprehending distaste for America’s pride, courage and resolve in the face of a deadly foe.”

Eternal vigilance is the watchword.