The Muslim Brotherhood's Conquest of Europe

The Muslim Brotherhood - An essential article in further understanding islamism, by Lorenzo Vidino
Middle East Quarterly
Winter 2005

Since its founding in 1928, the Muslim Brotherhood (Hizb al-Ikhwan al-Muslimun) has profoundly influenced the political life of the Middle East. Its motto is telling: "Allah is our objective. The Prophet is our leader. The Qur'an is our law. Jihad is our way. Dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope."[1]

While the Brotherhood's radical ideas have shaped the beliefs of generations of Islamists, over the past two decades, it has lost some of its power and appeal in the Middle East, crushed by harsh repression from local regimes and snubbed by the younger generations of Islamists who often prefer more radical organizations.

But the Middle East is only one part of the Muslim world. Europe has become an incubator for Islamist thought and political development. Since the early 1960s, Muslim Brotherhood members and sympathizers have moved to Europe and slowly but steadily established a wide and well-organized network of mosques, charities, and Islamic organizations. Unlike the larger Islamic community, the Muslim Brotherhood's ultimate goal may not be simply "to help Muslims be the best citizens they can be," but rather to extend Islamic law throughout Europe and the United States.[2]

Four decades of teaching and cultivation have paid off. The student refugees who migrated from the Middle East forty years ago and their descendants now lead organizations that represent the local Muslim communities in their engagement with Europe's political elite. Funded by generous contributors from the Persian Gulf, they preside over a centralized network that spans nearly every European country.

These organizations represent themselves as mainstream, even as they continue to embrace the Brotherhood's radical views and maintain links to terrorists. With moderate rhetoric and well-spoken German, Dutch, and French, they have gained acceptance among European governments and media alike. Politicians across the political spectrum rush to engage them whenever an issue involving Muslims arises or, more parochially, when they seek the vote of the burgeoning Muslim community.

But, speaking Arabic or Turkish before their fellows Muslims, they drop their facade and embrace radicalism. While their representatives speak about interfaith dialogue and integration on television, their mosques preach hate and warn worshippers about the evils of Western society. While they publicly condemn the murder of commuters in Madrid and school children in Russia, they continue to raise money for Hamas and other terrorist organizations. Europeans, eager to create a dialogue with their increasingly disaffected Muslim minority, overlook this duplicity. The case is particularly visible in Germany, which retains a place of key importance in Europe, not only because of its location at the heart of Europe, but also because it played host to the first major wave of Muslim Brotherhood immigrants and is host to the best-organized Brotherhood presence. The German government's reaction is also instructive if only to show the dangers of accepting Muslim Brotherhood rhetoric at face value, without looking at the broader scope of its activities.

The Muslim Brotherhood

The situation in Germany is particularly telling. More than anywhere else in Europe, the Muslim Brotherhood in Germany has gained significant power and political acceptance. Islamist organizations in other European countries now consciously follow the model pioneered by their German peers.

During the 1950s and 1960s, thousands of Muslim students left the Middle East to study at German universities, drawn not only by the German institutions' technical reputations but also by a desire to escape repressive regimes. Egyptian ruler Gamal Abdel Nasser's regime was especially vigorous in its attempts to root out the Islamist opposition. Beginning in 1954, several members of the Muslim Brotherhood fled Egypt to escape arrest or assassination. West Germany provided a welcome refuge. Bonn's motivations were not simply altruistic. As terrorism expert Khalid Durán explained in his studies on jihadism in Europe,[3] the West German government had decided to cut diplomatic relations with countries that recognized East Germany. When Egypt and Syria established diplomatic relations with the communist government, Bonn decided to welcome Syrian and Egyptian political refugees. Often, these dissidents were Islamists. Many members of the Muslim Brotherhood were already familiar with Germany. Several had cooperated with the Nazis before and during World War II.[4] Some had even, reportedly, fought in the infamous Bosnian Handschar division of the Schutzstaffel (SS).[5]

One of the Muslim Brotherhood's first pioneers in Germany was Sa‘id Ramadan, the personal secretary of Muslim Brotherhood founder Hassan al-Banna.[6] Ramadan, an Egyptian who had led the Muslim Brotherhood's irregulars in Palestine in 1948,[7] moved to Geneva in 1958 and attended law school in Cologne.[8] In Germany, he founded what has become one of Germany's three main Muslim organizations, the Islamische Gemeinschaft Deutschland (Islamic Society of Germany, IGD), over which he presided from 1958 to 1968.[9] Ramadan also cofounded the Muslim World League,[10] a well-funded organization that the Saudi establishment uses to spread its radical interpretation of Islam throughout the world. The U.S. government closely monitors the activities of the Muslim World League, which it accuses of financing terrorism. In March 2002, a U.S. Treasury Department-led task force raided the group's Northern Virginia offices looking for documents tying the group to Al-Qaeda, Hamas, and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. In January 2004, the Senate Finance Committee asked the Internal Revenue Service for its records on the Muslim World League "as part of an investigation into possible links between nongovernmental organizations and terrorist financing networks."[11] This privileged relationship with the oil-rich kingdom granted Ramadan an influx of money, which he used to fund the powerful Islamic Center of Geneva and to bankroll several financial and religious activities. Hani Ramadan, Sa‘id's son, currently runs the Islamic Center. Among its other board members is Sa‘id's other son, Tariq Ramadan, who recently made headlines in the United States when the Department of Homeland Security revoked his visa to teach at Notre Dame University.[12] Sa‘id Ramadan's case is not isolated.[13]

Following Ramadan's ten-year presidency of the IGD, Pakistani national Fazal Yazdani briefly led the IGD before Ghaleb Himmat, a Syrian with Italian citizenship, took the helm. During his long stewardship (1973-2002), Himmat shuttled between Italy, Austria, Germany, Switzerland and the United States.[14] Intelligence agencies around the world have long scrutinized Himmat's terrorist connections. He is one of the founders of the Bank al-Taqwa, a powerful conglomerate dubbed by Italian intelligence, "Bank of the Muslim Brotherhood," which has financed terrorist groups since the mid-1990s if not earlier.[15] Himmat helped Youssef Nada, one of the Muslim Brotherhood's financial masterminds, run Al-Taqwa and a web of companies headquartered in locations such as Switzerland, Liechtenstein, and the Bahamas, which maintain few regulations on monetary origin or destination. Both Himmat and Nada reportedly funneled large sums to groups such as Hamas and the Algerian Islamic Salvation Front[16] and set up a secret credit line for a top associate of Osama bin Laden.[17]

In November 2001, the U.S. Treasury Department designated both Himmat and Nada as terrorism financiers.[18] According to Italian intelligence, the Al-Taqwa network also financed several Islamic centers throughout Europe[19] and many Islamist publications, including Risalatul Ikhwan,[20] the official magazine of the Muslim Brotherhood. After the U.S. Treasury Department designation, Himmat resigned from the IGD's presidency. His successor was Ibrahim el-Zayat, a 36-year-old of Egyptian descent and the charismatic leader of numerous student organizations.

The fact that IGD leaders Ramadan and Himmat are among the most prominent Muslim Brotherhood members of the last half-century suggests the links between the IGD and the Ikhwan. Moreover, reports issued by internal intelligence agencies from various German states openly call the IGD an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood.[21] In particular, according to one intelligence report, the Egyptian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood has dominated the IGD since its early days.[22]

The Muslim Brotherhood—led by Ramadan and Himmat[23]—sponsored the construction of the imposing Islamic Center of Munich in 1960,[24] aided by large donations from Middle Eastern rulers such as King Fahd of Saudi Arabia who, according to a 1967 Sueddeutsche Zeitung article, donated 80,000 marks.[25] The Ministry of Interior of Nordrhein-Westfalen states that the Islamic Center of Munich has been one of the European headquarters for the Brotherhood since its foundation.[26] The center publishes a magazine, Al-Islam, whose efforts (according to an Italian intelligence dossier),[27] are financed by the Bank al-Taqwa. According to the interior minister of Baden-Württemberg, Al-Islam shows explicitly how the German Brothers reject the concept of a secular state.[28] Its February 2002 issue, for example, states,

In the long run, Muslims cannot be satisfied with the acceptance of German family, estate, and trial law. … Muslims should aim at an agreement between the Muslims and the German state with the goal of a separate jurisdiction for Muslims.

The IGD, of which the Islamic Center of Munich is one of the most important members, represents the main offshoot of the Egyptian Brotherhood in Germany. But the IGD is also the quintessential example of how the Muslim Brotherhood has gained power in Europe. The IGD has grown significantly over the years, and it now incorporates dozens of Islamic organizations throughout the country. Islamic centers from more than thirty German cities have joined its umbrella.[29] Today, the IGD's real strength lies in its cooperation with and sponsorship of many Islamic youth and student organizations across Germany.

This focus on youth organizations came after Zayat's succession. He understood the importance of focusing on the next generation of German Muslims and launched recruitment drives to get young Muslims involved in Islamic organizations. But a Meckenheim police report on the sharply dressed Zayat also reveals alarming connections. German authorities openly say he is a member of the Muslim Brotherhood. They also link him to the World Assembly of Muslim Youth (WAMY), a Saudi nongovernmental organization that seeks to spread Wahhabism, the radical and intolerant Saudi interpretation of Islam, throughout the world with its literature and schools.[30] WAMY, which falls under the umbrella of the Muslim World League, has the stated goal of "arming the Muslim youth with full confidence in the supremacy of the Islamic system over other systems." It is the largest Muslim youth organization in the world and can boast unparalleled resources.[31] In 1991 WAMY published a book called Tawjihat Islamiya (Islamic Views) that stated, "Teach our children to love taking revenge on the Jews and the oppressors, and teach them that our youngsters will liberate Palestine and Al-Quds [Jerusalem] when they go back to Islam and make jihad for the sake of Allah."[32] The sentiments in Tawjihat Islamiya are the rule rather than the exception. Many other WAMY publications are filled with strong anti-Semitic and anti-Christian rhetoric.

Meckenheim police also link Zayat to Institut Européen des Sciences Humaines, a French school that prepares European imams. Several radical clerics lecture at the school and several European intelligence agencies accuse the school of spreading religious hatred.[33] German authorities also highlight the fact that he is involved in several money laundering investigations.[34] Zayat has never been indicted for terrorist activity, but he has dubious financial dealings and maintains associations with many organizations that spread religious hatred. The IGD may have changed leadership after the U.S. Treasury's designation of Himmat, but it did not change direction.

While the Egyptian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood has chosen Munich as its base of operations in Germany, its Syrian branch is headquartered in Aachen, a German town near the Dutch border. The former Carolingian capital, with its famous university, is now home to a large Muslim population including the prominent Syrian Al-Attar family. The first Attar to move to Aachen was Issam, who fled persecution in his native country in the 1950s when he was leader of the Syrian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood. Other members of the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood soon followed. With time, Islamists from other countries adopted Attar's Bilal mosque in Aachen as their base of operations.[35] From hosting exiled Algerian terrorists[36] to operating a charity designated by the U.S. Department of Treasury as a financial front for Hamas,[37] Aachen is well known to intelligence agencies throughout the world.

The Syrian Muslim Brotherhood base in Aachen kept close relations with their Egyptian counterparts. For example, confirming the tendency of important Muslim Brotherhood families to close alliance through intermarriage, Issam al-Attar's son married the daughter of Al-Taqwa banker Youssef Nada.[38] Links between the two Muslim Brotherhood branches are more extensive than a single marriage, however. The Aachen Islamic Center reportedly received funding from Al-Taqwa.[39] Staff members have rotated between the Islamic Centers in Aachen and Munich. For example, Ahmed von Denffer, editor of the Islamic Center of Munich's Al-Islam magazine, came to Munich from Aachen.[40] Nevertheless, some distance remains. The Syrian Muslim Brotherhood has never joined the IGD, instead preferring to keep some form of independence.

Milli Görüş

Of all of Zayat's financial activities, the one that has attracted the German authorities' greatest suspicion has been his association with officials of Milli Görüş (National Vision, in Turkish). Milli Görüş, which has 30,000 members and perhaps another 100,000 sympathizers,[41] claims to defend the rights of Germany's immigrant Turkish population, giving them a voice in the democratic political arena while "preserving their Islamic identity."[42] But Milli Görüş has another agenda. While publicly declaring its interest in democratic debate and a willingness to see Turkish immigrants integrated into European societies, some Milli Görüş leaders have expressed contempt for democracy and Western values. The Bundesverfassungsschutz, Germany's domestic intelligence agency, has repeatedly warned about Milli Görüş' activities, describing the group in its annual reports as a "foreign extremist organization."[43] The agency also reported that "although Milli Görüş, in public statements, pretends to adhere to the basic principles of Western democracies, abolition of the laicist government system in Turkey and the establishment of an Islamic state and social system are, as before, among its goals."[44]

Milli Görüş' history alone indicates why the group should be considered radical. Former Turkish prime minister Nehmettin Erbakan, whose Refah Party was banned by the Turkish Constitutional Court in January of 1998 for "activities against the country's secular regime,"[45] is still Milli Görüş' undisputed leader, even if his nephew Mehmet Sabri Erbakan is its president. The 2002 European Milli Görüş meeting held in the Dutch city of Arnhem, where Nehmettin Erbakan was the keynote speaker, provides a glimpse into Milli Görüş' ideology. After a tirade against the evils of integration in the West and U.S. policies, Erbakan declared that "after the fall of the wall, the West has found an enemy in Islam."[46] A Bundesverfassungsschutz report reveals Milli Görüş' real aims:

While in recent times, the Milli Görüş has increasingly emphasized the readiness of its members to be integrated into German society and asserts its adherence to the basic law, such statements stem from tactical calculation rather than from any inner change of the organization.[47]

Milli Görüş pushes an agenda similar to that of the IGD, even if its target is more limited. Nevertheless, both Milli Görüş and the IGD collaborate on many initiatives. There is also a family connection. Zayat married Sabiha Erbakan, the sister of Mehmet Sabri Erbakan.[48] The siblings' mother is also involved in politics and runs an important Islamic women's organization in Germany. The Zayat family is active as well. Ibrahim el-Zayat's father is the imam of the Marburg mosque; other members of his family are involved in Islamic organizations. As Udo Ulfkotte, a political science professor specializing in counterespionage at the University of Lueneburg and an expert on Islamic terrorism, notes, the Erbakans and the Zayats lead networks of organizations that aim at the radicalization, respectively, of the Turkish and Arab communities in Germany.[49]

IGD and Milli Görüş are active in their efforts to increase political influence and become the official representatives of the entire German Muslim community. With well-endowed budgets, their mosques provide social services, organize conferences, and distribute literature nationwide. As the Office for the Protection of the Constitution (Landesverfassungsschutz) in Hessen[50] notes:

The threat of Islamism for Germany is posed … primarily by Milli Görüş and other affiliated groups. They try to spread Islamist views within the boundaries of the law. Then they try to implement … for all Muslims in Germany a strict interpretation of the Qur'an and of the Shari‘a. … Their public support of tolerance and religious freedom should be treated with caution.[51]

It presents a problem that politicians and security services in Germany view the IGD and Milli Görüş so differently. But, as Ulfkotte wrote about Zayat in his book, Der Krieg in unseren Staedten (The War in Our Cities),[52] "politicians of all colors and parties try to reach out to him."[53] For example, the prestigious Berlin Catholic Academy invited Zayat to represent the Muslim point of view in an inter-religious meeting organized by the academy in October 2002.[54] German politicians and Christian institutions regularly partner themselves with Milli Görüş in various initiatives. Milli Gazete, the official journal of Milli Görüş, once stated that "Milli Görüş is a shield protecting our fellow citizens from assimilation into barbaric Europe."[55] Nevertheless, German politicians meet regularly with Milli Görüş officials to discuss immigration and integration issues. The fact that an official like Ahmed al-Khalifah, IGD secretary general, represents Islam before members of parliament who are discussing religious tolerance,[56] shows the success of Brotherhood-linked organizations' efforts to gain acceptance as the representatives of German Muslims. The Office for the Protection of the Constitution well described these efforts, saying that Milli Görüş (and the IGD) "strives to dominate regional or nationwide federations and umbrella organizations for Muslims which are increasingly gaining importance as interlocutors for state and ecclesiastical authorities and thus to expand its influence within society."[57]

Zentralrat, the Islamist Umbrella

In 1989, under the auspices of Abdullah at-Turki, powerful dean of Bin Saud University in Riyadh, the Saudis created the Islamische Konzil Deutschland (Islamic Council of Germany). Turki assumed the presidency with other top positions held by Ibrahim el-Zayat, Hasan Özdögan, a high-ranking Milli Görüş official, and Ahmad Khalifa, an officer from the Islamic Center of Munich.[58] While an official German parliament report describes the Islamische Konzil as just "another Sunni organization," such an assumption indicates a dangerous misunderstanding of the Saudi relationship to German Islamists.[59]

The trend toward consolidation took a step forward in 1994 when German Islamists realized that a united coalition translated into greater political relevance and influence. Nineteen organizations, including the IGD, the Islamic Center of Munich, and the Islamic Center of Aachen, created an umbrella organization, the Zentralrat der Muslime. According to a senior German intelligence official, at least nine out of these nineteen organizations belong to the Muslim Brotherhood.[60] The German press has recently investigated the Zentralrat president, Nadeem Elyas, a German-educated Saudi physician and an official of the Islamic Center of Aachen. Die Welt linked Elyas to Christian Ganczarski, an Al-Qaeda operative currently jailed as one of the masterminds of the 2002 attack on a synagogue in Tunisia.[61] Ganczarski, a German of Polish descent who converted to Islam, told authorities that Al-Qaeda recruited him at the Islamic University of Medina where Elyas sent him to study.[62] Elyas said he could not remember meeting him but did not deny the possibility that Ganczarski, who never completed high school, might have been one of the many individuals he had sent over the years to radical schools in Saudi Arabia.[63] Saudi donors paid all of Ganczarski's expenses.[64] Ganczarski was not alone. Elyas admitted to having sent hundreds of German Muslims to study at one of the most radical universities in Saudi Arabia.[65]

The Zentralrat, which portrays itself as the umbrella organization for German Muslim organizations, has become, together with the IGD and Milli Görüş, the de facto representative of three million German Muslims. Even though the IGD is a member of the Zentralrat, the two organizations often operate independently. Their apparent independence is planned. With many organizations operating under different names, the Muslim Brotherhood fools German politicians who believe they are consulting a spectrum of opinion.[66] The media seek the Zentralrat's officials when they want the Muslim view on everything from the debate about the admissibility of the hijab (headscarf) in public schools, to the war in Iraq, and so forth. Politicians seek the Zentralrat's endorsement when they want to reach out to the Muslim community. Many German politicians are uninformed about Islam and do not understand that the view and the interpretation of Islam that the Zentralrat expresses, as does the IGD and Milli Görüş, is that of the Muslim Brotherhood and not that of traditional Islam. Accordingly, the Zentralrat expresses total opposition to any ban of the hijab, supports Wahhabi-influenced Islamic education in schools, and endorses a radical position on the Middle East situation.[67] While many Muslims endorse these views, the problem is that the Zentralrat neither represents nor tolerates those with divergent views. Moderate German Muslim groups lack the funding and organization of Muslim Brotherhood-linked groups. In terms of numbers, influence on the Muslim community, and political relevance, the Zentralrat and its two most important constituent parts, the IGD and Milli Görüş, dominate the scene. With ample Saudi financing, the Muslim Brotherhood has managed to become the voice of the Muslims in Germany.

Recently, the German public was shocked to hear what is preached inside Saudi-funded mosques and schools. In the fall of 2003, a hidden camera-equipped journalist from Germany's ARD television infiltrated the Saudi-built King Fahd Academy in Bonn and taped what it taught to young Muslim children. One teacher called for jihad against the infidels.[68] While the images elicited a rebuke from German politicians, the rather sterile debate about Saudi influence on German Muslims has not effected tangible change. Saudi officials and Saudi-run nongovernmental organizations continue to groom Muslim Brotherhood organizations.

First Germany, Then Europe

While the Muslim Brotherhood and their Saudi financiers have worked to cement Islamist influence over Germany's Muslim community, they have not limited their infiltration to Germany. Thanks to generous foreign funding, meticulous organization, and the naïveté of European elites, Muslim Brotherhood-linked organizations have gained prominent positions throughout Europe. In France, the extremist Union des Organisations Islamiques de France (Union of Islamic Organizations of France) has become the predominant organization in the government's Islamic Council.[69] In Italy, the extremist Unione delle Comunita' ed Organizzazioni Islamiche in Italia (Union of the Islamic Communities and Organizations in Italy) is the government's prime partner in dialogue regarding Italian Islamic issues.[70]

In parallel to European Union integration efforts, the Muslim Brotherhood is also seeking to integrate its various European proxies. Over the past fifteen years, the Muslim Brotherhood has created a series of pan-European organizations such as the Federation of Islamic Organizations in Europe, in which representatives from national organizations can meet and plan initiatives.[71] Perhaps the Muslim Brotherhood's greatest pan-European impact has, as with the Islamische Gemeinschaft Deutschland, been with its youth organization. In June 1996, Muslim youth organizations from Sweden, France, and England joined forces with the Federation of Islamic Organizations in Europe and the World Assembly of Muslim Youth to create a European Islamic youth organization.[72] Three months later, thirty-five delegates from eleven countries met in Leicester and formally launched the Forum of European Muslim Youth and Student Organizations (FEMYSO), which maintains its headquarters in Brussels.[73]

According to its official publications, FEMYSO is "a network of 42 national and international organizations bringing together youth from over 26 different countries." FEMYSO proudly stated in 2003 that over the preceding four years it had become

The de facto voice of the Muslim youth in Europe. It is regularly consulted on issues pertaining to Muslims in Europe. It has also developed useful links with: the European Parliament, the Council of Europe, the United Nations, the European Youth Forum, and numerous relevant NGOs at the European level.[74]

Ibrahim el-Zayat, who held the presidency until his commitments in Germany forced him to step down, even used the FEMYSO perch to address the European Parliament.[75] Because the Muslim Brotherhood provides the bulk of FEMYSO's constituent organizations, it provides the "de facto voice of the Muslim youth in Europe." While FEMYSO claims that it "is committed to fighting prejudices at all the levels, so that the future of Europe is a multicultural, inclusive and respectful one,"[76] such statements ring hollow given the position of sponsors like the World Assembly of Muslim Youth which believes that "the Jews are enemies of the faithful, God, and the Angels; the Jews are humanity's enemies. … Every tragedy that inflicts the Muslims is caused by the Jews."[77]

The Muslim Brotherhood's ample funds and organization have contributed to their success in Europe. But their acceptance into mainstream society and their unchallenged rise to power would not have been possible had European elites been more vigilant, valued substance over rhetoric, and understood the motivations of those financing and building these Islamist organizations. Why have Europeans been so naïve? Bassam Tibi, a German professor of Syrian descent and an expert on Islam in Europe, thinks that Europeans—and Germans in particular—fear the accusation of racism.[78] Radicals in sheep's clothing have learned that they can silence almost everybody with the accusation of xenophobia. Any criticism of Muslim Brotherhood-linked organizations is followed by outcries of racism and anti-Muslim persecution. Journalists who are not frightened by these appellatives are swamped with baseless and unsuccessful but expensive lawsuits.

In some cases, politicians simply fail to check the backgrounds of those who claim to be legitimate representatives for the Muslim community. As in the United States, self-described representatives for the Muslim community are far more radical than the populations they represent. In other cases, politicians realize that these organizations are not the ideal counterparts in a constructive dialogue but do not take the time to seek other less visible but more moderate organizations, several of which exist only at the grassroots level, impeded by financial constraints.

What most European politicians fail to understand is that by meeting with radical organizations, they empower them and grant the Muslim Brotherhood legitimacy. There is an implied endorsement to any meeting, especially when the same politicians ignore moderate voices that do not have access to generous Saudi funding. This creates a self-perpetuating cycle of radicalization because the greater the political legitimacy of the Muslim Brotherhood, the more opportunity it and its proxy groups will have to influence and radicalize various European Muslim communities. The ultimate irony is that Muslim Brotherhood founder Hassan al-Banna dreamed of spreading Islamism throughout Egypt and the Muslim world. He would have never dreamed that his vision might also become a reality in Europe.

Diversity and Multiculturalism: The New Racism

Multiculturalism - The ugly Marxist Social engineering wrapped in the mindnumbing Political Correctness - An attack on individualism and reason - multiculturalism is perhaps one of the most evil and destructive concepts of our time.



Diversity and Multiculturalism: The New Racism
By Michael S. Berliner and Gary Hull

Is ethnic diversity an “absolute essential” of a college education?
UCLA’s Chancellor Charles Young thinks so. Ethnic diversity is clearly the purpose of affirmative action, which Young is defending against a long-overdue assault. But far from being essential to a college education, such diversity is a sure road to its destruction. “Ethnic diversity” is merely racism in a politically correct disguise.

Many people have a very superficial view of racism. They see it as merely the belief that one race is superior to another. It is much more than that. It is a fundamental (and fundamentally wrong) view of human nature. Racism is the notion that one’s race determines one’s identity. It is the belief that one’s convictions, values and character are determined not by the judgment of one’s mind but by one’s anatomy or “blood.”

This view causes people to be condemned (or praised) based on their racial membership. In turn, it leads them to condemn or praise others on the same basis. In fact, one can gain an authentic sense of pride only from one’s own achievements, not from inherited characteristics.
The spread of racism requires the destruction of an individual’s confidence in his own mind. Such an individual then anxiously seeks a sense of identity by clinging to some group, abandoning his autonomy and his rights, allowing his ethnic group to tell him what to believe. Because he thinks of himself as a racial entity, he feels “himself” only among others of the same race. He becomes a separatist, choosing his friends—and enemies—based on ethnicity.
This separatism has resulted in the spectacle of student-segregated dormitories and segregated graduations.
The diversity movement claims that its goal is to extinguish racism and build tolerance of differences.

This is a complete sham.

One cannot teach students that their identity is determined by skin color and expect them to become colorblind.
One cannot espouse multiculturalism and expect students to see each other as individual human beings.
One cannot preach the need for self-esteem while destroying the faculty which makes it possible: reason.
One cannot teach collective identity and expect students to have self-esteem.

Advocates of “diversity” are true racists in the basic meaning of that term: they see the world through colored lenses, colored by race and gender. To the multiculturalist, race is what counts—for values, for thinking, for human identity in general. No wonder racism is increasing:
colorblindness is now considered evil, if not impossible.

No wonder people don’t treat each other as individuals: to the multiculturalist, they aren’t.

Advocates of “diversity” claim it will teach students to tolerate and celebrate their differences. But the “differences” they have in mind are racial differences, which means we’re being urged to glorify race, which means we’re being asked to institutionalize separatism. “Racial identity” erects an unbridgeable gulf between people, as though they were different species, with nothing fundamental in common.
If that were true—if “racial identity” determined one’s values and thinking methods—there would be no possibility for understanding or cooperation among people of different races.
Advocates of “diversity” claim that because the real world is diverse, the campus should reflect that fact. But why should a campus population “reflect” the general population (particularly the ethnic population)?

No answer.

In fact, the purpose of a university is to impart knowledge and develop reasoning, not to be a demographic mirror of society.
Racism, not any meaningful sense of diversity, guides today’s intellectuals.
The educationally significant diversity that exists in “the real world” is intellectual diversity, i.e., the diversity of ideas. But such diversity—far from being sought after—is virtually forbidden on campus.
The existence of “political correctness” blasts the academics’ pretense at valuing real diversity. What they want is abject conformity.
The only way to eradicate racism on campus is to scrap racist programs and the philosophic ideas that feed racism. Racism will become an ugly memory only when universities teach a valid concept of human nature: one based on the tenets that the individual’s mind is competent, that the human intellect is efficacious, that we possess free will, that individuals are to be judged as individuals— and that deriving one’s identity from one’s race is a corruption—a corruption appropriate to Nazi Germany, not to a nation based on freedom and independence.

The European Union and the Islamization of Europe

Here is the latest essay from one my preferred Political Anakysts, Fjordman:


Hugh Fitzgerald of Jihad Watch recently suggested a number of things Europeans can do to halt Islamization. The proposals were good, but I think we should focus on the most important obstacle: the European Union. I've suggested in the past that the EU is the principal motor behind the Islamization of Europe, and that the entire organization needs to be dismantled as soon as possible, otherwise nothing substantial can ever be done about the Muslim invasion. At the Gates of Vienna blog, I am writing a text called "Ten Reasons to Get Rid of the European Union," which can be translated into other languages and be republished when it is completed.

As Bat Ye'or demonstrates in her book Eurabia: The Euro-Arab Axis, senior EU leaders have actively been working for years to merge Europe with the Arab world. They are now feeling confident enough to say this openly. The British Foreign Minister David Miliband in November 2007 stated that the European Union should work towards including Middle Eastern and North African countries, as this would "extend stability." He also said that the EU must "keep our promises to Turkey" regarding EU membership.

The EU involves the free movement of people across borders. If it expands to the Middle East, hundreds of millions of Muslims will have free access to Germany, Italy, France, Britain, Sweden, the Czech Republic and Austria. If Turkey becomes a member, it means that Greeks, Bulgarians and others who have fought against oppression by Ottoman Turks for centuries will now be flooded with Muslims from a rapidly re-Islamizing Turkey. The same goes for Poles, Hungarians, Romanians and others who fought against Muslims for centuries.

The EU's Justice and Security Commissioner Franco Frattini states that Europe must relax its immigration controls and open the door to an extra 20 million "Africans and Asians" during the next two decades. Most of these "Africans and Asians" come from the predominantly Muslim countries of North Africa and the Greater Middle East. The EU thus decided to flood Europe with tens of millions of Muslims at the same time as peaceful Europeans demonstrating against the Islamization of Europe were brutally harassed by the police in the EU capital of Brussels. Frattini has also banned the use of the phrase Islamic terrorism: "People who commit suicide attacks or criminal activities on behalf of religion, Islamic religion or other religion, they abuse the name of this religion." He thinks we shouldn't use the word "immigration," either, we should talk about "mobility."

While Dutch politicians, in what was until recently a peaceful country, have been killed for being too critical of Islam, while Islamic terror attacks have murdered people in London and Madrid, while more terror attacks are planned every single day from Italy via Paris to Denmark, and while people from Sweden to Germany are subject to Muslim street violence and harassment, EU leaders want to increase Europe's Muslim population by tens of millions in a few years. This is criminal and evil, pure and simple.

In Cologne, Germany, a Muslim teenager who wanted to mug a 20-year-old German man was killed in an act of self-defense, according to witnesses. This led to angry protests from Muslims. Apparently, non-Muslims are not supposed to defend themselves from attacks. This violence is usually labelled "crime," but I believe it should more accurately be called Jihad.

Those who know Islamic history, as described in books such as The Truth About Muhammad by Robert Spencer or The Legacy of Jihad by Dr. Andrew G. Bostom, know that looting and stealing the property of non-Muslims has been part and parcel of Jihad from the very beginning. In fact, so much of the behavior of Muhammad and early Muslims could be deemed criminal that it is difficult to know where crime ends and Jihad begins. In the city of Oslo, it is documented that some of the criminal gangs also have close ties to Jihadist groups at home and abroad. As Dutch Arabist Hans Jansen points out, the Koran is seen by some Muslims as a God-given "hunting licence," granting them the right to assault and even murder non-Muslims. It is hardly accidental that while Muslims make up a minority of the population in France, they make up an estimated seventy percent of French prison inmates.

Why would anybody in their right mind want to import Islam, the most destructive force on the planet? Are EU leaders naïve? I don't think so, at least not all of them. You cannot maintain political power in the long run if you are totally naive.

We are told to treat cultural and historical identities as fashion accessories, shirts we can wear and change at will. The Multicultural society is "colorful," an adjective normally attached to furniture or curtains. Cultures are window decorations of little or no consequence, and one might as well have one as the other. In fact, it is good to change it every now and then. Don't you get tired of that old sofa sometimes? What about exchanging it for the new sharia model? Sure, it's slightly less comfortable than the old one, but it's very much in vogue these days and sets you apart from the neighbors, at least until they get one, too. Do you want a sample of the latest Calvin Klein perfume to go with that sharia?

I have heard individuals state point blank that even if Muslims become the majority in our countries in the future, this doesn't matter because all people are equal and all cultures are just a mix of everything else, anyway. And since religions are just fairy-tales, replacing one fairy-tale with another one won't make a big difference. All religions basically say that the same things in different ways. However, not one of them would ever dream of saying that all political ideologies "basically mean the same thing." They simply don't view religious or cultural ideas as significant, and thus won't spend time on studying the largely unimportant details of each specific creed.

In The Suicide of Reason: Radical Islam's Threat to the West, Lee Harris writes that: "What strikes us as irrationalities in the economic systems of Third World nations, such as the red tape documented by [Peruvian economist Hernando] de Soto, is not irrational at all from the point of view of the dominant elite: It is part of what keeps them dominant. With enough red tape, they can stay king of the mountain forever."

This reminds me a great deal of what the EU is doing, attempting to create a permanent oligarchy by keeping the native population in line though a combination of confusion, bureaucracy and intimidation from imported Muslims.

Far from being an irrelevant detail, religion is the heart and blood of any civilization. The greatest change (until now) in my country's history was when we adopted Christianity instead of the Norse religion. This changed the entire fabric of our culture. We became integrated into the mainstream of Western civilization at about the same time as we went from being a tribal society to a genuine state. Maybe Christianity helped in creating the foundations of nation states with an individualistic culture. If so, perhaps changing the religion is beneficial for those who want to replace nation states with authoritarian transnational entities, for instance the European Union. Islamic societies are always authoritarian. Those who want to abolish the democratic system and rule as an unaccountable oligarchy thus naturally prefer Islam.

The EU is an awful organization even if you don't take Muslim immigration into account. Former Soviet dissident Vladimir Bukovksy, who is not particularly preoccupied with Islam, fears that the European Union is on its way to becoming another Soviet Union: "The sooner we finish with the EU the better. The sooner it collapses the less damage it will have done to us and to other countries."

The brilliant French political thinker Montesquieu advocated that the executive, legislative, and judicial branches of government should be assigned to different bodies, each of them not powerful enough alone to impose its will on society. This is because "constant experience shows us that every man invested with power is apt to abuse it, and to carry his authority as far as it will go." This separation of powers is almost totally absent in the EU, where there is weak to non-existent separation between the legislative, the executive and the judicial branches, and where all of them function more or less without the consent of the public.

As Montesquieu warned, "When the legislative and executive powers are united in the same person, or in the same body of magistrates, there can be no liberty; because apprehensions may arise, lest the same monarch or senate should enact tyrannical laws, to execute them in a tyrannical manner." He also stated that "Useless laws weaken the necessary laws." The problem with the EU is not just the content of laws, but their volume. Law-abiding citizens are turned into criminals by laws regulating speech and behavior, while real criminals rule the streets. This will either lead to a police state, to a total breakdown in law and order, or both.

At least two conditions must be fulfilled in order to prevent the arbitrary use of power. The first one is a system of formal checks and balances, giving the possibility of peacefully removing officials who are not doing their job. The second is transparency, so people know what their representatives are doing. The EU deliberately ignores both these conditions, but especially the latter. Vast quantities of power have been transferred to shady backrooms and structures the average citizen hardly knows exist. Eurabia was created through such channels.

The pompous former French president Valéry Giscard d'Estaing declared that the creation of the proposed EU Constitution was Europe's "Philadelphia moment," alluding to the Philadelphia Convention or Constitutional Convention in the newly formed the United States of America in 1787. The USA has its flaws, but if Mr. Giscard d'Estaing had actually understood the American Constitution, he would have discovered that James Madison, Thomas Jefferson and others took great care to implement a number of checks and balances in the new state, precisely what is lacking in the EU. The American constitution is relatively short and understandable, whereas the EU Constitution is hundreds of pages long, largely incomprehensible and displays an almost sharia-like desire to regulate all aspects of human life. After it was rejected by Dutch and French voters, the Constitution has been renamed and is now being smuggled through the back door.

Madison, Jefferson, George Washington and the American Founding Fathers acted in the open and were generally elected by their peers and applauded for their actions. Contrast this with Jean Monnet, who is credited with having laid the foundations of the EU, despite the fact that most EU citizens haven't heard of him. He was never elected to any public office, but worked behind the scenes to implement a secret agenda. I read an interview with a senior Brussels lobbyist who dubbed Monnet "the most successful lobbyist in history." To this day, the EU capital of Brussels is dominated by lobbyists. The Americans in Washington D.C. have their fair share of lobbyists, too, and this can be problematic at times. The difference is that the EU capital is dominated ONLY by lobbyists and unelected bureaucrats, with little real popular influence. Those who read the excellent British blog EU Referendum regularly will know that this secretive modus operandi is still very much alive in the European Union.

Frankly, I don't think the EU has the right to use the term "European." Those inhabiting the European continent are first and foremost Germans, Dutchmen, Poles, Italians, Hungarians, Portuguese etc. "Europe" has existed mainly to protect the continent against Islamic expansionism. Charles Martel created Europe when he defeated the Arab invasion in the seventh century, aided by people such as Pelayo, who started the Reconquista in the Iberian Peninsula, John Hunyadi and Lazar of Serbia who fought against the Turks in the Balkans and John III Sobieski, King of Poland, who beat the Ottomans during the 1683 Battle of Vienna. The EU is actively trying to undo everything Charles Martel and these men achieved. This makes it the anti-European Union, an evil organization with no moral legitimacy whatsoever.

The EU is gradually reducing the indigenous people of an entire continent to the likely future status of second-rate citizen in their own countries. It is quite possibly the greatest betrayal in the history of European civilization since the fall of the Roman Empire, yet it is hailed as a "peace project" in the media. It is shameful to witness the bullying displayed by EU leaders vis-à-vis the Serbs, who are being forced to give up their land to Muslim thugs. This template will eventually be used against all Europeans. As Srdja Trifkovic warns, even if the Serbs are robbed of Kosovo, Muslims will not thank the West:

"In Europe most nations want to defend themselves—even the ultra-tolerant Dutch have seen the light after Theo van Gogh's murder—but cannot do so because they are hamstrung by a ruling class composed of guilt-ridden self-haters and appeasers. Their hold on the political power, the media, and the academe is undemocratic, unnatural, obscene. If Europe is to survive they need to be unmasked for what they are: traitors to their nations and their culture. If Europe is to survive, they must be replaced by people ready and willing to subject the issues of immigration and identity to the test of democracy, unhindered by administrative or judicial fiat. For those reasons too, Serbia must not give up Kosovo. By giving it up it would encourage the spirit that seeks the death of Europe and its surrender to the global totalitarianism of Muhammad's successors. Not for the first time, in Kosovo the Serbs are fighting a fight that is not theirs alone."

Some hope we can keep the "positive" aspects of the EU and not "throw out the baby with the bath water." I beg to differ. The EU is all bath water, no baby. The EU got off on the wrong path from its very inception, and is now so flawed that it simply cannot be reformed. Appeasement of Islam is so deeply immersed in the structural DNA of the EU that the only way to stop the Islamization of Europe is to dismantle the European Union. All of it.

Ten Reasons to Get Rid of the European Union — A First Draft

Fjordman is one of the sharpest political analysts around and has written a number of essays and analysis of an exceptional exellence - His initiative 'Ten Reasons To Get Rid Of The European Union' is an important step in working to preserve and defend our freedoms, our superb and rich European cultures, identities and our right to exist as people in our native lands.

The creation of a Supranational State such as the European Union is nothing short of a new form of totalitarianism and a blue print for tyranny - In order to impose multiculturalism upon an existing culture and society it is necessary to eliminate and destroy the host culture and the fabrics of the existing society in the respective nation states, the Soviet Union was such an example of a Supranational State and could only exist with the Iron-fist of a Totalitarian Communist State.

Former German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt proclaimed that bringing millions of Turkish guest-workers into Germany was a mistake and that multiculturalism can only work under authoritarian regimes. Schmidt told Hamburger Abendblatt reporters that:

“The concept of multiculturalism is difficult to make fit with a democratic society.”

Indeed, multiculturalism was conceived and developed as a Marxist strategy for overthrowing free governments. The former Soviet Union used massive immigration and deportation to dilute the ethnic, cultural, and political cohesion of the peoples of the Baltic states with the objective of making them more compliant and compatible with Soviet rule.

Hundreds of thousands of Estonians, Latvians, and Lithuanians were deported to Siberia, and hundreds of thousands of Russians were moved in to take their places.Lebanon and Kosovo are good examples of what happens, when Muslim immigration and higher Muslim birthrates tip the demographic balance in former majority Christian regions: escalating violence and terrorism, assassinations, and civil war. Most Serbian Christians in Kosovo were forced to flee.

In the European Union, massive immigration has become a tool to reduce the political power of ethnic, religious, or political majorities that might resist the new imperial order.
Besides providing cheap labor, massive immigration has become an instrument for political change and control. More immigration makes resistance to the European Union increasingly difficult. This will be true of the North American Union as well.

Political resistance to the European Union is growing within its twenty-seven member countries. Belgium, established by French revolutionaries in 1830, is an artificial construct dominated by the French-speaking southern region of the country and has been one of the most liberal driving forces in building and governing the EU. Its capitol, Brussels, is both the capitol of the EU and NATO headquarters. Belgium has been dominated by a liberal-socialist coalition since 1999. Yet political resistance in Belgium to the tsunami of Muslim immigration ranks among the strongest in Europe. This resistance is concentrated in Flanders, the more conservative Dutch-speaking northern half of Belgium, with about 59 percent of the population. But because of an uncorrected misallocation of parliamentary seats, the more liberal and socialistic French-speaking minority in the southern half of Belgium continues to dominate the Belgian Parliament. Hence there has always been a movement for Flemish independence.

Ironically the EU has used Belgium to be a showcase that multiculturalism is possible, a Balkanization of Europe as a result of the population experiment called multiculturalism is more than likely to happen, it will only be a question of how bloody we allow ourselves it is going to be down the road if we do not act now.

You can add thought's to the initiative HERE.

Ten Reasons to Get Rid of the European Union — A First Draft

Hello from Fjordman.

I intend to write a text called “Ten Reasons to Get Rid of the European Union” This text will be written with me as editor and contributor, but not necessarily sole writer. I will post some ideas here which can be expanded upon by blog readers. I will then post a second, more elaborate draft, make some changes to that, and then post the final version. It is my intention that this text should be translated into major European languages and be republished or reprinted in various EU countries. If you post comments HERE, you thus give your permission to allow your writings to be incorporated into this text and republished elsewhere.

The proponents of the European Union claim that it is a “peace project.” But the EU is not about peace, it is about war: A demographic and cultural war waged against an entire continent, from the Black Sea to the North Sea, in order to destroy European nation states and build an empire run by self-appointed and unaccountable bureaucrats. This is supported by national politicians in order to enhance their personal power, by creating a larger political entity than their individual nation states and by ridding themselves of the constraints of a democratic society. The EU thus corrupts national political elites into betraying the people they are supposed to serve and protect.

Anthony Coughlan, a senior lecturer at Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland, notes:

At a national level when a minister wants to get something done, he or she must have the backing of the prime minister, must have the agreement of the minister for finance if it means spending money, and above all must have majority support in the national parliament, and implicitly amongst voters in the country. Shift the policy area in question to the supranational level of Brussels however, where laws are made primarily by the 27-member Council of Ministers, and the minister in question becomes a member of an oligarchy, a committee of lawmakers, the most powerful in history, making laws for 500 million Europeans, and irremovable as a group regardless of what it does. National parliaments and citizens lose power with every EU treaty, for they no longer have the final say in the policy areas concerned. Individual ministers on the other hand obtain an intoxicating increase in personal power, as they are transformed from members of the executive arm of government at national level, subordinate to a national legislature, into EU-wide legislators at the supranational.

EU ministers see themselves as political architects of a superpower in the making. They can also free themselves from scrutiny of their actions by elected national parliaments. According to Coughlan, EU integration represents “a gradual coup by government executives against legislatures, and by politicians against the citizens who elect them.” This process is now sucking the reality of power from “traditional government institutions, while leaving these still formally intact. They still keep their old names — parliament, government, supreme court — so that their citizens do not get too alarmed, but their classical functions have been transformed.”

The European Union is basically an attempt by the elites in European nation states to cooperate on usurping power, bypassing and abolishing the democratic system, a slow-motion coup d’état. Ideas such as “promoting peace” or “promoting free trade” are used as a pretext for this, a bone thrown to fool the gullible masses and veil what is essentially a naked power grab.

The European Union is now suppressing free speech across Europe in the name of Multiculturalism and tolerance. Free speech is the hallmark of freedom. When the EU is suppressing free speech, it is repressing freedom itself. The EU has thus become a tyranny, and the laws and regulations it is passing are illegitimate.

The EU is deliberately destroying the cultural traditions of member states by flooding them with non-European immigrants and eradicating native traditions. This is a gross violation of the rights of the indigenous peoples across an entire continent. Forcing native Germans, Brits, Italians, Dutch, Greeks, Swedes or others to fund their own colonization, to suffer abuse and violence in their own countries and watch as their heritage gets extinguished is evil, not tolerant. Native Europeans are taught that we should be grateful for the cultural traditions Pakistanis, Iraqis or Nigerians bring to our countries. We are also told that we “don’t have a culture.” This is an insult to thousands of years of Greco-Roman, Judeo-Christian, Germanic, Celtic and Slavic history. Europe has one of the richest cultural and artistic traditions on the planet. To replace this with sharia barbarism is not just a crime against Europe, it is a crime against humanity.

The European Union is the principal motor behind the Islamization of Europe, perhaps the greatest betrayal in this civilization’s history. Appeasement of Islam and Muslims is so deeply immersed into the structural DNA of the EU that the only way to stop the Islamization of Europe is to get rid of the EU. All of it.

The European Union has created a borderless Europe from Greece to France and from Romania to Spain and Portugal, yet the citizens of these countries still pay the vast majority of their taxes to nation states whose borders are no longer upheld. It is ridiculous to pay up to half of your income to an entity that no longer has any semblance of control with its own territory. Unless national borders are reestablished, the citizens of all EU member states no longer have any obligation to pay taxes. We do, however, have the right to arm ourselves. As the authorities from Berlin via Amsterdam to London and Rome fail spectacularly to uphold law and order, citizens have not just the right, but the duty to arm themselves in order to protect their property and the lives of their loved ones.

The European Union cannot be anything but anti-liberty because it concentrates far too much power in a centralized system that is almost impossible for outsiders to understand. As the Austrian economist Friedrich Hayek warned in The Road to Serfdom:

To imagine that the economic life of a vast area comprising many different people can be directed or planned by democratic procedure betrays a complete lack of awareness of the problems such planning would raise. Planning on an international scale, even more than is true on a national scale, cannot be anything but a naked rule of force, an imposition by a small group on all the rest of that sort of standard and employment which the planners think suitable for the rest.

the large scale. It is no accident that on the whole there was more beauty and decency to be found in the life of the small peoples, and that among the large ones there was more happiness and content in proportion as they had avoided the deadly blight of centralisation. Least of all shall we preserve democracy or foster its growth if all the power and most of the decisions rest with an organisation far too big for the common man to survey or comprehend. Nowhere has democracy ever worked well without a great measure of local self-government, providing a school of political training for the people at large as much as for their future leaders. It is only where responsibility can be learnt and practised in affairs with which most people are familiar, where it is awareness of one’s neighbour rather than some theoretical knowledge of the needs of other people which guides action, that the ordinary man can take a real part in public affairs because they concern the world he knows. Where the scope of the political measures become so large that the necessary knowledge is almost exclusively possessed by the bureaucracy, the creative impulses of the private person must flag.

The European Union is deeply flawed in its basic construction, and cannot function as anything other than an increasingly totalitarian pan-European dictatorship, run by a self-appointed oligarchy. Indeed, there is reason to fear that it was specifically designed that way. There cannot be a European democracy because there is no European demos, no European “nation” with a shared sense of pre-political loyalty. Moreover, power in the EU is concentrated heavily in institutions that are not just above the formal restraints of public consent, but also above the informal restraints of public scrutiny and insight. In short: The EU authorities can do more or less whatever they want to, as they do in relations to the Arab and Islamic world.

We should study the work of the great eighteenth century French thinker Charles Montesquieu, who admired the British political system. He advocated that the executive, legislative, and judicial branches of government should be assigned to different bodies, where each of them would not be powerful enough to impose its will on society. This is because “constant experience shows us that every man invested with power is apt to abuse it, and to carry his authority as far as it will go.” This separation of powers is almost totally absent in the European Union, where there is weak to non-existent separation between the legislative, the executive and indeed the judicial branches, and where all of them function without the consent of the public. In short, a small number of people can draft and implement laws without consulting the people, and these take precedence over the laws passed by elected assemblies. This is a blueprint for a dictatorship.

In 2007, former German president Roman Herzog warned that parliamentary democracy was under threat from the EU. Between 1999 and 2004, 84 percent of the legal acts in Germany — and the majority in all EU member states — stemmed from Brussels. According to Herzog, “EU policies suffer to an alarming degree from a lack of democracy and a de facto suspension of the separation of powers.” Despite this, the EU was largely a non-issue during the 2005 German elections. One gets the feeling that the real issues of substance are not subject to public debate. National elections are becoming an increasingly empty ritual. The important issues have already been settled beforehand behind closed doors. Free citizens should obey laws that are passed with their consent and with the best interests of their nation and people in mind. Most of the laws across the European Union are now not passed by elected national representatives, but by unaccountable EU bureaucrats. As such, the citizens of these nations no longer have any obligation to obey these laws.

As Montesquieu warned, “When the legislative and executive powers are united in the same person, or in the same body of magistrates, there can be no liberty; because apprehensions may arise, lest the same monarch or senate should enact tyrannical laws, to execute them in a tyrannical manner.” He also stated that “Useless laws weaken the necessary laws.” The problem with the EU is not just the content of laws, but their volume. Law-abiding citizens are being turned into criminals by laws regulating speech and behavior, while real criminals rule the streets in our cities. This situation will either lead to a police state, to a total breakdown in law and order, or both.