Wilders: "Our elites...are so blinded by their own ideology that they turn a blind eye to the truth"

Geert Wilders causes outrage in the Dutch Parliament by telling the truth about Western elites.

"Wilders Causes Another Row. Pre-Captivity Stockholm Syndrome," by Thomas Landen in the Brussels Journal, June 1: In November 2008 a Dutch journalist, Joanie de Rijke, was abducted by Taliban fighters in Afghanistan. She was held captive, raped repeatedly, and released after six days for a ransom of 100,000 euros ($137,000). After her ordeal, she acknowledged that her captors “did horrible things to me,” but added in several media interviews “They also respected me,” and emphasized “They are not monsters.”

In a speech in the Dutch Parliament last Thursday, the Dutch opposition leader Geert Wilders referred to Joanie de Rijke’s case.

“She was raped, but she was not angry. The journalist who went looking for the Taliban in Afghanistan saw her curiosity end in a cruel ordeal of multiple rape. While this would make others angry or sad, this journalist shows understanding. She says: ‘They also respected me.’ And she was given tea and biscuits.”

“This story” Wilders said,

“is a perfect illustration of the moral decline of our elites. They are so blinded by their own ideology that they turn a blind eye to the truth. Rape? Well, I would put this into perspective, says the leftist journalist: the Taliban are not monsters. Our elites prefer to deny reality rather than face it. One would expect: a woman is being raped and finds this unbearable. But this journalist is not angry because the Muslim involved also showed respect. Our elites, whether they are politicians, journalists, judges, subsidy gobblers or civil servants, are totally clueless. Plain common sense has been dumped in order to deny reality. It is not just this raped journalist who is suffering from Stockholm syndrome, but the entire Dutch elite. The only moral reference they have is: do not irritate the Muslims – that is the one thing they will condemn.”

Stockholm syndrome is a psychological response sometimes seen in hostages, where the hostage shows signs of loyalty to the hostage-taker, regardless of the danger or risk in which the hostages have been placed.

Wilders’ words caused instant fury on all benches except those of his own party. Parliamentarians and government ministers reacted furiously to his reference to Joanie de Rijke. “You should be ashamed of yourself,” Femke Halsema of the far-left Green Left Party yelled. Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende, a Christian-Democrat, called Wilders’ statement “extremely painful and tasteless.” The PM said the opposition leader was “shamefully abusing” the journalist by turning her “once again into a victim unable to defend herself.”

The Dutch media, too, attacked Wilders. “Everybody is angry with Wilders” the Amsterdam daily Het Parool wrote. Even the conservative weblog De Dagelijkse Standaard headlined: “Geert Wilders insults journalist raped by Taliban.”

Wilders’ remark about the European elites’ “Stockholm Syndrome” seems to have hit a nerve. The Dutch elites – from the left to the right, from the Greens to the Conservatives – tried to distract attention from this by focusing on his alleged “insult” of an abused woman. [...]

In his speech in parliament last week, Geert Wilders argued that the entire Dutch elite is suffering from Stockholm syndrome and behaves in a fashion similar to Joanie de Rijke. Rather than trying to refute Wilders, the Dutch establishment attacked him, accusing him of “immorally abusing de Rijke’s ordeal for his own political goals.” De Rijke, too, said she was appalled at Wilders’ statement. “I did feel angry because of the rape,” she explained, “what I tried to make clear was that the acts of the Taliban cannot be reduced to rape. The fact that I wanted to stress that aspect of my feelings is not the same as the Stockholm syndrome people like Wilders like to talk about. In a war situation people seem only able to think in black and white. I wanted to refine the story. A person is not a monster because he calls himself Taliban.”

Her reaction confirms precisely what Wilders was trying to say. In reality the Taliban are not monsters because they call themselves Taliban, but because they behave like monsters. People like de Rijke, however, no longer judge people by their behavior and their actions, but condone them for the noble motives which they imagine have driven them to commit their acts. As Wilders said, “They are so blinded by their own ideology that they turn a blind eye to the truth.”...