Baltasar Cracian’s book, “The Art of Worldly Wisdom” is widely read and praised all over the world. Many people compare it to Machiavilli’s “The Prince” and Sun Tsu’s “The Art of War”. Most think that this is a wisdom manual for secular success in career, politics and business. This is totally misconceived. Garcian was a Catholic Jesuit and philosopher. Faith and theology are at the centre of his inner world. On the other hand, Jesuits are different from other Catholic Orders. They aim to engage with the secular world. Educated in Thomisic and Aristotolean ethics, it was logical for Gracian to bridge worldliness and the divine. His ethics are known as the philosophy of&nbsp;ingenium,&nbsp;while the virtue of prudence is a form of&nbsp;ingenium. Through the practice of prudence in worldly affairs, one can attain salvation after death. Prudence is a channel linking the world and the divine. Hence, my view is that the English title for the book is misleading. The original Spanish title of the book is “Oraculo Manual y Art de Prudencia”. Prudencia is the virtue of prudence. Gracian aims to encourage people to practise prudence in the world for achieving access to the divine by reading this little manual in daily life. This is a spiritual action treatise, not a self-help book for worldly success in the common understanding of the term.&nbsp;Although the book consists of short maxims, one should read these between the lines with contemplation.&nbsp; We can use the Chinese wisdom approach of “微言大义” (trivial words with great ideas) in reading Gracian’s book, finding out hidden and deeper wisdom for life in parallel with spiritualityThe First MaximEverthing is at its peak of perfection. This is especially true of the art of making one’s way in the world. There is more required nowadays to make a single wise person than formerly to make the Seven Sages of ancient Greece, and more is needed nowadays to deal with a single person than was required with a whole people in former times.The first maxim is essential. This lays the foundation and the core idea of prudence in practice. Gracian thinks that every person can be on the path to perfection to access God, and this way is through practice in the secular world, not in desserts or monasteries. To be wise and to access perfection, a secular person needs to practise his inner mind as did the sages in ancient Greece. However, this is more difficult in the secular world, as he is easily subject to evil temptations. The last sentence has political implications. Firstly, a prudent statesman can lead a nation to win any war even if the enemy has more resources. Secondly, if the leader of your enemy lacks prudence, others can take this weakness as a strategic opportunity.&nbsp;&nbsp;The Second MaximCharacter and intellect. These are the two poles of our capacity: one without the other is but halfway to happiness. Intellect is not enough, character is also needed. On the other hand, it is the fool’s misfortune to fail in obtaining the position, employment, neighbour and circle of friends of his choice.This is the first wisdom to build up a capacity for prudence. Most people value intellect highly, as this can be objectively tested and evaluated. We attended the same lessons and got a similar MBA. However, Gracian taught us to know our character first. God makes each person unique. Sun Tsu said “you will win every time when you know yourself and your enemy fully!” Further, character should match close surroundings because employment, neighbours and circles of friends are your personal strategic assets. The more you know your character, the more prudent you are.The Third MaximKeep matter for a time in suspense. Admiration at their novelty heightens the value of your achievements. It is both useless and insipid to play with your cards on the table. If you do not declare yourself immediately, you arouse expectation, especially when the importance of your position make you the objects of general attention. Mix a little mystery with everything with everything and the very mystery arouses venerations. And when you explain, do not be to explicit, just as you do not expose your inmost thoughts in ordinary conversation. Cautious silence is the sacred sanctuary of worldly wisdom. A resolution declared is never highly though of-it only leaves room for criticism. And if it happens to fail, you are doubly unfortunate. Besides, you imitate the divine way when you inspire people to wonder and watch.God is mysterious and we should learn from God. According to Lao Tzu, we should keep quiet and silence to follow the Tao. Likewise, Gracian told us to close our mouths in an open setting for two strategic aims. One is to arouse expectations among supporters and another is to avoid attacks from enemies. The last sentence clearly taught us to imitate God to make wonders and inspirations. These are also essential for public engagement and even in election campaigns.&nbsp;The Fourth MaximKnowledge and courage. These are the elements of greatness. Because they are immortal they bestow immorality. Each is as much as he knows, and the wise can do anything. A person without knowledge is in a world without light. Wisdom and strength are the eyes and hands. Knowledge without courage is sterile.When one makes prudent decisions, knowledge is necessary. However, not all knowledge is good. We should only acquire knowledge that sheds divine light for immortality and salvation. As a virtue, we need to use good knowledge with courage and persistence even when facing difficulty, denial and criticism. Education and ideology always forbid us to learn fringe knowledge. To Gracian, people will be wise when they have broad knowledge. Directed by divine wisdom, one can even apply this fringe knowledge to create effective strategies.The Fifth Maxim&nbsp;Make people depend on you. It is not he that adorns but he that adores that makes a divinity. The wise person would rather see others needing him than thanking him. To keep them on the threshold of hope is diplomatic, to trust to their gratitude is boorish; hope has a good memory, gratitude a bad one. More is to be got from dependence than from courtesy. He that has satisfied his thirst turns his back on the well, and the orange squeezed falls from the gold platter into the waste basket. When dependence disappears good behaviour goes with it, as well as respect. Let it be one of the chief lessons of experience to keep hope alive without entirely satisfying it, by preserving it to make oneself always needed, even by a patron on the throne. But do not carry silence to excess or you will go wrong, not let another’s failing grow incurable for the sake of your own advantage.God gives us hope. Hope is a virtue. If there is no hope, the relationship will not last long. In human affairs, hope is linked to a variety of dependence: physical, financial, political and even emotional. Gracian taught us to use dependence skilfully. As mentioned in the fourth maxim, keeping silence can sometimes boost dependence as others may make mistakes and come back to you for help. You can be a mysterious mentor for influence and power over that person. However, one should note the last sentence. To be prudent, your silence should not be excess and your interests should not lead to other’s sin. Otherwise, you will not have salvation.&nbsp;&nbsp;According to Gracian, stratagems do not only concern the secular world. When reading these maxims with a spiritual lens, true wisdom for life will be revealed. I hope to share more spiritual treasure of Gracian’s maxims with readers in the future.

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The Spiritual Roots of Baltasar Gracián’s Wisdom

Is it possible to remain ‘pro-Israel’ after all that has happened in the last year or so? Ralf Dekker and FVD think not. We have all been brought up to think of Israel as a model democracy surrounded by Islamist dictatorships, and therefore as our natural ally against our own domestic Islamist threat. But the moral compass has been brutally spun around by Israel’s recent actions in Gaza, Iran and Lebanon. The judgement against these wars is not just a matter of morality, it is also a question of national interest. Israel has dragged the US, and potentially other structurally pro-NATO and pro-US countries like the UK, Germany and the Netherlands, into a war with Iran. Never mind the military risks, the economic risks are extreme and will soon cripple Europe and the world.<a href="https://fvdinternational.com/article/ralf-dekker-on-the-middle-east">Read Ralf Dekker’s speech here</a><img src="/uploads/image_894d4e5598.png">FVD has voted for two motions put down in Parliament, which were carried, calling for the trade component of the EU-Israel association agreement to be suspended. The motions provoked a sharp reaction from the Israeli ambassador to the Netherlands. Ambassador Vapni&nbsp;<a href="https://x.com/vapni/status/2045004083250057514">deplored</a> as ‘shameful’ ‘a dangerous coalition between the radical left and the antisemitic extreme right’. This is pretty standard-issue Israeli boilerplate – but it is false. One of the two motions was put down by an MP from the governing centre-left D66 party, which sits with Renew in the European Parliament, and an MP from the governing centre-right Christian CDA, which sits with the European People’s Party. The other motion was also supported by these two parties. So the ‘dangerous coalition’ is not between the radical left and the extreme right but also includes two eminently ‘respectable’ centrist parties who are currently in government. It is precisely not the extremes alone which are criticising Israel but instead now parties from across the entire political spectrum. <a href="https://fvdinternational.com/article/broad-dutch-parliamentary-coalition">See the votes for the motions here</a><img src="/uploads/image_949c81ea30.png">Is disgust a legitimate political emotion? Gideon van Meijeren MP thinks so. In a recent speech he attacked a new Dutch law changing the meaning of the word ‘embryo’ to include cloned embryos created through cell nucleus transplantation or by inserting body tissue into a sperm or egg cell. This kind of human engineering touches at the very basis of human life and risks violating its sanctity. It will soon be possible for two people of the same sex to have a child this way, or even for a single person to reproduce on her own. Such manipulation of human life is already widely practised, including for eugenicist purposes, but further down the line there could be human cloning and even genetic creations involving combinations of humans and animals. This is grotesque: the revulsion it inspires is itself eloquent. Not everything which is technically possible should be allowed, and in particular human life should not be reduced to a research project, involving the deliberate creation and then destruction of embryos, or to a product. We know from experience that things like euthanasia and abortion were initially introduced for exceptional cases and then progressively enlarged to become banal. This has to stop. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9q297GlWaSA">Watch Gideon’s speech here</a><img src="/uploads/image_3d9107605f.png">Meanwhile, fuel rationing is clearly round the corner. While the government refuses to contemplate a cut in fuel tax, to deal with rising prices, it happily chucks away to Ukraine many multiples of the sums which would be involved in such a cut. So when you fill up your car you are paying for Ukrainians to die and for American arms companies to sell more weapons. The same goes for asylum which costs 8 billion euros a year.&nbsp; With this money you could abolish fuel tax entirely. These sums should be given to Dutch nationals instead. Would you rather have cheaper petrol or an asylum centre near your house? It is not difficult to guess what the people’s answer would be to such a question but they are never asked. Frederik Jansen denounced all this nonsense in a powerful speech to Parliament. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ol26zF2Yutc">Watch Frederik Jansen’s speech here</a><img src="/uploads/image_1ba7528cc7.png">We had an exceptionally interesting edition of The Forum &amp; Friends this week with two formidable guests, the former diplomat and intelligence officer, Alistair Crooke, and the Iranian geopolitical analyst Ehsan Sefarnajad from Shiraz. aIf you missed it, watch it now. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=emVa4Af_Jus&amp;t=186s">Watch The Forum and Friends here</a>

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The Weekly Forum - 24 April 2026

FVD has voted for two motions put down in Parliament, which garnered a majority and were therefore carried, calling for the trade component of the EU-Israel association agreement to be suspended. The motions provoked a sharp reaction from the Israeli ambassador to the Netherlands. Ambassador Vapni&nbsp;<a href="https://x.com/vapni/status/2045004083250057514">deplored</a> as ‘shameful’ ‘a dangerous coalition between the radical left and the antisemitic extreme right’. This is pretty standard-issue Israeli boilerplate – but it is false. One of the two motions was put down by an MP from the governing centre-left D66 party, which sits with Renew in the European Parliament, and an MP from the governing centre-right Christiand CDA, which sits with the European People’s Party. Both motions were supported by these two parties. So the ‘dangerous coalition’ is not between the radical left and the extreme right but also includes two eminently respectable centrist parties who are currently in government. It is precisely not the extremes alone which are criticising Israel but instead now parties from across the political spectrum.<img src="/uploads/image_1c81e16c3d.png"><img src="/uploads/image_f3160e542e.png">

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Broad Dutch Parliamentary Coalition Backs Motion to Suspend EU–Israel Trade Deal

Speech to the Second Chamber of the Netherlands States-General (Parliament)16 April 2026For a long time, I was under the impression that the instability in the Middle East, unfavourable to the Netherlands in many respects, was ultimately caused by autocratic, predominantly Islamic states.At the centre of this stood Israel, as a democratic oasis and the only foothold of the modern West, bravely resisting an irrational and aggressive environment with the support of the United States and the rest of the Western world.It was therefore our sacred duty, so I believed, to support and protect Israel. Also to ultimately prevent ourselves from being overrun by Islamic migrants with the same unfounded hatred. This is what I was brought up to believe.But, Madam Speaker, this worldview has gradually shifted.The events of 7 October 2023, when Palestinians from Gaza breached the border with Israel undetected and spread death and destruction, were shocking.However, they appeared to be used as justification for unprecedented large-scale Israeli brutality and destruction in Gaza, resulting in tens of thousands of civilian casualties and the total devastation of civilian infrastructure, whereas this shocking event could also have marked the beginning of genuine, fundamental discussions.The initial sympathy for Israel as a victim on 7 October has worldwide turned into shock and anger at the scale of what the Israelis were doing.The situation in Lebanon today unfortunately bears strong similarities. Here too, there is unprecedented brutal destruction of civilian targets, allegedly because they are Hezbollah hideouts. Even inhumane white phosphorus weapons are being used.And then Iran. This country has long been sanctioned, boycotted and opposed by the West in every conceivable way. The main reason given is that Iran is supposedly on the verge of developing a nuclear weapon.That would also pose a threat to the Netherlands.But this claim, that an Iranian nuclear bomb is only weeks away, has existed since the 1990s.&nbsp; It has been consistently denied by Iran, with the principal ideological opponent of such a bomb being the Supreme Leader Khamenei himself.He was, notably, one of the first to be deliberately targeted and killed by Israel in the war.Moreover, the nuclear site was reportedly successfully “obliterated” in 2025, according to the Americans. Senior American officials such as Tulsi Gabbard and Joe Kent have also stated that there is no evidence of an Iranian military nuclear programme.Does the minister nevertheless believe that Iran poses a nuclear threat to the Netherlands?Or are the United States, and we in their wake, being drawn into serving Israel’s agenda?The statement by the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Marco Rubio, that the Israeli attack on Iran was the trigger for American action, illustrates this.The ultimate objective appears to be, as has happened with countries such as Syria and Iraq, to eliminate and destroy a potential regional adversary of Israel.The principle of “the right to strike first and then call it self-defence” has become an Israeli/American hallmark: the pre-emptive strike.A simpler term for this behaviour is “aggression”.It strongly appears that Israel, at least the Netanyahu government, is not seeking peace in the region, but domination.The dream of “Greater Israel”, from the Nile to the Euphrates.We are now convinced that the threat Israel feels is largely the result of its own actions, with the United States following in its wake.The Netherlands must not support the current American/Israeli policy of violence, intimidation and bad-faith negotiations.Iran does not pose a threat to the Netherlands.The path to peace in the Middle East, and thereby to stability in the Dutch national interest, must run through diplomacy.A radical change and limitation of Israeli ambitions and approach are essential for this, alongside a fully-fledged two-state solution.The current explosive stalemate, from which neither party can escape, offers a unique opportunity for radical solutions.

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Ralf Dekker on the Middle East

Thierry Baudet, FVD’s founder and president, and John Laughland, director of FVD International, attended the ‘U-Turn for Europe’ conference, which FVD sponsored, in Vienna last weekend. The goal is to create a conservative network dedicated to rediscovering and restoring European civilisation. The organiser, Stefan Korte, who lives near Dresden, has obtained the patronage of Leo Hohenberg, otherwise known as Prince Leo von Hohenberg, the great-grandson of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, whose assassination on 28 June 1914 sparked off the First World War. In addition to his personal talents and charm, Prince Leo’s patronage of this wonderful endeavour is a huge honour. In his talk, Thierry spoke about meta-politics – FVD’s phenomenal undertakings&nbsp;<a href="https://jfvd.nl/">with young people</a>, in the food sector (<a href="https://eerlijketen.nl/">Eerlijk Eten</a>), with the&nbsp;<a href="https://forumapp.nl/">Forum App</a>, various other ambitious plans -while John addressed the question of how to define European civilisation.<a href="https://fvdinternational.com/article/can-we-define-european-civilisation">Read John’s lecture here</a><img src="/uploads/image_2d107885fc.png">John Laughland was also once again a guest on Stanislav Krapivnik’s podcast, In the Eyes of Truth, this week. They discussed the psychotic nature of the post-truth world Donald Trump and his administration have created. One minute, the Iran war was won on Day One, the next Trump is threatening to defeat Iran and demanding NATO’s help to do so, while denouncing the alliance as a paper tiger which will never help the USA. Is the point of all this to destabilise opponents or it is just what it appears to be, just incoherent rambling?&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_JVIplUc4lw">Watch John’s interview here</a><img src="/uploads/image_d9f698b0a1.png">Viktor Orban has been defeated after 16 years in power. This is a very severe setback for conservative and patriotic movements across Europe. There is much talk of AfD and the Rassemblement national but Orban was in power, unlike them, and for a very long time indeed. He managed to create a regional network of opposition to the EU’s warmongering, including Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Serbia and Republika Srpska in Bosnia. Now the central link of that chain has broken. The Prime Minister designate, Peter Magyar, Made in Brussels, has lost no time using an old Hungarian irredentist trope to declare his hostility to Slovakia, where PM Robert Fico is the only anti-war head of government left in the EU.&nbsp; David Engels has written a long piece reflecting on the fall-out from Orban’s defeat, which we are honoured to republish.<a href="https://fvdinternational.com/article/the-end-of-an-era-times-up-for-orban">Read David Engels’ piece here</a><img src="/uploads/image_c8e10fef15.png">George Szamuely and Kit Klarenberg were our guests on The Forum this week. Together with John Laughland, they are British citizens who have been held for hours at Britain’s borders and interrogated by the security services. These ordeals are, alas, proof that the UK has become a repressive state.<a href="https://theforumfriends.substack.com/p/the-forum-and-friends-repression-2fb">Watch The Forum &amp; Friends here</a>

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The Weekly Forum - 16 April 2026

Can we define European civilisation&nbsp;?John LaughlandLecture given at the U-Turn for Europe conference, Vienna, 11 April 2026Many people have tried to define European civilisation, with varying degrees of success.&nbsp; In his great television series made in the late 1960s, the British art historian Kenneth Clark stood on the Pont des Arts in Paris, the Institut de France on one side of the river, the Louvre on the other, with Notre Dame upstream, and said, ‘What is civilisation?&nbsp; I don’t know. I can’t define it in abstract terms – yet.&nbsp; But I think I can recognise it when I see it.’&nbsp; This is perhaps a rather pragmatic, British approach.&nbsp; The contemporary French historian, Rémi Brague, has no such inhibitions.&nbsp; For him, Europe is&nbsp;la Romanité,&nbsp;Roman-ness: to be European is to be a child of Rome, Rome being the synthesis of Athens, Jerusalem and Rome, all three of which, Brague claims, have a sense of an inherited civilisation which they wish to nurture and transmit to future generations.&nbsp; He uses the metaphor of the aqueduct to convey this idea.I would like to build upon Brague’s argument to say that the distinctive feature of European civilisation lies in its conception of the state.&nbsp; The state in European civilisation is the link between ‘things divine and things human’, to quote what the Emperor Justinian said about justice in Book I of his Institutes.&nbsp; This is certainly not to make the state divine.&nbsp; It is instead to say that the state makes real the most important of all the values, justice.&nbsp; Virtues, indeed, including justice, are the very basis of statehood.&nbsp; In the opening lines of the&nbsp;Magna Moralia, Aristotle says that ethics is a subcategory of statehood because you cannot have a state without virtuous citizens.&nbsp; However, the relationship between the highest objective values and the state is two-way: the role of the state is also to promote those values.&nbsp; Aristotle says that politics is the highest of all the arts&nbsp;(Magna Moralia 1182b), the sum of all other associations (Politics Chapter 1), and that ‘the goal of politics is the good of man’ (Nicomachean Ethics, Book I, 1094a).&nbsp; ‘Political association has as its end the virtue and the happiness of individuals and not just life in common.’ (Nicomachean Ethics, Book III, 1281a); ‘and this is why justice is often considered to be the most perfect of all virtues, neither the evening nor the morning star are as admirable’ (NE 1129b).&nbsp; For Aristotle, the state is the association of beings who have a sense of good and evil, justice and injustice, which they enjoy as a result of being animals endowed with reason (Politics, Book 1).&nbsp; Man alone has this faculty.&nbsp; The state is prior to the family and the individual because ‘the individual, when isolated, is not self-sufficing.’&nbsp; Justice is the bond of states (Politics 1253a).&nbsp; Without the state, man is a ferocious beast or a God.&nbsp; For His part, God is not an ‘imperative ruler’&nbsp;(‘epitaktikos archon’,&nbsp;Eudemian Ethics 1249b line 14) but is the end with a view to which prudence (phronesis) issues its commands.&nbsp;&nbsp;In other words, civilisation – which precisely means living in a city, life in the city (in the sense of ‘polis’) - is the means by which man uses his highest faculties to tend towards perfection, towards God.&nbsp; European civilisation is based on a concept of natural law, which it is the state’s role to emulate and to make real.&nbsp; This is, by the way, also the distinguishing feature of European art, which is more glorious than the art of any other civilisation.&nbsp; When we see a great painting or hear a great piece of music, its greatness lies precisely in the intimations of the transcendent which inspire it.&nbsp; European art tries to depict or evoke the divine, something which, for instance, Islamic art never does because any representation of the divine is strictly forbidden as blasphemous.&nbsp; Islamic art is just decoration.&nbsp; European civilisation is based on a particular intersection between the particular and the universal: the particular embodies the universal and the universal inheres in the particular.If we contrast this approach with the Jewish and Islamic approaches, we will see the difference.&nbsp; The Jewish tradition to statehood is a very tenuous one; in fact, it is almost hostile.&nbsp; The ancient Israelites were initially tribes which appointed ‘judges’ to rule over them only when there were disputes between them, rather like Roman dictators.&nbsp; The history of the United Kingdom of Israel was very short, about a century, before it split.&nbsp; Those kings – Saul, David and Solomon – were more mystical figures than political ones.&nbsp; David wrote the Psalms, Solomon built the temple and issued his famous ‘judgement’.&nbsp; But that judgement was precisely not political but instead moral.&nbsp; Moreover, the execution of Christ was obtained by the Jews by specifically renouncing any claim to political sovereignty and instead instrumentalising their subjection in order to pursue a religious goal: ‘We have no other king but Caesar!’ (Gospel of St John, 19:16).&nbsp; After the destruction of Jerusalem, Judaism has continued to exist in every state in the world for two millennia without being incorporated in a state of its own: the recent state of Israel is not specifically religious and there are more Jews outside it than in it.Islamic civilisation is almost exactly the opposite.&nbsp; It is precisely a political religion, in the sense that sharia law is a structure of rules for the whole of life.&nbsp; It would be entirely incompatible with Islam to leave secular life to human rules alone: the distinction between temporal and secular power simply does not exist.&nbsp; On the contrary, it is rejected as relegating God outside of human affairs.&nbsp; The original Arab conquests were just that – conquests, i.e. the establishment of political rule over new territories.&nbsp; In&nbsp;La Loi de Dieu Rémi Brague says that the oldest surviving document in the history of Islam is a tax receipt from an Egyptian to his new Arab overlord.&nbsp; Islam is therefore directly a form of political rule, as the concept of the ummah (the Islamic ‘nation’) expresses.&nbsp; The division of the world between&nbsp;dar al Islam and&nbsp;dar al-Harb&nbsp;(the land of peace, the land of war) is precisely political, there being no more eminently political division than the one between war and peace.So whereas Judaism is eminently unpolitical and hostile to the state, Islam is the state.&nbsp; Whereas the divine in Islam cannot be represented, and whereas the name of God cannot be uttered by the Jews, Christian civilisation is based, like Greek and Roman, on the conviction that the divine can be shown and can show itself in human affairs. The distinction between spiritual and temporal power is not today’s separation between Church and State, a separation which has caused both Church and State to wither.&nbsp; On the contrary, the interpenetration of the secular and the divine invigorates both of them.In 1940, as Europe was entering one of its darkest hours, Pope Pius XII began excavations under the high altar of St Peter’s basilica.&nbsp; The archaeologists discovered there an entire Roman necropolis – one of the many wonders of that wonderful city.&nbsp; Soon enough they located the Constantinian shrine built on the pilgrimage site where for centuries Christians had come to venerate St Peter’s tomb – he had been martyred in the Vatican stadium – and eventually the saint’s relics themselves.&nbsp; We should see in this extraordinary decision by Pope Pacelli, to dig down, quite literally, to the very foundations of our civilisation, a delightful metaphor and model for our own quest in today’s dark times as well.<img src="/uploads/image_297a899575.png">

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Can We Define European Civilisation?

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The End of an Era: Time's Up for Orbán

As the Iran war flits from one grotesque extreme to another, like a flying carpet, the Ukraine war grinds on remorselessly, bogged down in the black earth of the steppe. While the various fronts of the war in the Middle East change by the minute, the war in the Ukraine is the same as it was last year and the year before that. Certainly, the West’s approach has not budged: ever more sanctions against Russia, ever more billions shovelled into the war. Ralf Dekker MP recently reminded the Dutch parliament that the Netherlands has sent 21 billion euros directly to Ukraine since the war started and continues to send 3 billion every year in military aid. These are only the visible costs and do not include the cost of refugees, higher energy prices, markets closed to business, and so on. While ordinary Europeans are struggling to make ends meet, the honey pot never runs dry for the Ukrainians. FVD’s position is clear: stop this madness, it is not our war.<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ArbhFOXhJPI">Watch Ralf Dekker’s speech here</a><img src="/uploads/image_e87e94dc6b.png">Meanwhile the European political establishment is determined, perhaps more than anything else, to kill off its own population through abortion, while simultaneously replacing it with other populations through industrial levels of immigration. The right to abortion has become one of the supreme moral reference points of our age. Support for it is so extreme that it goes way beyond what the law itself allows. As Gideon van Meijeren MP recently recalled, abortion law decriminalises certain acts under certain conditions, it does not create a right. In particular, doctors must tell women who want abortions about the alternatives. In reality, this does not happen. On the contrary, you can now obtain abortion pills online without consultation. This is a crime in Dutch law – but it is ignored. What would we say if you could order suicide pills legally by post? You could perhaps argue on the basis of consent – a consent which is, to put it mildly, absent from the unborn child. Can we not at least agree that the law should be enforced? Apparently not, but only FVD seems to care.<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6axGIgloOEA">Watch Gideon’s van Meijeren’s speech here</a><img src="/uploads/image_a60352bb6d.png">Why does FVD always stand out from the crowd? Because FVD is genuinely interested in life, creativity and the unexpected. This is the opposite approach to that of the careerist politicians who smother all inventiveness in the name of security, procedure and stability.&nbsp; Peter van Duijvenvoorde MP recently bemoaned the stifling conformism of Dutch and European universities – something which did not exist a generation ago when different universities offered different, sometimes opposing, views of life. Now they have all been&nbsp;gleichgeschaltet through political correctness and the dead hand of bureaucracy – bureaucracy which believes that it can and should direct the pursuit of knowledge to so-called ‘useful’ ends. This is nothing but the politicisation of science which, like the politicisation of the arts, kills it.<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MH7PdS-ZKhU">Watch Peter van Duijvenvoorde’s speech here</a> <img src="/uploads/image_61fa292504.png">Tom Russcher MP has teamed up with the prominent influencer Dutch Travel Maniac to shed light on the terrifying lawlessness of asylum centres. These centres exist all over Europe and in the Netherlands. DTM has made videos about them and the crime and abuse which festers in and around them: drug dealing, weapons, violence, sexual assault - you name it. DTM’s videos –&nbsp;<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7XZ5XclNBkA">here</a> and&nbsp;<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3dielIirf8M">here</a> – are superb examples of investigative journalism (naturally, never carried out by legacy MSM) and truly shocking. Please take time to read the questions. You will shake your head in disbelief that our collective suicide is so far advanced.<a href="https://fvdinternational.com/article/dutch-travel-maniac-exposes-abuses-and-misconduct-at-the-Central-Agency-for-the-Reception-of-Asylum-Seekers-Tom-russcher-submits-parliamentary-questions">Read Tom Russcher’s questions here</a><img src="/uploads/image_e940e85973.png">Marta Havryshko, a Jewish Ukrainian academic based in Massachusetts, was our guest on The Forum this week, together with classicist and journalist Isabelle Buhre, to discuss forced mobilisation in Ukraine. If you missed it, you can watch back by clicking below. <a href="https://theforumfriends.substack.com/p/the-forum-and-friends-forced-mobilisation">Watch The Forum &amp; Friends here</a>

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The Weekly Forum - 8 April 2026

Europe is about to be plunged into a long and severe recession thanks to the Iran war, which the USA and Israel are losing. To be sure, Iran is suffering greatly but bombs continue to penetrate Israel’s so-called ‘Iron Dome’, including onto essential IDF military control centres; US fighter jets are shot out of the sky and AWACS surveillance planes destroyed on the ground; and thirteen US military bases across the Gulf have been severely damaged. The increasingly erratic American president, and the warmongering Israeli prime minister, appear to have launched their war of aggression with no strategic planning or exit strategy. Stated war aims change every day. Trump’s latest message to the Europeans – if you want Gulf oil, go and get it yourselves – spells the end of the Atlantic Alliance, which is the intellectual framework, or straitjacket, of swathes of the European political class, especially in the Netherlands where the governing VVD party is essentially a NATO regional office. Only FVD keeps focussed on reality. Ralf Dekker MP addressed these sombre developments in a speech in Parliament this week, stressing the dark times ahead and the overriding need to protect the Dutch people. Incredibly, as severe energy shortages loom, the Dutch government continues to refuse to open the Groningen gas field, the largest in Europe, all because of insane climate policy. Surely this is collective madness – or, rather, suicide.<a href="https://fvdinternational.com/article/the-war-against-iran-the-netherlands-should-stay-out-and-look-after-its-own-people">Read Ralf’s speech here</a><img src="/uploads/image_70ea715363.png">Meanwhile, as if the future were not dark enough, enemies are trying to blacken the past as well. A recent vote in the UN General Assembly has referred to slavery as a crime against humanity. This will no doubt be used to demand reparations from European countries– but not from the Arab and African slave traders from whom they bought their workforce. The main problem with this is that it was the European states who brought an end to the slave trade – Britain first, then the whole of Europe at the Congress of Vienna in 1815. Moreover, although it was then condemned in the name of ‘the principles of humanity’, the concept of a ‘crime against humanity’ was not formulated until 1945.&nbsp; Nullum crimen sine lege. As usual, only FVD understands and warns about the dangers this resolution represents. Tom Russcher MP and Ralf Dekker MP have put down questions to the Dutch government about it.<a href="https://fvdinternational.com/article/will-the-un-resolution-on-slavery-lead-to-more-development-aid-and-even-reparations">Read Ralf’s and Tom’s questions here</a><img src="/uploads/image_55a35a11c7.png">FVD International’s director John Laughland was once again a guest on Ian Proud’s ‘Peacemonger’ podcast recently. Ian is doing a fabulous job bringing together realist commentators to discuss current events. John and Ian discussed the ongoing outrage of EU sanctions against individuals, including EU citizens. These are punitive measures taken for explicitly political reasons (the EU defends them&nbsp;<a href="https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/policies/why-sanctions/">saying</a> they are part of foreign policy). Although the EU denies the sanctions are punitive, which is a contradiction in terms since a sanction is a punishment, it also insists that breaking sanctions is a crime. All this is done outside any judicial framework: what judicial review there is takes place only after the event and usually fails to change the EU’s mind. In other words, the victim has to prove his innocence! Apparently this is the new Brussels understanding of the rule of law.<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uZ59nOjZ94Y">Watch John Laughland’s interview here</a><img src="/uploads/image_ba5ac534a1.png">FVD International is sponsoring a conference on European values in Vienna next weekend.&nbsp; Please sign up and attend! The 39€ fee includes lunch and dinner. Thierry Baudet and John Laughland will both be speaking.<a href="https://uturnforeurope.com/index_en.html">Sign up for the Vienna conference here</a><img src="/uploads/image_5ed66d891f.png">The Substack of our weekly podcast, The Forum and Friends, is now live. All our past podcasts are available there and we will be publishing articles, especially by our guests.&nbsp; Please visit the page and leave your comments.<a href="https://theforumfriends.substack.com/">Visit The Forum and Friends Substack here</a><img src="/uploads/image_a768bb4438.png">Stephen Baskerville was our guest on The Forum this week, to discuss why the Right always loses. If you missed it, watch back!<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=58cZW7yDaqU">Watch The Forum and Friends here</a>

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The Weekly Forum - 3 April 2026

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FVD is a anti-globalist political party in the Netherlands founded and led by Thierry Baudet. John Laughland (right) is director of FVD International.

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