On the sustainable development goals and my “Nazi” Tweet

One of FVD’s MPs has been fined for posting a photoshopped image of two government ministers next to a flag with swastikas on it. Pepijn van Houwelingen explains what happened and why.

FVD is an anti-globalist party. We fight for the preservation of our individual freedom and national sovereignty - and thus against the Zeitgeist that has come to dominate the Western world since the end of the Cold War, in which slowly but surely a global technocracy is being developed that increasingly places almost all aspects of our lives in the hands of an all-powerful, supranational government.

We see it in the EU, which claims ever more powers. In the World Health Organisation, which started acting like a global 'ministry of health' during Corona. We see it in the rhetoric and plans of the World Economic Forum, in the Marrakesh Immigration Pact, climate treaties, and so on. 

Global elites, large multinationals and supranational organisations are spinning a web that spans the entire planet, transferring decision-making power over our lives to a globalist level. 

This megatrend - visible in almost every facet of life - is structured through the so-called Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), drafted in 2015 and adopted by the United Nations. These are 17 unachievable, idealistic goals (such as 'no hunger', 'good health for all', 'clean drinking water') that, precisely because of their unachievability, will require endless government efforts.

These SDGs - these 'Sustainable Development Goals' - have never been the subject of a proper debate in our country, nor in any other - although pursuing them inevitably means that we will gradually be placed under global technocratic authority. So, through those SDGs, we are moving towards a kind of world government. And all societal players are participating in it. 

That is why an 'SDG flag day' was established on 23 September last year. The minister of health, Ernst Kuipers, from the left-liberal D66 party, and the Social Affairs and Employment minister, Karien van Gennip, from the Christian Democrats, raised the SDGs' 'flag' to express their full support for the globalist agenda.

I tweeted about it at the time. I put the words 'the façade and reality' next to an image of the original photo with the SDG flag, on the left, and, on the right, this flag replaced by the swastika. Inappropriate? Clumsy? Perhaps. Given the nonsensical fuss that followed, I probably should not have done it. Perhaps the comparison with the hammer and sickle flag of communism would have been better.  It would have been more accurate because globalism is indeed closer to socialist equality thinking than fascist corporatism - that is, the merger between big business and the all-powerful state envisioned by Mussolini and Hitler. Ultimately, the two are not actually all that different from each other but that is a discussion for historians.

Anyway, I removed the swastika and posted a new tweet with the red communist banner. That flag was ignored (the association with communism does not seem to bother anyone) - but the seething reactions to the Nazi flag persisted. The media spoke of a 'Nazi tweet'. I was threatened with suspension as an MP and with being prosecuted in the courts by the government. 

It’s all a bit excessive, isn't it? We see mainstream politicians and journalists making Nazi comparisons almost daily. I myself was depicted as a 'brown shirt' in NRC Handelsblad and accused in the Chamber of having ‘glorified’ Hitler. Not a week goes by without someone blaming us for 'fascism'. Other FVD members are also constantly being slurred with references to Nazism, Mussolini, "ein Volk, ein Reich" rhetoric, and so on. Apparently, it is all allowed, it is apparently perfectly all right for the establishment to employ that kind of demonisation against the opposition. But if we do it once - however light-heartedly and teasingly - the world is too small. What double standards. What hypocrisy!

But secondly, and much more importantly, the very function of free public debate - in which basically anything should be allowed to be said, barring calls for violence - is to exchange ideas and resolve conflicts peacefully. That is where, on the cutting edge, the political fight should be able to take place. Now, with this cheap act of grandstanding, an extremely embarrassing escalation for democracy is threatening, in which MPs try to suspend each other for 'insulting statements' and the government pursues an MP in the courts.

Public debate in our country is in a sorry state. Why is it never about substance? Why does the media always choose to magnify a riot and not discuss the point I wanted to make? Why is our freedom of speech, even in our parliament, increasingly curtailed? 

For the record, I was not trying to compare Kuipers (or Van Gennip) as a person to Nazism. They are merely, we may assume, cooperating with the best of intentions in a system that bears similarities to other totalitarian regimes.  But come on, grow up! The SDGs are coming, they are going to undermine your and my freedom. The globalist plans exist, they are being pushed further every day. That is what this is really about, and that is what I will always continue to call attention to, and organise resistance against!