The Weekly Forum - 28 March
28 maart 2025 | Forum for Democracy Intl
As Europe gears up for war, the screws are being tightened on free speech. In the Netherlands, the government is giving itself new powers to close down finance from abroad of organisations deemed to be spreading homophobia or misogyny. Free speech used to be regarded not just as a right but also as a social good - the more opinions there are out there, the more people will have to choose from. Not any more. Worse, the criteria for restricting such financing (the notion of finance ‘from abroad’ itself being evidence of paranoia) will not be legal but discretionary. Gideon van Meijeren tried in vain to pin down a liberal MP to explain what would be the legal criteria for preventing such organisations from operating. He failed because there aren’t any. Welcome to totalitarianism.
Watch Gideon van Meijeren question the MP here
Meanwhile, as Europe seems to be preparing for war, green policies remain a taboo – at least officially. This is leading directly to the de-industralisation of the Netherlands, as of much of Europe. The crazy thing about these net-zero targets is that they have nothing to do with pollution in the ordinary sense of the word. Our cities and countrysides are cleaner than ever before. Instead, the carbon mania seeks to remove from the atmosphere a totally natural gas (we breathe it out) which is present only in the tiniest of quantities anyway. Ralf Dekker MP nailed it recently in a speech to the Dutch parliament – such a policy verges on the criminal.
Read Ralf Dekker’s speech here
Meanwhile, in keeping with its goal of addressing problems at their root, FVD’s Jelena Postuma spoke recently at a Make Europe Great Again conference in Brussels. MAGA is an inspiration for MEGA, she says – the US and Europe face the same problems and Europe should imitate MAGA to solve them. But Europe has two handicaps from which the US does not suffer, or suffers less. The first is that European countries are not sovereign but are controlled by the EU. The second is that the cultural rot is even deeper in Europe than in the US and politics is downstream from culture. The solution, then, is national sovereignty and civilisational renewal. This is FVD to the core.
Read Jelena Postuma’s speech here
Former UK diplomat Ian Proud was our guest on The Forum this week, to discuss ‘Is Diplomacy back?’ What is diplomacy and what can it really achieve in international relations? If you missed The Forum, you can listen back by clicking below.