The Weekly Forum - 10 October

What are you allowed to say in Parliament? Not much, it seems. Thierry Baudet questioned a Christian MP in committee recently and asked him why his party did not support remigration but instead only zero net immigration. Thierry’s view is that if immigrants come in and Dutch people leave, that may be net-zero but it is still bad. He said that this would lead, over time, to a replacement of the Dutch population by means of ‘homeopathic dilution’. He was immediately interrupted by the chairman of the committee – a member of Parliament for Geert Wilders’ Freedom Party - and told to mind his language, after another member of the committee protested that Thierry was being racist. Yet Dutch Members of Parliament are constitutionally protected from prosecution for things they say in Parliament and in any case there is a fundamental right to free speech. The phrase ‘homeopathic dilution’ is not exactly an incitement to violence! Yet if you think that your nation is being slowly eradicated, why should you not be allowed to say it?  And what does it say about those who try to stop you from even speaking about such a topic?

There is great confusion about the Dutch word ‘omvolking’ which is said to be a Nazi term (Umvolkung). This was one of the expressions Thierry was told not to use.  But ‘omvolking’ means ‘population replacement’, i.e. when one population is replaced by others, for instance through replacement migration, whereas Umvolkung refers to the process by which a population, e.g. the historic German populations in Russia, loses its own culture and language and adopts instead those of the host country: Russlanddeutsche stopped speaking German. So the two terms have really nothing to do with each other, while the knee-jerk reaction speaks volumes about the intellectual level of debate on this important issue.

Watch Thierry’s debate here

‘Everyone has the right to respect for his private and family life, his home and his correspondence.’ Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights lists private correspondence, and privacy generally, as a fundamental right. Many countries punish any interference in private correspondence - France, for instance, with one year in prison or a 45,000 euro fine. Yet the European Commission proposes to abolish private correspondence completely by scanning all electronic communications, supposedly to root out child pornography. As usual, only FVD protests against this, most recently when FVD MP Gideon van Meijeren spoke about it in a committee hearing of the Dutch parliament. Luckily some other parties abroad have also spoken out, including not only the AfD in Germany but also the CDU there. However, experience shows that when the Commission decides something, it generally goes through because the EU is dominated by it and member states are dominated by the EU.

Watch Gideon van Meijeren here

FVD International director John Laughland was interviewed on Unprecedented TV this week to discuss the political crisis engulfing France. The country has been adrift since July 2024 when a snap general election produced a hung parliament. Macron has let things drag on until the latest crisis, when the third government in a year collapsed after 14 hours. Incredibly, the latest crisis seems to have given encouragement to the Left which wants even more state spending at a time when the country is drowning in debt because it cannot bring its finances under control. This would do even more damage to the reputation of the euro, as German industrial production is already in free fall. Metaphors like ‘the house of cards’ and ‘the king has no clothes’ seem inadequate to describe the wholesale collapse of the European project of which Emmanuel Macron is one of the most perfect embodiments.

Watch John Laughland’s interview here (starting at 31:40)

Under the title: “The West: Greatness and Decline”, the Renaissance Institute is organising a reading group in Dutch. Together, we will read, over five sessions, the recently published book by Ricardo Duchesne, Greatness and Ruin (2025).

Prof. Duchesne is a historian and professor at the University of New Brunswick, Canada. Over the past decades, he has become a true nightmare for left-wing academics who have made it their habit to burden us with guilt over our past. In contrast, he offers a scholarly and well-founded tribute to the unparalleled greatness of the West.

We warmly invite you to join us in discussing Prof. Duchesne’s book. The sessions will take place on Friday evenings – 17 October, 31 October, 14 November, 28 November, and 12 December – at the Herengracht 74, from 7 to 10 p.m.

Cost: €100 for the full series, and €50 for JFVD members, including snacks, drinks, and a PDF version of the book.

Interested? Send a WhatsApp message to Hans van de Breevaart at 06-14186770. In your message, please explain who you are and why you would like to take part.

From the submissions, we will select 10 participants to join the first round. Not selected this time? Don’t worry! If there is enough interest, we will simply organise another round.

We look forward to your participation and a series of highly engaging and enlightening evenings!

Kind regards,
Hans van de Breevaart