The Weekly Forum - 13 March 2026
16 maart 2026 | Forum for Democracy Intl
Is politics about reality or just appearance? Is it about action or virtue-signalling? Do states prosper from good leadership by people who stand out from the crowd, or do our current democratic systems instead encourage the opposite - the herd mentality, with all the bestiality and oafishness that implies? Watching Lidewij de Vos being remorselessly berated for not distancing herself from this or that remark made by some FVD candidate in some group chat in the previous decade, on the one hand, and Pepijn van Houwelingen lay out, with magnificent clarity, the concrete effects of climate madness, immigration and warmongering on people’s daily lives – especially through new taxes which reach into people’s pockets to pay for this nonsense – makes one fear the answer to these questions. No less than €10 billion are being cut from health spending in the Netherlands to fund the climate and immigration scams and the (American) arms industry. The result? Dutch people get sicker so that these lobbies can cream off their money. It’s that simple, unfortunately, but only FVD sees it.
Gideon van Meijeren MP was acquitted on appeal last week on charges of incitement to violence. The charges were blatantly political and Gideon was subjected to a blatantly political trial. The very fact that the Prosecution service of a state has attacked an opposition politician demonstrates the totalitarian tendencies of today’s Europe. Gideon is not the only European to face lawfare or sanctions for what he has said, but his case is particularly symbolic because his prosecution was undertaken within the context of a 2023 report by the Dutch security services saying that people who criticise the governmental system (‘anti-institutional extremism’) are a threat to national security. This is part of a wider decade-old trend in Europe, which considers free speech issues – ‘disinformation’ – from a security, not a communication, viewpoint. The security state is upon us.
The fact that immigrants continue to pour into Europe after years and even decades of protest against it is terrifying. The EU is about to implement its Migration Pact which does precisely what George Soros wants – it transforms illegal migration into legal. It will not reduce flows and specifically will not change asylum policy, which has been an open door to abuse for years, at huge cost to the receiving countries. As Tom Russcher MP pointed out in a recent speech to Parliament, there is no way to stop immigration other than to close the borders – i.e. abandon Schengen – and leave the EU’s various legal mechanisms which encourage immigration – i.e. leave the EU. Anything else is just make-believe – the one thing our current governments are good at.
Read Tom Russcher’s speech here
We were honoured and humbled to welcome Dr Setareh Sadeqi from the University of Tehran on The Forum this week – humbled because she joined us from what must be a terrifying war zone. It is almost impossible to believe that the US administration has so recklessly plunged the world into such chaos – and impossible to understand why European leaders continue to give their unconditional support to America, the single greatest threat to world peace.