The Weekly Forum - 5 December
07 december 2025 | Forum for Democracy Intl
It is rare to hear politicians quoting Plato and even rarer to hear them properly invoking him. Yet this is what FVD’s newest MP, Peter van Duijvenvoorde, did in his recent maiden speech to Parliament. In a debate on education policy, Peter insisted that the greatest lesson Plato taught was Socrates’ famous ‘I know only one thing and that is that I know nothing.’ Not just education but freedom itself are based on the fact that it is impossible to give one simple definition of the true, the good and the beautiful. Any simple definition of these can quickly become instruments of power. Easy dogmatism becomes ideology. Instead, the goal of education must be to encourage us to do that which makes us humans. We are on a permanent path of search for the good, the true and the beautiful yet the search itself is the goal, not claiming to have reached the end of the journey. Just as law needs to be anchored in justice even though justice can never be conclusively defined, so education should not impose a single vision of citizenship, as is proposed, but instead teach children to search, to doubt and above all to think. Peter is a worthy successor of the great 18th century Dutch philosopher David Ruhnken and his motto: oportet quaedam nescire.
Watch Peter’s maiden speech here (translated by AI)
Ralf Dekker, who speaks on foreign policy issues for FVD in the Second Chamber of the Dutch parliament, delivered an impassioned plea for Europe not to wreck Trump’s attempt to end the war in Ukraine. Europe’s insistence on a ‘just peace’ is costing Ukrainian lives without bringing victory any closer, quite the contrary. It is also pushing Europe itself towards a financial precipice. Ralf instead appeals to Europe: ‘give peace a chance’.
Read Ralf Dekker’s speech here
We are also pleased to publish an English translation of a recent article on Ukraine by Stefan Korte, whom Thierry Baudet and John Laughland met recently in Austria. Korte argues that the 28-point ‘peace plan’ is in fact a plan by Trump’s USA to extract as much wealth as possible from Ukraine and from Europe, by concluding lucrative deals with Ukraine but leaving Europe to pay for the country’s reconstruction.
Read Stefan Korte’s article here
The American Right, meanwhile, is descending into civil war, as significant people within the broader MAGA movement complain ever more loudly about the importance given to Israel by people who claim to put America first. The term ‘woke right’ has been coined to discredit these anti-liberals. FVD International’s Vincent Vos has written an important piece explaining why one of the protagonists of this slur, James Lindsay, is profoundly wrong to claim that this anti-liberal Right is somehow really Left underneath. Instead, argues Vincent, it is liberalism which is rooted in the same gnostic millenarianism as the Left. In other words, Lindsay is the pot calling the kettle black.
Read Vincent Vos’s article here
Stefan Korte was our guest on The Forum this week, not so much to talk about Ukraine but instead about the ‘U-Turn for Europe’ cultural project he is setting up to try to turn the tide against oikophobia. If you missed it, you can listen back.
Watch The Forum here (starts properly at 5.45)