No longer Great, Britain capitulates to terror

For the first time in its history, Britain has denied entry to an elected official of the EU Parliament:

Geert Wilders was scheduled to screen his movie Fitna at the House of Lords on Thursday.

This is what he was going to screen:

Melanie Phillips writes about what happened next:

This meeting had been postponed after Lord Ahmed had previously threatened the House of Lords authorities that he would bring a force of 10,000 Muslims to lay siege to the Lords if Wilders was allowed to speak. To their credit, the Lords authorities had stood firm and said extra police would be drafted in to meet this threat and the Wilders meeting should go ahead.

But now the government has announced that it is banning Wilders from the country.

It “would threaten community harmony and therefore public security in the UK”, they claim. I find that “would threaten community harmony and therefore public security in the UK” particularly offensive. Is “community harmony” to be kept at all costs? Is “community harmony” worth the death of freedom of expression, and should it be preserved by the unprecedented step of banning from the country an elected official of another country? Should we all be bullied into submission by those who threaten to disturb “community harmony” because they are offended? From the looks of it, the answer is yes.

Phillips continues,

So let’s get this straight. The British government allows people to march through British streets screaming support for Hamas, it allows Hizb ut Tahrir to recruit on campus for the jihad against Britain and the west, it takes no action against a Muslim peer who threatens mass intimidation of Parliament, but it bans from the country a member of parliament of a European democracy who wishes to address the British Parliament on the threat to life and liberty in the west from religious fascism.

It is he, not them, who is considered a ‘serious threat to one of the fundamental interests of society’. Why? Because the result of this stand for life and liberty against those who would destroy them might be an attack by violent thugs. The response is not to face down such a threat of violence but to capitulate to it instead.

It was the same reasoning that led the police on those pro-Hamas marches to confiscate the Israeli flag, on the grounds that it would provoke violence, while those screaming support for genocide and incitement against the Jews were allowed to do so. The reasoning was that the Israeli flag might provoke thuggery while the genocidal incitement would not. So those actually promoting aggression were allowed to do so while those who threatened no-one at all were repressed. And now a Dutch politician who doesn’t threaten anyone is banned for telling unpalatable truths about those who do; while those who threaten life and liberty find that the more they do so, the more the British government will do exactly what they want, in the interests of ‘community harmony’.

Worst yet, I don’t expect that the British MPs will rise in protest against this banning order. One of my podcast guests once said that the Brits will always stand for freedom.

He was wrong.

This is how democracy dies.

Don’t think it can’t happen here.

Prior post on Wilders here. Gates of Vienna has been on top of the story from the start. More links at Memeorandum.