Powerline writer agrees with Wilders on Islam

I wrote to correspondents:

Paul Mirengoff at Powerline says that he likes Geert Wilders and agrees with his main positions, including: “halting Islamic immigration” and “deporting immigrants who … call for … the imposition of Islamic law.”

Powerline is basically a neocon site. It was formed for the purpose of defending Bush from the left and supporting the utopian Muslim Democratization policy of Bush and Norman Podhoretz. It opposed the Comprehensive Immigration Reform in 2007, but that was mainly about legalizing illegals. For a writer at Powerline to favor the ending of the immigration of all Muslims and the deportation of sharia believers, to support Wilders’s policy of stopping the Islamization of the West instead of the neocon policy of democratizing Muslims, is remarkable.

As of this moment, Paul Mirengoff, an establishment Republican conervative, is significantly harder line on Islam than Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer, who adore Wilders but have not endorsed his Islam policy—who, indeed, have formed an anti-Islamization organization which is silent on the question of Muslim immigration.

A correspondent replies:

Paul Mirengoff says that he agrees with “most of [Wllders’s] major [views],” so it’s hard to know exactly where he comes down any one question (including the big Islamic immigration question).

LA replies:

Here’s the relevant text in Mirengoff’s entry:

However, I find nothing beyond the pale in Wilders’ views, and I agree with most of the major ones I’ve seen or heard him express.

Wilders defends Dutch sovereignty by, among other things, opposing the EU’s centralizing policies. He defends Dutch identity by opposing the Islamization of the Netherlands. He seeks to accomplish this by, among other things, halting Islamic immigration. He also favors deporting immigrants who commit crimes, or who call for jihad or the imposition of Islamic law.

After saying that he agrees with most of Wilders’s positions, he then immediately lists several specific positions. Clearly he’s saying that he agrees with Wilders on these points. If he doesn’t mean that, if he means that he agrees with other views of Wilders that he has not listed here, but doesn’t agree with the ones that he has actually listed (which is what you’re suggesting), then he is engaged in an extreme level of deception would I think would be very unlikely.

At the same time, you are correct that this is less than a completely clear statement. He doesn’t come out and say, “I support positions X, Y, and Z.” Rather, he says that he agrees with another person who supports positions X, Y, and Z. So it looks as though Mirengoff is not exactly going to be in the forefront of these issues. But still, the fact that he has put himself on record as (apparently) supporting these positions is remarkable.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at March 06, 2010 01:31 PM | Send