No Retreat, No Surrend; Free Speech in Europe
German authorities closed an art exhibition organized by a Danish artists group named Surrend after “after threats believed to be from Muslims ” unless they removed a poster depicting the Kaaba. “The director of the art gallery in Berlin said there had been threats of violence if the poster was not removed, so they had decided to shut for a while.”
The imminent release of a film by Geert Wilders sending up the Koran has so terrified Dutch authorities that the Prime Minister has urged him not to release it. Both the Wilders and Surrend incidents are examples of a guerilla culture war between a radical Islam and secular activists in Europe fueled by the very system of political correctness that was supposed to prevent it in the first place. Surrend and Wilders have discovered that it is not necessary to threaten violence to get political attention. It is only necessary to raise a certain subject — and that subject will supply the rest. Political correctness itself has empowered the guerilla culture war.