Brings It All Into Focus

Geert Wilders
Start your day with TPM.
Sign up for the Morning Memo newsletter

Our Jillian Rayfield is doing great live-reporting/tweeting from the scene of the anti-mosque rally in front of the proposed site of the park51/Cordoba House project. And watching them now, I see the moment that brings it all together. The headline speaker at the rally is none other than Geert Wilders, the neofascist Dutch parliamentary. Brings it all into focus. Pam Geller, the force behind the rally, just toasted him as a “modern-day Churchill.”

Some background on Wilders: He supports a ban on the Koran, a tax on women who wear headscarves and a ban on the construction of new mosques.

[ed.note: I should add that I know there are a lot of people who are against the Park51 project, by most counts a majority of the country, though I think those numbers are placed in an important context by the equally clear polling data showing that Americans overwhelmingly support the right of the builders to go ahead with it — which is key. I don’t for a moment believe that all of those people are haters. I think some have just gotten a very distorted impression of what’s being planned. Others know the facts but just disagree. I respect that. But the people behind this protest, this is the rancid, hating fringe. If only it were more fringe.]

Latest Editors' Blog
Masthead Masthead
Founder & Editor-in-Chief:
Executive Editor:
Managing Editor:
Associate Editor:
Editor at Large:
General Counsel:
Publisher:
Head of Product:
Director of Technology:
Associate Publisher:
Front End Developer:
Senior Designer: