Demagogue

Another day in tolerant Holland.

A mosque was gutted by an arson attack in the west of Rotterdam in the early hours of Wednesday morning.

Here's a view into the mind of the far right:

Several slogans were clearly visible on the outside walls of the building in news footage of the building on Wednesday morning. The message in one of the slogans read: "geen moskee in Zuid" (no mosque in south). Another was the word "Lonsdale" along with a cross in a circle, a far-right symbol.

Some Dutch right-wingers, particularly teenagers with fascist sympathises, have a preference for clothing made by the Lonsdale clothing company in the UK because the middle letters of the brand name — nsda — call to mind Adolf Hitler's Nazi party, NSDAP.

Lonsdale's website is unfortunately under construction. I did learn, though, that after a previous arson, a Dutch school forbade students from wearing Lonsdale clothing, and that the term "Lonsdale youth" is used here in the Netherlands as a euphemism for young neo-Nazi thugs. I found a story about the rather extensive anti-racism campaign Lonsdale has undertaken, including sponsoring an all-African soccer team in Germany, but the story is on a repulsive site with no attribution of the source (apparently, neo-Nazis believe in plagiarism), so be forewarned. (I was, as usual, annoyed to discover from this site how much power we Jews wield. Am I the only Jew in the world who hasn't been let into the conspiracy? I mean, since we control everything, why can't I get a piece of the action?)

Prize for the best verbal response goes to the mosque's leader:

Mosque chairman Abdoelhak Billar expressed shock at the arson attack on the Shaan-e-Islam when he was interviewed by RTL Nieuws.

"Arson and racist slogans are an abnormal act… committed only by pathetic people," he said.

I'm less inclined to attribute this to a fear of terrorism and the murder of Theo van Gogh last year (though "RIP Theo" was also written on the mosque's wall). This mosque served a mostly Surinamese community, whereas radical Muslims in the Netherlands are generally Moroccan. I suspect this attack is your basic racist neo-Nazi outrage, rather than a post-9/11 phenomenon.