Lars Hedegaard, the intrepid Danish historian and journalist, who was nearly assassinated last year by a jihadist (who was just recently apprehended), gave an impassioned speech yesterday (5/4/14), commemorating Denmark’s Day of Liberation from the World War II-era Nazi occupation.
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[W] e are told that this ideology of conquest is an enrichment and if something is an enrichment, you cannot get enough of it. Consequently our political and spiritual masters see to it that Islam’s influence grows by the day and fall over each other to comply with every demand raised by the prophet’s strongmen. While doing this, our masters accuse everyone who refuses to toe the line of being racists and Fascists. Why don’t we – all of us common people – turn our backs on political parties, politicians, intellectual icons, journalists and priests who endeavor to destroy our country? So far we are not in a situation similar to the one faced by our comrades in the anti-Nazi Resistance. We can still speak our minds. We don’t have to vote for parties that open a door to evil and thus hand over their compatriots to foreign oppressors. We can stop buying newspapers that fill us with lies and propaganda. And if our priest agitates for an ideology he has promised to oppose, we can attend another church. We can refuse to give money to the erection of our enemies’ barracks and command and control centers.
The prophet’s followers certainly do not lack for passion or singleness of purpose. How about the rest of us?
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Remember our glorious forebears – and reflect
On Denmark’s Day of Liberation, May 4, Dispatch International’s Editor-in-Chief Lars Hedegaard spoke at Copenhagen’s Grove of Commemoration for the patriots who gave their lives as members of the Danish Resistance against the Nazi occupation 1940-1945.
Lars Hedegaard
At Stadsgraven between Christianshavn and Amager there is a monument for 76 men and women from the Copenhagen district of Amager who gave their lives fighting the German occupation during the World War II. The monument carries an inscription by the poet Otto Gelsted:
“You wanderer who stops at this spot
remember those
who gave their lives for freedom and right
and our common home
and when again you hurry to your day’s work
then remember
that you are still standing in a freedom front”
Otto Gelsted was a Communist and it may sound strange that he would talk about our common home.
But there was a time when Danes almost regardless of their political persuasion were certain that we had something in common – something worth protecting and keeping.
It was so important that thousands were willing to risk their lives to defend the inalienable gift that is Denmark and the freedom without which nothing matters. Today hardly anybody talks about Denmark as our common home and even fewer can imagine being part of a freedom front. That is very strange for the enemies of freedom who have entered our country and gained powerful allies among our ruling elites certainly do not lack for determination. They know what they want – which is to replace our man-made laws and democratic order that are the results of a thousand-year history with a law they claim has been handed down by a god and therefore cannot be changed.
It is a god who says that the entire world belongs to him and that it is the duty of every believer to engage in holy war until there is not a single human being who has not accepted his tyranny. This god’s prophet has created an ideology that has left a trail of blood through 1400 years of history and compared to which Nazism and Communism were like ripples on history’s surface. A few decades ago this ideology – and the project of conquest for which it stands – gained a foothold in our country. And here it will have the same consequences as in any other place to which it has spread. There is no reason to enumerate these consequences. Anyone with eyes to see will notice them or can read about them.
Nonetheless we are told that this ideology of conquest is an enrichment and if something is an enrichment, you cannot get enough of it. Consequently our political and spiritual masters see to it that Islam’s influence grows by the day and fall over each other to comply with every demand raised by the prophet’s strongmen. While doing this, our masters accuse everyone who refuses to toe the line of being racists and Fascists. Why don’t we – all of us common people – turn our backs on political parties, politicians, intellectual icons, journalists and priests who endeavor to destroy our country? So far we are not in a situation similar to the one faced by our comrades in the anti-Nazi Resistance. We can still speak our minds. We don’t have to vote for parties that open a door to evil and thus hand over their compatriots to foreign oppressors. We can stop buying newspapers that fill us with lies and propaganda. And if our priest agitates for an ideology he has promised to oppose, we can attend another church. We can refuse to give money to the erection of our enemies’ barracks and command and control centers.
Some of us will lose our lives because we refuse to submit. It cannot be otherwise. We must be realists. And if we are realists, we acknowledge that we must eventually die no matter how we have chosen to live our lives. And we will realize that if we remain silent when faced with the worst evil ever devised by man, we are already dead anyway. It takes a measure of courage to stand up to our country’s enemies and their Danish collaborators and facilitators. But we must consider how much more courage it will take in 10 or 20 years when the enemy has become more numerous and well entrenched. And consider what courage we demand from our children the day they stand with their backs against the wall and have to choose between freedom and submission.
If we do not act now when we still have the option of fighting for our liberty and constitutional order with peaceful and democratic means, what will our descendants think of us? Surely there will be no monuments in our honor. We will have monuments of infamy: ”Here lie the sorry remains of a generation that failed in the fight against evil. Damn their memory!” So far there are few signs that we have realized what we are up against and even fewer that the majority are prepared to accept the consequences of such realization.
People think they can tame the beast by speaking nicely to it. They think they can save their skin by bowing their heads, singing the praise of multiculturalism, showing obeisance to barbarians – and delivering their countrymen to persecution. That may succeed for a time – until the day we realize that the Danish lion has been shot and its skin sold and that we shall never get our country or our freedom back. Look at what has happened wherever the prophet’s ideology has gained the upper hand. And ask the obvious question: What makes us believe that it will be different here?
The evil ideology’s spokesmen and champions have not a second’s doubt that they are following Allah’s command and will get their reward for our oppression in Paradise. They laugh in their beards at our stupidity and cowardly attempts to please them. But of course they are happy that Danes make their power grab all that easier.
Our situation can best be compared to the one W.B. Yeats described in a famous poem written in 1919, immediately after World War 1:
“The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.”
The prophet’s followers certainly do not lack for passion or singleness of purpose. How about the rest of us? Have we no conviction that there is something worth fighting for regardless of the consequences to ourselves?
That is the question we all have to ask.
We are gathered here surrounded by the bodies of those whose conviction was strong enough that they risked their lives in the battle for Denmark’s freedom.
Please observe a minute of silence – for them and for us.
