All posts tagged: Learns

The Netherlands learns a lesson on right and far-right alliances

The Netherlands learns a lesson on right and far-right alliances

Geert Wilders, leader of the Party for Freedom, at the House of Representatives in The Hague, February 3, 2026. JEROEN JUMELET / AFP No executive committee, no organizational structure, never any internal votes and no members – except for one, Geert Wilders himself. Since 2006, Wilders has been the sole person to allocate positions, set the party’s direction and speak on behalf of the Party for Freedom (PVV). Over the years, he has delivered harsh rhetoric that has fueled the success of his far-right party, which made it the most popular in the Netherlands by 2023. He launched tirades against the Quran, which he likened to Mein Kampf; condemned “scum”; promised to “deal with” Moroccans; stoked fears of a “tsunami” of immigrants threatening to turn the country into “a province of the Islamic Super State Eurabia,” and so on. The Dutch lawmaker’s party has been and remains a political anomaly; its autocratic structure has allowed it to avoid, for two decades, the internal rivalries and ego clashes that often plague – and sometimes destroy – …

Dawkins Watches as Science Skeeters Off a Cliff, Learns Nothing

Dawkins Watches as Science Skeeters Off a Cliff, Learns Nothing

At Reason Magazine, Nick Gillespie interviewed Richard Dawkins on new threats to science. The interview, in connection with his latest book Genetic Book of the Dead (2024) is vintage Dawkins. I want to call attention to one part: Gillespie: Last year, you wrote an article in The Spectator called “Why I’m sticking up for science” about the adoption of certain Māori origin myths being presented as science in New Zealand schools. What was going on there? Dawkins: … The New Zealand government—which was then a socialist government; it’s changed now, but the present government is doing the same thing—is importing compulsorily into science classes in New Zealand schools, Māori myths. And they are being given equal status to what they call “Western science.” Which is just science. It’s not “Western”; it’s just science. So the children in New Zealand are, I would have thought, being bewildered by, on the one hand, learning about the big bang and the origin of life and DNA and things like that; on the other hand, they’re being told it’s …