Geert Wilders' victory in Netherlands election spooks Europe
Geert Wilders' victory in Netherlands election spooks Europe
EU leaders should take note but it's too simplistic to say populists are taking over, says Katya Adler.
The unexpectedly meaty win for controversial, hard-right politician Geert Wilders in Wednesday's general election in the Netherlands set international headlines on fire.
Right-wing nationalists across Europe rushed to congratulate the populist politician, sometimes dubbed the Dutch Trump - partly for his dyed, bouffant-like hairdo, and partly for his famously firebrand rhetoric.
Geert Wilders' publicly expressed views - including linking Muslim immigration with terrorism and calling for a ban on mosques and the Quran - are so provocative that he has been under tight police protection since 2004.
Wilders was convicted of inciting discrimination, although later acquitted, and he was refused entry to the UK back in 2009.
But Europe's far right believes their views have now become more mainstream.
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So we often don’t get to see politics from Europe because of how loud American politics are. But what’s up with the spread of extremist right wing ideology over yonder?
Same thing that's up with it in the US. They offer simple "solutions" to complex problems, and (at least in the UK and Germany, not sure about the Netherlands) they're fuelled by right-wing media conglomerates.
That's indeed also the case in the Netherlands. The use of gross oversimplification for complex problems, but it gets you votes. Too many people fall for it.
But his rhetoric is crazy. It's filled with racism and hatred and meanwhile he wants to stop funding Ukraine, slash all cultural subsidies, stop climate policies and leave the EU. Idiot.
Also, what a lot of people seem to be missing is that this only works because of rampant hypocrisy among traditional parties. They promise time and again to make life better, to make work pay, to do this and that but they always fail because they’re neoliberals - whether they are lying or just fundamentally wrong doesn’t really matter.
This then allows far right wingers to swoop in and use a lot of the same underlying logic the traditional parties use, but without the hypocrisy. They just need to swap the hypocrisy out for hate towards minority groups.
This is a lot easier than the alternative left wing parties offer, which is fundamentally not aligned with the traditional parties in the West.
I'm Dutch and afaik right-wing media doesn't play a role. The reason is quite simple, it's because the previous coalitions lead by the neoliberal VVD have consistently fucked everyone who isn't rich (and even some who are). Especially the crises that they've caused have completely eroded trust in the previously big parties. Some of these issues I'll lost below.
In the northern province of Groningen houses started getting damaged die to earthquakes caused by government-funded natural gas extraction. The whole country got rich of of this for decades, but when the people of Groningen needed money to repair their homes they sometimes had to fight for years to get anything.
The tax agency started incorrectly marking people as fraudsters for claiming certain benefits, which often put these people in debt for thousands of euros. This has ruined the life's of hundreds of people, yet the government initially just ignored it. While these people lost everything they had, the government seemed to do everything it could to avoid paying or helping. At some point they did start paying and pretending to help, but for many victims this was simply too little to late.
And then there's plenty of other issues that erroded trust as well. Years of ignoring "the nitrogen problem" until it was too late and lead to all kinds of issues. The farmers (who are the biggest cause of this issue) suddenly become the target of the government, which they obviously didn't like. This caused huge protests and the rapid growth of parties like the BBB and probably also the PVV. And there's also a housing crisis, where buying houses is impossible.
In short: the previous normal coalitions kept fucking up, until people seemingly had enough. There were other alternatives to the PVV, but apparently voting on a right -wing extremist who has all the ideas is easier than voting left-wing for many people here. I hope the damage stays limited, but this is truly a dark day for our country.
I'm Dutch and afaik right-wing media doesn't play a role.
I take it you haven't looked at the Telegraaf or PowNews the last months? They definitely played a role.
Ongehoord Nederland as well
Who does nothing breaks nothing. Don't be so hard on the left wing parties. Progress requires experimentation, it isn't always a easy to figure out all the ramifications of a new policy.
Neolibs aren't leftists and they don't experiment, unless it's to find a new way to steal from us and give to the rich.
Let's just call them capitalists or conservatives instead of their false branding
Neoliberal is good enough for Chomsky.
I'd say they'd prefer to be called Capitalists, Conservatives (or even Centrists, weirdly)
Yeah true it's weird that a linguistic expert like Chomsky kind of submits to such manipulation of language
I'm well aware of that, and far from defending neoliberals. I seriously can't reconstruct my thought process when i posted this, sorry. But I was defending actual leftists, i wasn't trying to represent neolibs as leftists. Any chance the original post was edited? Or maybe I just misunderstood something.
Besides simple solutions, they also offer simple culprits for everything that is bad, where the default is usually some form of immigrant. But green/left activists are also a well-received target. Or the EU.
The same everywhere.
Also, any other party thinks it has to push a neoliberal agenda (except one or two). And, this agenda makes people vote for the far-right at the end.
In the Netherlands, they have the issue with the Mocro mafia and this doesn't help.
Russian money and quick solutions to impossible problems, paired with racism and a healthy dose of anti-EU stance (but that's repeating "russian money")
Inaction. Like everywhere else, a lot of things go wrong but aren't acted upon for too long because of political impotence or incompetence. Which paves the way for populist sentiment. Netherlands now has a housing crisis, a nitrogen crisis, employment shortage and then there is global warming, inflation and war in Europe.
Things we knew were coming and the sole reason the government didn't do anything was because of the neoliberal idea that the market will solve all problems through the magic of capitalism. This has been true for the past 3 decennia now.
Our saving grace is the EU and many policies and money coming in has been touted as solutions offered by a lot of populist in the east of the EU. Giving them an air of legitimacy. But of course the EU is also the entity that has been spreading the neoliberal ideals and open markets, a single coin. So easy to paint the EU with negative side effects as a boogeyman. Just don't mention the positive and don't offer solutions.
The problem is that far-right populist never have solutions because they see most of the problems coming from within a corruption of culture. So they often ignore fundamental systemic solutions because they are themselves functioning because of the system they are in. Fixing things is directly undermining their right of existence. So a feedback loop is inherently present.
Once you're in it's extremely difficult to get out.
Things we knew were coming and the sole reason the government didn't do anything was because of the neoliberal idea that the market will solve all problems through the magic of capitalism. This has been true for the past 3 decennia now.
This is the best resumé.
Also, Russia is playing on it.
Look at Trump, he's the same type of right wing nutter. Bullies that ride into power of populism, blaming certain groups of people for everyone's unhappiness. Deliberately stir up discontent into a fervour and then putting forward a simple yet extreme solution. There's your answer. It's happening all over the world including the US.
It's reminiscent of the 1930's Hitler and Mussolini.
One thing that should be noted, is that Europe's far right and right wing populist problem pre-dates Trump. Often by decades.
Vlaams Blok (later Vlaams Belang), the Freedom Party of Austria, Lega Nord, the UK Independence Party, Law and Justice (Poland), Fidesz (Hungary), Front National (now National Rally), Alternative für Deutschland, etc.
Voters really really don't like mass immigration.
They don't like what they're told about it
This might be a factor, but it's far from being the only one. Spain has had a far right resurgence in recent years, which hasn't resulted in a far right party getting more than 13% of votes, but it's dragging the largest right wing party to its positions in matters of tolerance and environmentalism, and the immigration to Spain hasn't been too significant since 2009.
Far right populists have been gaining popularity all over Europe for many years. It looks like it's only going to get worse before it gets better again.
The failed integration of millions of refugees and the resulting increase in crime might be to blame
The "increase in crime" is only really there if you compare today to the unusually low pandemic numbers. In general, we are just back to the normal (higher) pre-pandemic crime rates.
Pre-pandemic numbers are post-migrant crisis numbers. Rape across western Europe doubled with just two million refugees entering our borders. Violent crime is up too, as is theft.
I can't speak for the rest of Europe, but in Germany there was a major reform in sexual assault laws in 2016. You cannot compare before and after at all, because the laws are much stricter now. Things that were not considered rape or sexual assault before, are now. I would assume the same happened elsewhere, too. In 2017 "Me Too" started, which also led to much more awareness on the subject, so more people report on it since then.
Violent crime in Germany, while being higher than in the last few years, is still lower now than in 2010 or any year before. https://de.statista.com/statistik/daten/studie/153880/umfrage/faelle-von-gewaltkriminalitaet/
Theft is roughly on the level of 2019 in Germany and way lower than 2016 and any year before that. Grand theft is lower than ever (excluding 2021).
Source: German Federal Criminal Police (page 36), https://www.bka.de/SharedDocs/Downloads/DE/Publikationen/PolizeilicheKriminalstatistik/2022/FachlicheBroschueren/IMK-Bericht.pdf?__blob=publicationFile&v=5
Always easy punching down...
I don't get it. We know the numbers, which were published by our own governments. Crime is up significantly compared to pre-migrant crisis.
According to cbs, crime is down significantly since 2010, from 1.2 million registered crimes in 2010 to 806k crimes in 2022. Of course that doesn't give the whole picture. CBS also reported 47% less murder/killings compared to 20 years ago.
Maybe the migrants are more visible now than they were, maybe it's more concentrated in certain parts of the country. It's no secret that the government is really mismanaging the situation.
But that wasn't the point of my initial remark: punching down, blaming the people that have the least power, that's doesn't make sense and isn't fair.