by Steve McGiffen -

October 18, 2010 - Somehow, despite refusing to accept invitations from what he dubs the 'left-wing' state broadcasting service, and generally playing little part in debates outside parliament, far right populist Geert Wilders has become the most popular politician in the Netherlands. This is, unfortunately, far from being an isolated event in a Europe which is seeing the rise of the far right in most countries. If the left is to combat such people, it is important first of all to understand their appeal.

Six years ago Wilders left the VVD, a significant player in the Netherlands' multi-party system, a system based on the most extreme form of proportional representation it is possible to have and therefore one which invariably calls for the formation of coalitions in the wake of general elections. The VVD, which has an agenda in relation to the economy which might fairly be described as 'Thatcherite', is liberal – in the Anglo-American sense – on what might be defined as 'moral' issues, or issues of 'personal conscience', and does not generally go in for racist rhetoric. Wilders began to differ on both these counts, embracing the anti-Muslim rhetoric of the far right whilst maintaining an attachment to most elements of the Netherlands' highly advanced welfare state.

The combination has proved a winner in a country which, despite its traditions of tolerance, has never become comfortable with its recent development into one of Europe's most multi-ethnic societies. Since leaving the VVD, Wilders has proved a skilful politician. By last June, his party, the PVV (Freedom Party), was able to pick up twenty-four seats in the 150-strong parliament, polling roughly 16% of the vote. This is despite the fact that the PVV does not actually exist. It has no members and therefore, of course, no structure. Even its MPs and local councillors are not members of anything.

This gives Wilders the kind of dictatorial power he clearly covets, and he equally clearly has his finger on the pulse of Dutch opinion. Perhaps his decision not to form an actual party was influenced by the experience of Pim Fortuyn, the last far right demagogue to make an impression in the Netherlands. When Fortuyn was murdered in the run-up to the general election of 2002, the party he left behind turned out to consist of the mixture of the sad, the weird and the downright criminal that generally makes up the numbers on the right fringe of politics. It quickly imploded and has since disappeared. Wilders also appears to have learned that you will not gain mass support in the Netherlands by attacking its welfare state, and that any proposals for cuts must be carefully thought-out and carefully targeted. Despite his origins in the VVD, he has increasingly taken up causes associated with the left and centre-left, opposing the raising of the pension age,
for example, and calling for a less technology- and bureaucracy-oriented approach to policing, for 'more blue on the street', a popular slogan which even the Socialist Party (SP), the only bona fide left party in parliament, supports.

Where he parts company with the left is in his monomaniac explanation for all social ills: Islam. Boys and young men who create a nuisance in the generally peaceful streets of Dutch towns and cities are not expressing a social alienation which might be traced to racism and a failure to deal with it, or their anxiety about a future with limited prospects for decent employment or a decent life, but are badly behaved simply because they are Muslims. Female genital mutilation, practised by a handful of heterodox Muslims and certainly neither advocated not condoned in the Koran, is claimed to be a feature of Islamic orthodoxy. The harassment of gays, which might fairly be traced to attitudes easy enough to identify in the roots of both Islam and Christianity, though scarcely shared by all adherents to these religions, is portrayed as if, again, it were an article of Muslim faith. Rowdy youths, misogyny, homophobia, all of which are unfortunate features of Dutch life - as they are in most other countries - apparently did not exist prior to the arrival of Muslims and would disappear as the last planeload of Moroccans left Schiphol. In Wilders' strange world-view, moreover, such problems form the roots of international Islamic terrorism. Terrorism is merely an extreme but inevitable manifestation of a religion which is anti-Western, anti-democratic and anti-Semitic.

Wilders' bold solution, and perhaps, from the point of view of a man anxious to maintain his popularity, his riskiest proposal, would be the annulment of Article 1 of the national constitution, which provides for the equality of citizens without regard to race, religion, gender or sexual orientation. Dutch people are generally proud of the tradition which lies behind this wording. Conservative yet tolerant, the broad middle – politically, economically and culturally - may see this as a step too far, embodying the very same attitudes which many of them perceive in Islam and which make them suspicious of it. The call is accompanied by a demand for a halt to the entry of 'non-Western' migrants and even for the repatriation of all Muslim immigrants. Other examples of Wilders' naked extremism are his call for the deployment of the army against young men who create an atmosphere of fear on the street, all of whom, he would have us believe, are of Moroccan origin, and punishment by knee-capping of the ringleaders. He wants to see a ban on headscarves in certain public buildings - and a tax on them. Strangest of all he calls for the Koran to be banned, scarcely a likely move from a country which makes a great deal of money selling armaments to Muslim-dominated states. All of this aggressive rhetoric has led to his being hauled up in court for incitement to racial hatred, as well as to his receiving death threats. Both the trial and the violent threats play precisely into his hands, appearing to confirm his views of both Islam and the hypocrisy of those who defend the rights to self-expression of Muslims while attacking his own.

As SP National Secretary Hans van Heijningen explains, “Attempts by the progressive forces to halt the rise of Wilders or, as he himself asserts, to demonise him, have so far proved counterproductive. Labelling him a 'danger to democracy', giving him the designation 'racist' or calling his performances 'offensive' have only led to an increase in his popularity as a critic of the establishment, the man who dares to put things in a straightforward fashion.”

When Pim Fortuyn arose as a political force, the SP attempted to counter his appeal by pointing out that his programme was just as neoliberal and anti-working class as that of the mainstream right-wing parties from which he sought to distance himself. This is more difficult in the case of Wilders, whose attachment to many elements of the welfare state means that he cannot be accused of simply being a neo-liberal in a new suit. The party's approach has therefore been to accept that many of the problems to which Wilders draws attention are real enough, and to attack instead his solutions.

This could not, as it turned out, succeed in stopping the electoral success of the PVV, whose 24 seats won in June put it just seven behind that of the next most right-wing party, the VVD, which topped the poll. The centre-right Christian Democrats, which have been involved in almost every governing coalition since the war, had their worst result in all of that time, winning only 21 seats. The arithmetic of this made the formation of a coalition which could muster the necessary minimum of 76 seats in parliament virtually impossible, especially as the Christian Democrats and Labour, who together dominated the last government, had fallen out so badly that they could no longer contemplate forming any kind of coalition.

As the leader of the VVD, Mark Rutte was, in keeping with Dutch Constitutional practice, asked by the Queen to form a government. In the end, he succeeded, though it is a minority government in coalition with the Christian Democrats, and the process took four months in all. Between them, the two centre-right parties have only 62 seats, and must rely on a deal, under which the PVV 'tolerates' this government without participating in it. Many Christian Democrats were opposed to any cooperation with a party which favours removing the principle of equality from the Constitution. A special congress approved the deal, however, though in the face of considerable dissent, and in the end two of the party's MPs had to be cajoled and bullied into line.

Wilders' party will thus appoint no ministers and remains free to express its ideas, but is 'tolerating' a government which will cut €18 billion of spending in four years. Though dressed up in the bogus rhetoric of waste reduction, the cuts will bear hardest, as usual, on the most vulnerable: public sector workers will see their salaries frozen, people will have to pay more for a reduced package of medical services, and development aid, which proportionally is the highest in the world, will be slashed. Some new restrictions on immigration, ill-defined at present, are planned, and the terrible menace to Dutch civilisation presented by the 170 women who currently wear the burka in public, will be brought to an end.

The SP's view is that the only way to combat Wilders is to develop a broad progressive alternative. A step towards this was taken in September when the two centre-left parties – Labour and the Green Left – along with the SP and the centrist group D66 agreed a common alternative to the savage cuts to be implemented by the government. Cuts in defence spending, the maintenance of the current levels of tax on profits, and cuts in corporate welfare would demonstrate how unnecessary, and therefore clearly ideologically motivated, are the anti-working class measures to be implemented by the ruling coalition and those who 'tolerate' it. The coalition is clearly unstable, but the danger exists that it will collapse and that Wilders will emerge from the wreckage stronger than ever.

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Spectrezine editor Steve McGiffen is a former employee of the Dutch Socialist Party and continues to serve as its English-language translator. The photo is by screenpunk, and shows an election hoarding from the 2009 European Parliament elections. The poster with the 'voor Nederland' – 'For the Netherlands' – slogan is for the PVV. The scary looking man on the right with the very strange hair is Geert Wilders.

from Spectrezine