Rabat – Any outsider who watched the news coverage of the 2023 Dutch elections likely saw a country in trouble: rampant crime, immigrants crowding out public housing, and deep and fundamental economic woes. Such a grim conclusion from an appalled outsider wouldn’t be surprising; instead, it adequately summarizes the zeitgeist in much of Dutch electoral politics.
In reality, the Dutch economy is one of Europe’s top performers, crime rates have declined significantly over the past two decades, and the country is consistently rated as one of the happiest, most prosperous and safest countries on earth.
So why the disparity? Why do Dutch citizens have such a skewed perspective on the state of the nation?
Despite being one of the most stable and prosperous countries in the world, the Netherlands is facing unprecedented social tension and rising economic inequality that are in part due to 14 years of electoral victories for the largest Dutch neoliberal party, the People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD).
The rise of unrealistic fear in the Netherlands cannot be explained by economics alone, as the post 9/11 era had a profound impact on the country.
In the early 2000s, the Netherlands first saw the impact of growing Islamophobia in politics when the eccentric far-right populist Pim Fortuyn created a political party that remarkably resembles Geert Wilders current political party.
At the time, Geert Wilders was a parliamentarian for the VVD, and in 2001 he spoke out strongly against Fortuyn’s overt Islamophobia. On Dutch TV, Wilders described Islam as “a respectable religion,” in a September 26 talk show discussing the attacks in the US.
“’It’s not about religion. Unlike Pim Fortuyn who calls for a crusade, or what is it, a Cold War against Islam – which is a reprehensible remark because he lumps all Muslims together,” he said. “I have said from the beginning: there is nothing wrong with Islam, it is a religion to be respected. Most Muslims in the world, but also in the Netherlands, are good citizens and there is nothing wrong with them. It’s about that small bit of Muslim extremism, I have nothing against Islam.”
That view changed when Pim Fortuyn was assassinated nine days before the 2002 Dutch general election and left a sizable political vacuum of xenophobic and Islamophobic voters.
Moroccans in the Netherlands
The Moroccan community in the Netherlands first emerged in the mid 1960s. The country was facing severe labor shortages in the decades following World War II and decided to actively recruit foreign workers through bilateral agreements with Morocco and Turkey. By 1986, immigrants mostly consisted of families who joined those workers who had migrated before.
Moroccan immigrants faced a difficult start in the Netherlands, as the country increasingly grew to become a knowledge-economy. The Dutch had eagerly recruited workers to fuel the factories that drove the country’s economic development, but always preferred those with little to no education, rejecting anyone with secondary education or higher during the post-1965 recruitment era.
Despite the Netherlands no longer needing foreign workers as its economy evolved, Turkish and Moroccan immigration continued as foreign workers were reunited with their families after decades apart.
Still, the lack of education of first-generation migrants and their families became a growing obstacle to their successful integration in Dutch society. Most migrants came from rural areas in their country of origin and did not have a mentality that prioritized education.
This started to improve decade after decade, until on September 11, 2001, Islam and Dutch Muslims would suddenly be in the spotlight like never before.
A new political strategy
When Wilders vigorously defended Islam and Muslims, two weeks after the attacks in New York and Washington, there was no “playbook” on how to exploit growing fears about Islamic extremism and the concept of terrorism in general.
One year later, politicians around the country had noticed Pim Fortuyn’s meteoric rise in Dutch politics fueled by Islamophobic rhetoric. When Fortuyn was assassinated by environmentalist activist Volkert van der Graaf, it was clear there was a large constituency of Dutch voters eager to vote for hate-filled rhetoric that had long been taboo in Dutch society.
For half a century after the end of World War II, there was a consensus in Dutch society that far-right politics was the cause of the catastrophic conflict, and far-right views had never dared enter the mainstream ever since.
In 2002, it was clear that Pim Fortuyn had broken this taboo, despite his many attempts to claim he was a centrist.
Wilders became the spokesperson for the VVD in that same year, and he suddenly turned into a vocal critic of Islamic extremism. He was expelled, leaving the party after internal disagreements over his increasingly extreme public statements and Wilders’ opposition to Turkish EU membership.
Wilders’ new found “principles” led him to found his own political party in 2004, with a political platform that eerily mirrored that of the deceased Pim Fortuyn.
The PVV participated in its first parliamentary elections in 2016, and won 9 out of 150 parliamentary seats, providing further signs that they had effectively co-opted the Fortuyn constituency. The far-right party was still mostly seen as taboo, and played only a minor role in national and regional politics.
That changed in 2010, when Wilders’ party won 24 seats in parliament and got its first taste of power as it supported a centrist coalition. Two years later, Wilders abandoned the agreement as it became clear the government would introduce stringent austerity measures that were part of his own neoliberal ideology, but also were certain to be unpopular with the public.
Over the years, Wilders and his PVV grew their influence in the Netherlands and Europe while enjoying only limited success in elections. That changed in 2023, when an election gripped by irrational fear and hatred finally led to the PVV gaining the most votes of any party and becoming part of the governing coalition.
‘Feeling unsafe:’ pushing a narrative
For two decades Wilders had pushed his apocalyptic narratives of dangerous migrants and an Islamic “great replacement” in Europe, and the ensuing poison eventually blinded a significant part of the nation.
Over those same two decades, the Netherlands had seen a steady decline in crime, and a significant drop in youth crime and violent crime. The country’s diversified economy had withstood the tremors of the 2007-2008 financial crisis and the pandemic, and it now seems poised for future success in key industries like semiconductor production.
Surveys by the Dutch Bureau for Statistics (CBS) highlight that Dutch people feel increasingly safe. Yet the PVV has pushed a narrative of “street terrorists,” falsely claiming that certain neighborhoods were “no-go areas” for police and that Dutch police are underfunded. Dutch society is on the verge of surrendering to “alien” invaders, the xenophobic party has alarmingly claimed, calling for severe reforms of the country’s highly successful justice system.
Further claiming that that “crime pays” in the Netherlands, the PVV has tellingly called for a “zero-tolerance” policing approach that is used in countries with much higher rates of crime and recidivism.
Wilders himself has heavily pushed this narrative, saying: “Take a walk down the street and see where this is going. You no longer feel like you are living in your own country. There is a battle going on and we have to defend ourselves. Before you know it there will be more mosques than churches.”
Journalists who dug deeper into PVV constituencies found a group of voters who distrust elite politicians, are Eurosceptic, oppose mainstream political parties and climate policies, and express xenophobic views about migrants and foreigners. Interestingly, PVV voters are on the far-right on immigration, but center-left when it comes to income inequality.
The PVV’s political platform is perfectly tailored to this politically schizophrenic audience, offering left-wing proposals that benefit lower-income people, while simultaneously calling for a ban on mosques and catering to the fear that immigrants cause crime and “threaten Dutch culture.”
No place for nuance
The PVV’s populist agenda and Wilders both have a laser-focus on immigrants and Muslims as the cause of the Netherlands’ imaginary problems. They paint the country to be a hellish dystopia, a place of common street violence and regular violence perpetrated exclusively by refugees, immigrants and Dutch citizens of foreign origin.
The question remains how committed Wilders and the PVV are to actually resolving these perceived problems.
In 2008, Wilders had a key opportunity for dialogue with Dutch muslims. At the launch of his anti-Islam movie “Fitna,” the Dutch Muslim Broadcaster (NMO) invited Wilders to screen his movie during their broadcast on Dutch national television. The organization had invited and interviewed critics of Islam before, including Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Theo van Gogh.
All the broadcaster asked for was an open dialogue between Wilders and both supporters and opponents of the controversial anti-Quran movie after its public broadcast. Wilders declined.
Such a rejection of an opportunity for a good-faith and open dialogue is another of the many indications that Wilders’s black-and-white narrative of the perceived ills of Dutch society is a political strategy, not a genuine quest to improve Dutch society.
Another indicator came in 2021 following the unmasking of the identity of the person who had paid the lawyers that defended Wilders in his 2020 public trial for incitement to violence and insulting an ethnic group. American anti-Islam crusader Robert J. Shillman was found to have picked up the bill, after also funding British far-right provocateur Tommy Robinson.
Wilders’s calls for racism and xenophobia appear to be a political strategy with little personal conviction. After all, his wife isn’t Dutch, and half of Wilders’ roots lie in Indonesia, the largest Muslim-majority country in the world, Indonesia.
Wilders defended Islam two weeks after the September 11 attacks, while his newfound Islamophobia conveniently emerged after the death of Fortuyn left a xenophobic constituency without a leader.
The result of Wilders’ political opportunism is clear — it has left the Netherlands more divided, more openly racist and xenophobic than ever.
For a country that has long benefited from being a cosmopolitan multicultural society, the irony is that the greatest threat to “Dutch values” is Wilders himself.
