The Dutch election signals a need for a political awakening.
Geert Wilders's PVV won the Dutch election on an anti-migrant platform promising a cavalcade of unconstitutional policies. The elections evince a damning cluelessness among the political incumbents.
After an electoral campaign that started and ended by presenting migrants as a threat to the country, should it really come as a surprise that the anti-migrant party came out on top in the Dutch elections? The Dutch electorate has come to dismiss the pseudo-solutions of the existing political class, most prominently those of the VVD, as being too little, too late.
We were told for months that the VVD had changed - no longer being the party of the elites, no longer ignoring its citizens - but the reality is that the vast majority of the electorate saw through this. As the political discussion increasingly turned towards the right, the appeal of Geert Wilders’s anti-migrant, anti-Islam, anti-EU, and anti-climate movement party only grew. How did we get here and what do we do now?
The electoral campaign
I wrote in my first post on this substack that the principal concerns of Dutch voters were the cost of living crisis, the housing crisis, migration, and the environment / climate change.
Indeed, in each platform debate throughout the electoral campaign, these were the primary debate points and we heard ample discussion on each.
But what was evident was that throughout, the PVV was able to turn each of these issues back into a debate on migration. Remember, Mark Rutte and the VVD collapsed the existing coalition on migration earlier this year - this is why we’re having elections in the first place.
In response, to try and attract voters, Yeşilgöz and the VVD attempted to present themselves as both firm and reasonable with the question of migration. Frequently in debates, it was repeated that the left was ignoring migration as a concern while the VVD had eminently reasonable solutions. On the other hand, Yeşilgöz emphasized repeatedly that VVD didn’t have the same extreme tendencies of Wilders, while simultaneously extending endless sympathy and willingness to govern with him. The VVD attempted a stance in the centre between two poles and in the end, collapsed between them.
What this did instead was to legitimate the PVV’s stance on migration while showing an internal hypocrisy and contradiction within the VVD. Yeşilgöz argued, nearly in the same breath, that the Netherlands needed far firmer borders while continuing to be highly dependent on migrant workers from across the EU. In this deeply pessimistic picture of migration, the VVD found itself crafting a vision wherein we harden our stance against protecting refugees while at the same time continue to exploit migrant workers for cheap labour domestically. The story proved unconvincing with the electorate seeing through the charade and turning to the right.
In this environment, the PVV was able to provide a more coherent narrative, albeit one that is xenophobic and particularly Islamophobic.
But why the political emphasis on migration in the first place?
Ewald Engelen, left-leaning columnist in the Groene Amsterdammer, has written that the past decades of the Netherlands has consisted of a continuous scapegoating of migrants in a desperate attempt to ignore political economic concerns that are far trickier and more complicated to resolve. It has been convenient, since 9/11 and even before, to claim that all woes of the country originate in migration, rather than on a systemic incapacity to address legitimate political and economic questions that the VVD has ignored under Rutte’s premiership.
While the entire political discourse throughout the electoral campaign circled around the topic of refugees (predominantly those with a Muslim background), the reality is that this population is significantly smaller than wealthy expats, international students, and holders of international capital - all of which present a much higher burden on the populace in terms of the housing shortage and gentrification costs. Just as a reminder: refugees made up barely 13% of migrants of the past 10 years.
Nevertheless, a growing segment of the Dutch population found themselves experiencing the brunt of the crises of the past decade and a half. Even worse, when they expressed themselves in popular revolt, they found themselves described as intolerant, bigoted, backward, and indulgent.
Ultimately, a narrative developed in the Netherlands that those who find themselves outraged and ignored by the existing political order are uneducated, racist, xenophobic, and lower-class. It’s a familiar tale that the political incumbents would prefer to ignore. This time, the electorate demanded their attention.
If we look towards the problems created through the Rutte years, we start to uncover some additional logics that might help us understand the vote for Wilders.
So what to do about Rutte’s dirty laundry?
Rutte’s crises don’t disappear with the fall of the VVD. We are still living in crises of housing, cost of living, environmental standards, childcare subsidies, among many others.
We also can’t forget that these crisis have shown repeatedly a disdain of the political incumbent for the residents of the Netherlands: the toeslagen affair; the inability to discuss emissions with farmers, rather than impose strict and punishing measures; Mark Rutte wiping his work phone from messages. It should be unsurprising that the citizens of the Netherlands have lost faith in their political leaders.
And so they sought solutions elsewhere.
And here the picture becomes ever more complicated. Whether PVV’s populism is purely tacit political opportunism for garnering voters is unclear, but its policies ring more to the tune of redistributive social policy than the familiar neoliberalism of the VVD. It has at least provided a very real different set of solutions for the crises of the country.
This is not to diminish the xenophobic and dangerous platform of the party. It is rather to understand what it is that this segment of the Dutch populace wants, aside from the view on migration.
For example, consider the following proposals taken directly from the election campaign:
Removal of the VAT on groceries to help with the cost of living crisis;
Lowering of energy costs through reduction of taxes on electricity and gas;
Lowering of rent for social housing;
Raising of the minimum wage;
Increase of housing cost subsidy;
Removal of the mandatory contribution for healthcare costs;
Lowering of retirement age to 65;
De-marketization of urgent care.
Needless to say these policies are antithetical to the free-trade market logic of the preceding 13 years of VVD and so spell an alternative vision for the country. While some of these policies were also in the election promises of the VVD, we know damn well what that party has done the past 13 years.
These policy proposals are also remarkably similar to the agenda of the further left of the country in many ways, raising further questions on why they appear to be at an even lower point than ever before. (Perhaps more on that in a later post).
While the question remains as to whether these policies are legitimately supported by Wilders and co., political support for them portrays a very different vision desired by the Dutch voting populace.
Lest we forget the dangers at hand.
Both Wilders’s explicit discourse and policy visions for the country are dangerous, unconstitutional, bigoted, and present a real harm for many living within the Netherlands.
Consider the following policies, again taken directly from the campaign program of PVV:
Opting out of EU migration and asylum laws;
Opting out of UN-refugee conventions;
Removal of temporary protection for some Syrian refugees;
No Islamic schools, banning of Mosques and Qurans within the country;
Less non-western migration;
Forbidding dual-nationality;
Major reduction of international students;
Elimination of the national coordinator against discrimination and racism;
Retraction of the formal apology for slavery and colonialism;
Elimination of subsidies for art and culture;
Dramatic reduction of international foreign aid;
Removal of all governmental information in Arabic and Turkish.
In addition to this, Wilders has called for a referendum for leaving the EU, has been very explicitly anti-LGBTQI+, against climate action, and against the Dutch public broadcaster. He has also been entirely one-sided in an uncompromising support for Israel. Those who wished for a country in solidarity with the Palestinian people will be dismayed and unsurprised at the heavy-handed and brutal manner with which Wilders has neglected the circumstances of those in Gaza. Lest I remind you that the Netherlands is still, to this day, profiting off of the conflict.
Fortunately, many of Wilders’s proposals cannot be implemented due to constitutional limitations and the necessity to form agreements with coalition partners.
That being said, the fact this policy agenda spoke to such a considerable share of the Dutch population should wake us up. The past 13 years has fomented a real political discontent that we must take seriously.
And what to do?
It is going to be a difficult period of time for those of us seeking to create a more tolerant, progressive, and equitable country. This is especially the case for the Muslim, international, and extremely diverse population of the country. We must reach out with solidarity and care for those whose safety is threatened and seek solutions together.
That being said: it’s obvious that something has broken. We must take this seriously. The Rutte years have victims and we need to acknowledge that.
Earlier this year a report was commissioned describing rising poverty across the country and the measures that can be taken to remedy it. This report chronicles that the past near 15 years of governance has failed spectacularly when it comes to producing an ambitious, protective, and equalizing welfare state.
One of the authors of the report produced a similar one over 30 years ago and in a recent podcast episode of Follow the Money, he highlighted that when conducting that research decades ago, foodbanks were inconceivable and not being able to heat one’s home was inconceivable. Now, there’s over 170 food banks in the country and many are left in the cold.
I implore us to take this seriously. To understand that rising poverty and inequality tear social foundations apart. Whatever makeup we have with the coming government, and however functional or not it is to become, take seriously the worsening social and economic conditions of many living in the Netherlands.
Now is the moment when a government has to be formed. Coalition formation has rarely been swift in recent Dutch elections, and already, Yeşilgöz has rejected the idea of participating within the cabinet, much to Wilders’s chagrin.
Pieter Omtzigt from NSC has been very explicit about not accepting the most extreme of Wilders’s policies were they to enter coalition together. While this is a moment in which the agency of the Dutch voter seems particularly placated and we wait to see what compromises are made in the creation of an upcoming coalition, this does not equate to a moment to stand by the wayside in patient acquiescence.
This is a moment for new movement building. For learning from the mistakes of this election campaign, or the past 15 years, and how to form a more equal country with ambition and empathy at heart.
Ewald Engelen in his piece in the Groene Amsterdammer describes a need for new forms of democratization. I agree with him that this is a moment in which political experimentation is urgently needed.
Sure, I understand that we have protections from the parliamentary system and the situation could be far, far worse. That being said, this should wake us up to how divided we truly are as a country.
I implore the reader not be dispirited, however bleak this moment may seem.