The Netherlands: Elections grant the freedom to assail

Moderates depart for the extreme

For long I have lamented the docile and cuddly nature of the moderate leaning politicians in the Netherlands who have for the past 8 years given ground to the voluble, garrulous extreme representatives of populist agendas.

One area that seems to excite the electorate without the necessary proof is that of immigration, that in the sense of immigrants who do not have much as opposed to wealthy and prosperous immigrants.

In the Netherlands, the fault lines have been drawn on the anti-Islam rhetoric fronted by The Freedom Party – as an aside, I have never seen a party with “Freedom” in its name ever espouse the real ideals of freedom.

They usually exercise the freedom to be nasty, rotten, atrocious and reprehensible and claim every attack on their positions as an attack on their freedom of expression.

The populists have the field

The middle ground of the moderate, the reasonable and the consensual could easily have consigned these extreme elements to the scrapheap but the traditional parties and the age-old civility of discourse have been mute, blind, ineffective and scared to tackle hot-button issues that populists thrive on for mass hysteria.

This populist activity warps our democracy and the dividends end up with parties whose singular and narrow agendas is the equivalent of giving control of a cruise liner to someone can hardly float a canoe.

Yesterday, we were at the polls for the local government and council elections and we chose representatives for our local councils and cities in two separate sets of lists that were the perfect confusion for the ballot box.

In the end, I had to go for broad party policy rather than particular party representative balancing the issues of the party I thought was better for my local government which surprisingly was quite different for the one I considered better for the city council.

They are gathering pace

The Freedom Party fielded candidates in two cities, Almere which was reclaimed land – a polder, and Den Haag (The Hague) which is the administrative capital of the Netherlands – they would probably be the biggest party in Almere and the second largest in The Hague.

With the general elections coming in June as I had surmised at the fall of the last cabinet in February there is every possibility that the Freedom Party might well sweep the board and we would be lead by an extreme wing of reactionaries pretending to have the interest of the Netherlands and the Dutch at heart.

Host-Guest dichotomy

It is not like the Dutch can with their Calvinist and Catholic heritage say that in the 21st Century they are anything like a Christian nation and the increase in foreign nationals from Islamic nations has resulted in isolated communities rather than fully integrated adherents to the Dutch ideal.

This was not helped when certain Muslim leaders of thought began attacking the liberalism and tolerance of the Dutch that developed a gathering irritation of guest dictating to host.

The need to crowd the centre

But we need great objectivity in these times not to lose our heads in the hazy cloud of our differences that could bring upon us a government headed for ruin and the destruction of our country but seek the common ground of consensus and commonality that brings out the best of all of us.

The results from Almere are unfortunately a dyke-break, if a polder can vote in the extreme, one can begin to fear the worst but hope that the victory of today just creates the indiscipline and arrogance that would make the people move back to moderation and core Dutch values by June – a long shot but a very hopeful one.

Sources

BBC News - Dutch anti-Islamists makes key gains in local elections

Party for Freedom - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Fitna - The irresponsible movie [akin.blog-city.com]

The amazing prospect of Balkenende V [akin.blog-city.com]

Al Jazeera English - Europe - Dutch cabinet falls over Afghan row

Polder Model - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Geert Wilders - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Verdonk: Her misplaced pride

A sailor on dry land

A few weeks ago, I was on the tram from my neighbourhood to the Central Station when I saw a big poster set up at the Amsterdam Passenger’s Terminal showing a lady dressed up as a clean looking tar with hands on ship wheel.

The text on the poster was Trots op Netherland, which means “Proud of the Netherlands”, the lady in the poster was Mrs. Rita Verdonk who until last year was the Minister of Immigration and Integration till her actions brought down the government.

Lady Oddjob’s pride

In my blogs about her, I referred to her as Lady Oddjob and this was derived from the time when she decided to throw her hat in the ring to contest the leadership of her party (VVD) then, she persona and firebrand populism drew impressions of the Oddjob character in a James Bond film decapitating people by throwing his hat like a Frisbee.

She did not win that leadership contest but at the general election she polled more votes than the party leader and tried to unseat the leadership by sleight.

Eventually, she became unmanageable within the party hierarchy and she got kicked out of the party, hence this new incarnation of Lady Oddjob as leader of Trots op Netherland.

No leader at all

I have always been of the view that Mrs. Verdonk might be a good minister but she has no leadership or even decent team-working abilities in politics, she held everyone to ransom and in the process destroyed her party’s ability to continue in coalition after the elections because they lost seats.

Trots op Netherland is no new dimension in Dutch politics, it has nothing to do with being proud of the Netherlands, and rather, it would serve as a refuge for nostalgic, bitter, disgruntled and ignorant Dutch citizens who have been left behind by the changing times.

It would be the gathering place for the populist use of flawed statistics, poorly reasoned logic about problems with the Netherlands and a catchment for those who inadvertently seek greater instability for the country they want to be more prosperous.

We have seen the rise and fall of the Lijst Pim Fortuyn and the advent of Geert Wilder’s band of patriots called the Party for Freedom.

Bitter people

It needs the articulate verbiage of Senator Obama to give voice the real issue here which as the truth is best not spoken, he might have been expressing a frustration in not being able to break into the working class communities around America when he said, “You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania and, like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them, and it's not surprising, then, they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations”.

Whether it was politically astute for Senator Obama to say that, say it in that way or try to rephrase it in some more digestible language, time will tell, but the is the truth as glaring as you will get it about populist parties and their causes.

The congregation of bitter people who cling to nostalgia, religion, guns, antipathy, anti-immigrant sentiment or some other so-called patriotic or nationalist cause in the name of taking back their country, which in fact, is taking their country back to the Dark Ages of economic stagnation, insularity and protectionism all of which would never yield good dividend in this global village we now inhabit.

Now, we live in a free country with the freedom to assemble for any cause we might be persuaded of, if the “bitter” people need a sort of representation in our political system, they are welcome to proselytise and they would find sympathisers, people who would lurk in the shadows providing substantial but clandestine support – democratic subversion, you might call it.

The proud are represented

I would contend that those who are really proud of the Netherlands have already spoken, they voted for the parties now in power who for all their foibles have more broad-based ideas for taking the Netherlands forward than saying anything that would panic people into running into the last refuge of the scoundrel – blind Patriotism. (Paraphrased from Samuel Johnson)

Fitna - The irresponsible movie

Hyped beyond significance

Many would have read about some impending film to be released by some Dutch politician that has created more commentary than a serious blockbuster movie that addresses serious issues of the day.

Geert Wilders is by the standards of Dutch politicians a poorly educated rabble-rousing populist whose political ascendancy has served to stoke the embers of discord, reaching to out to remove the rivets of societal cohesion that binds our quality of life to the kinds of objective purpose that allows us to persuade different cultures of our way of life.

Fitna, the movie

I decided to watch Fitna, the “movie”, not so much out of curiosity but for the purposes of highlighting the flawed nature of trying to create a social debate by intemperate and provocative material.

The caricatures of Islam in the film are unnecessary and the montage of trying to push an agenda against Islam by the narrow but emotive pictures of the terrorist attacks of 9/11, Madrid and London bombings just appeals to the baser instincts of a more civilised humanity.

Mr. Wilders lack of academic mien shows and it follows the common saying that implies copying from one source is plagiarism but that from many sources is research – this is a collage of tired images glued together without intelligent purpose. He is being sued for breach of copyright for the use of one of the Mohammedan cartoons.

Violence in both books

The Surahs that he selected from the Qu’ran for the film could with adequate theological study have similar verses produced from the Bible or some other religious book – all religions have a temperance element and a fundamental element. I cannot remember the number of Psalms that wanted to strike terror to the heart of my enemies. Fitna analysis.

Anyone who concentrates on just the Old Testament and the book of Revelation could come away thinking that the Bible was quite a bloody book, and that is just in the search for balance in any argument.

To suggest that the Qu’ran is very much like Hilter’s Mein Kampf is a bit rich considering Hitler was using the flawed Christian ideology of holding the Jews accountable for the death of Christ.

Both the Bible and the Qu'ran predate Hitler's tome by well over a millennium and it is unlikely that Hitler was reading the Qu'ran when he was narrating his struggle - legend has it that he thought he had the spear (Spear of Destiny) that pierced the side of Jesus on the cross and hence his obsession with world domination.

The abuse of expression

Beyond this, we have all this talk about the freedom of expression which is fine but no one seems to touch on the responsibility that evolves from being able to express yourself freely without causing offence.

For the kind of rhetoric Geert Wilders spews out, we the taxpayers of the Netherlands have to pay dearly for his security and that in my mind is just as bad as the uncontrolled welfare regime we dole out to the immigrants he is so much against.

If Mr. Wilders had to foot the cost of his irresponsible use of the freedom of expression just as the immigrants should be persuaded to take on a better work ethic, we probably would have a better place for vigorous debate.

Irresponsible to the extreme

This "seminal" work of Mr. Wilders unnecessarily endangers Dutch activities all around the world where people are a lot more emotive about their religious affiliations than the contemporary Dutch are.

This is not about having the balls to talk about issues others are afraid to talk about, it is simply reckless behaviour that takes no account of consequence – many audiences however have been brought low into this diatribe, excited by provocation as they find themselves running into the last refuge of the scoundrel – Patriotism.

We all need to talk

Do not get me wrong – there is a debate to be had, a serious rubbing of minds of intellectuals within our society to address the concerns about the growth of Islam and Islamic cultural views within Western societies that are fast losing their religious heritage for liberal agnostic secularism.

I do not think you can raise a standard of secularism against the force of the passion for religion – either Christianity or Islam – that is the battle that the West is appearing to lose because if there were a stronger religious adherence amongst us, it would be difficult to be labelled as outright infidels.

Muslims and conservative Christians have coalesced on “hot-button” social and religious issues in the United States, so, it is not a case of these people not being able to co-exist.

Bad news for all

The case of Fitna which Mr. Wilders wrote and co-directed with the Scarlett Pimpernell which I think is no doubt an attempt at humour, does not carry the debate forward – the best you can get out of this is a shouting match of extremists and riots in religious hotspots along with a boycott of Dutch products just because one Dutch member of parliament has a big mouth.

It is interesting that only those organisations that align with tugging at the base instincts of humanity have offered to air this tripe – we seek a better and more cohesive Dutch society, Mr. Wilders is definitely not the man to take us there – not by any stretch of the imagination – our leaders in the centre need to speak up for our values better and seize back the agenda and initiative from these trouble makers.

Frankly, I am not impressed, not one bit at all.

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