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Yesterday, the focus of Dutch politics was, as usual, on Geert Wilders and his Freedom Party. They presented their manifesto, and as one might have expected, I was curious enough to take a look. It is a remarkable text, not in the last place because it is remarkably badly written, but let's not disqualify the enemy because he doesn't use our rhetoric. This text, obviously, was written for people who like remarkably badly written texts and who seem to be expected by the authors of the text to struggle comprehending well-written prose. Apparently, Geert Wilders thinks his voters are morons. In a certain sense, perhaps they are, too.

Nevertheless, I must admit I kind of had a good time reading it. It helps that the PVV is twelve seats down in the polls, so we need to take it slightly less seriously then when there still was a serious chance that Geert Wilders would be our next Prime Minister. He won't. Of course, I disagree completely with, say, 95% of the program, so let's forget about that. We all know Geert doesn't like the educated Dutch elite, and there are few surprises concerning his views on the Dutch muslim community. The Freedom Party has what one might call a tribal temper: who is not with us, is against us, and who fails to conform to our laws will be punished severely or just erased from society altogether. It is a 21st century version of Hammurabi's laws. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. But let's just not bother about that, because there are some very intriguing statements in this text.

For example, we now have our national Joe the Plumber. He is called Henk, a typically Dutch name, and his wife is called Ingrid. Not exactly what you call a Dutch name, but we have been taken for Scandinavians many times by foreigners, so I understand the mistake. Remember that Geert comes from Limburg, they don't really do Dutch names over there. The program of the Freedom Party is for Henk and Ingrid, who suffer daily and lead miserable lives because of Ali and Fatima, who just recently arrived and consume all their hard-earned tax money.

Yet, there is more. On the 4th of May, Holland commemorates the victims of the second world war and all the military conflicts that followed that. The Freedom Party has an interesting interpretation, which I will quote in Dutch:

Op 4 mei gedenken wij de slachtoffers van het (nationaal) socialisme

So it is not just Hitler's victims who we commemorate, but - brackets - also those dutchmen who died because of socialism. I don't, actually, know when was the last time that we had a socialist government that made victims. I don't even think we ever really had a socialist government, although some people may think of the Den Uyl government in the 1970 as a socialist one.

Then, there is this bizarre Israel thing going on. Israel is the one-word-version of the facebook relationship status "It's complicated". There are no uncontested facts, it's all politics, and nobody really oversees the whole of what's happening. There might be some consensus that there might have been some troubles in recent years. Yet, not for Geert. Israel, says the manifesto literally, is an "overwhelming succes". No matter where your sympathy lies in these matters, I suggest we agree on this being blatant nonsense. Yet, more intriguing than the statement itself is the question why this is stated so explicitly. For, let's be honest, who cares? so what? We are voting for a Dutch parliament, we don't have anything to do with Israel, and any clear position on Israel will put off rather than attract voters, especially if your Israel position is absurd like that of Wilders. He also wants us to move the embassy to Jeruzalem, as the real capital-city of Israel, and refer to Jordania as 'Palestina' because it is inhabited by Palestinians. One might remember that Wilders, at some point, was on tour in the US. There may be some (foreign) financial support involved in these statements.

There is much more. Wilders wants the green core of the Randstad Area (the 'Groene Hart') to transform in the beating heart of the Netherlands (kloppend hart), thus sacrificing, say, 75% of that typically Dutch landscape shaped by our battle against the water, which is in clear contradiction with his emphasis on the Dutch glory of the far past, when the seas were dominated by those vessels with the Dutch flag (quietly ignoring the fact that many of these vessels either contained slaves being transported for good money to the US or pirates waiting for the next gold-packed spanish fleet to pass by). Wilders doesn't understand our broadcasting system which consists of several broadcasting companies each having their own profile, some of which are left-wing, and some of which don't care about politics. This is the usual freedom-of-speech-as-long-as-you-say-what-I-want-to-hear-tantrum. But, hey, as long as he doesn't get more than, say, 15 seats, let him go on talking bullshit. It's amusing, too.

NL Politics, Wilders,
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We, the Dutch, and Geert Wilders

06-03-10, 18:44

I am going to do this in English, because the people capable of reading Dutch know very well what I think of the man who here in Britain is generally thought to have a serious chance of becoming our next prime minister (Guardian, BBC). Yes, there is serious chance that he will end up conquering twenty-seven or even more seats in parliament, and there is the possibility that his party will be the largest (though, fair to say, we never had a parliament with all parties having less than 30 seats, which is one fifth out of a total of 150). Yet, I personally do not believe the man is going to be our next prime minister, and I think few people, at this point, are believing that.

We are going to have strange elections. Three parties might end up largest: the Christian-Democrats, the Labour Party, and the Freedom Party. Now for both other large parties, the Freedom Party is something of a no-go-area, simply because their voters would not accept a coalition with Wilders, and would run away. The same is true for the Greens party, the Socialist Party and the Liberal Democrats, so that it is completely impossible for Wilders to get involved in a coalition that comes anywhere near 75 seats. That's the good news.

The bad news is that Wilders' ideology of divide and rule has been dominating the debate in Dutch politics for some five years now, and that there is a fair chance of the upcoming elections campaign being dominated by issues about islam and integration, which is not at all helpful for the hard issues that are at stake in the years to come. People will cast their vote based on arguments about the burqa, islamic schools and other completely irrelevant things, without seriously thinking about the future of our national health-care, our school system or our state pension. For me, personally, that is more scary than whether or not Wilders will end up largest. One of the parties that is likely to profit sharply from this is the Liberal Democrats (D66), who will probably conquer a large percentage of the vote because of their leader saying sensible things about Wilders, but who have a socioeconomic agenda that might have far-reaching consequences for our society. Yet, many people will vote for them without even realizing. That, really, is the price to be paid for Geert Wilders. It is not a price of racism, but a price of distortion.

Wilders NL, D66,
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