Muslims living in Holland should tear the Koran in half, as half of the book advocates violence, thus maverick Dutch politician Geert Wilders recently suggested, subtly adding:“If Mohammed lived here today, I could imagine chasing him out of the country tarred and feathered as an extremist.”
This was the latest in what has become an extensive repertoire of Wilders’ “wisdom” on immigration and Islam. He has also held forth on headscarves and mosque building, and it is this populist and provocative approach that has brought him headlines as well as friends and foes in equal measure. His nicknames include: bulldog, crusader, street fighter and, on account of his carefully waxed LouisXIV white locks, the Blond Dolly of The Hague.
Having left the liberal party in 2004, which he thought“too left,” Wilders went on to establish his Freedom Party, with which he won 9 out of 150 parliamentary seats during the 2006 elections; and according to a recent poll, Wilders would win seats, if elections were held today.
Latest in a series of political grandstanders
However, one would gravely underestimate current trends inHolland by writing off Wilders as a noisy crank, thrown out by the exotic tradition of Dutch coalition-based politics.Wilders is but the latest in a series of very colorful, if highly controversial politicians, who have played the anti-immigration card for significant political gains and triggered a wind of change, transforming the Dutch Kingdom from one of Europe’s most progressive and welcoming states into a country with the toughest immigration laws on the continent.
It all started at the end of the 1990s with the emergence of the flamboyant Pim Fortuyn, a former communist turned liberal university professor with a love for designer suits and controversy. Warning of “an Islamization of Dutch culture,” even though Muslims make up but 5% of the population, Fortuyn was the first to put immigration and integration firmly on the political agenda. He was shot dead in May 2002 by a Dutch environmentalist.
Next to carry the anti-immigration and anti-Islam flag was Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a Somali refugee who was granted political asylum in 1997 and who entered parliament for the LiberalParty in 2002, under a storm of criticism, as she had always been a member of the Labor Party. Ali was and still is a very ambitious woman and, like Fortuyn, emphasized the“backwardness” of Islam, especially regarding women.
Loyal to her new liberal party masters, Ali also called for tough immigration laws, until in May 2006 it was discovered that the 37-year-old had lied about her past. She had not lived through and survived the Somali civil war, but in fact attended one of the best schools in Kenya. Too much of a political hot potato for her party, Ali withdrew quietly from mainstream politics and accepted a job with the ultra-right American Enterprise Institute.
With Fortuyn killed and Hirsi Ali gone, only Wilders remains. Often called “the new Fortuyn”—a title he vehemently rejects—Wilders wants to be seen as` his own man.“I want people to judge me on who I am,” he stated during a visit to the United States. “I am Geert Wilders. What we share is our anger that the popular voice is not being translated into policy.”
The last sentence says it all. Like Fortuyn before him,Wilders claims that Dutch politicians have lost touch with“the street.” To back up his often outrageous comments,Wilders likes to refer to “the millions outside(parliament)” who think like him. Fortuyn claims he dared to say what “most people” only dare to think. Such populist references to “the silent majority” have had often disastrous consequences in the past. At the height of its popularity in 2003, Fortuyn’s party took only 17% of Dutch seats, while Wilders could only claim 6% in 2006.
The purpose of Wilders’ trip to the United States was to meet a number of neo-con and Christian right groups. “I want to explain what’s going to happen in Holland and ask for support—political support, maybe financial support, all the support possible.” Wilders is in dire need of support, mostly monetary, as he is no longer part of the well-offLiberal Party, and has become painfully aware of the fact that a political party cannot live on screaming headlines a lone. Yet, although the new breed of Dutch politicians can rely on some sympathy among America’s conservative elite, it is unlikely they are to receive much cash.
First of all, institutions linked to the US government will think twice before financing a Dutch opposition party, while Holland belongs to America’s most loyal allies in the so-called War on Terror. Secondly, conservative Holland is not quite yet conservative America. Wilders may be anti-Islam and cherish a free market ideology, yet he lives in a country that has formally embraced gay marriages, abortion, euthanasia and a liberal drugs policy.
What does this mean for the future of Wilders? Well, on the short term, he will no doubt continue to provoke headlines.Yet on the long term, a combination of limited finances and equally limited political experience will see the FreedomParty follow in the footsteps of Pim Fortuyn’s party, which failed to win a single seat in the 2006 elections.
PETER SPEETJENS is a Dutch writer and freelance consaltant
