Dutch politics

Wilders's things

The Netherlands inches towards a minority government

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Just because the Koran is a "holy book" does not mean that it is any less dangerous than Mein Kampf. In fact, I would argue that it is more dangerous because it IS a religious book rather than an ideologial or political polemic.

Comments like Dapples and the "ashamed" Dutch posters reflect the fact that in their efforts to be politically correct, leftists tend not to look at the substance of what they are defending. I could name 10 places in the world right now that are experiencing violence due to the adherents of Islam not being able to get along with their neighbors (both Muslim and non-Muslim).


This brings to mind what happened in Austria not so long ago; right-wing party goes into coalition with far-right partner. As I recall all of that didn't end up too badly.

Which is not to say that I particularly like seeing Wilders getting into power. But I rather doubt that it'll prove to be the end of civilization.


@A Dutchman: Regarding judges, if I remember correctly, it's Mr. Wilders who is being prosecuted for his ideas and in fact for speaking the truth: The Quoran is a fascist text and has indeed led to many more deaths and suffering than Mein Kampf(though to be fair these deaths are spread over many centuries). And he is lucky to be just prosecuted because others have been killed or are under a death warrant for their views(like Salman Rushdie or the Danish cartoonists).


Geert Wilders represents the elephant in the room for all of Europe when it comes to the official attitude of professional politicians (and academic intellectuals from ivory towers) to Islam. They want to ignore it but the fact is they cannot. It has to be faced that Islam in Europe is not just a religious belief worn lightly (as is the vast majority of Christianity), but rather a religious and political movement the majority of which fundamentally opposes European norms of individual rights and freedoms. The way forward is to shine a light on Islam in Europe and ask its leaders to openly and categorically state that Islam is just like any other religious belief in Europe - something personal to consenting and self associating adults and has no special place in law. This means in practice that all children in Europe should ideally be taught values up in a secular education system and there should be no Islamic schools except in the same way as private Christian or Jewish schools who must teach a common state curriculum. Islamic leaders in Europe should also be asked to clearly condemn the misogynistic, homophobic, theocratic Islam that we see as the standard in the majority of Islamic states in the wider world. Until European Islam does these things it is not to be trusted and has no place in Europe.


As a Turkish-Dutch, I can understand the fears of indigenous Dutch people. To see a city which was once predominantly white turning into a metropolitan city where the 'autochtonen' (indigenous Dutch) become a minority is not easy to accept for some people, as happened to the city I live in (Rotterdam). It is true that 'foreign' Dutchmen have shaped society into their own liking and now it has pretty much nothing do with Dutch culture. If you take a walk down the centre of Rotterdam, you would feel like you were in New York, Istanbul, Marrakech, Mumbai or Beijing. This does not neccessarily have to be a bad thing, but if all ethnicities keep their own culture, it will eventually clash. The Dutch have failed horribly to integrate these 'new' Dutch people into society. The Netherlands never accepted itself as an immigrant country and probably never will, but the fact is that this country will need 2 million immigrants in the upcoming decade. I wonder how this new government will handle this. The Netherlands needs to adjust its integration policy and take a more US-approach in this matter, since former UK colonies are the most advanced in integrating foreigners into their country (Canada, USA, Auastralia, New-Zealand..) Newcomers need to take over Dutch values and customs and learn the language in my opinion(ABN). It got me into university and that from an immigrant family who cleaned toilets and worked in fabrics. Either way, what Wilders is doing is demonizing one part of the population to gain support for his own agenda. There are one million Muslims in this country and only a small part of the Maroccan muslims are a true problem. This Wilders is a fascist which just shouts things the people love to hear. He doesn't know anything about Islam, let alone countries which are predominantly Muslim. In Turkey headscarves are banned from public buildings and in Uzbekistan beards are not aloud. In Azerbaijan, there is a statue of a women which takes off her veil. The only image Wilders has about Islam, is that of the Arab world (which still does not give a good Image about Islam as long as Saudi Arabia exports its wahabism to other countries). Yes, there need to be fundemental changes in the way the Netherlands deals with immigration, not with muslims in particular. Wilders is the biggest danger to the social cohesion in this country. I wouldn't even care that much if he would bash Islam the whole time, but calling Turkey a barbaric nation goes a bit too far. What age does he think he lives in to talk like a crusader, the Middle Ages? I love this country and I am proud of it, but I am ashamed of the 1.5 million people who voted for this man. By the way, I am not a leftist and I would not vote for the PvdA in a milion years (I have my reasons).

Peace at Home, Peace in the World.

Johan Sterk

Over the last 400 years Radical Enlightenment has created a society where all can be free to say and publish what they want, live the way they want to, and stay free from harassment by religion and government, and where I have lived happily over the last 62 years.

I voted the Freedom party because I have no intention to compromise on these principles, have an artist murdered because of speaking his mind two blocks from where I live, have imported women be lockup in a small apartment two streets away.

Dutch toleration entails positive individual freedom not toleration of fundamentalism and barbarism. May I suggest Economist' journalist to read some read some history and philosophy, say Jonathan Israel "Radical Enlightenment" and Spinoza's "Theological-Political Treatment"; the above account is almost unbearably superficial and shows much political ignorance and credulity.

snorri godhi

"For almost a decade many Dutch voters have supported various anti-immigration, anti-Muslim parties, while mainstream politicians have struggled to purge them from the system."

I seem to remember that something similar happened in England in the late 1680s, in the American colonies in the early 1770s, and in France in the late 1780s. The superficial issues were different, but the conflict between the people and the political class seems basically the same.

If The Economist had been around at the time (1688, 1776, and 1789), it would have called the revolutionaries the "far-right", and would have asked them to reject their "more discriminatory elements", such as banning Catholics from bearing arms, prohibiting an establishment of religion, or nationalizing church land.


@Jos Visser: "the beauty of coalition government is that any extremes tend to get moderated by the process of creating policies that all involved can support". I could not disagree more. IMO, coalition government takes power away from the electorate and hands it to grubby, deal-making politicians who each want disproportionate government largesse for their own supporters.


Europe's history is full of these "conservative" types. Throughout the history these types had managed to rise to power by demonizing a particular group of people; they still do that! This is the "culture" of Europe, so don't be surprised by this Gentleman's comparisons of Koran with Hitler's infamous best seller! He has probably read the book himself a number of times and he's probably planning to implement some of third Reich policies; but this time to Muslims!



You're so right. Islam is way more agressive towards Europeans than Europeans against Islam. So who's far-right in this matter?


You're saying that the book 'mein kampf' has led to more murdering than the Islam. You couldn't be more wrong. Islam has sacrificed way more human lives in all these years than Hitler could ever kill. Religion is the root of all, i repeat all, evil in this world. Government should scrap any kind of funding to ANY religious organisation.

No shame on the Netherland, Bravo for the Netherlands for trying to take steps against the most agressive of al religions Islam.

William Rubber III

When the christians in the Baltic states were denying the human rights of gays, Mr. Wilders was dead silent. Imagine what would be happened if the christians there were actually moslims...


Funny thing is that on the axis liberal(in a civil liberties sense) - authoritarian, you could call the PVV far right wing. On the axis socialist - liberal(in an economic sense), however, you could call them extreme left wing. Their proposed welfare spending surpasses all dutch leftist parties...

A Dutchman

It's getting increasingly hard to differentiate between 'left' and 'right' parties in the current Dutch political playing field. So I agree with some of the commenters that calling Geert Wilders' party just "far-right" doesn't paint the whole picture.
I would rather call them "extremist fascist xenophobics"`. Maybe a couple of their recent political statements will illustrate this for the forgeign viewers, not familiar with the PVV and the Dutch politics:
- they want to make it illegal to posses or read the Qur'an
- they want a special tax for Islamic women for wearing their Hijab (the Islamic headscarf, which the PVV calls the 'kopvod'; 'kop' = head of an animal, 'vod' = rag). Do not mixup the Hijab (leaving face and eyes uncovered) with the 'Burqa' (covering all of the women's face)
- they want "armed city troopers", with special permission to 'shoot aiming at the knees' of unarmed civilians, using firearms (I'm not making this up!).
- they want to allow the police to strip search anyone, at anytime. "If you have nothing to hide, you'll have nothing to fear"
- they want to have the 'fight against Islam" as the *main* goal of the Dutch international politics
- they want to end the independant position of judges in the Dutch legal system; judges should take political orders (again; I'm not making this up)
Anyone notice the similarity to extremist Muslim regimes (apart from the islamophobic elements)?.... They surely want to take a lot of our freedom for a party that is called the "Freedom Party" ;-)

Jos Visser

As a Dutchman abroad I am often told that people love my country for its tolerance. It's always a bit of a shock to these people when I explain them that this tolerance is actually ignorance and apathy, combined with the iron will to borrow money to pay for everyone's pet peeve. I am happy as a clam that this seems to be coming to an end. It sucks a bit that we are going to have a minority government and I am somewhat upset that in the days running up to the last election the free-spending left wing nutcases in the country gained back seats they had "lost" in earlier polls. What's wrong with my people? Don't they see that even the government of an economically successful country can in the end not spend more than it has? The economy and the amount of budget cuts needed to get the country back on track was *the* issue in this election. Even the left wing parties promised billions in cuts; a sudden flash of sanity must have hit them. The PVV's stance on immigration and the (radical) islam is a bit looney, but the beauty of coalition government is that any extremes tend to get moderated by the process of creating policies that all involved can support. I hope my country will get on the right track with this new government.


Edmund_Burke (pfff...) nice to see you use Wilders' popular nickname Widler(s) in your comment to support the guy.


The Netherlands are heading to the right/conservative way!!
The right policy will be better for living, better for economy, better for finance, better for culture and better for serveral things more!
Europe, follow us!
We drop our leftish minds within 10 years time!
I am happy! Go Geert

This message is for Economist.com too: PVV is not a far-right but a conservative party. Let me proof it with the following link (At the page's left hand please click on language Nederlands. In the middle of the page you can see our current political landscape):


(Due to the comments policy, I may not refer to a Dutch page, so please follow this way)


I agree with Sam and Thales. Wilders' PVV resides and moves within the borders of democracy and addresses many issues affecting normal Dutch citizens. In a country where criminals seem to have more rights than their victims and where pedophiles are given ridiculous short scentences things just have to change. And about Islam ... just read that Wilders is going to the states on sep 11th to protest against the plans to build a mosque on ground zero. I also read that Dutch (!!!) tax-payers money is going to be spent on that same mosque. Need I say more? I voted Widlers and I'm proud of it.


Since decades our public servants are focussed on creating subsidies for almost any conceived inequality. Billions are spent on projects which have been proven not to help in any way to increase welfare or well-being, besides of course that of civil servants. And of course new government funded projects are paid by increasing taxes.

In a country where on ministries staff with actual knowledge are frowned upon (they'd rather hire consultants), where success rates are increased by lowering the standards (our minister of economic affairs wants to increase the exam grades by lowering the standards for eg mathematics), I'm relieved that finally a right wing government comes into power to stop spending money on nonsense and reduce income tax, to stop the influx of uneducated immigrants, and to stop the terror of social unadjusted persons.

Dutch treat

Well I also am a Dutch native, and I am not ashamed at all. This country has been pampering (muslem) immigrants far too much, and has accommodated them in maltreating wives, gays, jews and general non-muslim people. This has been present throughout all Dutch society for the last years. People are fed up with this situation and political correctness.

The so-called 'ashamed' people don't know jack what is happening in the streets nowadays and live probably under a stone. It just has to stop.

Let Holland take the lead in Western countries to express zero tolerance to all those who do not want to contribute to society.

Long live Holland, and let's be tolerant ONLY to those who deserve it.



Throughout history, more people have been killed in the name of religion then for any other reason, including Mein Kampf. The fact that more people care about the contents of the Koran then they do about the contents of Mein Kampf does not make any difference.

I'm dutch myself and i really hope, now that we finally have a right wing government unconstrained by the naive ideas of the leftist parties, that our country can be reformed and modernized into a wellfare state of the 21st century. A critical view to government spending and taxation is key to make such a thing work, and mr. Wilders provides just that.



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