Fitna in the Netherlands – Elections and the myth of tolerance

I have read several of the reactions outside the Netherlands about the recent local elections which were ‘won’ by the progressive liberals of D66 and the radical anti-islam party PVV of Geert Wilders. Consider some of the headlines:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/extreme-right-on-the-march-in-europes-most-tolerant-nation-1916481.html

The anti-Islamist party led by Dutch firebrand Geert Wilders has triumphed in municipal polls in The Netherlands, opening the way for a political breakthrough for the far-right in general elections in June.

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/tobyyoung/100028507/geert-wilders-victory-in-hollands-regional-elections-is-a-victory-for-free-speech/

All citizens of a modern liberal democracy must respect the right to free speech, and if that means some of them are going to be offended from time to time, they’ll just have to learn to take it on the chin.”

Had the Dutch authorities reacted like that — and had Islamic groups simply ignored him, which would have been the sensible thing to do — the whole Fitna affair would have blown over in a matter of days. Instead, he’s been condemned by the international Muslim community, a shameful attempt was made to ban him entering the UK and countless fatawa have been issued against him, including one by Al-Qaeda. Ludicrous — and precisely the kind of fanatical intolerance that Fitna was intended to point up.

Albeit from different perspectives both articles point to a breakthrough of a radical anti-islam politician in a once so tolerant Dutch country or a country fighting against intolerant Muslims. Same was said after Fortuyn’s rise in the 2002 elections, after the political murder of Fortuyn in 2002, after the political murder of Van Gogh in 2004. How many blows can the myth of Dutch tolerance have before people recognize it is a myth after all? Let’s consider what I wrote a while ago about Dutch tolerance:
C L O S E R » Blog Archive » The Politics of Dutch Tolerance

Tolerance is perhaps one of the main mythical characteristics of Dutch society. Mythical in the sense that it is a sacred narrative concerning how the Netherlands and the Dutch people came to have their present form. It can be traced back to the Dutch golden era, the 17th century and is still an important issue in debates and the relationship between different people.

Tolerance in Dutch society is mainly used with regard to different religions. Especially Amsterdam from the 17th century onwards is famous for its ability to attract people with a wide variety of religious and ethnic backgrounds who came for economical reasons or fled for religious reasons (Lucassen en Penninx 1997). In the 20th century religious tolerance is very much connected with the system of pillarization. In this system society was deeply divided into distinct and mutually antagonistic religious and ideological groups. Because of overarching cooperation at the elite level and by allowing each group as much autonomy as possible, a stable democracy was made possible (Lijphart 1968). The 1960s were a turning point in history in Europe and the U.S. In the Netherlands this turning point involved a major shift in the position of religion. A popular narrative is that during the 1960s the Dutch liberated themselves from the burden of religion. Free speech rights were loosened in the 1960s and already after WWII new mass political parties such as the PvdA (Labor Party) and the VVD (secular-right-liberal) emerged as powerful forces (Kennedy 1995: 356). By the end of the 1960s daily newspapers had lost their religious affiliations and the mass media become more adversarial with loosening of ties to religious denominations (Kennedy 1995: 285). After that the debate about tolerance seems to have shifted towards the question of how to deal with (Christian) groups that do not acknowledge and accept the fundamental freedoms of a secular Dutch society. In this sense secularism is not only a description of the decline of religion in society but also a norm in society. This question was raised when several Christian groups refused to vaccinate their children against polio or in case of the SGP (a right wing orthodox Christian political party) who refuses women to become active members of the party. The way these questions were resolved did not question the tolerance of society. On the contrary it was seen as an affirmation of Dutch tolerance. More serious questions were raised during the 1990s when the issue of tolerance was linked to immigration and Muslims. This shows that tolerance is more just a virtue alone. It is an important aspect of identity politics on both sides of ‘us’ and ‘them’. Identity politics, in my view, should be taken to mean the negotiations about the definition and interpretation of ideas, practices and experiences that constitute a certain identity (Eickelman en Piscatori 1996, Eriksen 1993). In this case it involves negotiations about the definition and interpretation of ideas, practices and experiences related to tolerance. One only has to have look at the headlines of Dutch and foreign newspapers after the murder of Van Gogh, or look at touristic brochures and flyers to realize that tolerance is considered to be an in important part of Dutch identity.

The issue of tolerance is a founding myth that has become part of a politics of identity that is not necessary that tolerant. Read for example Theo van Gogh’s (2001) statement about tolerance in relation to the conviction of Janmaat, a former leader of the far right Centrum Democrats:

The notion that tolerance is worth the trouble of defending as part of the Dutch cultural tradition, has disappeared forever, in the ritual repudiation of the poor wretch Janmaat. The internal uncertainty over what is now really Dutch manifests itself in practice in a debate where the native born Dutch, stand with their hat in their hands, in submission, and observe their own culture.

In this case tolerance is connected with free speech and the intolerant people are the ones who repudiated Janmaat for his standpoint about multiculturalism. This fragment is symptomatic for a change in Dutch society since the 1990s. In 1989, after the fatwa of Khomeiny condemning Salman Rushdie for his Satanic Verses there was a major outcry in the Netherlands, though less compared to the UK. Most Muslim spokesmen rejected the book as well as the fatwa but after a demonstration of several hundred Pakistani supporting Khomeiny, the public outcry was huge. Some people stated that this showed that the multicultural policy did not work. Although people thought there was still a ‘taboo’ on criticizing Muslims – if you did chances were you would be labelled a racist – this taboo is starting to erode after the Rushdie affair. Muslims are increasingly distinguished from Dutch people (while people used to talk about allochtons or ethnic minorities) and their loyalty towards the Netherlands is questioned. The first Gulf War influences the picture of Islam in the Netherlands. Bolkestein, political leader of the Dutch liberal party (VVD), states in a lecture and an interview that Islam is incompatible with Western liberal values. He is the first politician who uses the minority issue as a political strategy. The only party that did that before him was the Centrumpartij (of Janmaat), but they were marginalized. Bolkestein (1991) says that migrants should adjust to the Dutch law and the multicultural society has his limits because not all cultures are equal. His lecture was held in Luzern and in it he made an extensive analysis on a new strategie of NATO. Before this former NATO secretary-general Claes stated that according to him Islam was as dangerous as communism was. Bolkestein is severely criticized for his statements but this criticism relates more to the way he said things than to the content of his message. In 1996 Pim Fortuyn released his book ‘Against the islamisation of our culture’ in which he elaborated on the issues Bolkestein addressed earlier (Fortuyn 1997). Muslims, including liberal Muslims, are against the separation of church and state, against equality of men and women and the main threat for world peace, accordint to Fortuyn. Although he not only had an ‘Islam-topic’ and he had anti-establishment discourse as well, his messages concerning Islam are most visible. His popularity causes other politicians to firm up their language on and towards migrants. When he is killed on 6 May 2002 the whole country is in a shock and many people (Muslim and non-Muslim) hope the perpetrator will not be a Muslim.

Bolkestein and Fortuyn but later on also people like Cliteur, Ellian, Hirsi Ali, Ephimenco and Scheffer have in common that they do not question the virtue of tolerance itself, but state that ‘we’ have gone too far in tolerating the intolerant. Used in this way tolerance is a characteristic of Dutch society and the Dutch people and intolerance is part of the other. Fortuyn is probably most outspoken in two columns in which he calls for a Cold War against Islam (Fortuyn 2001a, 2001b):

Meanwhile, the free and developed West is very naive. We have to lay off our shyness and speak out – and act accordingly – that the main threat for world peace comes from Islam, whereby the difference between liberal and fundamentalist Islam is relatively small. In Indonesia for example, complete disintegration is bound to happen, with the daily bloodbaths that go with it, by the claims of Islam that does not allow any opposition, let alone create space for dissenting voices.

These concerns about the relation between Islam and social cohesion are not exclusively dealt with by Bolkestein and Fortuyn. On the hand ethnicity and religion are increasingly seen as private matters instead of issues the state has to deal with (Fermin 1997: 233). At the same time the limits of religious and cultural difference and the conditions for social cohesion and integration are questioned by a broad political spectrum ranging from ultra-left to ultra-right, socialist and liberal parties and religious parties (Fermin 1997: 247). On the left for example Scheffer (2000) argued that multicultural politics of ‘integration while maintaining one’s own culture’ is the cause of the failing of integration policies.

On the right (besides Bolkestein) philosopher Cliteur (2002: 144-146) affiliated with the liberal party VVD has argued that tolerance is used as a legitimization for being politically correct and for censorship. According to him the battle for real tolerance has to be fought again against the intolerants. The cultural relativist nature of Dutch politicians, in his view, has hindered that battle. Most of the people mentioned here can be called, in terms of Prins (2000), ‘new realists’. One of the characteristics of these new realist men (and a few women) is the he believes that a typical aspect of Dutch character is to be open-minded, honest and realistic. Another characteristic is that they see themselves as people who dare to call the things by its real name, face the facts and openly challenge the taboos on certain truths – for example that radical Islam is the true Islam and that is incompatible with Dutch society -which the politically correct elite and official discourse have hidden from the common people (Prins 2000, Prins 2002). In this sense tolerance and freedom of speech (and perhaps the freedom to insult) are related to each other. The real tolerant people therefore are not the so called anti-racists but the realists with Fortuyn, Hirsi Ali and Van Gogh as their figureheads.

The first time this new realism appears at the surface is the El Moumni-affair in May 2001. In the televisionprogram NOVA about the attitude of Moroccan boys towards homosexuality, young people were showing their contempt for gays. According to imam El Moumni in that program, homosexuality was a dangerous disease. This unleashed a fierce debate about the position of Islam in the Netherlands that clearly showed the transformation of tolerance that was already set in motion in the 1990s. Gaymagazine Gaykrant opened a website with a poll with the thesis: ‘New Dutchmen must accept our tolerance, otherwise they don’t belong here’. An overwhelming majority of 91% agreed (Prins 2002, Trouw 2001b). Also Kennedy points to the changing ideas about tolerance in an interview with Dutch daily Trouw (Top 2005). Freedom and tolerance become the dominant concepts and narrow-mindedness and intolerance are attacked. Tolerance becomes a militant term and something that other people should learn.

Tolerance and in particular since 2004 freedom of speech remains important for Dutch identity but is, in particularly by the new realists, transformed. From something that a dominant group is able to give to a minority group, to something the dominant group demands from the minority group. This is based on a very strong emphasis on personal autonomy and the conviction that the Other does not value personal autonomy and wants to restrict the personal autonomy of Dutch people.

Wilders rise therefore is not end of Dutch tolerance, but part of a transformation of tolerance and freedom of speech that has been going on for quite some time now. And there are more reasons to debunk the headlines about tolerance (or victory for freedom of speech for that matter). In an excellent article in the Guardian Mark Fonseca Rendeiro also critizes such conclusions:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/mar/04/dutch-elections-pvv-wilders-right

This sudden explosion of intolerance and fragmented politics is nothing new; we have been reading about it for decades. The myth maintained by international media outlets and perhaps the Dutch bureau of tourism, which parrots the Netherlands as an open-minded leftwing paradise, has long kept a smoke screen over the well-established and not always tolerant tradition of smaller parties, extremist or moderate, left or right, which rise up suddenly, gain power and occasionally disappear into obscurity as fast as they came.

The international press summed up the results of yesterday’s Dutch legislative elections as a major victory for the far-right, anti-Islam and ironically named Freedom Party (PVV). They are also quick to point to the two cities (out of the entire country!) where the PVV managed to top the polls in local elections. But while The Hague, where the PVV is now the second-largest party, is certainly a city of international and national importance, gaining control of it, along with the little-known city of Almere, does not equal an electoral sweep.

I agree with him that the small gains by the PVV is significant because it is exactly a radical anti-islam, xenophopic and nationalist rhetoric that has worked for hem. Nevertheless several parties opposing this discourse such as the Green-Left and progressive liberals have had quite some success as well although their moderate stance towards multiculturalism and islam do not make fun headlines. He also points to Dutch history:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/mar/04/dutch-elections-pvv-wilders-right

The Netherlands, a nation where 85% of the population is connected to the internet, was divided along political, religious, and social lines long before anyone knew what a blog was. Where nowadays some people and political parties lament the influence of Islam, much of the population can remember when it was socially unacceptable for Catholics to marry Protestants. In the liberal bastion of the Netherlands, political parties used to organise along religious or nationalist values, which did not begin with the PVV in 2009 or 2010.

Furthermore the author is right to point to the fact that the PVV only ran in two cities: Almere and The Hague. Compared to the last municipal elections these cities have had a major change; no surprise there because in those elections the PVV did not act. There is more to say about that. During the Euro elections in 2009 the PVV had 27% of the votes in Almere, now they received 21% of the votes. The won the elections, but lost 5% of the votes. In The Hague during the Euro elections they had 19,9% of the votes, now they received 17,5% even lower than the nation-wide poll. Nation-wide, in the polls, the PVV remained stable. Nevertheless the results are impressive and combined with the sensationalist headlines (not only in foreign press) do present a danger. Muslims/migrants may (continue) to loose their trust in wider society and native citizens and become more alienated than some of them already are. Wilders’ PVV is able to get those native people to the participate in the elections who otherwise stay at home out of resentment and/or alienation. On the other hand Wilders’ PVV may also be able to get those migrants and natives to participate who otherwise would stay at home only because they want to oppose Wilders. Political commentators expect a fierce, harsh electioncampaign for the national elections in June. The result may be more polarization and chaos between natives and migrants and among natives, in a country that in some far away past seemed to be relatively stable and quiet.

Wilders is showing his movie Fitna (chaos, strive) today in the House of Lords in the UK (see HERE for a critique) signalling his belief that Islam is a danger to a stable tolerant country. The real fitna however is already apparent in the Netherlands; not a breakthrough for xenophobia and islamophobia, but xenophobia and islamophobia that has become acceptable and moreover a reason to vote. Not a breakthrough washing away political opposition but a deadlock situation making the country difficult to rule for left and right.