Elections in the Netherlands (again)

What happened with the murder of Fortuyn and Van Gogh was an absolute disgrace. I hope countries who have a low muslim population are keeping abreast of this news and understanding the effects of sustained muslim immigration.

Nimh, you destroyed my argument with factual content!!!

australia wrote:

What happened with the murder of Fortuyn and Van Gogh was an absolute disgrace. I hope countries who have a low muslim population are keeping abreast of this news and understanding the effects of sustained muslim immigration.

Pim Fortuyn was murdered by a white environmental activist. No Muslim was even involved. So his murder doesn't say jackshit about "the effects of sustained muslim immigration".

Author: Jeroen Bosch | Date: February 2005




Netherlands - Wilders tries to follow in Pim Fortuyn's footsteps


Geert Wilders, the independent MP who quit the right-wing liberal VVD last September, is trying to launch a new conservative populist party.
According to some opinion polls, even without a party and hardly any programme, Wilders could already win up to 28 seats in the 150-seat Dutch parliament. This looks increasingly like the start of a new populist revolt on similar lines to the meteoric rise and spectacular fall of the late Pim Fortuyn's party, the List Pim Fortuyn (LPF).

Wilders's latest moves fit the evolution of his political career, which started in 1990 in the VVD as an assistant and speechwriter for Frits Bolkestein, a politician with hardline views on immigration and Islam. Also in Bolkestein's team was Hans van Baalen, now a VVD MP but formerly a sympathiser of the fascist Nederlandse Volks Unie (NVU).

Wilders was elected to parliament in 1998. Like Bolkestein he was seen as an illiberal hardliner espousing discriminatory positions against people with disabilities and a self-confessed hatred of the left as well as acquiring notoriety for his outbursts against Islam.

For Wilders opposition to Islam is a crusade, summed up in his declaration that "our own culture is on the defensive because of the one million Muslims in our country". To stir the pot still further he has claimed that if he were Prime Minister he would ban Islamic headscarves. "I will eat them [Muslims] raw when they come to protest‚" is one of his most infamous one-liners.

A vital weapon against Islam is a halt to immigration, according to Wilders, coupled with assimilation: "At home they can wear their scarves and slaughter their sheep; outside they have to behave like anyone else," he ranted in an interview in February 2004.

Together with his then VVD colleague Gert-Jan Oplaat, Wilders published a 10-point manifesto last summer aimed at pushing the VVD further to the right. The main aspect of this mini-programme was that Turkey should never be allowed to join the European Union because it is an Islamic country. Other points called for a rise in speed limits, a 50% cut in development aid, the removal of radical Islamists from the Netherlands and the expulsion of immigrants who integrated too slowly.

When the VVD failed to approve the programme, Wilders quit. Oplaat stayed silent and is still in the VVD. Finally liberated from party discipline, Wilders has gone on to demand "a total halt to non-western immigration, especially Muslims, for five years".

Just two days after the murder of the controversial filmmaker Theo van Gogh by an Islamic fanatic on 2 November, Wilders rushed to the media to announce the establishment of a new party with the leader of the conservative Edmund Burke Foundation, Bart Jan Spruyt. Spruyt has written the ideal programme from Wilders's viewpoint. It calls for Muslims to be prevented from establishing schools and organisations, and a halt to immigration. Spruyt and Wilders also want to lower taxes and the legal minimum wage.

At the end of December, Wilders announced a campaign against the EU's negotiations with Turkey and is now trying to raise money and mobilise people for his new party. He also calls for a vote against the European constitution in a referendum "to prevent Turkey from having too much power in the future of Europe". He has sent a personal email to 13,000 people who have supported him in recent months, touting, not without success, for money and support.

Since October 2004, Wilders has been under heavy guard because of threats to his life. At the end of the year he grabbed the headlines by refusing to work in parliament unless the Justice Minister and Prime Minister guaranteed his safety and that of his as yet unknown future parliamentary colleagues and party members.

When he eventually returned to parliament, Wilders gave a newspaper interview hugely reminiscent of Pim Fortuyn. "My mission", he stated, "is to give the Netherlands back to its citizens … The Netherlands has to become more liveable. People scream for solutions but the government is only concerned with its own power."

Wilders now plans to travel to Israel and the United States to discuss his political strategy and how to build a movement with conservative counterparts. His main concerns, however, are to turn his predicted 28 seats into reality in the next election in 2007 and to avoid the mistakes made by the LPF. He has the time, support (although it is not yet clear from what kind of people), political experience and a fine nose for publicity, and could grow to be a significant political force in parliament.

The other political parties are likely to react by becoming as tough as Wilders in order to cling on to their power. The left, anti-fascists and even sections of the media can play a major role in unmasking Wilders as an Islamophobe and exposing his policies as wholly undemocratic, grossly unrealistic and totally inhumane.


LPF MP speaks at Vlaams Belang meeting
Hilbrand Nawijn, a List Pim Fortuyn MP and minister for refugee policy for a mere 87 days in 2002, was due to speak at the Belgian extreme-right Vlaams Belang's new year reception on 25 January.

This marks the first time that a Dutch MP has consorted with the former Vlaams Blok. The theme of Nawijn's speech was to be the situation in the Netherlands following the murder of Theo Van Gogh.

In the past, Philip Dewinter, leader of the Vlaams Belang, held meetings with the Dutch extreme right in an attempt to bring the various factions together but always failed. Dewinter claims now, however, that the late anti-immigrant populist Pim Fortuyn called him to suggest a meeting when Fortuyn "was Prime Minister of the Dutch government".

Dewinter issued a personal invitation to Nawijn after they met in Rotterdam at the beginning of December at a debate with students at the Erasmus University. During the debate Nawijn described as scandalous a Belgian court's verdict that the Vlaams Belang's forerunner, the Vlaams Blok, was racist. "We know them also here, those left-wing judges," he said.

For Mat Herben, then leader of the LPF, mere contact with the Vlaams Blok was sufficient reason for the expulsion of Michiel Smit of NieuwRechts from the LPF in 2003. Since then Smit has held regular meetings with Dewinter.

Nawijn also apparently sees no problem in having contacts with the VB and is hoping for future co-operation for his new right party, probably with Geert Wilders. Justifying his relationship with Belgian far-rightists, Nawijn claimed "You have to talk with everybody. I don't know what the Vlaams Belang used to be like, but I don't think they are racist now".

Quote:

Author: Jeroen Bosch | Date: February 2005




Netherlands - Wilders tries to follow in Pim Fortuyn's footsteps


Geert Wilders, the independent MP who quit the right-wing liberal VVD last September, is trying to launch a new conservative populist party.
According to some opinion polls, even without a party and hardly any programme, Wilders could already win up to 28 seats in the 150-seat Dutch parliament. This looks increasingly like the start of a new populist revolt on similar lines to the meteoric rise and spectacular fall of the late Pim Fortuyn's party, the List Pim Fortuyn (LPF).

Wilders's latest moves fit the evolution of his political career, which started in 1990 in the VVD as an assistant and speechwriter for Frits Bolkestein, a politician with hardline views on immigration and Islam. Also in Bolkestein's team was Hans van Baalen, now a VVD MP but formerly a sympathiser of the fascist Nederlandse Volks Unie (NVU).

Wilders was elected to parliament in 1998. Like Bolkestein he was seen as an illiberal hardliner espousing discriminatory positions against people with disabilities and a self-confessed hatred of the left as well as acquiring notoriety for his outbursts against Islam.

For Wilders opposition to Islam is a crusade, summed up in his declaration that "our own culture is on the defensive because of the one million Muslims in our country". To stir the pot still further he has claimed that if he were Prime Minister he would ban Islamic headscarves. "I will eat them [Muslims] raw when they come to protest‚" is one of his most infamous one-liners.

A vital weapon against Islam is a halt to immigration, according to Wilders, coupled with assimilation: "At home they can wear their scarves and slaughter their sheep; outside they have to behave like anyone else," he ranted in an interview in February 2004.

Together with his then VVD colleague Gert-Jan Oplaat, Wilders published a 10-point manifesto last summer aimed at pushing the VVD further to the right. The main aspect of this mini-programme was that Turkey should never be allowed to join the European Union because it is an Islamic country. Other points called for a rise in speed limits, a 50% cut in development aid, the removal of radical Islamists from the Netherlands and the expulsion of immigrants who integrated too slowly.

When the VVD failed to approve the programme, Wilders quit. Oplaat stayed silent and is still in the VVD. Finally liberated from party discipline, Wilders has gone on to demand "a total halt to non-western immigration, especially Muslims, for five years".

Just two days after the murder of the controversial filmmaker Theo van Gogh by an Islamic fanatic on 2 November, Wilders rushed to the media to announce the establishment of a new party with the leader of the conservative Edmund Burke Foundation, Bart Jan Spruyt. Spruyt has written the ideal programme from Wilders's viewpoint. It calls for Muslims to be prevented from establishing schools and organisations, and a halt to immigration. Spruyt and Wilders also want to lower taxes and the legal minimum wage.

At the end of December, Wilders announced a campaign against the EU's negotiations with Turkey and is now trying to raise money and mobilise people for his new party. He also calls for a vote against the European constitution in a referendum "to prevent Turkey from having too much power in the future of Europe". He has sent a personal email to 13,000 people who have supported him in recent months, touting, not without success, for money and support.

Since October 2004, Wilders has been under heavy guard because of threats to his life. At the end of the year he grabbed the headlines by refusing to work in parliament unless the Justice Minister and Prime Minister guaranteed his safety and that of his as yet unknown future parliamentary colleagues and party members.

When he eventually returned to parliament, Wilders gave a newspaper interview hugely reminiscent of Pim Fortuyn. "My mission", he stated, "is to give the Netherlands back to its citizens … The Netherlands has to become more liveable. People scream for solutions but the government is only concerned with its own power."

Wilders now plans to travel to Israel and the United States to discuss his political strategy and how to build a movement with conservative counterparts. His main concerns, however, are to turn his predicted 28 seats into reality in the next election in 2007 and to avoid the mistakes made by the LPF. He has the time, support (although it is not yet clear from what kind of people), political experience and a fine nose for publicity, and could grow to be a significant political force in parliament.

The other political parties are likely to react by becoming as tough as Wilders in order to cling on to their power. The left, anti-fascists and even sections of the media can play a major role in unmasking Wilders as an Islamophobe and exposing his policies as wholly undemocratic, grossly unrealistic and totally inhumane.


LPF MP speaks at Vlaams Belang meeting
Hilbrand Nawijn, a List Pim Fortuyn MP and minister for refugee policy for a mere 87 days in 2002, was due to speak at the Belgian extreme-right Vlaams Belang's new year reception on 25 January.

This marks the first time that a Dutch MP has consorted with the former Vlaams Blok. The theme of Nawijn's speech was to be the situation in the Netherlands following the murder of Theo Van Gogh.

In the past, Philip Dewinter, leader of the Vlaams Belang, held meetings with the Dutch extreme right in an attempt to bring the various factions together but always failed. Dewinter claims now, however, that the late anti-immigrant populist Pim Fortuyn called him to suggest a meeting when Fortuyn "was Prime Minister of the Dutch government".

Dewinter issued a personal invitation to Nawijn after they met in Rotterdam at the beginning of December at a debate with students at the Erasmus University. During the debate Nawijn described as scandalous a Belgian court's verdict that the Vlaams Belang's forerunner, the Vlaams Blok, was racist. "We know them also here, those left-wing judges," he said.

For Mat Herben, then leader of the LPF, mere contact with the Vlaams Blok was sufficient reason for the expulsion of Michiel Smit of NieuwRechts from the LPF in 2003. Since then Smit has held regular meetings with Dewinter.

Nawijn also apparently sees no problem in having contacts with the VB and is hoping for future co-operation for his new right party, probably with Geert Wilders. Justifying his relationship with Belgian far-rightists, Nawijn claimed "You have to talk with everybody. I don't know what the Vlaams Belang used to be like, but I don't think they are racist now".

Source

Somewhere, somewhere in the articles above I thought I read that the next parliamentary elections are in 2007. 2007?

Forgive me on being a little slow on this. After the US election, I got into learning (thanks to msolga et al) all about Australian politics. I look forward to
finding out more about Dutch goings-on. -rjb-