Anti-Muslim Dutch politicians in hiding after death threats

(Un)employment 62% would be a big topic around here, too. Were they counting school kids?

Nah, actual voters to these local elections (turnout was 59%, slightly higher than last time). Kind of an exit poll. Much larger sample than in a regular phone- or web-poll.

Interesting as well:

I'm pleased the Dutch have voted sensibly, and not fallen for the War on Islam propaganda (above) especially since you wrote that nimh, and no one here.

Oh pretty much all of that is lifted from posts that have appeared somewhere or other on this board, if about some European country or other rather than specifically about The Netherlands. OK, so I added the righteous uprising and our grannies being robbed bits.

Glad to see you pleased though. I for sure am ;-)

the point you overlook is that Islamism raises contentious issues across the political spectrum and within political parties.

Huh? Everyone agrees that rising Islamism is a problem; all parties do. But, uhm... I'd say the contrast between the kind of fear-mongering and enemy-pointing done by the Livable parties and VVD Minister Verdonk - that you in the UK have luckily been largely spared in this cycle - and the more consensual-oriented left-wing parties is enormous.

Only the right empathically blames multiculturalism as a concept. Only the right consistently phrases the issue as a battle between us Dutch and the 'backward Islam' (rather than specifically Islamism or fundamentalism). Only the right can be trusted to always grasp for the fear of immigration and the resentment of foreigners/Muslims when they get in politically troubled water. Only the right is defending the kind of inhumanely restrictive asylum policies proponed by Minister Verdonk (see examples in this thread). Only the right proposes stuff like any immigrant who commits a crime (any crime) must be sent back 'home' (even if he hasnt been to the 'home' in question since he was a baby, doesnt speak the language there and doesnt know anyone). Only the right (Christian parties excluded) wants to forbid people from wearing headscarves. Only a right-wing minister comes up with the idea to oblige people to speak Dutch on the street. Only the right wants to fobid brides and grooms from abroad from coming in until they've found, paid for and completed a Dutch integration course in their home country (good luck Laetitia from Bumfucao, Trinidad). Only the right (Christian parties excluded) want to close Islamic schools ... do I really need to go on?

Everyone agrees integration is an issue and that Islamic extremism, specifically, is a danger. The Labour approach - not to mention that of multicultural champions Green Left - is very different from that of the government or the Fortuynists, however. When Labour Mayor Cohen of Amsterdam, a few years back, said he considered it also his task to "keep the whole kaboozle a bit together", he was ridiculed by the VVD and the Fortuynists - even in this election campaign the VVD quoted him again in an attack ad, saying that it, instead would make clear choiced: Take real measures! Clamp down!

If the cosmopolitan cities in Holland had really been in the state that some posters here make Europe out to be - a state of hypertension where everywhere ordinary European people are harassed and intimidated by roving Muslim youths while extremist Imams have succeeded in establishing Sha'ria rule in whole neighbourhoods - if that were really the case, wouldn't one expect a totally different result of these elections?

It seems that a majority of the Dutch are turning back to community rather than polarisation, to constructive consensus rather than broad-sweeping condemnations of whole population groups or religions. About effin' time too. Time to revisit some assumptions, then.

ok well you obviously know more about Dutch politics than I do. But if there has been a shift to the centre left in Holland, I very much doubt that reflects a more concensual attitude on the specific issue of Muslims and Islamism among ordinary Dutch voters.

You are right that in the UK the main political parties agree on the basic premise of a multi cultural society. But this relatively harmonious state of affairs masks the fact that the more extreme parties on the right have been effectively marginalised. Here apathy suits the establishment very well, because if the non voting apathetic working class suddenly took an interest in politics they would flock towards the extreme right. The government know this as well as anybody hence all issues to do with race/Muslims/Islam are very tightly controlled...although of course our wonderful BBC is not and never has been influenced by the wishes of the government of the day

The turn-around in the voting pattern of Holland is entirely due to the political backlash from its near-One Million Islamic population.

As a result of the murders of Pιm Fortuyn and Theo van Gogh... and as a result of politicians such as Geert Wilders and Rita Verdonk finally having the courage to speak out in protest against the Islamic invasion of their homeland... and as a result of the well-publicised news that cashed-up middle class Dutch society is emigrating in droves to put distance between themselves and a homeland that is increasingly becoming saturated with a hostile and belligerent Muslim community.... and as a result of half a dozen high-profile public commentators needing a 24-hour guard against being murdered by irate Muslims.... and as a result of the news becoming common knowledge that a staggering 60% of Moroccans and Turks in Holland are languishing contentedly on the dole as unemployed and unemployable parasites... all of this negative publicity against their Muslim community ensured that the native Dutchman would vote for the rightwing parties in this latest election.

And so Holland's Muslim leaders mobilised their community into a counter-action to nullify this predictable swing to the right by the native Dutch voter. And they did this very successfully - and with the most simple of tactic.

Holland's voting is voluntary -- and as such they ordinarily wouldn't get 1 in 500 Muslim wives and sisters traipsing off to the polling booths on election days. It would be frowned upon by their menfolk as usurping their 'manly role' as the family patriarch under Islamic tradition.

But this time it was different. This time their womenfolk were driven to the polling booths in their 10's of 1000's by alarmed husbands who were heeding the advice of their imams and community leaders.

And for precisely the same reason the normally idle and politically-indifferent Muslim youths were exhorted to attend the polling booths to vote for leftwing parties whose policies are antagonistic to Dutch society's conservative backlash.

And in this endeavour they succeeded beyond all their most optimistic and best expectations.

And so it is that by a process of gradual political osmosis one eventually finds ones own homeland society being usurped and subsumed by an immigrant community whose alien cultural background and loyalties couldn't give a rat's arse that the host people are losing their national birthright.

Meanwhile have a nice day, nimh! Enjoy your current victories while you may!

Better luck next time with trying to sell the fiction that the native Dutchman is voting Left in sympathy with their Muslims!

It's great to hear and read such an insider's anylysis!

Thanks, herberts - it has even less quality than your mathematical/statistics skills.




Published in today's de Volkskrant:






From today's Nederlandse Dagblad:

How is it that every German I have ever worked with has been a leftwing Diehard... ? In their unseemly rush to put distance between themselves and the - *ahem* - 'conservative' hue of their recent political past - the German race has been carefully propagandised and intimidated into believing their only hope of rescue from being a nation of evil monsters is for them to embrace and champion every leftwing cause with as much vigour and moral righteousness as they can muster.

I also regard the majority of British voters to be leftwing imbeciles of the highest order - all enthusiastically embarked upon a mission of self-destruction whereby the Anglo-Saxon Judeo-Christian national heritage is buried beneath sedimentary layers of imported alien cultures and incompatible peoples.

I have not the smallest scintilla of sympathy for a British electorate who election after election for the past half-century has consistently voted to support successive governments in their promotion of ethnic social division and disunity through their non-discriminate immigration policies and through the seditious betrayal of the British people through what is euphemistically known as 'multicultural' policy.

I have the deepest sympathy for all those who lost their lives in the London bombings - but ultimately this was a failure of immigration policy as much as anything else. It was the electorate getting only what they had voted for - an Alien Nation of Islamic foreigners nestled in amongst the British people in their own homeland.

I am

I don't think, you ever have hidden your BNP supportership, Herberts, so write it openly down here.

It's not very easy to prove such heritage - the Jewish community in London (the only known and notable) was less than 400 about 1690, the Anglos and the Saxons left as much as the Norse and Jutes, ... ... imported alien cultures, as you said.

You should not only reread your maths books but study English history as well!

Sadly, Herberts is not untypical. I dont know why he stopped at "I am.." perhaps someone shot him.

But also Herberts writes quite entertainingly and as I've said I have some sympathy for his views on the religion known as Islam, though not his racist solutions to the "problem" of immigration.

Whether we like it or not, the fact is a lot of people think like Herberts, and I for one have no clue what to do about it.

I am...

...at this point I was rudely interrupted by a loud and unseemly clamour caused by the thunderous applause of a standing ovation from a legion of admirers and supporters here who thereupon hoisted me upon their shoulders to paraded me about the neighbourhood like a Genghis Khan returned from a successful campaign...

As for you lot - you reprobate Leftwing no-hopers....

Charles Moore writing in this weeks Spectator thinks Ghengis Khan quite left wing...

I had no idea the conservative party had changed so much.

Fair enough, you've definitely got a point there.

On a related note, I predict a very unpleasant election campaign next year when national elections are on. After all, having been stuck at 40% in the polls for years now, the right-wing government parties know they have little to hope from their socio-economic policy track record, in terms of popular appeal. The one issue they do still have a groundswell of popular support on is, you are right, immigration/integration exactly. So I wouldnt be surprised if the VVD would do everything it could to make the elections all about foreigners, asylum-seekers and crime.

I'm kind of afraid of that. To be honest, if I were them, I'd make plain-spoken Immigration Minister Verdonk, our own "Iron Lady", the new leader, and fight exactly such a rabble-rousing campaign. But it looks like they're shying away from that. The VVD's parliamentary leader Van Aartsen has just resigned in the wake of the disappointing local election results, but talk is of the centrist Rutte, rather than Verdonk, becoming his successor.

And actually - still replying to your point - even on this score these local elections do give me hope. You're right, it would be foolish to interpret the left-wing victory as a magnamonious gesture of multicultural tolerance. The voters swung to the left to such an unprecedented extent because they are fed up with the harsh economic policies of the right-wing government, period. (Otherwise the Green Left would have profited as much as the Socialists now did.)

But - notably - apparently they didnt let the 'softer' image of the left on immigration stop them either. It's supposed to be the big achilles heel of the left, and the VVD made for a last-minute grab at it by highlighting in an ad how Labour is silent and vague about integration and street crime - yet it made no difference whatsoever. Doesnt mean it will again fail to make an impact next year, but it does give hope.

Perhaps, in fact, we are seeing the opposite of the Fortuyn effect now.

Pim Fortuyn showed that with a populist, anti-immigration/muslims appeal, you could bore into a groundswell of 15-20% of support. But the alternative scenario is what you had in the UK. Duncan Smith and especially Howard went full for the crime/Europe/asylum-seekers card. And it had zero effect. In fact, Cameron is now having to go for a Blair-type reinvention of his Conservative Party to rid it from its "nasty party" image that solidified in the process. If Rutte becomes the new VVD leader, then the party apparently thinks the lesson to learn this time round is that of Cameron, not Fortuyn.

I'll go even further. Of course the "lurch to the left" does not mean a frank popular endorsement of multicultural tolerance. But it does show that voters appreciate a balance in the message.

The voters liked the right because it was (or hastily turned) straight-shooting, no-patience, demanding on immigrant/integration. Adapt or go home. People liked that. But the message did come with a lot of harsh political manners, with polarised bitterness, intolerance bordering on heartlessness - and subsequent hostility in turn from black and Muslim youths. Society became a lot more divided and harsh.

It's not a fun country anymore - and outside the right-most quarter of the electorate, people dont only blame hardcore radical Muslims for that. They're well able to see the boorishness of the Fortuynist mindset too.

Now, on top of that, the government also chose to go for an each-for-himself, harsh economic sanitation line, uprooting core values of the welfare state (health insurance, rent controls, early retirement).

Perhaps it's all TOO loud, too hard, too egoistic, too hostile. There's been a lot of discussion in the (christian- and social-democratic centre) on the need for a return to basic common decency, in the years since the riotous Fortuyn revolution. The turn to the left may not equate with a sudden re-embracing of multiculturalism or anything, but it does signal a groundswell of sentiment that, hey! - this has gone too far. Lets all behave a little again. Be at least borderline decent instead of everyone yelling at each other.

The politics of the Livables, the Fortuynists and the Verdonk-type VVD'ers is one of constant suspicion and resentment. In its world, kindness, trust and patience are suspect signs of weakness, or even unreliability in the face of the enemy (eh, sorry: "challenge"). By shifting left, a chunk of centrist voters is saying, way I perceive it: hell, of course integration is important - but, in Cohen's 'infamous' words, "keeping the whole kaboozle together a bit" is at least as important.


True. That is a car-crash waiting to happen. Although in your country the electoral system alone will prevent it. I dont know about Germany though <looks aside to Walter>. They looked to me like they still had their Fortuyn revolution to come. But perhaps they just got lucky and might escape still, as the political tide perhaps shifts back a little again).

Yes, what you describe is exactly what happened in Holland in '02. But the lesson this year might also be: such things pass again, too. Not without leaving scars (both good and bad), but ... they do.

Wow. Long. Sorry, Steve.

Knee-suckers? Wow, some people have weird kinks.

no probs nimh will read it tomorrow

nighty night

and you herberts