Freedom Party: The dutch Racists

[Comrade Gwydion]

Hi!
Maybe this one should be better for the Dutch sub-forum, but I guess belgians could just replace 'PVV' with 'VB' and Brits could do the same with 'BNP' and whatever right-wing extremist party.

In the Netherlands there has been a dramatic rise in racism these last years, with the so-called Freedom Party becoming first party in the polls. This party states that Islam is fascism, that when immigrants get a fine for driving to hard they should be send back to whatever warzone they come from, that each and every palistinian should be driven into the sinaï, and that the police should shoot with sharp rebelious youths through the kneecaps, especially with what they call 'morrocan street-terrorists'.
They also want to get rid of all 'leftist hobbies' like development for the 3rd world, minimum wages, non-commercial (so government subsidised) art and television.

And even worse, this guy manages to make other even more extreme rightwinger seem more and more acceptable.

Do you guys have any tips of battling parties like this?

[Die Rote Fahne]

The left has to get active in the Netherlands. The Social Democrats, the Socialists and Communists need to begin campaigning against the PVV and the CDA

This means fliers, pamphlets, writing editorials, rallies, protests, etc.

Anything that can show people what the left has to offer and what the right intends to destroy.

The Dutch people need to be aware that these options are available and worth it.

[rebelmouse]

Hi!
Do you guys have any tips of battling parties like this?

only with anarchists revolution in which will be abolished capital and the state. capital is financing racists political parties and the state secure their position in power. whne we redistribute capital, racists will loose power. when we abolish the state, racists will not have position from which they can damage mass of people.
but revolution is not tomorrow, so in the meantime we should create our medias and companies which will finance our movement (medias also) but in which workers will be economic equal people who decide together. we should have enough information power like our enemy, if we don't have it, enemy will win.

[Wanted Man]

Do you guys have any tips of battling parties like this?

I think the typical photo-op protests (50 people marching on the street shouting slogans) are getting increasingly useless. At the moment, it's problematic that there is little real effort to forge working class unity. In mainstream media discourse, a divide between "the Moroccans" and "the white working class" is always assumed (the "multiculturalism" of the bourgeois parties has largely stuck to this as well, tbh, showing that they are quite impotent in the face of a growing extreme-right), and there is little agitation against this outside of the already convinced leftist circles.

This can't really be blamed on any particular group or party on the left, and I'm also not saying that Party X or Group Y are the only ones doing well, or the only ones capable of doing it. Rather, the lack of concrete organisation is a problem of the entire left. Most are just too small, others have been more interested in setting up their version of the "popular front" (allying with reactionary clerics, forming front groups including conservatives, liberals and social-democrats, etc.) and have ultimately not gained much.

I also think it's necessary for the left to expose the PVV's new "social face" (suddenly, they want to keep the pension age at 65, while the government wants us to work until 67...), as well as all their other plans which will really screw us over (unlike the traditional fascists, the PVV are quite open about their neo-liberal approach to economics). I think this protest (http://www.revleft.com/vb/antifascisten-voeren-actie-t116015/index.html) (Dutch) was encouraging. Not because it was big or hard-hitting, but because it did a good job of dealing with the issues at hand.


The Social Democrats, the Socialists and Communists need to begin campaigning against the PVV and the CDA
The problem with the first part is that the social-democrats (PvdA) and the Socialist Party have little interest in making a serious effort at fighting back. The PvdA (and other centrist parties) usually just act offended whenever Geert Wilders makes a "politically incorrect" comment on TV. The SP agree with many of the PVV's nationalist ideas, although they say they don't want to govern with them if the possibility ever arose.

The social-democrats can't campaign against the CDA anyway, because they're governing together! But I do think it should be made clear that the current government (and previous ones) is the one attacking immigrants' rights right now, putting into practice much of what the PVV wants...

[Tjis]

Okay so this post turned out to be very long. Sorry about that!
tl;dr the PVV and Geert Wilders are a result of decades of racist policy.

---
An explanation of the dutch situation is probably handy here. I'm not 100% on all the details, but at large it should be correct.

During the 60's, the dutch economy was apparently so good that there was a huge demand for workers, mostly for low-skilled manual labor. In order to meet this demand, workers from (amongst other countries) Turkey and Morocco were asked to work here (both by companies and the government). They were referred to as 'guest workers', since the idea was that they'd eventually return to their original countries.
Because they were seen as temporary residents, no effort for integration was really made. Because of the work they did, they were (and still are) also generally seen as less worthy than "real" dutch people. This was a view that the dutch state didn't try to combat. After all integration was not in their interest.

then in the 70's the economy went shit again. The immigration policy once again changed to a restrictive one. However, many of the guest workers were already so long in the Netherlands that they were actually entitled to social welfare programs and couldn't just be deported either. In fact, they were entitled to bring their families to the Netherlands too. And many did.
So there were a lot of non-western families which were treated like dirt by most of dutch society. Because of the recession many of the previous guest workers had also lost their job and were on welfare, which created even more of a split (cause lots of people didn't consider these people to be dutch, and therefore did not consider them to be entitled to receive any welfare). Again, this view was in the interest of the state since they still wanted these people to leave. Later on they sort of changed this view to one promoting integration after it became clear that the migrant workers weren't going to leave.

Fast-forward to 21st century. People of a different skin colour are now called 'allochtoon', which means someone from non-western descent. It also includes the 2nd and 3rd generation children of the 60's immigrants, who are legally completely dutch, so it's a really racist definition. Nevertheless it is used officially in debates and statistics. Mostly these 'allochtonen' live in their own communities (usually in the poorer parts of the Randstad, the industrial area of the Netherlands), many still have low-wage jobs and the youth is desillusioned with a society that largely hates them. Some of these youth become petty criminals, which is widely reported on in the press. More importantly, many people fear groups of (usually) morrocans on the streets (they are referred to as "street terrorists", as someone else in this thread mentioned). The political coalition at the time (liberals + social democrats) largely ignored the problems and tensions. If they even did anything, it was never more than a multi-culturalist festival or something of that kind.

So then 9/11 happened and suddenly racist scumbags had an excuse to vent their anger. Instead of "foreigners", they could now hate muslims (which just happens to be the majority religion of these 'allochtonen'). In this political climate, scumbags like Pim Fortuyn appeared. With a strategy of being controversial, Pim Fortuyn presented himself as the underdog of politics, the only one who dared to deal with the problems. It worked too.

Then 6 may 2002 he was shot dead by a left-wing vegan activist. At first it wasn't clear at all who shot him. So there was this huge tension. Someone later told me that he saw that non-white kids were called home by their parents, because they were expecting serious retaliation actions if the murderer would turn out to be non-white. The climate was such that if the murderer had been a non-white, many cities would have had a race war. It was scary.

Despite his party gaining 26 seats in the election, the party completely failed and split into various small parties without the leadership of Pim Fortuyn. However the right-wing populist sentiment remained very popular.

During the next years all parties shifted to the right to retain their electoral base. Heavy anti-immigration policies were created during this time. For example, all non-western immigrants are required to do a test about dutch society to prove they know enough about it to function in it. However, when the test was broadcasted on television, it turned out most of the 'native dutch' would also fail for this test. Despite this, the law remains unchanged.

Which brings us to the situation right now. Pim Fortuyn has been replaced by Geert Wilders and his party, who are the first after Fortuyn to criticise non-whites this much. Some time ago it was estimated that had there been elections a the time, the PVV would have been the largest party. I think right now they're on the second place because of their decision to not participate in city council elections, which is generally perceived as a weak move.

However the PVV and Geert Wilders remain very popular.

In conclusion I'd like to restate that the policies of Geert Wilders and the PVV are nothing new. He's merely the first one to do it so openly. Ever since the first migrant workers arrived, the state has tried its very best to ensure a division between them and 'natives'. Later on, when the economy went bad, these migrants were implied to be part of the problem for using the social welfare they were eentitled to, thus widening the gap. During the years after that the dutch state made sure to be as awful to migrants as possible to discourage immigration. To justify this policy, they presented immigrants as lazy profiteers out to get our welfare money. Of course, never too openly, but they did it. Pim Fortuyn, and then Geert Wilders were merely the first ones who dared to openly state the true motives behind these policies. And thanks to decades of covert racist propaganda they are hugely succesful.

[Tjis]

The left has to get active in the Netherlands. The Social Democrats, the Socialists and Communists need to begin campaigning against the PVV and the CDA

This means fliers, pamphlets, writing editorials, rallies, protests, etc.

Anything that can show people what the left has to offer and what the right intends to destroy.

The Dutch people need to be aware that these options are available and worth it.

The left is active, but mostly unheard. Unless Geert Wilders is directly involved, both the state and the corporate media simply ignore us. While we could of course do more actions, write more stuff etc I doubt it'll do much good if we remain unheard.

Also, the few actions that do get media coverage are weak. It's basically saying that Wilders is a bad guy without presenting any kind of alternative. People who vote Wilders don't mind that he is controversial. In fact they love it. It makes him seem like the underdog, someone outside the established world of politicians who'll fix all problems.

Perhaps the key to any anti-PVV propaganda would be to show that their politics are essentially the same politics that have ruined the world up to now, that neither the racist nor the economical viewpoints are any new, even if they are more extreme than before.

However, we'd still have trouble being heard. I've no idea what this is like in other countries, but fly posting is big over here. Every company and their dog is doing it. Because of this, our posters largely remain unseen simply because there are so many other posters competing to be seen. The same goes for leaflets. People have them pushed in their hands all the time.

The only thing I can still think of is actions at the workplace and in the schools, where we know people personally. I'll certainly try to set up something at my university soon.

[RotStern]

With a brick. Make your presence felt. You can't battle them if your not doing anything.

[Tjis]

With a brick. Make your presence felt. You can't battle them if your not doing anything.

The PVV is one of the largest parties of the Netherlands right now. They are backed by a significant part of the working class as well. Throwing bricks at them isn't going to help anymore. It might just make them even more popular.
Besides, the guy has been under constant police protection for the last few years. Actions like this are pretty much impossible.

[Q]

Recently the PVV has also made some populist left moves. In the debate on the statepension (AOW) for example the government wants to raise the age from 65 to 67, effectively raising the pension age aswell (most people also have a private pension complementing the increasingly measely AOW).

The SP has stated it's opposition to this, but this remains confined to the parliament. The main union federation FNV has no strategy of fighting a prolonged struggle to win this battle and already gave up on the logic that the working class has to pay the price for the crisis. This embolds the government to make more outragious claims, planning cuts of up to 40 billion euro's (20% of the state budget!!) starting in 2011.

The PVV is the only party that stated that it would reverse the AOW cuts and lower the age back to 65, once in power. A very populist move, yes, but he's ever more getting popular because of moves like these.

The effective answer to this is that the SP leadership has to get off their fucking ass and start broad campaigns, fighting for working class interests. But they don't want to, they want to become a "good and trustable" coalition partner for the next government. So once more, the extreme-right can rise because the left fails to do their job.

This has strategical implications. In the first place the PVV has to be countered by broad working class support. Like others have said, the 50-odd mini demonstrations are completely useless in this context.

Secondly, and more importantly, we need a strategy to rebuild the workers movement in the broad sense; as an independant, internationalist and democratic movement, against the bosses and their state. Neither the SP nor the FNV are competent for this task anymore. But we do need an appeal towards the rank and file within these organisations in order to build something new. Otherwise you'll end up nowhere and with small sects (which is exactly where the far left is today).

In conclusion: we need to rethink.