Don’t believe a word you read today about how a charismatic Dutch politician beat ‘the Dutch Trump’ in the elections by appealing to reason. It’s bullshit.
A very conservative very right wing Dutch politician beat ‘the Dutch Trump’ by being super racist himself. That is all.
We’re still fucked. We’re just fucked by your typical racist capitalism instead of full genocidal fascism.
16-03-2017
One, capitalism isn’t inherently racist. Two, what has Rutte actually said that’s racist?
There is a looooot of writing out there about the link between capitalism and racism so I’m gonna jump that question. If you’re genuinely interested: google it. Jumping to the second point:
Tone examples:
1. VVD had the islamophobic slur ‘kopvodden’ (ragheads) on their election poster.
2. VVD had the ‘In Rotterdam we speak Dutch’ election poster and other public condemnations of people speaking their mother’s tongue in public.
3. Rutte told immigrant to ‘adapt or get out’
4. Rutte defended blackface
5. Rutte said that ‘with too many refugees the Netherlands will no longer be the Netherlands’ and many other things that spread an unrealistic fear that immigrants are ‘destroying our culture’
6. VVD parlement member Cora van Nieuwenhuizen said immigrants who can not speak Dutch should be denied benefits, basically denying them food and shelter and life.Real stuff done while in power examples:
1. Made it illegal to wear the niqab
2. Criminalized giving food and shelter to undocumented people
3. Worked with other parties in the EU to close all roads into Europe, forcing refugees to take ever more dangerous routes, resulting in thousands of deaths each year
4. Is working to limit the freedom of movement of Antillean Dutch from the Antilles to the NetherlandsAn incomplete list. There is way way more but I don’t have a resource list handy.
I didn’t say that capitalism can’t be racist; I said that it isn’t an inherently racist system, which it isn’t. Let’s remember that it wasn’t capitalism which committed the mass genocide of Jews and Tartars in Europe but fascism and communism.
There’s nothing ‘racist’ about banning the niqab in public. It’s not even an issue of race, but if anything a religious/ideological matter, and banning the niqab is hardly the most offensive of policies. Oh, no! They’re protecting the rights of hundreds of women! How evil are they!?
People should be documented. That sounds a little harsh, but still, they should be documented. Illegal immigrants are still criminals, however morally just their reasons might be. The law and morality are two completely separate concepts. But if you don’t enforce the law, you don’t have a functioning society.
Having open borders to refugees was a stupid idea – not because of racist notions of them being terrorists, but rather because it doesn’t help legitimate refugees. Hundreds of economic migrants were able to come to Europe, taking places that could have been filled by those in real need from Syria.
I really can’t comment on that last point about the Antillean Dutch, since I’d be lying if I said the Dutch sphere of influence is something I’m particularly well-informed on.
Honestly, whilst some of those policies are scummy and I’d disagree with them, there’s nothing really racist about them. Asking immigrants to speak your language or appreciate your society’s values is not evil.
Well it looks like you didn’t take up my advice to google some stuff about the links between capitalism and racism and instead try to temp me into a huge side conversation about the Holocaust and communism. I find that distateful but if someone among my followers wants to talk about the link between capitalism and fascism and the Holocaust: go for it. I’ll stick to talking about the Netherlands, which is what this post was about after all.
Banning the niqab in public does not protect women. Taking away women’s rights to wear an item of clothing never protects them, all it does is take away their right to wear an item of clothing! In a scenario in which a highly religious man does force a woman to wear the niqab, a law banning this would not suddenly free this woman. What it is much more likely to achieve is a situation where this woman is now also forced to stay home, leaving her more isolated and more vulnerable.
As for undocumented people, let be start by saying that the treatment of undocumented people in the Netherlands is incredibly harsh compared to most other countries. Whereas in places like the US many undocumented people have jobs, rent houses, own cars, have bank accounts, in the Netherlands none of this is possible and undocumented people can be arrested and detained at any time, for no reason, including children. Being undocumented in the Netherlands generally means being homeless, desperately trying to avoid getting arrested for sleeping rough and subsequently deported. With living undocumented in the Netherlands being so deeply shitty, most undocumented people are either:
- Absolutely 100% sure that they will be killed if they go home.
- Stuck in a bureaucratic limbo in which they can get legal documentation after a period of time (people who need to wait 6 months to await a court appeal, minors who might qualify for a status once they turn 18, etc)
- Undeportable because they are from a country that does not accept them back, because no nation recognizes them as citizens, because the country they were part of no longer exists, etc. These people are stuck in a limbo forever. They can not get documented, they can not go home. It is impossible for them to stop being undocumented.
No one wanted to be undocumented. These people are living on the street, without food, without health care, desperately trying to stay alive because they literally have no other choice. And what the VVD run government tries to do is to criminalize Dutch citizens who give these people food and shelter. Jup, really. They are in effect trying to starve people who have no place to go. Let that sink in.
As for economic refugees: if you wanted to differentiate between ‘economic refugees’ (whatever that means, since hunger is just as deadly as war) and refugees fleeing war, the best way to do that would be let people apply for asylum so you can review their case. That would be the effective and humane thing to do. What is not a humane thing to do is to close the borders so that no one gets in and the people who are extremely desperate are forced to put their faith in the hands of smugglers, cross oceans in tiny boats and watch their children drown because the EU is criminalizing organizations who try to rescue refugees stuck at sea. Let that sink in too.
Oh, and the ‘in Rotterdam we speak Dutch’ poster doesn’t just imply that people should speak Dutch, but also that they should not speak their own language in public ever, that their cultural identities should be invisible.
You can pretend that all this has nothing to do with racism, but only if you are really desperate not to see the fact that all of this is happening to people of color every damn time. Only if you are desperate to ignore how much racism is behind xenophobia and islamophobia. There is something incredibly racist about your system when thousands of dead bodies of color are nothing but policy as usual.
Not caring enough about people of color to not let them drown in the ocean, rot in your detention centers or starve on your streets is racism. Inventing ever more policies that make this situation worse is racism. Courting racist votes by speaking about minority communities as if their existence is a problem is racism. Pretending that people speaking their own language, expressing their culture and religion in public is a threat to your own culure is racism.
QueerAnarchism 