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.
#ew im sorry#but please do celebrate that you don’t have a fascist leader#cause we would be in the same boat if we got hillary#and i soooo wish we got hillary
Oh believe me we do. Even though it is much harder to get all the power under the Dutch coalition system pretty much all of us who care about fighting racism are quite relieved that we did not wake up on March 16th with the distinct possiblity of a Wilders run government ahead of us.
What we are stressing very clearly is that this isn’t a case of good beating evil. The party that did win the most voted is very very racist, the party right behind it (CDA) is pretty damn racist and none of the other parties with a significant number of seats care enough about people of color to take a real stand on their behalf in coalition negotiations. On top of that, Wilders’ party did manage to grow again, like the years before.
Racism is increasingly normalized in Dutch politics and though Wilders did not win the elections, racism definitely did and we are pretty much certainly looking at another 4 years of increased attacks by the state on muslims, refugees and people of color. The Dutch Parliament has never been more rightwing, nationalist, and racist than it is today. There is very little reason to celebrate.
QueerAnarchism 