The Netherlands is set to get its first openly gay prime minister, Rob Jetten, following strong results in the country's recent election, which saw his party gain 17 seats, and Geert Wilders' far-right party lose 11.
Well look at that, Europe may finally be turning the page on right wing populists.
France and England rejected their alt-right parties, and with the Netherlands following suit I am hoping the Trump effect will help reset politics on the old continent back to more moderate viewpoints.
I definitely wouldn’t say people are turning the page on them, it’s definitely still a very real and sizable threat to our democracies. Managing to keep them out of power by the skin of our teeth is the best we got right now.
Most hopeful thing re: populism that happened in the Netherlands so far is that our local trump crashed the cabinet but that’s barely changed people’s minds on blaming minorities for their problems, they just picked different representatives for it this time around.
Excuse my ignorance of the nuances of the political situation in the Netherlands, but I was under the impression that D66 are center-left liberals with some right of center economic policies. I didn’t know they had similar stances on migration and foreigners as the PVV do.
What I’m saying is that the far right parties, summed together, went from 40 to 42 (out of 150) seats and so their threat is still as real as it ever was. (‘proper’ left parties are ~30 seats taken together, for reference, everything else is relatively center)
In other words, just because PVV isn’t the biggest party in parliament anymore and won’t be in charge of forming a cabinet, the voters’ sympathy for far right policies is still alive and kicking.
Oh wow, that puts a very different perspective on this “victory”. Thanks for providing that insight.
What’s driving the far right in the Netherlands? Same-same story of “I don’t like brown people”?
What’s driving them? My educated guess would be your usual blend of misinformation, xenophobia and egotism / fear of losing what they perceive (and are told, by like minds) to be their birthright.
Symptoms include but are not limited to:
othering minorities
racism
fear of trans people
telling n-th generation Dutch people who happen to be not white to ‘go back to their own country’ (an all time favourite)
fear of refugees (only when they’re brown of course, no problem accepting Ukrainian refugees)
violent protests against local govt when they announce a new refugee center
nationalism
misplaced nostalgia for when we were a ‘proper’ country (think white)
Probably forgot some but you get the idea. Then there’s also some flavours that are just straight up fascism like Forum voor Democratie.
Recent low point includes above party initiating a motion to mark antifa as a terrorist organisation (they wish they were trump so bad) and it being passed in parliament by a majority (all the right wing parties summed) because no one bothered to think about it for even 2 seconds.
Thanks for elaborating on that. Honestly it sounds very similar to racists here, albeit without the mental gymnastics required to somehow justify the occupation of indigenous lands they need to do in order to avoid having to come to terms with that they themselves are immigrants.
I did read about the antifa thing a while ago. To my knowledge that didn’t actually get implemented though, did it?
They actually cannot implement it. They voted that antifa is a terrorist organisation. But antifa is not an organisation and they cannot do that, because in the Netherlands only judges can decide what organisations are terrorist.
I wouldnt be too sure on the UK and France yet, the far right parties in both are leading in the polls right now. The UK has a lot of local elections next spring and Frances’s parliament seems like it will probably collapse and require new elections soon, maybe by this time next year if the far right havent gained significant power we can talk about turning a corner.
While I understand the concern about these parties polling well, the old adage that “the only poll that counts are the elections” still applies. I am at least still cautiously hopeful that the Trump effect will continue to pay dividends across the rest of the world by making the majority of the electorate reconsider supporting parties styled after the MAGA movement.
The leader of the modern Dutch Far-Right some years ago, when it really took of, was very openly gay.
I suspect that you’re from a society where sexuality and sexual orientation are massively affected by Moralism and heavilly politicized - in other words treated as heavy and important subjects aligned with certain political forces - which is totally different from many other countries, most notably The Netherlands were they just treat all sexual orientations as just normal (which is why Dutch Far-Right muppets couldn’t care less that their leader was gay).
All this to say that your reading about the sexual orientation of a countries top politicians and what it says for populist politics, doesn’t at all apply outside very specific societies with wierd political takes on such subjects.
I get what you’re implying, but no it’s not a big deal here in Canada either. I was just optimistic to see a stalwart alt-right staple party like Wilders’ PVV suffer a quite significant election defeat.
Number of gay PMs in the Netherlands = 0 too. This guy hasn’t been sworn in yet.
PP was mostly trans bashing by the way, but my point is that I don’t recall the sexuality of candidates being a relevant thing in elections here.
Also, “We don’t elect women?” that’s just downright incorrect - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_female_first_ministers_in_Canada
More in general it’s a good thing that the era of rightwing cohalitions governing the country, which lasted almost 2 decades, seems to be finally over, as the other parties of the governing cohalition have all lost votes.
The Netherlands has actually been quite a neoliberal country for a while now, with steadilly degrading public services (still Scandinavia-style personal taxes but ever more American style public services) and one of the worse realestate bubbles in Europe.
Hopefully this is a change in direction back towards traditional social democrat ideals and away from deregulation, trickle-down delusions and even support for the modern version of the Nazis (the Zionists).
I have heard some concerning stuff coming out of the Netherlands for a while, yes. Especially the gradual erosion of the social safety net they erected back in the 60s and the privatization of core parts of the country’s public infrastructure. I’ll share in your hope that this may see a reversal, or at the very least a stay under whatever new government results from these elections.
Funny you mention Scandinavian levels of taxation by the way - when I lived in the Netherlands for a few years I paid significantly more income tax than I did in Sweden. Not sure how progressive the tax system still is in the Netherlands, but it felt like all but folks on income assistance were taxed similarly.
France and the UK are both very likely to see their far right parties win their next major elections, and far right parties are continuing a net rise across Europe. They’re struggling badly whenever they do get into power at all, but they’re likely to come to power everywhere at least once, and with those monsters you never know which election will be the last.
Well look at that, Europe may finally be turning the page on right wing populists.
France and England rejected their alt-right parties, and with the Netherlands following suit I am hoping the Trump effect will help reset politics on the old continent back to more moderate viewpoints.
I definitely wouldn’t say people are turning the page on them, it’s definitely still a very real and sizable threat to our democracies. Managing to keep them out of power by the skin of our teeth is the best we got right now.
Most hopeful thing re: populism that happened in the Netherlands so far is that our local trump crashed the cabinet but that’s barely changed people’s minds on blaming minorities for their problems, they just picked different representatives for it this time around.
Excuse my ignorance of the nuances of the political situation in the Netherlands, but I was under the impression that D66 are center-left liberals with some right of center economic policies. I didn’t know they had similar stances on migration and foreigners as the PVV do.
D66 is that, yes.
What I’m saying is that the far right parties, summed together, went from 40 to 42 (out of 150) seats and so their threat is still as real as it ever was. (‘proper’ left parties are ~30 seats taken together, for reference, everything else is relatively center)
In other words, just because PVV isn’t the biggest party in parliament anymore and won’t be in charge of forming a cabinet, the voters’ sympathy for far right policies is still alive and kicking.
Oh wow, that puts a very different perspective on this “victory”. Thanks for providing that insight. What’s driving the far right in the Netherlands? Same-same story of “I don’t like brown people”?
What’s driving them? My educated guess would be your usual blend of misinformation, xenophobia and egotism / fear of losing what they perceive (and are told, by like minds) to be their birthright.
Symptoms include but are not limited to:
Probably forgot some but you get the idea. Then there’s also some flavours that are just straight up fascism like Forum voor Democratie.
Recent low point includes above party initiating a motion to mark antifa as a terrorist organisation (they wish they were trump so bad) and it being passed in parliament by a majority (all the right wing parties summed) because no one bothered to think about it for even 2 seconds.
Thanks for elaborating on that. Honestly it sounds very similar to racists here, albeit without the mental gymnastics required to somehow justify the occupation of indigenous lands they need to do in order to avoid having to come to terms with that they themselves are immigrants.
I did read about the antifa thing a while ago. To my knowledge that didn’t actually get implemented though, did it?
They actually cannot implement it. They voted that antifa is a terrorist organisation. But antifa is not an organisation and they cannot do that, because in the Netherlands only judges can decide what organisations are terrorist.
Hurray for sanity. Glad to hear the Netherlands still has institutional backstops to this kind of nonsense.
Note the far right part they refer to is the second biggest with only a 15k difference in votes at the time of writing.
I wouldnt be too sure on the UK and France yet, the far right parties in both are leading in the polls right now. The UK has a lot of local elections next spring and Frances’s parliament seems like it will probably collapse and require new elections soon, maybe by this time next year if the far right havent gained significant power we can talk about turning a corner.
While I understand the concern about these parties polling well, the old adage that “the only poll that counts are the elections” still applies. I am at least still cautiously hopeful that the Trump effect will continue to pay dividends across the rest of the world by making the majority of the electorate reconsider supporting parties styled after the MAGA movement.
The leader of the modern Dutch Far-Right some years ago, when it really took of, was very openly gay.
I suspect that you’re from a society where sexuality and sexual orientation are massively affected by Moralism and heavilly politicized - in other words treated as heavy and important subjects aligned with certain political forces - which is totally different from many other countries, most notably The Netherlands were they just treat all sexual orientations as just normal (which is why Dutch Far-Right muppets couldn’t care less that their leader was gay).
All this to say that your reading about the sexual orientation of a countries top politicians and what it says for populist politics, doesn’t at all apply outside very specific societies with wierd political takes on such subjects.
I get what you’re implying, but no it’s not a big deal here in Canada either. I was just optimistic to see a stalwart alt-right staple party like Wilders’ PVV suffer a quite significant election defeat.
Number of gay PM’s in Canada = 0, we don’t even elect women. Poilievre was up 30 points while gay bashing.
Number of gay PMs in the Netherlands = 0 too. This guy hasn’t been sworn in yet. PP was mostly trans bashing by the way, but my point is that I don’t recall the sexuality of candidates being a relevant thing in elections here. Also, “We don’t elect women?” that’s just downright incorrect - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_female_first_ministers_in_Canada
I totally agree that that’s a good thing.
More in general it’s a good thing that the era of rightwing cohalitions governing the country, which lasted almost 2 decades, seems to be finally over, as the other parties of the governing cohalition have all lost votes.
The Netherlands has actually been quite a neoliberal country for a while now, with steadilly degrading public services (still Scandinavia-style personal taxes but ever more American style public services) and one of the worse realestate bubbles in Europe.
Hopefully this is a change in direction back towards traditional social democrat ideals and away from deregulation, trickle-down delusions and even support for the modern version of the Nazis (the Zionists).
I have heard some concerning stuff coming out of the Netherlands for a while, yes. Especially the gradual erosion of the social safety net they erected back in the 60s and the privatization of core parts of the country’s public infrastructure. I’ll share in your hope that this may see a reversal, or at the very least a stay under whatever new government results from these elections.
Funny you mention Scandinavian levels of taxation by the way - when I lived in the Netherlands for a few years I paid significantly more income tax than I did in Sweden. Not sure how progressive the tax system still is in the Netherlands, but it felt like all but folks on income assistance were taxed similarly.
France and the UK are both very likely to see their far right parties win their next major elections, and far right parties are continuing a net rise across Europe. They’re struggling badly whenever they do get into power at all, but they’re likely to come to power everywhere at least once, and with those monsters you never know which election will be the last.
what? I missed when that happened
I was referring to UKIP and Le Pen losing the elections, but perhaps my optimism was misplaced reading the rest of the replies.
I mean, from all accounts of how Starmer has been as a prime minister, Labour marched hard towards the right to get elected.
Same for Carney to be honest. The Liberals were never truly left wing to begin with here, but even then he’s a clear rightward departure from Trudeau.