The collapse of the Dutch post-war consensus

Dutch politics, Geertje Wilders, Islamophobia
Published on

Oh dear. The latest opinion polls do not look good for the government parties, with the social democrats in particular polling at a historic low point (link in Dutch/PDF). How did it get to be this way?

latest figures show a collapse in support for the centrist parties

Until about 2002 the Dutch political landscape was relatively uncomplicated. Power was shared between the social democrats (PvdA), liberals (VVD/D66) and Christian Democrats (CDA) in various centre right (CDA/VVD) or centre left (PvdA/CDA, PvdA/VVD/D66) coalitions, with a few smaller parties on the fringes for those who chose principles over power. Sure, there were times when several of the big three and a half (D66 being the half) parties were not on speaking terms, but on the whole it was a cozy and mutual profitable consensus. Even the exclusion of the Christian Democrats from power for most of the nineties –something that hadn’t happened before — did not really threaten the system.

But then came Fortuyn and the whole house of cards collapsed. As I explained at the time, Fortuyn’s party won the 2002 general elections through a combination of the voters being sick to the backteeth of the existing parties and their arrogance, the general dire economical and political situation making the party’s populist message attractive and a general wave of sympathy for the murdered Fortuyn. When the party went into government only to crash and burn completely, it looked at first as if the old consensus had re-established itself, but since then we’ve seen the rise of two more would-be Fortuyns, Geert “Islamophobe” Wilders and Rita “talks the talk but does not walk” Verdonk, both coincidently ex-members of the VVD. Especially the rise of Verdonk’s party, Trots op Nederland (Proud of Holland), is remarkable, getting 18 seats without having done anything at all. Verdonk has barely shown her face in parliament, prefering to go on begging tours of the country instead…

To draw longterm conclusions out of one poll is of course silly, but the polls have been trending this way for a year or so now and even if things will shake out differently at election time, it’s still a somewhat worrying development. Not so much the establishment parties losing their traditional voting base –they deserve it– but where those votes are going. Both Wilders and Verdonk play on a nascent xenophobia and Islamophobia that, if not quite unknown before 2001-02, only came into full flower after the September 11 attacks and the murders of Fortuyn and Theo van Gogh. Sentiments that had been taboo for decades (Islam as a violent religion, the need for all foreigners to integrate and learn Dutch, the usual stereotypes about workshy, criminal wifebeating minorities etc) went mainstream, were seriously debated by political commentators who, if pressed, would’ve called themselves leftwing. Don’t take my word for it, The European Commission against Racism and Intolerance said so too, earlier this year.

Meanwhile the options for the real left look bleak. Two years ago it looked likely that we’d see a genuinely leftist government in power, but as per usual the PvdA opted instead for the familiar and went with the Christian Democrats. Now this choice has brought them well deserved ruin, but the votes they lost are not picked up by the only genuinely socialist party in parliament, the SP. Instead the SP is losing the competition with Verdonk and Wilders for the populist vote, as the country is continuing its rightward drift.

In short term then things look bleak, but we shouldn’t panic. The SP needs to keep mounting a strong opposition against both the establishment and the populist right, keep holding to their principles and not go for the easy option of joining in the scaremongering. Currently Wilders and Verdonk are doing well because they don’t have to worry about anything but political point scoring. They’re not in power, they’re focused completely on parliament, not local government and therefore they can be as extreme as they like without suffering the consequences. Like Fortuyn’s party, these movements are likely to splinter once they do have to take on real responsibilities and inevitably have to compromise. Not a reason to be complacent and sit on our hands, but a reminder that things may look bleak now, but they won’t always remain so. The destruction of the old consensus opens opportunities for the left as well as the right.

Fortunately we’ve got Microsoft

Comix, funny
Published on

Questionable Content explains the drawbacks of sentient computers. (You may also want to see this and this to get the full story.

In a completely unrelated story, Chrome, Google’s spiffy new browser has a socalled incognito mode: “For times when you want to browse in stealth mode, for example, to plan surprises like gifts or birthdays, Google Chrome offers the incognito browsing mode. Webpages that you open and files downloaded while you are incognito won’t be logged in your browsing and download histories; all new cookies are deleted after you close the incognito window. You can browse normally and in incognito mode at the same time by using separate windows.”

An incognito mode to plan surprises. Suuure. Better make sure to wipe the keyboard and screen as well after you’ve “planned”your “surprise”.

I don’t care

Comix
Published on


I Still Like Mike

Even if he is “like Sims with the funny taken out and replaced with Swamp Thing obsession and random musings on creepy comic shop motards“.

Obama will bring the revolution

2008 US election, US politics
Published on

Andy Newman is engaging in a bit of wishful thinking today, by arguing that the election of Barack Obama as president of the United States will buy space for the left to grow. In particularly:

If Obama wins, then that is a mass popular endorsement of hope — that things should and can change. The revival of trade unionism in the sit down strikes in the 1930s could not have happened without the confidence given by Roosevelt’s New Deal. The growth of the 1960s civil
rights movement, and the growth of women’s liberation and black power movements were linked to expectations of injustice being ended by Kennedy and LB Johnson.

Barack Obama

I’m skeptical, as it reminds me too much of similar guff heard when New Labour was first elected, back in 1997, as witnessed in such thriumphal books like John O’Farrell’s Things Can Only Get Better (Andy seems to recognise this, considering the title of his post). But more importantly, it seems to me Andy has got the relationship between a strong progressive or leftist mass movement and a left leaning president wrong. The movements he mentions, trade unionism and the civil rights movement, existed and knew success before they got a president on their side. Roosevelt started off a moderate and was largely forced into the New Deal, Kennedy gave lip service to the civil rights movement but it was only with his successor LBJ that civil rights legislation really got going. And in both cases this wouldn’t have happened without pressure from a broadbased, grassroots uprising, didn’t go as far as the movement wanted or extended itself to foreign policy, which was just as reactionary under Roosevelt and Kenndey/LBJ as their under their predecessors.

With Obama we’ve seen that his first instincts certainly aren’t anything but centrist or even rightwing. He got lucky in that he didn’t have to vote for the War on Iraq, but it took a long time for him to take a real stand against it once he was elected. Even now, he only wants to leave Iraq to strengthen Afghanistan and he’s hawkish on the “threat” of nuclear armed Iran, as well as saying all the wrong things about Georgia. He does talk the talk about poverty in America, but also felt the need to urge Black fathers to take their responsibility. As Andy admits himself, he has a lot of support from Wall Street which is despairing of the Republicans bollixing up the economy and his core advisors are not exactly leftist firebrands either…

To come back to Andy’s main argument, that Barack Obama will bring a feeling of hope that has been missing for the past eight years, which will open space on the left, I’m with John Pilger, as quoted by Andy. “ An Obama victory will bring intense pressure on the US anti-war and social justice movements to accept a Democratic administration for all its faults. If that happens, domestic resistance to rapacious America will fall silent.” We’ve seen it happen already, as the various centre left organisations like MoveOn have fallen in line behind the Democrats.

Somalia: another US proxy is losing its war

War on Terror
Published on

p>
Back in 2006, when it looked like the Islamic Court Union was going to emerge as the winner in the country’s decades long civil war, Ethiopia intervened by invading the country and propping up the western friendly “interim government”. Ethopia quickly managed to drive the ICU out of much of Somalia, but at the cost of an ongoing guerilla war. Not a rich country, Ethiopia can’t keep up its occupation of Somalia the way America can do with Iraq and with little to no support given by the west, it’s no wonder the country has threatened to withdraw even if this meants the ICU will win:

Ethiopia is prepared to withdraw troops from Somalia even if the interim government is not stable, Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi has said.

Ethiopia invaded its neighbour in 2006 to oust an Islamist militia and re-install the transitional government.

He told the UK’s Financial Times paper that financial pressures had to be taken into account and said the commitment was not open ended.

The withdrawal of Ethiopians is a key demand of the Islamist insurgents.

Al-Shabab, the radical wing of the Islamists who controlled much of Somalia in 2006, has refused to recognise a recent UN-brokered agreement the interim government has signed with an opposition group including a top Islamist leader.

It has demanded that Ethiopian troops leave Somalia before any ceasefire is considered.

Ethiopian interference in Somalia has been a disaster for the country, with aid agencies active in Somalia warning about famine as far back as March this year. It would’ve been much better off if the ICU had been allowed to win the civil war, even if they are the Islamic fanatics western propaganda has made them out to be, but in the framework of The War Against Terror this was never on the cards. The American government would rather wreck a country than let it fall into the hands of “Islamic terrorists”, so they first sponsored the same warlords America fought against back in 1993, then got ethiopia to invade when that wasn’t enough. It’s more than even odds that when Ethiopia withdraws (officially to be replaced with an African Union peaceforce) the Somalian civil war proper will flare up again, but this is of lesser concern to the US and Ethiopia, as long as the ICU doesn’t gain power. As usual in American foreign policy, if they can’t keep a puppet regime in power, a crippled country is a good secondbest scenario.