Welp, there goes my willingness to move to the Netherlands.
Not sure where you’d be moving from, but as an American… Even their craziest far-right dude is basically just a racist socialist. He’s got some bad ideas, for sure, but half of them are racism and the other half are “so some of the shit that hasn’t worked for America.”
I’m not saying that makes it okay. I’m surprised and disappointed in the Netherlands. But compared to most of America’s politicians, he seems downright reasonable.
Calm down. While he got the biggest share, it is “just” 35 seats in a 150 seats parliament. He would need another 41 seats in coalition to get anywhere, which means (as his share is the largest) he would not only need one, but at least two partners willing to form a coalition with and a government under him.
While those 35 seats are still 35 seats too many, I doubt he will run the country.
Right now people are theorizing 2 possible coalitions, the first one is PVV - NSC - VVD and the other one is GLPVDA - NSC - VVD - D66. This means we’re either getting a far-right populist as the prime minister or we are getting a coalition that will get us absolutely nowhere and will change nothing from the status quo, while also likely destroying leftist support even more because of how little to coalition will be capable of vs. what the leftist party (GLPVDA) promised
We’re not doing okay
it is “just” 35 seats
The article says that the projection has now risen to 37.
As a Dutchman, I’m kind of shocked. The battle seemed to be between the previous largest party VVD, the new NSC party and the labour/greens fusion. Then the PVV suddenly surged. Apparently a lot of people who weren’t sure yet ended up going with the PVV. Out of the 4 largest parties we have 3 that are right-wing and/or conservative. The PVV is far-right (though hard to place), the VVD is a neoliberal party, and the NSC is closer to the centre but also quite conservative. We’re entering dark days…
The leader of the labour/green did a very bad campaign. I voted for him out of conviction, but I can totally see undecided voters not being convinced by his campaign. The loss of the VVD can be explained partly by the punishment that ruling parties get in elections in these times. I’m just hoping the leader of the NSC doesn’t agree to be in a coalition with PVV. Best thing we can hope for now is a center-right coalition with the Labour/Greens, the VVD (neo-liberals) and NSC (center-right) :(
What shocks me is that unconvinced voters thought his idiotic anti-Islam position wasn’t a reason not to vote for him.
They’ve know that’s what he stands for the past 17 years. Sure, he said it’s ’negotiable’ if it helps him get into government sometime during the campaign but now that he’s the biggest he’s gonna make a stand on that once more.
Everyone here would do well to read the room a bit if we find that surprising. Or at least keep tabs on whats going on outside of your particular ideological bubble.
Anti immigrant sentiment is up big time across the EU right now. And specifically directed towards people from the Middle East and Africa. I’d wager a lot of people didn’t vote for him despite his stances on that issue, but rather because of them.
The thing is, he kinda sorta distanced himself from his earlier anti-Islam statements. Not really though, but he made them ‘negotiable’ in order to get into government. This in turn seems to have opened the door for VVD to not exclude them from taking part in government from the start. This made PVV a ‘legitimate’ choice where it was once seen as throwing away your vote because they would be excluded anyway.
But I’m no political analyst so take this with a grain of salt.
To be fair, his concession speech was stellar. Talk about peaking too late.
What would you say the chances are of Wilders being able to form a coalition?
Before the election I would have said unlikely, because both NSC and VVD ruled out a coalition with PVV. Afterwards the NSC already caved to “respect the choice of the voters” and the VVD also did not make a clear statement.
To add to this, even during the campaign the leader of the VVD (neo-liberal party) didn’t exclude the possibility of working with Wilders like the former PM of the VVD always did. I think this helped Wilders a lot.
That sucks. Thanks for the insight.
Perhaps it’s like the Trump win. People declared they’d never vote for him publicly, but secretly did
Is there a country in the EU where the far right isn’t on the rise? I need a Backup plan in case the nazis are voted in Germany again
Portugal? IIRC they’ve been quite resistant to right-wing populism.
Portugal’s Chega party increased to 7,2 % in 2022. That’s lower than in the rest of the EU, but still an increase by eleven seats.
I stand corrected. And somewhat dejected.
Sorry :(
spain’s fsr right wing party went down from 15% to 12% in the last elections.
Denmark. You may not like how Frederiksen did it - she essentially opted for politics that are as anti-immigrant as legally possible - but she also obliterated the far right there. The two far-right parties in Folketing now total 10 of 179 seats…
And the difference between Frederiksen’s social democrats and the actual far right is huge. No climate change denying, no cozying up to Russia, no anti-lgbtq nonsense, no anti-EU propaganda and so on.
Yeah we have tax rebates for the rich, defunding of education, some laughably passive bordering nonexistent policies to protect local environment and combat climate change (heavily lobbied for by the agricultural lobby)…shit is going just A-OK here 👌
shit is going just A-OK here 👌
Well, the baseline is the rest of the planet, so unironically: yes. I mean, take the climate change portion for instance: Every single country on the planet is doing worse than Denmark. .
I also think your pig farming is silly and detrimental to the environment afaik the only reason you’re not in a recession is fat people in America, but still, the numbers on pretty much everything make Denmark look pretty good. Or the rest of the world very shitty.
“Anti-immigrant” but welcoming people from select countries. Reminds me of how a Swedish person told me he thought there were too many immigrants but that I, a Canadian, would be perfectly welcome to go there.
Apparently some people are considered immigrants and that’s bad, while others are just expats looking for a new home.
Apparently some people are considered immigrants and that’s bad, while others are just expats looking for a new home.
I don’t think they’re considered expats if they plan to stay indefinitely. But yeah, there’s vastly different sentiments towards different types of immigrants. Usually the surveys ask for “European immigration”, but I guess a Canadian would fall into that as well, so they might just as well ask about Western immigration (the use European because of EU freedom of movement). In part sentiments obviously have a lot to do with racism and xenophobia, but it’s unfortunately not just that. The statistics for people who immigrated irregularly (i.e. without a visa) really don’t look good. E.g. here in Germany in 2022 foreign nationals made up some 16% of the population but 32% of crime suspects (excluding crimes around migration which Germans can’t commit). The percentages regarding people who actually get convicted are even worse and “Zugewanderte” (recent immigrants, mainly asylum seekers) used to have even worse numbers as well (before the refugees from Ukraine, largely women and children came).
Obviously there’s demographic and socioeconomic reasons for that discrepancy. The main issue is that there’s a lot of young men among immigrants and you men tend to commit most crimes, but that obviously doesn’t undo any of these crimes. Ukraine’s rather sexist border controls (they don’t allow men aged 18-60 to leave) really did their diaspora a solid here.
It’s cultural and religious differences that irritate people moreso, I find.
It’s also that there’s no interest to adopt the culture of the host country and rather building foreign bubbles
Ireland?
Well that aged poorly exceptionally quickly 😂
Oof, later in the day from when you commented that, there was a far right riot 😬
😬
Freedom of movement is a human right! For everyone, everywhere, in every direction!
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Now Geert Wilders has likely won a massive election victory in the Netherlands and is in pole position to form the next ruling coalition and possibly become the country’s next prime minister.
In his first reaction, posted in a video on X, formerly Twitter, he spread his arms wide, put his face in his hands and said simply “35!” - the number of seats the poll then forecasted his party had won.
In 2009, the British government refused to let him visit the country, saying he posed a threat to “community harmony and therefore public security.” Wilders had been invited to Britain by a member of Parliament’s upper house, the House of Lords, to show his 15-minute film “Fitna,” which criticizes the Quran as a “fascist book.” The film sparked violent protests around the Muslim world in 2008 for linking Quranic verses with footage of terrorist attacks.
To court mainstream voters this time around, Wilders toned down the anti-Islam rhetoric and sought to focus less on what he calls the “de-Islamization” of the Netherlands and more on tackling hot-button issues such as housing shortages, a cost-of-living crisis and access to good health care.
His campaign platform nonetheless calls for a referendum on the Netherlands leaving the European Union, an “asylum stop” and “no Islamic schools, Qurans and mosques,” although he pledged Wednesday night not to breach Dutch laws or the country’s constitution that enshrines freedom of religion and expression.
He also is a staunch supporter of Israel and advocates shifting the Embassy of the Netherlands there to Jerusalem and closing the Dutch diplomatic post in Ramallah, home of the Palestinian Authority.
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