The Election

 

He's not joking

I have never been eligible to vote in the Netherlands but am nonetheless a regular user of the stemwijzer, an online survey meant to guide Dutch voters through a thicket of political acronyms. I consult it because it is a thrill to participate, even vicariously, in a democratic process that involves many political parties, several of whom align nicely with my own very leftie views (a sad contrast to the US elections which are, for me, an invariant choice between the lesser of two evils). My favorites never do as well as I'd like, but even the centrist Dutch parties are pursuing policies I generally support, and it is the centrist parties that are the real winners time and again.

Not this election. In a pendulum swing pushed by immigration pressures, a long-standing housing crisis, leftover resentment at COVID-era policy, and contentious reforms to agriculture and related ecological issues, the furthest-right party has taken a huge number of parliamentary seats from the former leaders of the ruling coalition, and now controls almost a quarter of the "Tweede Kamer," or Dutch House of Representatives.

The leader of the winning party, pictured above, is a demagogue whom many are comparing with Trump: anti-immigrant, isolationist, inflammatory, careless of his country's constitution, funny-looking, in short, a political party of one with strong authoritarian inclinations. He is all this, but unlike Trump, whose only policy goal is his own aggrandizement, this politician believes in something outside himself: that the presence of Islam in the Netherlands is an existential threat to his retrogressive vision for that country. And unlike Trump, whose capacity for governing is limited and who just isn't that bright, this man, Geert Wilders, is an experienced and capable politician who speaks in whole sentences and is able to comport himself as an adult.

Most of my Dutch social circle is as left-leaning as I am, and, to judge by what I read on WhatsApp, are deeply worried about what comes next. They are also no doubt humiliated and offended to discover themselves now the smaller part of an electorate promoting an extremist who so clearly rejects social values they hold dear, such as tolerance and an open embrace of the wide world outside this small country's borders. Certainly part of my horror in watching Trump's eager celebration by a huge number of my fellow citizens is the realization, always there but usually ignored, that I am so not like they.

I have bad news and worse news, friends. The bad news is that even if Wilders fails to form a ruling coalition, he isn't going away: having won, his presence, if not his premiership, will be an even greater hindrance than previously to progress as you and I define it. The worse news is that regardless of his impact on the Netherlands, the insult of his election, which is to say the impact of this on your innerlands, is never really going to get better. The world has revealed itself to be a shittier place than you thought and, in the same stroke, has become even harder to fix.