Dutch Treat
Ithought I was seeing the decade of 1930-1940 all over again. First came Brexit. And then the Trump presidency. And followed the agitation of the far-right parties in Europe. Oh, and should I mention the election of a very divisive president closer to home in this as well?
That decade, arguably, was the worst one in the last century. Worse even than the one that had the First World War in it.
What characterized that decade was a return to ultra-nationalist governments, isolationist nation-states fuelled by ultra-right ideologies, and—you guessed it— the hatred of all things that were “not like them.”
Think about what happened in Nazi Germany during this time. There was great restiveness in the general population. The German economy was in a free-fall, and many people were discontented with their situation. Enter Hitler, and his convenient scapegoat, the Jews. What happened next, of course, is now part of that decade’s infamous history. The annexation and invasion of many nations in Europe, the extermination of hundreds of thousands in the Holocaust, the spread of the war to Asia, etc. All these were part of the chain of events triggered by that thing called paranoia.
The disturbing thing is that this is the very phenomenon that we are seeing again today—bogeymen that are being used by populist governments to stir their populations into a frenzy, much as Hitler and the fascists in Italy and Japan stirred their people into supporting their war efforts.
As it happens, the bogeyman this time around is immigration.
Brexit, for instance, was sold to the British people as the cure to the influx of Eastern European citizens, who were said to be invading the UK, taking away their jobs, and draining their government’s resources. Trump won on the back of promising to build a wall—whether real or imaginary—between the United States and Mexico. The rightist parties in Europe, particularly in France, also rode on the same band- wagon. They especially raise the threat of immigration from Islamic lands, and how this invasion from a different culture would pose a threat to their own societies. Come to think of it, Trump also made this a priority, and is in fact making a travel ban of immigrants from a number of predominantly Islamic countries as a priority item on his agenda.
The latest to vote on whether to accept or reject a populist, ultra-right government this week were the Dutch. Known for their ultra-liberal attitude (including having legal marijuana cafes and fully-legalized prostitution), they were also on the brink of falling for the fascist bait.
Geert Wilders, the Dutch politician who is the founder and leader of the populist Party for Freedom, was the front-runner in the polls, and thought as the man to beat in the elections. If he did win, this would really have marked a turning point in European politics – that an unashamedly rightist politician who is seriously proposing to ban the Koran from the Netherlands – would lead a major European nation in this millennium.
Fortunately, common sense prevailed, and conservative Prime Minister Mark Rutte was able to avert what would have been a disaster of sorts for Europe.
For now, Netherlands has given the world a Dutch Treat, preventing the rise of populism and ultra-nationalism in Europe, with potentially dangerous consequences. But like the Dutch Boy preventing the flooding of Amsterdam by plugging a leak in the dike with his finger, we don’t know for certain just how long this threat can be contained.