People's Democracy

Politics Of Far Right In Netherlands

Jayati Ghosh

ACROSS Europe, there is evidence of a substantial shift to the Right in terms of election results. The rabid right-wing candidate getting second place in the presidential election in France was the most dramatic example of this. But this is not necessarily a reflection of the decline of social democracy, as is being argued. Rather, it may be because the social democratic parties have become the same as the rightist parties in terms of policies, and have not really provided an alternative.

The recent turmoil in politics in the Netherlands provides a good example of this. The recent elections brought a political murder and a dramatic shift to the Right, involving a new rightwing non-party which won 26 (of 150) seats in parliament. This non-party, which swept the traditional political landscape, was started only 3 months ago (!) by a former professor in sociology, who in recent years worked as a columnist for a right-wing magazine.

This person, called Pim Fortuyn, was made leader of a new populist movement in November 2001, with a strong political base in local municipalities. But within 3 months he was thrown out of that party because of his remarks on Islam (" a very backward culture") and on immigration ("our country is full; no more migrants").

He then started his own movement in March 2002. This was completely centred around his own personality, which was very flamboyant, and expressed only his own political views, which were a combination of market-oriented and populist. The group around him was strangely mixed, even including some migrants themselves

The Dutch political establishment (and the ruling Labour Party in particular) proved to be quite incapable of responding to him, especially in debates on TV and radio, which Fortuyn used very effectively.

In the event, just before the election, Fortuyn was murdered (probably by a white environmentalist activist) which threw the entire country into turmoil. The elections on May 15 took place in extremely tense circumstances, previously unknown to the Netherlands. The election result indicated a huge shift to the right at one level. It reduced the Labour Party to half its previous size, and made the "List Pim Fortuyn" the second largest party after the Christian Democrats.

Dutch governments of recent years have always been fairly large coalitions of often unlikely partners. The earlier coalition government (1994-2002) consisted of Labour, Conservatives and Liberals. The economic policies of this government were clearly conservative or rightwing. They included: partial privatisation of social security and health insurance; deregulation of labour legislation; a failed attempt to privatise the railway system; small fiscal deficits (or even a surplus), while taxes were cut and made less progressive; exempting big energy multinationals from pollution norms, and so on.

The high GDP growth and high employment growth - claimed as big successes of this government - were appropriated by Labour as of their making. But at the same time, Labour consciously neglected the sharp increase in inequalities, big problems in the health care system the deterioration of the education system, the breakdown of public transport, and (inner-city) tensions between low-income migrant and non-migrant populations.

Pim Fortuyn exposed all these problems and therefore became the voice of many of those who were dissatisfied, that is migrant as well as non- migrant. His identification of problems and tension areas was not incorrect, his exposure of the technocratic inward-looking political class was revealing, but his own solutions were all so marketists that they would have made the problems much worse.

Now, in fact, the political situation is very unstable. The Christian Democrats are the biggest party and have taken the lead in the formation of the new coalition government. The List Pim Fortuyn is the second party, without a leader; but it has been argued that it is no more than a bunch of shady self-made persons, with the attitude that politics is there to serve them rather than that they are there to serve society. While a rightist three-party coalition government has been formed, it will probably be unstable and unlikely to survive for more than one or two years.

Meanwhile, the Pandora's box that was opened by Fortuyn and that unleashed deep-rooted feelings of distrust and even hatred between various groups of the population, is unlikely to be easily closed again. This means that a scenario in which things escalate further (and the country becomes even more right wing) is not unrealistic.

The only good thing about these election results is the gain made by the Socialist Party (from 5 to 9 seats). This gain by a left party, the only one of the "left" parties to gain, shows that the support for principled socialist policies, based on solidarity and more democratic forms of governance, is growing even here. While this process is still slow, in an optimistic scenario, the Socialist Party, which is the only truly left party in parliament may grow to be the main effective alternative to the populist-rightwing trend.

Similar tendencies are noticeable in other European countries as well. The basic problem is that the old Labour parties, after shedding off their ideology, have become indistinguishable from other mainstream parties, and particularly from the conservative ones. As a result, people no longer see any real alternatives, as far as the currently big parties are concerned.

At the same time, while the Dutch private sector has boomed in the 1990s, the public sector (social security; health care; education; public transport) was thrown into misery. People feel insecure, unprotected, also by globalisation, and anxiously look for protection; in response, Dutch Labour party politicians told them that the economy is doing well, the deficit is down, inflation is low, so they should not worry.

Probably as a result, voters have turned to populist politicians, who project the image that they will make things work, they will protect them, and so on, in a "strong-leader" syndrome, which - obviously - is very dangerous. The rest of the world has to hope that the more truly socialist alternative, which is slowly regaining strength, would eventually triumph over these early neo-fascist tendencies.