Geert Wilders' victory in Netherlands election spooks Europe
Geert Wilders' victory in Netherlands election spooks Europe
EU leaders should take note but it's too simplistic to say populists are taking over, says Katya Adler.
The unexpectedly meaty win for controversial, hard-right politician Geert Wilders in Wednesday's general election in the Netherlands set international headlines on fire.
Right-wing nationalists across Europe rushed to congratulate the populist politician, sometimes dubbed the Dutch Trump - partly for his dyed, bouffant-like hairdo, and partly for his famously firebrand rhetoric.
Geert Wilders' publicly expressed views - including linking Muslim immigration with terrorism and calling for a ban on mosques and the Quran - are so provocative that he has been under tight police protection since 2004.
Wilders was convicted of inciting discrimination, although later acquitted, and he was refused entry to the UK back in 2009.
But Europe's far right believes their views have now become more mainstream.
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Countries haven't implemented any safeguards against anti-democracy. These kinds of horrible individuals shouldn't even be able to be an option in an election
Almost impossible in a democracy.
Eg. In 2004 the far right Vlaams Blok in Belgium was effectively shut down following a ruling convicting it for racism. It's likely they undermined their own case, because being convicted was electorally advantageous for them.
They then almost immediately started a new party called Vlaams Belang, which no longer said the quiet bits out loud, pushing the whole "Free Speech" narrative really hard. This new party is now stronger than Vlaams Blok ever was.
Yeah... No one seems to have any ideas going forward
What kind of safeguards are you thinking of? And doesn't that go against the right to make yourself electable?
I'm no expert and don't see any clear solution to this problem.
- Lie-based populism will always have an edge to the truth as fact-checking is always late and with a lesser impact.
- Education can't keep up and it's actively made worse.
- Countries can't take voting rights away from the easily manipulated.
There might be some other avenues I can't think of right now but it seems that democracies might need some kinds of qualifications to be electable.
In Finland a minister is required to be "known to be honest and skillful" but that is not enforced in any way and our speaker of the parliament is a clone of Geert Wilders
I'm afraid of this becoming a slippery slope. Suffrage (both active and passive) are very important rights that should never be infringed.
You can see the slippery slope in action in America: mass incarceration is being used as a way to take away voting rights from black people. Any loop hole will always be used by the people in power to remain in power.
It's not hard to predict that the right would classify "socialism" as "lying about the economy" and try to take suffrage away from socialists, or whatever they consider socialists that day.
... mass incarceration is being used as a way to take away voting rights from black people.
So you're saying they're arresting black citizens specifically to take away their voting rights?
I'm not the one you're quoting but that seems to be a sought-after side effect. War on drugs was specifically aimed to incarcerate low-income minorities