Go Back to Where You Came From

by Sasha Polakow-Suransky

  Sarrazin is terrified that the Muslims are going to replace the Germans and that the great—and supposedly more intelligent—German race will vanish. He accuses the Germans of being “too lazy and indolent” to keep up their fertility rate to compete with the demographic conquerors, alarmingly pointing out that a third of children born in Paris and half in London are nonwhite.18 It is a vision of multiracial hell straight out of the pages of Raspail.

  Bent Melchior, the Danish refugee turned rabbi, isn’t convinced by Caldwell and Sarrazin’s apocalyptic predictions. He believes that the European way of life will rub off and that people will eventually integrate even if they hold on to some of their religious traditions and language. There’s an old expression in Danish about “the villa, the Volvo, and the dog. Little by little, the Muslims see that this is a pleasant way of living.”19 Gradually, he says, they will have two or three kids rather than eight.

  His theory is supported by evidence from Denmark’s neighbour, Germany, where the birth rate in the 1970s was 4.4 for Turkish immigrant women and had by 2010 fallen to 2.2, almost exactly in line with the population at large. In France, the situation is similar. Whether it is due to adapting to the cost of living or cultural norms, the numbers are converging.20 It is something he has seen close up in the Jewish community, he says. “In the long run, the majority conquers.”21

  The most interesting part of Sarrazin’s book features an extended conversation with the mayor of Neukölln, a largely Arab and Turkish area of Berlin, where dependency on social welfare is a real problem. The mayor, who clearly knows a great deal more about the challenges of integration policy than Sarrazin, tells the author that the women “who wear the veil most rigorously are often the ones who master the German language best”22 and come from cultivated families. “Orthodoxy, culture and the veil can go together perfectly well.”

  Ignoring his well-informed source, Sarrazin proceeds to conclude that further immigration will lead to a dumber Germany where churches will turn into mosques and schools will no longer teach German—a future in which “the country of my grandchildren and great-grandchildren will be in large part Muslim, where we speak mostly Turkish and Arabic, where the women wear veils and the daily rhythms are marked by the calls of muezzins.” In Sarrazin’s Eurabian dystopia, “Germany will not die all at once, it will disappear quietly along with the Germans and their intellectual potential, eaten away by demographic developments.”23 It, too, has an echo of Raspail. “We’re going to die slowly, eaten away from the inside by millions of microbes injected into our body. Little by little. Easily, quietly. No pain, no blood,” he wrote in The Camp of the Saints.24

  Like Sarrazin and Raspail, Holland’s newest right-wing actor on the parliamentary stage, Thierry Baudet, is terrified of a Great Replacement—the disappearance or “dilution” of what he considers a superior white civilization. To him, it is an existential question. “If I go to a museum, and I look at these portraits, they are essentially people like me that I can see. In fifty years it won’t be,” he says wistfully. “People will walk in the Rijksmuseum or the Louvre, and they’ll look at these faces and say, ‘Yeah, those were the people that once were.’ Rather like we look at Roman emperors.”25

  People like Baudet would have never found their way into parliament without help from the new right’s media arm. Just as the FN has become a huge presence on social media in France, the right is in the midst of conquering Dutch media. Geenstijl, a popular Breitbart-style news and video site in Holland whose name means “no style,” deploys an army of snide commenters across mainstream sites. It began as an irreverent blog and drifted more explicitly to the right, becoming a destination for those who felt politically homeless after Pim Fortuyn’s murder. It has now become ubiquitous, and its commenters are a formidable presence on Dutch Twitter. The site draws on the Dutch penchant for irony and pushing the limits of acceptability. Some politicians confess that the first thing they do when they arrive at their offices in The Hague is check Geenstijl.26

  It has also helped shape what the journalist Kustaw Bessems sees as a new form of political correctness. In the old days, he says, there were taboos enforced by the left: badmouth immigrants and “you were immediately called a racist and extreme right and basically pressured to shut up. Now, it’s the other way around,” Bessems argues. As in Denmark, where the Muslim question has taken over public debate, in today’s Holland, “as soon as you say anything else than ‘immigration is a problem’ or ‘Islam is the cause of terrorism’ … the thought police immediately jump on your neck to correct you.”27

  In addition to hijacking the concept of free speech and redefining it as the right to insult Islam, the new right’s greatest success has been to reframe the debate in stark cultural terms to the point that ideological cleavages over economic policy, foreign policy, and other issues that were long the bread and butter of political debate have almost disappeared from the discussion. Geert Wilders is a prime example.

  Early in his career, he was advised by a rising intellectual star of the Dutch right: Bart Jan Spruyt, a neoconservative in the American tradition, who wanted to roll back the cultural revolutions of the 1960s and 1970s and saw in Wilders an opportunity to establish a conservative movement in that mold. By 2006, the two had fallen out and parted ways.28 The cultural shift was far too entrenched. And to Wilders’s credit, he was smart enough to realize that the old right’s moralism was not a winning position in modern Dutch society, especially after Fortuyn. He grasped that Holland’s unique political and cultural preferences meant that there was no space for that sort of conservatism; being both socioeconomically right wing and culturally right wing was a nonstarter.29

  Fortuyn lay the groundwork for right-wing populism in the Netherlands; but it wouldn’t have succeeded if others hadn’t followed his lead. Dutch elites tend to adapt; the massive changes in the 1960s and 1970s would never have happened if not for the political elites standing aside, seeing which way the wind was blowing, and accommodating to that change.30 The only convincing explanation for the durability of Fortuyn’s ideas is that he succeeded in introducing a new form of cultural opposition, and the other parties have for the past fifteen years played along.31

  That cultural opposition cannot be ignored. Fortuyn and Van Gogh both embodied a peculiar but essential national trait—a very Dutch pride in causing offence. What Van Gogh seemed to miss was that, to some, his words actually mattered. He sounded the alarm about extremism before most, but, as the historian Ian Buruma writes, he never expected the outside world to “intrude on his Amsterdam scene, with its private ironies, its personal feuds, and its brutal mockery that was never intended to draw more than imaginary blood.” Such rhetoric works well among friends or in small countries. “Its destructive power can be cushioned in a narrow society where everyone knows the rules of the game. When it is exposed to outsiders with a less playful view of words the effects can be devastating.”32

  Websites like Geenstijl are particularly effective at enforcing the new politically correct orthodoxy when these cultural flashpoints emerge. There has been a debate in Holland in recent years over the holiday Sinterklaas, a peculiarly Dutch pre-Christmas ritual that features a character known as Zwarte Piet, or Black Pete, who, like Santa’s little helper, brings gifts to children. The character is a cultural icon as deeply entrenched in popular culture as the Tooth Fairy. People often dress up in blackface to play Zwarte Piet.

  For decades, there was no discussion about it; in the past few years, it has become a national debate as black Dutch citizens of Surinamese origin and other activists have called for an end to the tradition. Everyone from radio hosts to the prime minister has weighed in. White Dutch people never faced questions about their traditions and still tend to react by arguing they’re innocuous. The reaction from many of them has been outrage at the left’s political correctness and a demand that when it comes to this holiday tradition, which appears to most foreigners as crude and racist, you can’t take it from u
s.

  That Holland has a beloved blackface tradition in 2017 says something about its ability as a society to handle diversity.33 The Black Pete debate is really about whether a minority group has a right to criticize Dutch national traditions. The Irish became Americans, as did the Jews, but the shrill debate over Black Pete confirms that despite the Surinamese speaking Dutch as a mother tongue, many people have never accepted them as Dutch.

  The same is true when it comes to positive celebrations of diversity. Debates about public observance of non-Christian religious holidays such as Diwali for Hindus, Eid for Muslims, or Yom Kippur for Jews usually boil down to: we have just Christian holidays, and that’s it.34 It is the mark of a country that has yet to grapple with even the most superficial and innocuous embraces of diversity.35

  The debate can be traced to Holland’s amnesia about its colonial past. There is a widely held view that because Holland was not a great power like some of its neighbours, it is superior by virtue of not having a violent nationalist tradition.36 Such a self-perception also drives the debate about apologies and accommodation of minorities. If we haven’t been as oppressive or brutal a colonial power as our Belgian or German neighbours in terms of body counts—a dubious honor—then the conclusion is we don’t need to redeem ourselves. Memories of the Dutch army’s brutal campaigns in Indonesia are conveniently forgotten. And it is not just white Dutch people who have no sense of the country’s ugly history.

  As Bessems, the Volkskrant journalist, points out, many among the younger generation are not learning about any of the country’s darker chapters. And in lower-level schools (Holland is notorious for its tracking of students into vocational, higher, and academic tiers), there is little emphasis on history. As in France, there are Dutch children of Muslim background who are exposed to Holocaust denialism or attracted to it out of hostility to Israel.

  It is all the more troubling because Holland has never fully confronted its not-so-distant historical demons. It is a country that, unlike Denmark, did very little to save its Jewish population. In fact, the Dutch were among the most zealous in rounding up and exterminating what was once a large and prosperous community. Only Poland was more murderous. The outside world is familiar with the story of Anne Frank. Less known is the fact that over 70 percent of Dutch Jews were sent to Nazi concentration camps.37

  Paul Scheffer is adamant that everyone in the country should learn that history, and he finds it offensive and condescending when some commentators argue that schools shouldn’t bother Turkish children with the bloody history of World War II in Holland on the grounds that it’s not their history. To Scheffer, this is just another version of the abdication that he claims leads some extreme cultural relativists to say it’s fine for Muslim men to beat their wives because it’s “their culture.”38

  By the same token, he believes that a young Algerian in France has every right to ask why he isn’t taught about French-led massacres in the 1960s or that a Dutch-Surinamese student should be able to ask her teachers about colonialism. The presence of minorities “forces you to rethink institutions like education and the welfare state,” argues Scheffer. It also means asking, “What is the history you’re teaching? If we talk about history and we think it is important to know where you come from, then we have to talk also about how vulnerable we have been as an open society to these forms of barbarism.”

  He mocks right-wingers who deride Muslim intolerance and forget their own history. Wilders’s supporters like to talk about how Holland has had religious freedom since the seventeenth century. “Well, why did Catholics have to hide, and why was it forbidden by law for Jews to marry Christians?” Scheffer asks. Those who defend equal treatment for gays, he adds, “should remember that fifty years ago, this was absolutely not accepted in the Netherlands either. It’s a very recent discovery.” By all means defend it, Scheffer argues, “but then understand how vulnerable it has been.”39

  Some of these dilemmas arise because the modern left doesn’t know what to say when minority groups say or do offensive or illegal things, be it an imam denouncing gays, the Cologne attacks, or Holocaust denialism. “People find it hard to say, ‘No, you’re wrong.’… It’s ludicrous and it’s vicious and it’s very damaging for a society to deny a genocide,” Bessems argues. Confronting the Christian establishment was one thing; it’s quite another when the clash is with a less powerful group. “Left wing, liberal, and progressive people have found it hard to make the same points against Muslims, because they felt they were stepping on the minority.” Nevertheless, he insists, “if you believe that values are universal, if you believe in personal freedoms, if you believe in equality despite gender or sexuality or race or whatever, then you will.”40

  Bessems spent four years working in The Hague. “I was really astounded by how little of the outside reality actually penetrates into this bubble.… The only thing they are worried about is the image they project,” he says of the country’s political class. “Events are not real events anymore. They are factors in this image management.” The result is that Dutch politicians can be inaccessible to the point of absurdity. Leaders rarely talk to media unless it is perceived as helpful to their immediate political interests. Even low-ranking party members across the spectrum tend to behave as if they are celebrities and eschew the press—or demand the review of quotations before publication.41

  Parliament has become a sort of theatre detached from society. For voters, this leads to more disillusionment with the establishment. “There’s no sense among voters that there is a connection between their vote and what happens,” argues Bessems. “A lot of very important issues have been transferred, of course, to the European level in a very dishonest way.” Of course, politicians might say you voted for us and the decisions are politically legitimate, because it was elected parties that transferred authority to Brussels. But voters don’t buy it, and it helps Wilders win the votes of the frustrated, and others, fearful of losing more voters to him, start to parrot his policies.

  Bessems recalls visiting officials in The Hague at the height of this mimicking trend. “When I talked to politicians, I used to say that sometimes I wish you would just close your eyes for ten minutes and pretend that Wilders doesn’t exist.” He would ask them what they really believed and their considered positions on actual issues. There were few answers. “I think they’ve become totally reactive. They’re reactive to Wilders, they’re reactive to media, they’re reactive to public outcries, they’re reactive to opinion polls.”

  Bessems blames the growing number of PR consultants in politics, who regularly outnumber journalists. “They have whole armies of spokespeople in between when a politician is on the record.” In this stage-managed political landscape, the ghost of Pim Fortuyn looms large. He was “someone who was prepared to think out loud, who enjoyed confrontations with his critics,” says Bessems, by no means a fan of the late populist leader. Fortuyn’s style now seems a thing of the past. “He was not a classic populist in the sense that he was always trying to please his electorate,” recalls Bessems. “He would say things that his own electorate would probably not like,” and then explain himself, something almost unimaginable in today’s political environment. Bessems wonders how Fortuyn would have fared in this era of gotcha journalism. “We as media have … a very big and damning influence,” he admits. Political reporting is not generally focused on substance. “Basically, you ask a politician something and you hope it’s either not in line with their party or not in line with the coalition partner or not in line with something they said three years ago,” says Bessems.42

  Fortuyn was transformative because he went beyond what politicians generally attempt. Whereas many politicians merely mirror what the masses think, Fortuyn tried to sculpt them, seducing them into sharing his views.43 The results are plain to see. Fifteen years after his death, people are saying things that politicians got prosecuted for in the 1980s.

  Dutch politics today is almost entirely devoid of substance, and
moral commitments are frowned upon. It has descended into a sort of popularity contest where the most theatrical get the most attention.44 Wilders, of course, with his dyed-blond streak of hair, is the most colourful and plainspoken politician. While he is no Pim Fortuyn, he attracts attention in the theatre that parliament has become.

  He can also say things that others cannot. Wilders has perfected a populist rhetoric that blames foreigners for all that ails the Dutch working class at a moment when they feel they no longer have any control over their neighborhoods or society. What Wilders has done, Bessems argues, is to tell these frustrated voters, “I can give you that control.”45

  He appeals to these sorts of voters because he breaks a taboo in Dutch politics—he is perfectly comfortable being blunt and with issuing moralistic messages. Other politicians “talk in a very abstract way,” says the former Labour MP Ahmed Marcouch. “The people don’t understand.” Wilders by contrast “is very clear,” speaking directly in blunt soundbites like “De-Islamize Now” and “No More Islam.”46 It’s no wonder that in January 2017, Dutch prime minister Mark Rutte fired an opening shot in the campaign for the March 15 election, which he won, by telling immigrants and their children who don’t like the Netherlands that they should “act normal” or, if they don’t like it, leave.47

  For Wilders, unlike the prime minister, follow-through is not so much of an issue. “I think it’s a complete utopia that he tries to sketch for his voters, and I think he can never deliver what he is promising,” argues Bessems. He doesn’t have to.48 Wilders is not in the cabinet and not directly accountable to any specific constituency or for any ministerial portfolio. The lack of responsibility for actual policymaking allows a lot of freedom. Wilders and PVV politicians can say almost anything without consequences, and it might even attract more voters to their side. By leaving major economic crises festering and unresolved, they also ensure an ongoing receptive audience for their message, so long as they are never blamed for the problem.