Re: <nettime> Dutch Lawmaker Urges Halting Immigration

[Patrice Riemens <patrice {AT} xs4all.nl>]

On Sat, Nov 20, 2004 at 06:50:46AM -0800, coco fusco wrote:
>
> The racist spirit of Pim Fortuyn lives on in Holland -
> this suggests that all liberal and progressive
> attempts to argue that Fortuyn was an isolated
> extremist are completely wrong.
>
> Borders, borders and more borders...
>
> coco

Chill, Coco!  Geert Wilders is a MP, but hardly representative for the 
_whole_ country, even less for the whole political spectrum.

Yes, Geert Wilders is building his platform on an anti-immigrant, and 
hardly concealed anti-muslim stance. And yes, at the moment he is being 
'projected' with 20-25 seats in parliament - that is one sixth and larger 
than the liberal-conservative party he just left, becoming a 'one man 
fraction' - that is _if_ elections were due to-morrow (they are due in two 
and half _years_). Geert Wilders is simply surfing on a wave of shock and 
resentiment, which is ugly enough in itself - just as the crime that 
triggered it. But he is no more (though different in outlook, and may be 
in intelligence) than the Dutch equivalent of Jean Marie Le Pen. With of 
course, the same danger, which is not so much himself, as his ideas, that 
are being taken over by other, big mainstrem parties.

That has happened already and will happen even more. Holland is now "tough 
on immigrants" (as in "tough on crime", with exactly the same amount of 
posturing and going after the weak). It is the road Denmark has gone 
before, for exactly the same reasons: a small, little understood country, 
that always managed to strongly keep to itself, while projecting an image 
of openness and tolerance, but that is now discovering the big bad world 
will not leave it alone, especially when it has done next to nothing to 
come to terms with it.

But there is a redeeming feature. The whole affair has triggered an 
unheard amount of discussion and soul searching in this country. Of 
course, a lot of 'dreck' comes up, and our bleach-haired politico is a 
fine exponent is part of it. But that can be, and will be cleansed 
eventually. Better that than it remains under the carpet. The more extreme 
the immigration issue becomes, the more desperate - and in the process 
laughable, inept, and self-defeating - the attempts to keep "Fortress 
Europe" an island outside the world around it, and the sooner the whole 
charade is going to come down.

It's going to go the same way as 'intellectual property': the trashheap of 
history. Not even something to get so much worked up about. Better prepare 
calmly for the world after that.

cheers always, patrizio & Diiiinooos!






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