lennart
20-01-03, 23:52
http://www.iht.com/cgi-bin/generic.cgi?template=articleprint.tmplh&ArticleId=83839
Copyright © 2003 The International Herald Tribune | www.iht.com
Dutch politics breaks taboo on talking about immigration
John Vinocur/IHT International Herald Tribune
Monday, January 20, 2003
AMSTERDAM The Netherlands votes Wednesday in national elections that are revolutionary in terms of pushing back the limits of what European politics is comfortable in discussing.
With political correctness here in shreds, and multiculturalism often defined for the time being more as a problem than as an enrichment, the Dutch are basically choosing from mainstream candidates who have all marked out ground rules for how Muslim immigrants must integrate into and assume the obligations of the Dutch humanist tradition.
With millions of Arabs, Pakistanis and Turks now living in France, Britain and Germany, the issue of their integration is one of Europe's most acute concerns - and least comfortable subjects for debate. In elections in France and Germany last year, traditional parties virtually fled dealing with the question in terms of names and numbers, preferring vague discussions of "difficult neighborhoods" and promises about more "security."
But in Holland, all the big parties, left and right, are articulating the very specific concern that Dutch democracy not be drowned in a separate-but-equal multicultural broth. In detail, that means immigrants' acceptance of what are called the majority's "norms and values," use of the Dutch language, and respect for women and homosexuals.
For the Christian Democrats, residence permits would go only to immigrants who successfully complete an integration course, including competency in the Dutch language. For those immigrants already in the Netherlands, the Labor or Social Democrat Party would bar entitlement to social services without passage of the integration course. The Liberals want an eventual bar against the entry of foreign imams, or Islamic religious leaders, with the explanation that the Netherlands will have formed enough of its own.
Decried as a demagogue, and stigmatized by the left elsewhere in Europe as a rightist bogeyman, Pim Fortuyn, the populist who was murdered last May - an animal rights activist has been charged with the crime - nonetheless profoundly changed politics here by acknowledging what was so uncomfortably on the electorate's mind, and by making it seem a no longer shameful subject for discussion.
The left-of-center newspaper De Volkskrant described the particularity of the Dutch situation:
"Until recently," wrote Martin Sommer, "the dominant feeling was that the multicultural society was not only a fact but a plus in our existence. Whoever talked about conflicting cultures and failed integration quickly placed himself outside the established order. Because of Fortuyn's death, the roles were abruptly reversed. The multicultural network has unraveled."
The election campaign has demonstrated that it is now O.K. for the Dutch to say they are worried by population trends, involving Moroccans and Turks, that point to the country's four main cities moving toward foreign, and probably Islamic, majorities. According to Frits Bolkestein, the European commissioner and a leading member of the Liberal Party, it is also no longer a touchy matter to talk about disproportionate numbers of Muslims in crime statistics or the prison population.
After the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in the United States, the Social Democratic mayor of Amsterdam hardly felt discomfort about publicly asking the government what provisions the Dutch Army was making in the event of riots relating to the situation in the Middle East. And last week, a vocational training school in Amsterdam, like one in The Hague whose students with foreign backgrounds make up about half of its enrollment, ordered that only Dutch be spoken on the premises.
Strikingly, the traditional middle-ground left, a cousin of France's Socialists, Britain's Labour Party, and Germany's Social Democrats, speaks in an entirely new register.
Klaas de Vries, interior minister in the last Social Democratic-led government, said in an interview: "We're now describing real problems with the most accurate words at our command. If we see a problem in an ethnic group that bothers our society, we no longer try to tuck it away. Everything that was taboo, politically correct, is now on the table."
The Netherlands remained a multicultural society, de Vries said, but the emphasis was now both on the rights "and obligations" of newcomers to the country. The big change, he indicated, was in his party's recognition that in the view of "the traditional part of the population, the problem was getting out of hand. It was very inflammatory and very dangerous."
Indeed, the only the characteristic that distinguishes the big parties of the left and right now, said De Volkskrant, is a little less severity in the left's view of how to sanction violations of the "norms and values" whose defense polls describe as uppermost on voters' minds. The evolution is such that it is referred to in television debates as the "New Politics."
Those polls gave conflicting reports at the weekend about whether the Christian Democrats or Social Democrats would be the leading vote-getters. A coalition government between the two parties appears possible, with the Liberals becoming a conceivable third element. Its leader's message co-opted and cleaned up at the edges, Fortuyn's party has shrunken to virtual insignificance.
Last May, when the old politics were still in sway (and after Fortuyn's murder), a coalition, including the populist's party, ousted the government that had been led by the Social Democrat Wim Kok. Incoherent and amateurish, that grouping imploded after 87 days. The mainstream parties subsequently picked up the essential pieces of the Fortuyn discourse, rubbed off some of the rough edges, and returned to the debate with a political sound unknown to the Netherlands' neighbors.
Joao Verela, a member of what remains of Fortuyn's party, said: "We dared to take a step and everybody jumped on us for it. Three months later, everybody agrees. Politically speaking, it's clever. They grab our strong points, and we suddenly look like mice. It's fascinating."
At the same time, there have been expressions of concern from Muslim groups in the Netherlands about the overall trend. Although they live in one of Europe's strongest democratic cultures, and the parties explicitly reject a reading of their views that makes Muslims or Islam suspect or subjects of divisiveness, Moroccan immigrants in particular have complained of newspaper and television reports stigmatizing them.
A group called Change of Course: NL issued a declaration last week asking, "Do you realize that in the morning thousands of Moroccans open their newspapers hoping for once that there wouldn't be news of Moroccans, Muslims or foreigners?"
In fact, there are about 700,000 Muslim immigrants in the Dutch population of approximately 15 million. In terms of security, it makes the new political frankness here a rather less fraught undertaking than it might be in France with 4.7 million Muslims, Germany with 3.2 million, Britain with 2.4 million.
While de Vries said Dutch voters had no particular awareness of the exceptional aspects of their election debate - he personally agreed with the premise that it was unique in Europe - Bolkestein insisted in an interview that it would soon be coming to the rest of the EU countries.
"It will go through Europe; you just can't look past reality," Bolkestein said. "Reality will enforce itself on politics just as it has in Holland. Politicians can't escape. It's a pity that politicians in France and the U.K. have not come to grips with it. Because otherwise it will explode."
Copyright © 2003 The International Herald Tribune | www.iht.com
Dutch politics breaks taboo on talking about immigration
John Vinocur/IHT International Herald Tribune
Monday, January 20, 2003
AMSTERDAM The Netherlands votes Wednesday in national elections that are revolutionary in terms of pushing back the limits of what European politics is comfortable in discussing.
With political correctness here in shreds, and multiculturalism often defined for the time being more as a problem than as an enrichment, the Dutch are basically choosing from mainstream candidates who have all marked out ground rules for how Muslim immigrants must integrate into and assume the obligations of the Dutch humanist tradition.
With millions of Arabs, Pakistanis and Turks now living in France, Britain and Germany, the issue of their integration is one of Europe's most acute concerns - and least comfortable subjects for debate. In elections in France and Germany last year, traditional parties virtually fled dealing with the question in terms of names and numbers, preferring vague discussions of "difficult neighborhoods" and promises about more "security."
But in Holland, all the big parties, left and right, are articulating the very specific concern that Dutch democracy not be drowned in a separate-but-equal multicultural broth. In detail, that means immigrants' acceptance of what are called the majority's "norms and values," use of the Dutch language, and respect for women and homosexuals.
For the Christian Democrats, residence permits would go only to immigrants who successfully complete an integration course, including competency in the Dutch language. For those immigrants already in the Netherlands, the Labor or Social Democrat Party would bar entitlement to social services without passage of the integration course. The Liberals want an eventual bar against the entry of foreign imams, or Islamic religious leaders, with the explanation that the Netherlands will have formed enough of its own.
Decried as a demagogue, and stigmatized by the left elsewhere in Europe as a rightist bogeyman, Pim Fortuyn, the populist who was murdered last May - an animal rights activist has been charged with the crime - nonetheless profoundly changed politics here by acknowledging what was so uncomfortably on the electorate's mind, and by making it seem a no longer shameful subject for discussion.
The left-of-center newspaper De Volkskrant described the particularity of the Dutch situation:
"Until recently," wrote Martin Sommer, "the dominant feeling was that the multicultural society was not only a fact but a plus in our existence. Whoever talked about conflicting cultures and failed integration quickly placed himself outside the established order. Because of Fortuyn's death, the roles were abruptly reversed. The multicultural network has unraveled."
The election campaign has demonstrated that it is now O.K. for the Dutch to say they are worried by population trends, involving Moroccans and Turks, that point to the country's four main cities moving toward foreign, and probably Islamic, majorities. According to Frits Bolkestein, the European commissioner and a leading member of the Liberal Party, it is also no longer a touchy matter to talk about disproportionate numbers of Muslims in crime statistics or the prison population.
After the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in the United States, the Social Democratic mayor of Amsterdam hardly felt discomfort about publicly asking the government what provisions the Dutch Army was making in the event of riots relating to the situation in the Middle East. And last week, a vocational training school in Amsterdam, like one in The Hague whose students with foreign backgrounds make up about half of its enrollment, ordered that only Dutch be spoken on the premises.
Strikingly, the traditional middle-ground left, a cousin of France's Socialists, Britain's Labour Party, and Germany's Social Democrats, speaks in an entirely new register.
Klaas de Vries, interior minister in the last Social Democratic-led government, said in an interview: "We're now describing real problems with the most accurate words at our command. If we see a problem in an ethnic group that bothers our society, we no longer try to tuck it away. Everything that was taboo, politically correct, is now on the table."
The Netherlands remained a multicultural society, de Vries said, but the emphasis was now both on the rights "and obligations" of newcomers to the country. The big change, he indicated, was in his party's recognition that in the view of "the traditional part of the population, the problem was getting out of hand. It was very inflammatory and very dangerous."
Indeed, the only the characteristic that distinguishes the big parties of the left and right now, said De Volkskrant, is a little less severity in the left's view of how to sanction violations of the "norms and values" whose defense polls describe as uppermost on voters' minds. The evolution is such that it is referred to in television debates as the "New Politics."
Those polls gave conflicting reports at the weekend about whether the Christian Democrats or Social Democrats would be the leading vote-getters. A coalition government between the two parties appears possible, with the Liberals becoming a conceivable third element. Its leader's message co-opted and cleaned up at the edges, Fortuyn's party has shrunken to virtual insignificance.
Last May, when the old politics were still in sway (and after Fortuyn's murder), a coalition, including the populist's party, ousted the government that had been led by the Social Democrat Wim Kok. Incoherent and amateurish, that grouping imploded after 87 days. The mainstream parties subsequently picked up the essential pieces of the Fortuyn discourse, rubbed off some of the rough edges, and returned to the debate with a political sound unknown to the Netherlands' neighbors.
Joao Verela, a member of what remains of Fortuyn's party, said: "We dared to take a step and everybody jumped on us for it. Three months later, everybody agrees. Politically speaking, it's clever. They grab our strong points, and we suddenly look like mice. It's fascinating."
At the same time, there have been expressions of concern from Muslim groups in the Netherlands about the overall trend. Although they live in one of Europe's strongest democratic cultures, and the parties explicitly reject a reading of their views that makes Muslims or Islam suspect or subjects of divisiveness, Moroccan immigrants in particular have complained of newspaper and television reports stigmatizing them.
A group called Change of Course: NL issued a declaration last week asking, "Do you realize that in the morning thousands of Moroccans open their newspapers hoping for once that there wouldn't be news of Moroccans, Muslims or foreigners?"
In fact, there are about 700,000 Muslim immigrants in the Dutch population of approximately 15 million. In terms of security, it makes the new political frankness here a rather less fraught undertaking than it might be in France with 4.7 million Muslims, Germany with 3.2 million, Britain with 2.4 million.
While de Vries said Dutch voters had no particular awareness of the exceptional aspects of their election debate - he personally agreed with the premise that it was unique in Europe - Bolkestein insisted in an interview that it would soon be coming to the rest of the EU countries.
"It will go through Europe; you just can't look past reality," Bolkestein said. "Reality will enforce itself on politics just as it has in Holland. Politicians can't escape. It's a pity that politicians in France and the U.K. have not come to grips with it. Because otherwise it will explode."