So after all the agonizing the past weeks and months - in Europe, anyway, though I dare say all the angst about Trump, right-wing populism and the 'alt right' must have gained more than usual attention in the US for European elections as well - the result in the first of these dreaded 2017 elections is pretty anticlimactic. Geert Wilders is now expected to have eighteen hapless lackeys joining him in parliament, moving from fifteen seats to nineteen - nice, until you realize he was over thirty in the polls a month or so ago. And that he'd need 76 for a majority. Not a good night for Bannon or Breitbart, I dare say, and a good sign for the much more consequential French election coming up in April.
On the other hand, it doesn't matter all that much whether Wilders has 19 seats or 30, and the VVD's (mainstream right-wing party) unexpectedly large lead is mostly due to the nasty spat with Turkey of the past week, in which both the Netherlands and Turkey had everything to gain from grandstanding towards each other, in which the VVD could reap the electoral benefit thanks to having the Prime Minister. If this incident has lost Wilders a few seats today but causes Erdogan to eke out a win in his referendum to (essentially) abolish Turkish democracy next month, that will be far too high a price to pay.
Wilders has already won in one respect, I think, because he moved the conversation further to the right. I have to agree with many of his ideas. Essentially the paradox of tolerance is you can't tolerate the intolerant. In the Netherlands, a nation with progressive social equality, can you let in people who do not believe in full equality for women and gay people? Whose ideas about religion can come into conflict with the ideals of the secular state. While I believe in immigration right now, I also believe in assimilation and learning the language and cultural mores of the host nation as a requirement. Don't learn it? Get sent back to wherever you came from.
I wonder if the Netherlands will turn into another Denmark in that respect. Denmark seems to have gone further along the road in restricting immigration than most other European nations.
Turkey acting the way it does is just going to cement the fact that it is not going to get into the EU anytime soon. If ever. I wonder if Turkey behaving this way will actually help parties on the right in Europe.
