Geert’s Wildly Inappropriate Anti-immigrant Website
Anna Sonny, 16 February 2012
By Anna Sonny
Geert Wilders, the leader of the Dutch Party for Freedom (PVV), has become rather well-known for his highly divisive and inflammatory views, particularly when it comes to immigration. Yet, despite his right-wing notoriety few can fail to be shocked by his latest project – an online forum welcoming complaints from the Dutch population about the presence of immigrants in the Netherlands.
The website, entitled “Hotline Central and Eastern Europeans”, asks: “Did you lose your job to a Pole, Bulgarian, a Romanian, or any other Central or Eastern European? We would like to hear about it.” Polish nationals, who make up around 80% of the 125,000 central and eastern Europeans residing in the Netherlands, are singled out in particular for being the “cause of many problems, such as nuisance, pollution, [and] a squeeze on the labour market.”
According to the website Dutchnews, representatives of the PVV claim that the website intends to develop proper insight into the “problems caused by central and eastern Europeans in terms of crime, alcoholism, drugs use, dumping household waste and prostitution”. Many, however, see the site as outrageously discriminatory and as an open forum for inciting racial hatred. The site invites xenophobic complaints but leaves little room for any real analysis of social issues, let alone suggestions for working towards solutions. It is highly doubtful that any ‘proper insight’ can be gleaned from this initiative and it is already creating more problems than it could ever solve.
The hotline has attracted a lot of attention, but is it truly a reflection of Dutch public opinion? So far the website has collected over 30,000 complaints, but it allows one person to post as many times as they like so it is possible that this figure includes re-postings or even spoof comments. A string of parody websites have been set up in response, poking fun at the project and at Wilders in particular. In an opinion poll on the website Dutchnews, which asks whether the Dutch Prime Minister, Mark Rutte, should distance himself from the PVV’s website, 69.7% responded “Yes, the prime minister should take a stand against inciting hatred.”
However, while a number of Dutch citizens have been quick to make their feelings clear, no formal statement has been made by the Dutch government in response to the site. The Prime Minister has so far declined to comment, saying that the forum is a matter for the PVV only. The social affairs minister, Henk Kamp, refused to criticise the initiative, saying it is up to political parties to do as they see fit. (This may well worry opponents to the site, seeing as it is to this very minister that the PVV plans to present the results of what they collect on the site). But, does the Dutch government’s silence really speak of tacit agreement? Or does it rather testify to the cumbersome arrangement of the Dutch coalition agreement – Wilders’ party has no ministers and no seats in the cabinet yet the governing coalition needs the support of the PVV to retain its slim parliamentary majority.
Whether Rutte and Kamp agree with the PVV or not, they are now under both national and international pressure to speak out against the site. The Dutch social-liberal party, Democrats 66 (D66), called on the government to save the international reputation of the Netherlands by condemning the PVV’s project. Other European voices are also making themselves heard, but Wilders has been quick with his retorts. His reported response to EU Justice Commissioner Viviane Reding’s denunciation of the site as an “open call to intolerance” was: “Europe can get stuffed. We’ve had more than 32,000 complaints.” When ten eastern European countries sent a letter calling on The Hague to distance itself from the initiative, accusing the site of “targeting a selected group of people living in the Netherlands” and being “clearly discriminatory and degrading in its intents and purposes,” Wilders flippantly dismissed the letter as “a waste of paper”.
At the beginning of this year, the international NGO Human Rights Watch published a report which highlights a growing intolerance towards immigrants within the EU. It points to a worrying right-wing shift in EU governments, citing the Netherlands specifically as a European country in which a populist extreme party formally supports a minority government and has a clear impact on mainstream politics. The report unequivocally blames this troubling spread of xenophobic attitudes on weak leadership within the EU. It is disturbing to see that this trend seems set to continue, with measures such as the “Hotline Central and Eastern Europeans” being allowed to emerge unchallenged by the leader of the government.