Anti-left extremism in the Netherlands

The Dutch have goose-stepped to the right in the recent elections.
With the FvD winning 8 seats. Ja21! winning 3 seats and Geert Wilders’ PVV winning 17 seats.
All three very anti-immigrant, very anti-left.
And FvD (which stands for Forum for Democracy) has openly anti-semitic followers and the leader believes in Qanon-like conspiracies.

Besides these extremists parties, the VVD (right-wing liberal party) won 36 seats and D66 (centre-right liberal party who’s brilliant policies; which have been pushed through parliament include organ harvesting, undermining referenda and bringing the civil service into the same work sphere as regular jobs, but retaining the extra responsibities) got 26 seats.

The left wing parties got a punishing.

Now, the FvD has a very loud presence on social media. Sort of like the US right-wingers on this chess forum. A small group who are extremely vocal, paranoid and influence debate way above their numbers.

And this is leading to extreme behaviour in real life as well.
Anti-corona protests, protests against BLM, etc. with an intermingling of football hooliganism, rioting and conspiracy madness.

But lately it’s even went one step further.
An action group calling itself “Visor on Left” has been placing stickers on people’s doors.
The sticker basically says:
“Observed location. This location is being watched by visor-on-left. Go to the website to get information on left-wing activists and to tip us on others.”

https://nos.nl/artikel/2373565-stickers-vizier-op-links-op-voordeuren-geplakt-kamervragen-over-intimidatie.html

At what point does it become justified to use violence against this right-wing extremism?
Words, debates, rationality don’t seem to work. You can’t convince them that cultural marxism isn’t a thing. And that it’s nazi propaganda from the 20’s and 30’s. Even if you prove it to them.
They’re getting ever more vocal, violent and intimidating.

When do you have to take matters into your own hands and fight fire with a fierce escalation?

Or do you just sit around and wait for the goosestepping to become ever more literal?

@shavixmir said
At what point does it become justified to use violence against this right-wing extremism?
Words, debates, rationality don’t seem to work.

There's no easy answer to this. Violence against extremism can lead to more of .
But, sometimes violence is the only thing that works, though it's usually only a temporary solution.

This highlights why it's important to stamp out right-wing extremism before it flares up. There's a misguided belief that tolerance should extend to the intolerant; that KKK rallies have just as much a right to exist as BLM protests. That any hateful, racist rhetoric should be allowed to exist as long as no one is immediately hurt by it, because of the right to free speech.

That's all good in theory, but in practice it only allows extremism to grow. So what's the answer? Do we limit free speech by making all racist language and ideas illegal? Right now, I can't in good conscience say yes. I can see where such actions can lead to. But, as you said, word debates and rationality don't seem to work.

There's no easy answer. There are times when utilitarianism must be invoked.

@shavixmir

Hahaha. and you throw insults at America? Ha!

I see they had a nice Marshmallow Roasting in Haarlem the other day. Cool.

@shavixmir said
The Dutch have goose-stepped to the right in the recent elections.

The left wing parties got a punishing.

The overall phenomenon is very troubling, but I have one question that I'm curious about. In the 2010 and 2012 election, the Dutch Labour Party / PvdA was respectively one and three seats short of tying with the VVD as largest party. In 2012 it got a quarter of votes cast. In 2017, it crashed to 5.7% and its figure this time seems to be about the same.

So who were those lost Labour Party voters, and where did they go? Were they old-fashioned working-class voters who (as in Britain in 2019) switched to right-wing populist parties? Or were they middle-class metropolitan liberals who jumped ship to the centrist or centre-right parties - in which case, have the votes for the far right come from people who used to vote mainstream right (as, say, in Britain, traditional Tory seats in Kent shifted c. 2014 to UKIP)?

It is an illusion that centrism is not extreme.

It only appears to not be extreme because of artificial comparisons.

The post that was quoted here has been removed

He bloody better not.
His post smells of right-wing BS.

@teinosuke said
The overall phenomenon is very troubling, but I have one question that I'm curious about. In the 2010 and 2012 election, the Dutch Labour Party / PvdA was respectively one and three seats short of tying with the VVD as largest party. In 2012 it got a quarter of votes cast. In 2017, it crashed to 5.7% and its figure this time seems to be about the same.

So who were those ...[text shortened]... vote mainstream right (as, say, in Britain, traditional Tory seats in Kent shifted c. 2014 to UKIP)?

Difficult to speculate.
At the last election the SP and Groen Links (both left wing parties) picked up a lot of seats. But so did the PVV. So it would seem the PvdA’s base split into left and populist voting.

In the election last week there were 30+ political parties to chose from.
Denk is basically a left-wing Turkish/ Muslim party (well, I think they’re left-wing) and they picked up the working class Turkish vote.
Bij1 is a left-wing inclusion & diversity party which will have picked up the more activist leftwing votes.
VOLT is a pan-European party which is left-wing and pro-EU (obviously), they’ll have taken votes from the SP (which is the socialist party, but very critical of Europe... which probably irritates some of their base).

Forum for Democracy and Ja21! are extreme right-wing populist parties. Their main difference with the PVV is that they also believe in deep-state malarkey... basically the seeds of right wing US republicanism have trumped their way across the pond and taken root in the mind of the obnoxiously ignorant (you seriously can’t have a conversation with these types. Ask a polite question and they go into auto-overdrive and verbally assault you claiming they will defend their freedom, etc. basically the sort of lads who wear jogging trousers and are accompanied by pitbulls).
They, anyways, picked up a few PVV seats, but they’ve also picked up working class votes from somewhere.

Which basically means their message is resonating with a target audience.
I think one of the problems is the pro-PC brigade constantly blaming white people and white privilege is driving some people into the arms of this right-wing lunacy.
Which, in turn, pumps up the volume of the pro-PC brigade.

A prime example being the Black Peter discussion. The pro-PC brigade call anyone who wants Black Peter racist. This riles people up and basically is one of the major causes of polarization within Dutch society.

The real problem being that racism isn’t actually the problem. What you have is whole generations experiencing an innocent children’s party as something beautiful, being told that it’s racist and not beautiful and innocent at all.
This undermines the foundation of people’s (collective) identity. Because their natural reaction is: “I’m not a racist.”
And very many of them aren’t.

What should have happened is that some people should have said: “I find it racist and it upsets me.” And left it at that.
Slowly nudging and within a generation or two it would slowly change and the feast would mutate into something more internationally acceptable.

But oh no! It’s bad and it must change. As fast as possible. And that mentality is partially (I’d say about 70% ) the cause of the swing to the extreme right.
People feeling assaulted in their core beliefs and wanting to hold on to what they know. Aggressively.

@shavixmir -
But oh no! It’s bad and it must change. As fast as possible. And that mentality is partially (I’d say about 70% ) the cause of the swing to the extreme right.


Very well could be.

Rightists in America stand staunchly behind Trump because he is the only one out there that battles back and can energize the base to do likewise.

@philokalia said
It is an illusion that centrism is not extreme.

It only appears to not be extreme because of artificial comparisons.

A centre is literally defined by its extremes and extremes are literally..... see if you can finish the sentence.

@earl-of-trumps said
@shavixmir -
But oh no! It’s bad and it must change. As fast as possible. And that mentality is partially (I’d say about 70% ) the cause of the swing to the extreme right.


Very well could be.

Rightists in America stand staunchly behind Trump because he is the only one out there that battles back and can energize the base to do likewise.

Except that the ‘Black Peter’ thing is an actually a thing, not the BS right wing claim that they’ve cancelled Christmas, which we get every year only to find that yep Christmas is happening after all.

@earl-of-trumps said
@shavixmir -
But oh no! It’s bad and it must change. As fast as possible. And that mentality is partially (I’d say about 70% ) the cause of the swing to the extreme right.


Very well could be.

Rightists in America stand staunchly behind Trump because he is the only one out there that battles back and can energize the base to do likewise.

Yes. And they, like the extreme-right in the Netherlands, are wrong.

It’s a rabbit hole you’re running down and one that polarises, rather than betters.
And while PC narratives irritate rational people’s jingly bits, right-wing extremism leads to serious friction and violence.

And that becomes a circle. Just look at history. How do you think it ends when you can no longer discuss subjects and find a middle ground? When you can no longer pull people away from the fringes of society and political debate?

And these right-wing extremists come away with the same rhetoric, whether it’s in Israel, the US or the Netherlands: cultural marxism... foreigners are to blame... left-wing elitests... etc. ad nauseum.

A lot of hate. A lot of fear towards change.
And an aggression in tactics and framing.

So, ultimately, society polarises. And violence commences.

Why wait? Why stretch it out. Why not get the right-wing extremists, line them up against a wall and shoot them?
Get it over and done with.