The Poster Boy of Exclusivism

POPULIST ANTI-ISLAMISM leader Geert Wilders has won a surprise victory in the Dutch general election with his Freedom Party (PVV) picking up 37 seats. Though short of a majority, Wilders is now busy negotiating a power-sharing pact with other similarly inclined parties that could take weeks to conclude. Wilders’ party had campaigned hard to harness frustration about immigration.

While this campaign focus was not unique to PVV, Wilders distinguishes himself from his political cohorts on the right by lacing his public outpourings with a heavy dose of anti-Islamism. His antipathy extends to also banning the Quran in the Netherlands.

Wilders’ ever-readiness to stir the communal pot has often landed him in trouble, but in the run-up to this election cycle he sheathed his view in the cloak of a populist ultra-nativism, vowing to “close borders” altogether.

The emphasis has struck a chord with Dutch voters and Europeans beyond the Netherlands. This is one of the reasons why Europe’s far right believes its time has come. And many are making similar pledges predicated on putting the interests of their indigenous white populations ahead of all other ethnicities.

Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orbán sees Wilders’ victory as a clear sign that “the winds of change” are blowing across Europe. Orbán, like Wilders, is big on anti-immigration.

Far-right Flemish independence leader Tom Van Grieken also thinks that the Dutch results offer proof that “parties like ours are on their way in the whole of Europe.”

Indeed, Wilders’ victory confirms what appears to be an inexorable lurch towards the far right in Europe. Many parties that were once described as “outcasts” are now in dominant positions in Italy, Spain, France, Hungary, or Finland.

Just days ago, Ireland saw violent protests against immigrants in its capital after a knife attack on children and an adult was attributed to a foreigner. Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar, himself of Indian origin, expressed his outrage against the far right that spread the invidious rumour which sparked racial tensions.

Naturally, the left in Europe is beside itself with consternation. Even so, while the left concedes that these parties are gaining acceptability, it also emphasises that they are very far from gaining respectability. At least not in the eyes of ‘cosmopolitan’ voters who are dead against them.

Indeed, most parties like PVV have taken very strident positions against multiculturalism. Some have also begun to mine anti-Islamism. This focus of course is interpreted by the

opponents of parties like PVV as denoting a brazen Islamophobia.

But blaming Islamophobia for Wilders’ shock win may be a lazy response for an issue that requires a more studied and urgent response.

The fine line between opposing Islamism and not Islam itself is easily blurred. Particularly when far-right politicians hit the stump

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Of course, it must be admitted that the fine line between opposing Islamism and not Islam itself is easily blurred. Particularly when far-right politicians hit the stump. In their zeal to appeal to all strata of white indigenes, the tendency is to make an example of the most ghettoised immigrants who often happen to belong to the Muslim community.

But some politicians, like British conservative Suella Braverman, do better at explaining themselves with greater nuance. The sacked former British home secretary, it is said, set out what is dubbed as a “civic argument” against immigration by declaring, “Multiculturalism makes no demands of the incomer to integrate. It has failed because it allowed people to come to our society and live parallel lives in it. They could be in the society but not of the society.”

While Braverman certainly didn’t mean this explicitly about Muslim immigrants, empirical evidence suggests that they have a problem shedding Islam’s innate exclusivism.

Many European Muslims often resist the secular bent of European constitutionalism that calls upon all citizens to embrace a common code of Western legal and cultural mores.

Clashes with authorities over the right to wear the burqa, or to occupy public spaces for daily prayers, renounce Sharia law or embrace scientific education in place of madrassa learning are often read as deliberate acts of defiance to the nation-state ideology. It doesn’t help that European societies are overwhelmingly Christian. Being of the book they are therefore less accommodating of other religious dogmas, too.

Those grappling to understand, or even stop, the rise of Europe’s far right might do better to see Wilders’ victory as a plea from Dutch natives to immigrants, especially Muslims, to do a better job of fitting in.

But what if this is ignored? Again.

The answer to that question may possibly seal the fate of the left’s dalliance with multiculturalism across Europe.

About The Author

Rahul Shivshankar

Rahul Shivshankar is Consulting Editor, Network 18

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