Holland: a fringe rabble-rouser takes the crown!

So long was it in the making that no honest analyst or a keen watcher of Dutch politics can pretend not to have seen the election of the unabashed West Supremacist and racist, Geert Wilders, coming.

Just before the first ballot was cast, I sent this short missive to a Dutch friend: “So, the Dutch are voting today to elect the next government after the disastrous reign of the Wreck, Mark Rutte.

For those who can remember, it must be sad to see what has happened to the NL which counted itself among the most liberal and successful progressive (in terms of social justice and protection) nations in the world.

It must be painful for those who can remember to see the Dutch political landscape defaced by the current gaggle of truly crazy politicians out to outdo themselves in their outlandish displays of buffoonery!

How did the NL end up with a system whereby a party like the VVD is considered leftwing, one where a scum like Geert Wilders has a shot at the premiership?

How did the Dutch end up substituting bullets for reasoned political debates and discussions?

But, then, did they not say that people get the type of government that they deserve?”

A few hours later, the results of the polls were declared and, no surprises there, Dutch voters have voted to double the electoral votes of a man many of them scorned a few years back. Geert Wilders's rants were so intolerably inflammatory and controversial that he has been under armed police protection for two decades, yet with 37 seats, he doubled his seats in the Dutch parliament and his PVV became the largest single party in the low country. His message certainly resonated with his people.

Today, the man that Liberal Dutch commentators derided has a chance to become the next prime minister of the Netherlands!

This would have been unthinkable just a few years ago. But it clearly shows the depth to which Dutch, no, make that European, politics has sunk! It marked the yawning chasm between the ordinary citizens and the irresponsible, uncontrollable, bureaucratized woke ideologues who rule over them.

Ironically for a man whose party’s name means Party for Freedom (PVV), Wilders is one crafty old fox for whom the word freedom does not stretch far.

The only freedom Wilders understands is one that gives him unfettered leeway to spew incendiary racial hatred.

According to the Gospel of the new leading Dutch politician, Arabs are “Scum”, Moroccans are “Street Terrorists”, the Koran is a “Fascist book” and the Islamic Prophet is: “the devil.” Wilders advocated a moratorium on all non-Western immigration to the Netherlands. Per him, no new mosque should be established and Muslim women should be taxed for wearing the Hijab.

This is just a brief sketch of the man whom the majority of the Dutch electorates have chosen as their leader.

As a correspondent for the New African magazine, I have examined Dutch politics, and on one occasion I have touched on the Geert Wilders phenomenon. This is from my 2008 article.

Holland: Blame everything bad on black
(Published in the New African magazine, June 1, 2008)

Every now and then, an irascible politician appears on the Dutch political scene whose primary goal in life is to vent Dutch anger and racism against the minorities of the low country. A few years ago, we had Jan Blok who believed that black people were the cause of everything ill in the Dutch Kingdom. Then it was the turn, a few years later, of Aad Kosto, a theologist, actor, and later assistant secretary of justice (of all things!), who extended Blackophobia to new heights.

Another few years down the road, Pim Fortuyn, a tall, balding academic, arose to lead the Dutch pack of Islamophobes. Forgetting the contributions (mathematics, medicine, architecture, to mention but a few) made by Muslims to lead Europe out of the dark ages, Fortuyn was of the opinion that Muslims were backward people, and Islam a backward religion.

He also fervently believed that the anti-discrimination part of his country's constitution should be excised. He made a very provocative movie portraying Islam in the worst hue possible. When he was knifed to death on the streets of Amsterdam, his hardcore adherents who love his gospel of "blame everything bad on the foreigner", all but declared him a saint.

Then came Rita Verdonk, an aggressive woman who became the minister of immigration and (of all things!) integration. Verdonk is a passionate believer in Pim Fortuyn's idea of making Holland as white as snow, and she has, in fact, succeeded in making the country - once a leading liberal state - rigidly xenophobic.

Under her direction, Holland became one of the most racist nations in Europe. Her immigration policies pushed for the whitening of the country as far as possible. Non-European immigrants must now learn the Dutch language in their countries before they are allowed into Holland. And they can only marry in their country of origin.

Verdonk's immigration policies saw the mass migration of non-Europeans from Holland. Almost the entire Somali community emigrated en masse to England. Her message was simple and direct: "Non-European immigrants are not welcome in Holland."

Thank God, Verdonk lost out in a leadership tussle within her party and quit the government. She has since launched her own party, right-fully called, "Trots op Nederland" - in English, "Proud of the Netherlands".

Enter a new prophet of the anti-Islamic movement in Holland: Geert Wilders, an MP of the Party of Freedom (PVV). His nuisance factor has little to do with his inability to articulate any sensible idea beyond his mono agenda of Islam and Muslim-bashing; he is simply beyond irony. To him, Islam is a religion of barbarity and violence (look who is talking!). His outrageous outbursts against Islam are always big-time news. He calls the Koran a "fascist book", and also consistently insults Prophet Mohammed. He claims to be working on an anti-Islamic film, and this has provoked outrage from some Dutch business concerns and has led to riots in several lands.

But, like a majority of Dutch people, Wilders has not taken the time to study his country's history properly. He would otherwise have learned the role his tiny country played in the Western pillage of the world. If Westerners were to read their history critically, they would learn that the behavior of their progenitors gives new meaning to the words "savage", and "barbarian", and wouldn't be so proud of their forefathers.

But thanks, in large measure, to their successful colonization of history, and also to the virtual monopoly they exert on the means of global communication and information dissemination, the West today goes around with arrogance borne out of sheer ignorance.

Since the Dutch suffer from historical amnesia and appear to be reading the wrong history books, they could well be taken along a not-very-palatable memory lane.

The Dutch have played a leading role in the West's despoliation of the non-white world. It was in Holland that the Catholic Council of Elders met in 1457 to sanction the enslavement of Africans as chattel property. Holland was also the last of the slave nations to abolish slavery.

Their son, Johan Anthoniszoon "Jan" van Riebeeck, was the man who made South Africa safe for Dutch colonialists. Van Riebeeck was a Dutchman from the town of Culemborg.

Another Dutchman worth remembering is Hendrik Frensch Verwoerd. He was the primary architect of apartheid (derived from the Dutch word "apart hood') and was its greatest theoretician. Verwoerd was a native Dutch before he migrated to South Africa to help establish the racial system that so thoroughly blighted the face of that beautiful country. And it should not be forgotten that the Dutch Reformed Church played a pivotal role in sustaining the odious apartheid system until its last dying years. It says so much about the Dutch that their colonial possession in Africa was the most virulently racist, and was also the last to be decolonised.

J. W. Schulte Nordholt writes in "The People that Walk in Darkness", that: "The Dutch share in the slave trade was large: in fact, in the 17th century, it was the largest. The Dutch West India Company had various settlements on the African coast, and millions of slaves were ferried from there, especially during the time of Dutch occupation of Brazil. "In the 12 years between 1637 and 1648, they transported no less than 23,163 slaves from Elmina and Luanda, for an amount of 6,714,423 guilders and 60 cents, [the Dutch were very precise!]. They bought slaves from the Congo for 40 to 50 guilders and sold them in Brazil for 200 to 800 guilders. Certainly a worthwhile business."

Schulte Nordholt describes a scene from the Dutch participation in the slave trade: "I stopped the carriage at the water-side, to behold a group of human beings, who had strongly attracted my attention ... They were a drove of newly imported negroes, men and women, with a few children, who were just landed from a Guinea ship that lay at anchor in the roads, to be sold for slaves.

"The whole party was such a set of scarcely animated automatons, such a resurrection of skin and bones, it forcibly reminded me of the last trumpet. These objects appeared at that moment to be risen from the grave, or escaped from Surgeons' Hall; and I confess I can give no better description of them, than by comparing them to walking skeletons covered with a piece of tanned leather."

In "Marcus Garvey and the Vision of Africa", edited by John Henrik Clarke, the Dutch are described as the "most brutal" of the slave-raiders: "The Dutch had established themselves in Berbice in 1624. During the years 1624 to 1763, they were the cruelest of slave masters. The Dutch slave code was much harsher than the Spanish code [the savagery of the Dutch code is shown by one provision of calculated cruelty: the burning alive of mutinous slaves over a slow fire].

"The Dutch had no institution comparable to the Spanish audiencia, a tribunal which included four judges. The ruthlessness of the Dutch created the situation that came to a climax in the Berbice slave rebellion."

And Walter Rodney, in "How Europe Underdeveloped Africa", informs us that: "Central and South American gold and silver - mined by Africans - played a crucial role in meeting the need of coin in the expanding capitalist money economy of Western Europe, while African gold was also significant in that respect.

"African gold helped the Portuguese to finance further navigation around the Cape of Good Hope and also into Asia ever since the 15th century. African gold was also the main source for the mintage of Dutch gold coin in the 17th century, helping Amsterdam to become the financial capital of Europe in that period."

If Geert Wilders and his adherents are unaware of the atrocities the non-white world suffered at the hands of their forebears, it is the duty of the non-white world, especially Africa, to keep reminding them. Amnesty does not and should not equate amnesia.

Those were words from 2008, unfortunately, they remain valid even today!

©️Fẹmi Akọmọlafẹ
November 25, 2023