Fear and Loathing in Belgium and the Netherlands
Fear and Loathing in Belgium and the Netherlands
Yascha Mounk: Fear and Loathing in Belgium and the Netherlands
I was born in Germany in 1982, a few months after Helmut Kohl took over the reins of government. In my young eyes, he seemed such an eternal fixture of political life that it took me a while to figure out that ?BundeskanzlerHelmutKohl? was a conjunction of a name and an office rather than one single word. When I celebrated my sixteenth birthday with Kohl still in office, he had, for me, come to embody everything that was wrong with German politics. He seemed provincial, old-fashioned, nationalist, and, well, more than a little drab. While other European countries had become more multicultural, ecological, and socially liberal since my birth, Kohl?s world was still that of a moralistic postwar burgher.
In those years, I looked with envy toward Germany?s small Western neighbors, like the Netherlands and Belgium. The Netherlands seemed much more modern than stodgy Germany. Amsterdam was a vibrant international city that many of my friends and classmates liked to visit?not just because of its tolerant attitude towards marijuana. The country as a whole seemed proudly multicultural and cheerfully welcoming of its immigrants.
Belgium never had quite the same allure. It probably seemed small and boring to me. (Just as some Americans, assuming that nothing interesting ever happens up north, claim that there are no famous Canadians, so we would challenge each other to name a famous Belgian. Hergé, the creator of Tintin; Eddy Merckx, the cyclist; and René Magritte, the painter, I would respond). But Belgium?s capital, Brussels, was also Europe?s capital. Though I never gave much thought to domestic Belgian politics?there didn?t seem to be much of it, from what I could tell?I did see Brussels as a symbol for Europe?s future. It promised a world in which ethnic, national, and linguistic differences counted for much less than a commitment to democratic values and European unity.
Today, the Netherlands and Belgium are once again on my mind (and that of many other Europeans). But the circumstances are very different. The Netherlands, which once served as a model for the peaceful coexistence between Christians and Muslim immigrants, has emerged as a particularly fertile breeding ground for the anti-immigrant far Right. Belgium, the geographic center of the European project, has meanwhile become plagued by such unforgiving hostility between the Flemish-speaking north and the French-speaking south that the country?s very existence is increasingly in doubt. The Netherlands and Belgium, in my childhood symbols of hope for a more tolerant future, have turned into the harbingers of possible horrors to come across the continent. Two of Europe?s scariest demons, xenophobia and nationalism, seem once again to be rearing their head.
Belgium?s elections last Sunday were, on the face of it, less worrying than the elections in the Netherlands less than a week before that. Yes, the New Flemish Alliance (NFA), a party clamoring for the independence of Flanders, celebrated an unexpected and triumphant victory, becoming the largest party in Belgium?s parliament. But under its leader Bart de Wever, the NFA has tried to position itself as a moderate movement, willing to cooperate with mainstream parties and hoping to break Belgium up in a slow, democratic process. With only 27 out of a total 150 seats, the NFA is also very far from being able to call the shots on its own.
Nevertheless, the viciousness characterizing the relationship between Belgium?s two linguistic groups is genuinely worrying. While the Flemish have some understandable grievances about past oppression and the ongoing unwillingness of French-speaking Walloons to learn their language, other demands go far beyond parity. Many Flemish voters and politicians still appear filled with a longing?explicitly propagated by the NFA?s predecessor organization, the Volksunie, or People?s Union?to reestablish a national home free of ?alien? cultural, linguistic, and racial influences. This past belies the NFA?s official rhetoric of seeking to found a moderate, democratic Flanders under the auspices of the EU. It also makes it doubtful that inhabitants of Brussels, which is in the Flemish region but has a majority of Walloon inhabitants, would ever accept being a part of Flanders.
For now, Belgium?s elections are merely likely to result in yet another shaky and indecisive coalition?enough of a problem if you take the country?s poor public finances and the crisis of the euro into account. But they also remind us how intractable separatist movements in Europe continue to be, whether in Scotland, Northern Ireland, the Basque Country, Catalonia, or northern Italy. In some cases, these movements may remain dormant; in other cases, new European countries might soon be born in a peaceful and democratic process. But there can be no guarantees, not even in a country as affluent and genteel as Belgium. The specter of European nationalisms and the devastation they have so often caused will remain with us for the foreseeable future.
One detail that has largely gone unnoticed amidst the NFA?s victory is that another, far more radical Flemish party, Vlaams Belang, has retained a worryingly large portion of the vote. This brings us to the Netherlands, where a similar movement, Geert Wilders? Party for Freedom (PFF), gained over 15 percent of the vote in national elections on June 10. Though Wilders failed in his ambition to surpass all other parties, this is still a shockingly high share of the vote for a man who wants to ban the Koran (which he once termed ?a fascist book?), tax Muslim women for wearing the headscarf, and pay immigrants to return to their home country.
When the deep resentments that had been simmering underneath a show of harmonious multiculturalism became visible in Netherlands during the early 2000s, many observers hoped that this would be a short-lived phenomenon. There had been 9/11, of course. There had also been the murders of Pim Fortuyn, an anti-immigrant campaigner, and Theo van Gogh, a controversial filmmaker critical of Islam. Once the memories of these horrible events had faded, I (along with many others) hoped back then, so would the recent rise of anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant fanaticism. We were wrong. Hostility towards Muslim immigrants has only intensified since.
It has also spread far beyond the Netherlands. In Italy, no-holds-barred rhetoric against Muslim immigrants has greatly contributed to the success of Lega Nord, an increasingly powerful member of Silvio Berlusconi?s governing coalition. In Switzerland, a right-wing referendum amended the constitution last year to include this sentence: ?The building of minarets is forbidden.? In France, Nicholas Sarkozy and his allies have moved toward banning the burqa and the niqab from public spaces?more to win votes than to emancipate the very few immigrant women who actually wear them.
Separatist feeling in Flanders and anti-immigrant fervor in the Netherlands have intensified to a worrying degree. As they are but more extreme versions of similar developments in other parts of Europe, it is crucial to understand why. But I honestly do not know quite what to make of what is going on. Possible explanations are easily at hand. You like your causal theses economic? The current economic crisis was sure to rouse anti-immigrant feeling, particularly in countries, like the Netherlands, that have a particularly sizable immigrant population. Similarly, the rise of separatism in Flanders can be explained by the fact that it has economically overtaken the traditionally richer Walloon region, making secession a potentially profitable prospect. Or do you prefer causal theses with a cultural flavor? No problem. A peaceful coexistence between deeply different cultures may be possible in the short run, but too lenient an attitude to minorities must, as is now the case in the Netherlands, eventually result in a clash of civilizations. As for Flanders, a cohesive linguistic group with a shared history is, and will remain, in search of a nation-state to house it, even if such longing has remained subdued until now. As is readily apparent, none of these explanations are very convincing.
In the absence of a convincing explanation for the rise of the far Right in these countries, I am, for now, able to draw only one lesson from the recent elections in Belgium and the Netherlands: we should never fall prey to the temptation to make projections for the future simply by extrapolating recent trends. Everything in the postwar history of Belgium and the Netherlands seemed?not only in the eyes of my naïve sixteen-year-old self, but to most political observers?to point toward an increasingly peaceful and tolerant future. That future now seems more distant than ever. But this should not lead us, in turn, to project the recent rise of dangerous political movements into the future as though their ascent were sure to continue in a linear manner. Recent events are very worrying, not because they point to inevitable problems in the future, but because they show us that we can take nothing to granted?not even in Belgium or the Netherlands.
Perhaps there is one more, personal, lesson for me to draw. The recent rise of the far Right in many European countries gives me a little more appreciation for those old, drab, provincially decent right-wingers I grew up with. Compared to a possible future Flanders under de Wever or a future Netherlands under Wilders, Germany under ?BundeskanzlerHelmutKohl? now seems to me strangely appealing.
