Wilders vs the austerians

How the political establishment will try to contain Geert Wilders and his party, the PVV. Populism must not be allowed to prevail.

When Geert Wilders and his Party for Freedom (PVV) unexpectly came out first in the Dutch Tweede Kamer (Lower House) elections held on 22 November, they won 37 of 150 seats. While a decisive win in the context of the highly pluralistic Dutch electoral landscape, it was obviously far from an absolute majority. That meant negotiations with other parties to obtain the necessary majority to form a government (or rule as a minority coalition, also an option, albeit a more tenuous arrangement). This can be an arduous, protracted affair. As winner of the election, the PVV was entitled to select the informateur , the individual tasked leading the negotiations, and Wilders tapped Ronald Plasterk, an interesting choise, given that he's been long associated with the Dutch Labor Party, not a natural ally of the PVV. But Plastkerk defies easy categorization, having become, as columnist for the most widely read national daily newspaper, De Telegraaf, a staunch critic of contemporary liberalism and the modern “left”. (As an aside, Plastkerk is also candidate for prime minister, for which he appears to enjoy considerable support both among the public as well as the negotiating parties, but that is a topic for another day).

In any case, Plasterk was reported on Monday 29 January as saying the negotiation process is a bumpy one (my translation):

Especially on finance, [Plasterk] said, the parties differ: "Money, because it affects everything, is always an important issue." The VVD is pushing for austerity, while the PVV is fiercely against it.

(“Plasterk: stevige gesprekken, vooral over financiën”, NOS, 29 January 2024)

It is worth emphasizing that it is not immigrants and immigration policy which is the stumbling block, but finances. While Wilders may be best known, notorious if you will, for his inflammatory and illiberal Islamophobic rhetoric in the past, the PVV campaign platform included a raft of what one might call “left populist” economic measures, such as raising the minimum wage, designed to bring some relief to the economically beleaguered citizenry, in particular PVV's provincial electoral base. The Dutch have seen their purchasing power and general economic stability steadily deteriorate under fourteen years of the profoundly neoliberal regime of Mark Rutte and is coping with inflation, high energy bills, and astronomic housing costs.

None of the PVV's proposals are remotely radical; there’s no talk of nationalizing the banks, leaving the eurozone, or anything of the sort. In fact, it would represent at best a modest retrenchment to social democratic model of the postwar years. But anno 2024, that's too much; not that it doesn’t make economic sense, but because it is coming from an icky populist like Wilders. The increasingly authoritarian EU bureaucracy and its running dogs in the Hague cannot be seen to yield to “populist” demands. When Mark Rutte's VVD was in power and interest rates were at zero (or even in the negative), the sky was the limit in terms of spending to keep the VVD's coalition partners happy and (most importantly) Rutte in power. Tens of billions were earmarked for the megalomanical “green transition” ambitions of the rabidly pro-EU D66 party upon whom Rutte heavily depended. Billions and billions were to be spent on dismantling agriculture and commercial fishing, in a sense deindustrializing the country, yet more billions dedicated to building vast wind turbine farms in the North Sea.

But that was then, this is now. As Plastkerk indicates above, the VVD is calling for austerity. Raising the minimum wage? Ho maar. That's a bridge too far. Wilders must be kneecapped, he cannot be allowed to deliver on his populist economic proposals, however modest they may be. In case you think I may be reading too much into this, see the following news item that appeared around the same time:

Officials in Brussels have reportedly drawn up a secret plan to sabotage Hungary’s economy if Viktor Orbán decides this week to again block a €50bn support package for Ukraine.

The plan, reported by the Financial Times, reflects the fury mounting across European capitals at what one diplomat called the “policy of blackmail” being pursued by the Hungarian prime minister, who leads the bloc’s most pro-Russia state.

The FT said the strategy involved targeting Hungary’s economy, weakening its currency and reducing investor confidence.

(“Secret EU plan ‘to sabotage Hungarian economy’ revealed as anger mounts at Orbán”, The Guardian, 29 January 2024)

Stop and think about this for a moment. The EU bureaucracy wants to sabotage the economy of one its own member states, ultimately with the goal of provoking regime change, because its leader, Victor Orbán, exercises Hungary's right to vote against a joint EU policy decision, and harebrained one at that, namely funding for non-EU member state Ukraine in a doomed and disastrous effort to prolong the military conflict with Russia (Orbán rightly describes this as throwing good money after bad). The charge by an unnamed diplomat that Orbán is blackmailing the EU is a sterling example of confession by projection. The EU has a long and sordid history of strong-arming and blackmailing its member states, the case of Greece in 2015 being the most egregious, as painstakingly detailed by Yanis Veroufakis in his memoir from that time. Geert Wilders does not enjoy the same large absolute majority that Victor Orbán does in Hungary, hence the methods deployed to contain him may be less dramatic: death instead by a thousand (bureaucratic) cuts. If Wilders is going to be able to achieve anything concrete, he will have to choose his battles very wisely and stick to his guns.

So here we have the EU of today: enthusiastic support for rabid ethno-nationalists and fascists (the real thing) in Ukraine and in Israel as they pursue genocidal campaigns against their respective Untermensch, while utterly demonizing at home anyone who shows the least interest in preserving democratic sovereignty, cultural identity, and pursuing national self-interest. Marine Le Pen, Victor Orbán, Geert Wilders — whatever their faults and shortcomings — are not the “extremists”; the extremists have been those mainstream politicians like Angela Merkel and Emmanuel Macron (and Mark Rutte) enabling the slow but steady destruction of our modern nation-states based the once sacrosanct Westphalian principles, facilitating the emergence a corrupt and wholly unaccountable authoritarian technocracy in the form of the current EU.

Meanwhile in The Hague, coalition negotiations appear have to collapsed last week, with one of the four negotiating parties precipitously bailing. We face yet another interminably long interregnum as we lurch from one crisis to another, effectively rudderless. Mark Rutte continues to go through the motions as leader of the caretaker government, but clearly he has moved on. Word on the street is that he wants to move up the ladder in Brussels by becoming the next secretary-general of NATO. Hence, to preserve Mark Rutte's job prospects, Wilders must be contained; it would be a bad look for NATO's next head honcho to come from a member state fraught with populist rumblings.