Article, January 2005
Author: Eric Krebbers
The Netherlands: from multiculturalism to forced integration
On November 4, 2004, just two days after the death of film maker Theo van Gogh, independent member of parliament Geert Wilders announced that he was going to found a new conservative party. According to some polls he could win almost 20 percent of the votes and that would make his party the second largest in the Netherlands.
Wilders has been crusading against Islam for years. “Our own culture is in danger because of the more than one million Muslims in our country”, he said. According to him Muslims have “a backward culture”. “Why are we afraid to say that Muslims should adjust themselves to us, because our norms and values are simply of a higer, better, nicer and more humane level of civilization? No integration, assimilation!” He promised that if he would become a minister, he would immediately ban headscarves and send imams, who “almost call out for a holy war, back to their caves in Saudi Arabia, or wherever”. He also wants to exclude Muslims from constitutional rights like the freedom to found schools and organizations, because Islam supposedly cannot be reconciled with “Dutch culture” and the “democratic rule of law”. To arrest the “islamization of Dutch culture”, immigration should stop and every non-integrated immigrant should leave the country. “You adjust, or get out of here”, he argued. He also justifies racism. “If it ever came to race riots, which I really do not want, they will not automatically have negative results.”
Wilders opinions are quite extreme, but not really new or unique in the Netherlands. In the last 5 years many opinion makers voiced this kind of racist thoughts. Wilders was kicked out of the conservative-liberal party VVD on September 2, 2004, because of his extreme Right ideas. But, seeing him become so popular so quickly, three months later the party asked him to come back. The murder of Van Gogh had made his opinions acceptable to the mainstream. Wilders didn’t return.
Wilders’ popularity is the result of some 12 years of anti-immigrant campaigns by opinion makers, social scientists and conservative, liberal, Christian-democrat and social-democrat politicians. Immigrants and refugees were called criminals and profiteers from social security. Feelings of racial superiority dating back to the colonial period surfaced easily again. People began to perceive migrants and refugees foremost as a problem. As a result, many harsh anti-immigration laws were introduced without much protest. The individual social-fiscal number was introduced in 1992, compulsory identification in 1995, and the Linking Act in 1998, a law by which all governmental databases are linked to exclude undocumented people from all services. In 2001 a new Immigration Law made it almost impossible for refugees to get asylum in the Netherlands. In 2002, for instance, only 103 refugees got a residence permit as political refugees. That was only 0,55 percent of all 18.667 applicants. At the same time border controls were expanded, the number of razzia’s at workplaces grew, just as the number of special jails for undocumented people. The extreme Right, however, isn't able to use this racist atmosphere, because it is still associated with the Nazi occupation in World War Two, and also because the electorate sees the ‘decent’ mainstream politicians doing the same thing.
Multiculturalism
Until about 2000 the multicultural ideology was still central to mainstream politics. Policy makers, opinion makers, the professional middleclass and worried civilians could almost all be considered multiculturalists. Central to this multiculturalism was the "recognition of the cultural diversity" of the Netherlands. Other "national cultures" had to be respected as much as possible. And different habits and traditions of immigrants had to be seen in their "cultural context" and therefore not to be condemned too quickly. On the pretext of "unity in diversity" immigrants should be given their own place in society in order to save "their own culture".
When we look at society, our political vision mostly determines what we see. The radical Left, of course, first and foremost sees capitalist, patriarchal and racist power relations that have to be fought. Multiculturalists, on the other hand, mostly wanted to see a lot of "national cultures" that differ a lot from each other, and which should all be saved if possible. Thinking in "cultures" and their accessory "peoples" is a nationalist political choice. Like nationalism, multiculturalism also suppresses the awareness of power relations within these alleged "peoples" and the oppressive practices within these alleged "national cultures". Actually "peoples" and "national cultures" are nothing but imaginations promoted by people in power who want to undermine the Left struggle against oppression. "National cultures" and the multicultural society only exist as a product of all continuous activities aimed at "saving" those "cultures".
Especially immigrants and refugees were being addressed in connection with their "national culture". They were supposed to see themselves in the first place as representatives of some or another "national culture". They all had to hand over that one special "national culture" - and not some other - to their children, for instance by special lessons in "their own language". All immigrant and refugee behavior was supposedly guided by "their culture". In this way the "Moroccan culture" supposedly determined the behavior of boys whose parents or even grandparents have left Morocco long ago. Also, immigrants and refugees were supposed to especially aid members of "their own cultural community". Even those immigrants and refugees who regarded the "culture" in "their own country" to be too restrictive and fled to the Netherlands to escape it, were here being glued to "their culture" again by multiculturalists. For the government always recognized and sponsored the most conservative immigrant and refugee organizations which supposedly best represented "the original cultures" of the countries of origin. Organizations based on more progressive ideas were supposedly not "authentically" enough in a "cultural" sense. In that way the government affirmed the unequal power relations within immigrant and refugee communities and weakened the position of workers, women and minorities. The government for instance regularly met with imams and mosque leaders as if they represented all immigrants and refugees from Turkey and Morocco.
Also because they could count on the warm support of the conservative elites of immigrant communities, multiculturalism remained an interesting ideology for the Dutch political elite for a long time. Multiculturalism created separate communities centered around different "cultures". That resembled the model that dominated Dutch society since the beginning of the twentieth century and which was very effective against radical resistance. The working class was in this way kept divided and each part was ruled by the elites of their own community (catholic, protestant, socialist and other). That made solidarity difficult and organizing counter power from below virtually impossible.
Multiculturalism also came in very handy when advertising the exploitation and exclusion of worker migrants. Multiculturalists always stressed how much worker migrants and refugees added to "our" economy and "the cultural live". They told moving stories of hardworking Turks cleaning "our" toilets, of artistic Africans crafting such beautiful art for "us" and the Vietnamese spoiling "us" with their spring rolls. Multiculturalism liked to ascribe certain "cultural" capacities to every population group. Much less interested were the multiculturalists in immigrants or refugees who could not, or who were not allowed to, make themselves useful for "our economy". These people shouldn't count on support from the multiculturalists when they are for instance threatened with deportation. Although multiculturalists did protest against extreme Right racism, they never did so against the racism of the state or the deportation machine.
Integration debate
By the end of the nineties the growing racism and the dominance of the Right led to the elite dropping multiculturalism. The multicultural nationalism that promoted "every group its own culture" got traded in for a conservative nationalism with its forced assimilation policy. In the spring of 2000 former communist opinion maker Paul Scheffer published a famous article on "the multicultural drama". He argued that migrants and refugees did not integrate enough into Dutch society. Most opinion makers agreed and said that the Dutch have been too tolerant towards foreigners, who have "barbaric" ideas and habits that "we liberal Dutch do not approve of". They all posed as great defenders of the Enlightenment, and argued for the equality between man and woman, for the separation between church and state, for the rights of the individual and so on, ideals that have supposedly all been realized for a long time in the "free west", by people like themselves. In reality, insofar as they have indeed been realized, these ideals have been struggled for by the Left and feminists, mostly against people like them.
But the opinion makers were able to mobilize virtually the entire society. By continually arguing that the headscarves, which some Islamic women wear, are by definition repressive to women, they even managed to win over large parts of the women’s movement. The same thing happened with the gay-movement after some imam said that being gay is a sickness. His remark was blown up into a giant scandal. Strikingly, a similar statement by a protestant Christian a few months earlier didn't cause that much anger. More and more problems like fundamentalism, homophobia, patriarchy, and also anti-Semitism were seen as "un-Dutch" and imported by foreigners. That is of course utter nonsense, which is of course not to say that these problems are nonexistent among migrants and refugees. They just have nothing to do with nationality.
As a result of these debates the political atmosphere got rather heated. That caused dozens of mosques and asylum centers to be attacked right after 9/11, 2001. That same summer opinion maker Pim Fortuyn had decided to go into politics. Being an university professor he was allowed to state racist opinions for which neo-Nazi’s used to get convicted. He called Islam “a backward religion” and always suggested that gay men like himself couldn't feel safe anymore because of gay bashing Moroccans. He warned for the "islamization" of “Dutch culture” and argued for a "cold war against Islam" because "Muslims are busy conquering Western Europe". Foreigners should learn to be Dutch or get out of the country, he said. He often referred to foreigners as criminals. We should be free to mention these "truths" about foreigners, without being called racists, said Fortuyn. With every racist remark his popularity grew. On May 6, 2002, only 9 days before the elections, Fortuyn was killed. Tens of thousands of his fans took to the streets for days, to honor the man "who wasn't afraid to say what we all think".
Opinion makers and politicians can nowadays bash immigrants, without ever being criticized for it, by choosing themes like female excision, honor related violence, headscarves and Muslim fundamentalism. By seemingly coming to the aid of the female victims of violence, the Right manages to create a humane image of itself. Many progressive and anti-racist people, on the other hand, keep silent about these themes, for fear of also attacking immigrants and in that way aiding the Right. This causes the Right to continually have the initiative, and the Left to watch powerless how racism is being made ‘normal’ in this way. By permanently and one-sidedly stressing the violence of immigrant men the Right uses the centuries old, but still surviving, colonial and racist stereotypes of threatening black rapists and of “nature people” being more emotional and violent. The Left should speak out against all forms of domestic and sexual violence, including honor related violence, but should not join in discussions on the supposedly “cultural backgrounds” of this violence. Not the immigrants or “their cultures” are the problem, but patriarchy and violent men in general.
In September 2002 the “integration debate” started in parliament and the media. For two years almost every day politicians and opinion makers came with racist remarks, and proposals for even harsher measures against immigrants and refugees, who were continually being depicted as backward barbarians and religious fanatics who need to be civilized by the Dutch. The nationalist atmosphere almost made the differences between the Right and the Left disappear. In the spring of 2004, 40 of the most prominent opinion makers, from far Left to the conservative Right, together wrote an open letter in which they pleaded the government to quickly make the reached consensus into law. Most parties wanted compulsory integration contracts in which immigrants would declare themselves adherents of Dutch values. As a result of the debates all first and second generation immigrants have to successfully complete 6.000 euro “integration courses” or be excluded from social security and even deported. One of the most important goals of the new policy is to make immigrants more useful to the Dutch economy. The borders are being completely closed to immigrants with little education, and plans are developed to make social security unavailable to new immigrants anymore. Also plans are being made to forcefully spread immigrants to the cities and neighborhoods where the economy needs them.
Van Gogh
Just when the integration debate was slowing down a bit, Van Gogh was murdered. In his columns and other texts he had consequently called Muslims “goat fuckers”, or for instance “pimp of the prophet” or “bootblack of Allah”. According to Van Gogh Muslims are “messengers of the utmost backward darkness” and he always warned that “Islam is a faith which threatens our freedoms”. Together with conservative liberal (VVD) member of parliament Ayaan Hirsi Ali he had produced the short film “Submission” in which negative quotes from the Quran about women are painted on women’s bodies. It was certainly not women’s emancipation which drove him to make this film, because he often spoke with much contempt of women and feminism. “Maybe a man who really beats them up is actually very attractive to some ladies”, he once said. Van Gogh also wrote many anti-Semitic articles. He for instance had Jewish writer Leon de Winter perform the “Treblinka love game” with “a piece of barbed wire” around his “dick”. He also fantasized about “copulating yellow stars in the gas chamber”. In this way he reproduced the anti-Semite myth of the perverse sexual drives, which supposedly completely dominate the Jewish existence. According to Van Gogh, even in the gas chambers this drive got the better of them.
After the murder most members of parliament called for extremism to be met with very strong measures. But, as if it were self-evident, they almost only meant Muslim fundamentalism, and not the “Dutch” extreme Right with it’s dozens of attacks on mosques. Or Right extremists like member of parliament Wilders. Opinion leaders repeated over and over again that extremism was produced by “the Muslim culture”, but kept quiet about “the Dutch culture” which, according to the same nationalist reasoning, should then logically have given birth to the school bombing fascists who committed more than 100 attacks in the weeks right after the murder.
This anti-Muslim agitation by opinion leaders and politicians was extremely successful, a survey by the bureau Motivaction showed a week and a halve after the murder. Some 80 percent of the respondents wanted a tougher integration policy, 90 percent wanted more rights for the police and the secret services, 60 percent wanted to allow the police to break the law when fighting terrorism and 40 percent even said that they hoped Muslims would start to feel less at home in the Netherlands. The government recognized the favorable situation and immediately started to implement new repressive measures on top of those already taken after 9/11.
All Muslims and immigrants were expected by opinion makers, politicians and even some Left wing activists, to immediately distance themselves from the murder. By demanding such a condemnation one makes them into suspects. To especially ask Muslims and immigrants furthermore suggests that it is not self-evident for them to reject murdering people. In this way Muslims were slowly dehumanized. There were Muslims who principally refused to distance themselves, and who justly answered: “What has this guy, this murderer, to do with me?”. A student with a Moroccan background argued: “Do you see us believing that every white person is a fascist, now that Islamic schools are being set on fire?”. Moreover, Van Gogh’s murderer is not only a Muslim, but also Right wing, male and Dutch, just to name a few possible identities. It is a nationalist choice to specifically ask Muslims and immigrants to distance themselves, and not for instance all Right wingers, all religious people or even all men.
Many politicians and opinion makers nowadays analyze conflicts in terms of “cultures” and religions. According to them there is a global “cultural war” between “us” and “the Islam”. This nationalist view has large consequences. Immigrants are now being addressed more and more as Muslims by the government and the media, and in a sense they are being made into Muslims. In politically stressful times the government hardly talks with immigrant organizations anymore, but mostly with the Contactorgaan Moslims Overheid (Contact Organization Muslims Government), which is founded, paid and dictated by the state. In this way the government supposedly keeps in contact with “the community”, as if all immigrants are Muslims or want to be represented by Muslims.
Muslim fundamentalists, by the way, also create cultural and religious identities and force these upon people. Sometimes literally. In his “open letter to Hirsi Ali” Van Gogh’s murderer, for example, called conservative liberal (VVD) member of parliament Van Aartsen a Jew, which he isn’t. According to the murderer Dutch politics are completely dominated by Jews. In the eyes of this kind of religious fascists all their opponents are Jews or lackeys of Jews. And just like many opinion makers and politicians they promote the idea of a “cultural war” and they are strongly opposed to every Left and feminist struggle.
Both sides use this alleged “cultural war” to attract, mobilize and control the population. The opinion makers want us to choose between democracy and terror, or – in Left wing terms – between capitalism and feudalism. Here in the rich west, the choice for capitalism with it’s relatively large civil freedoms is of course easily made. But the radical Left shouldn’t let them force upon us such a choice between two reactionary alternatives, because our goal should remain a socialist and feminist world.
Much of the extraparliamentary Left and the small radical Left, unfortunately, have also started arguing in terms of clashing cultures, instead of Left and Right. For fear of criticizing Islam as a whole, they refuse to speak out against Muslim fundamentalism, or for that matter, the Arab nationalism of the Arab-European League. By some, fundamentalists and nationalists are even considered possible allies because their ability to mobilize many immigrants. But Muslim fundamentalism is nothing but religious fascism, and Arab nationalism is all about crushing the Left and feminism. Turning a blind eye on the extreme Right character of these currents has, for instance, lead to anti-Semitic, patriarchal and anti-gay slogans and violence on demonstrations organized by the Left against the war in Iraq or the Israeli occupation. “Hamas, Hamas, all Jews on the gas” has become a popular slogan.
So, it is by now "politically correct" in the Netherlands to be against multiculturalism. Everyday politicians and opinion leaders are bashing "the completely failed multicultural society", as they call it. The current Right criticism on the multicultural society always contains hardly hidden racism against immigrants, refugees and Islam. Although the radical Left also has a lot of criticism on multiculturalism, it is not very wise to start attacking it right now. It is better to fight racism, without defending multiculturalism. For the radical Left should not get involved in the thinking in terms of "cultures". Or be seduced to classifying humans in "cultures" or "peoples". Or pleading for dialogues between "cultures", whatever that may be. Nor striving for "cultural conservation". But also not for a "cosmopolitan culture". Instead of looking at "cultures" and “religions” for the causes of all kinds of injustices, the radical Left should simply focus its attention on unequal power relations and fight them.