The Dutch Need to Do Better

I'm not a regular LinkedIn user and I truly hate to do this, but I’m in a reflective mood today and I’m upset - what my kids call ‘being emo’ and for the first time in a while and I feel compelled to say something in a public place, even though I know that I’m just throwing a needle of thought into the haystack of social media and it probably won’t matter, because the great algorithms that govern our grey matter aren't likely to show it to anyone who could be convinced by anything I have to say. Sometimes it seems like no one convinces anyone of anything anymore and that's part of the problem I'm upset about, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't try, so here I go. Scroll on past to something else if you're not interested. I'm sure someone on your feed has an inspiring story that's more comforting to read than mine.

I just got back from the grocery store, where I bought a pack of cigarettes from a pretty teenaged girl who was wearing a headscarf. There was nothing usual about this. We had a standard exchange of pleasantries, she gave me what I asked for, I paid, she smiled and wished me a nice day and that was it. A typical day in a Dutch supermarket.

Except, something occurred to me. I was thinking about how this girl would repeat our exact interaction for the rest of the day, selling cigarettes and lottery tickets to dozens of people and wishing them well, and I started to wonder how she felt, knowing that roughly one in four of the people she’s serving just cast their vote last week for a man who thinks she doesn’t belong in this country, a man who spent two decades telling people like her that they aren’t welcome here. Can you imagine what that’s like? Because I can’t. Not really.

Roughly 2 million Dutch people went out and voted for a man who has spent his entire career demonizing the roughly 1 million Muslims who live in this country, as well as migrants in general, journalists, the EU and anyone who disagrees with him. This is the guy who once proudly promised there would be ‘minder Marokkanen’ (fewer Moroccans) under him when he wasn’t busy trying to make friends with ‘illiberal’ leaders in Europe and beyond.

This is the part where people try to make me feel better by reminding me that the Dutch demagogue probably can’t form a stable coalition, that even if he does, it’ll likely fall apart in less than a year given how little experience and acumen can be found in his party, that he’ll have to water down his rhetoric and platform, that most of his plans are unconstitutional and can’t possibly happen, but none of that makes me feel any better, because it doesn’t change the fact that two million of my countrymen think that this is the guy who should lead us. And don’t get me started on the fact that, according to a nation-wide mock election, most of our youth said they would vote for the same guy, or for another bombastic populist who also thinks the moon landing was fake and that the World Economic Forum rules the planet.

You might try to make me feel better, just like our possible prime minster did, by saying that governing is different from campaigning or leading an opposition party, or that he has to be the prime minister for ‘all Netherlanders,’ but that doesn’t make me feel any better either, because it’s abundantly clear that he doesn’t consider a million of us to be actual ‘Netherlanders,’ and no amount of spin will change the fact that he spent 20 years saying that those people aren’t welcome here and should leave.

Please don’t try to make me feel better about it by telling me ‘it’s not that all these people are racists/Islamophobes,’ but that ‘he just represents a rejection of the established order,’ or worse, that ‘he’s actually progressive on some issues,’ or that ‘people voted for him because they’re worried about crime or inflation or healthcare.’

All of that is ridiculous, and not just because there is no chance that their candidate is actually going to make anyone safer, put money back in their pockets or cut waiting lists at the hospital. This doesn’t make me feel any better, because all it proves is that people’s selfish fantasies are more important to them than their humanity.

People are reporting on this election like it’s a major cultural shift - often because they don’t realize that Dutch tolerance and open-mindedness are largely a myth - and they don’t seem to realize that it’s not as big a shift as they think, because we’ve been down this road before.

The last time this country was run by politicians who demonised minorities, many of its citizens became complicit in genocide. The man who was most responsible for that was also elected by people who might have claimed that they weren’t racist, but compelled to vote for hateful populists because of economic anxieties and frustration with the established order. We all know what happened. Over 100 thousand Jews were deported from the Netherlands and three quarters of them didn’t survive. We remember this every year but when we do, we tend to talk about the occupying forces that carried out the mass murders, conveniently forgetting that many of us were accomplices in these crimes, either through collaboration or inaction, often because we are busy with our own concerns.

I’m sure many voters will tell you that they didn’t mean to endorse racism. They smile at supermarket workers with headscarves too, and probably just never gave a thought to how their vote would affect that kid behind the counter, who’s never done anything to them, but just because you don’t mean it, doesn’t make it okay.

For the record: if you vote for someone who spreads hate, it doesn’t matter that you did it because you were worried about your taxes or the price of gas. You stood up to be counted with bigots and you are the company you keep.

When I was a kid, I knew I’d screwed up badly when one of my parents used a powerful cliche: ‘I’m not mad. Just disappointed.’ Right now, I’m so disappointed in this country that I struggle to put it into words.

We have to do better than this. We have to BE better than this. There are kids out there like the girl in the supermarket who deserve better. At the very least, we owe her an apology.