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Berlin’s rulers want homelessness

Roughly 10.000 people in Berlin lack any shelter. This isn’t a policy failure – the government chooses to keep people on the streets


02/02/2024

Last week, Neukölln presented six “safe places” for homeless people. Apartments? Not quite. On a fenced-off empty lot, these white plywood “housing boxes” offer three square meters of privacy – with no heat or running water.

In the last year, 607,000 people in Germany lacked their own place to live (“wohnungslos”) at some point. About 50,000 went without any shelter at all (“obdachlos”). On Berlin’s biggest English-language podcast, experts discussed the complex causes.

Homelessness seems like an inevitable feature of any city. And yet, in the early days of the Covid pandemic, New York and Los Angeles moved thousands of unhoused people into hotels. All it took was the stroke of a pen to end all the suffering.

In other words, our rulers are choosing to keep people on the streets. Drug addiction and mental health issues exist everywhere, yet they only lead to tents in city parks if there’s a housing crisis.

Neukölln’s former social councilor, Falko Liecke of the CDU, famously called for increased police repression against the “voluntarily homeless”. Who does Liecke, a lobbyist for realty speculators, think chooses to live like this? What he means is that some people do not want to go to emergency shelters where they can only stay a few hours per night, without pets, without partners, without friends, where they might have to share a room with strangers suffering from severe mental health problems.

The housing market is like a game of musical chairs. With too few apartments, some people are going to land on the ground. In Germany, “social apartments” generally have their rents capped for 30 years. With most of them built in the 20th century, affordable housing is disappearing fast. Last year, just 25,000 new ones were built.

Is there a lack of space? Not even close. Berlin has almost a million square meters of empty offices. Just look at that awful Amazon Tower in Friedrichshain. Jeff Bezos’s employees would desperately prefer to work from home – you could do them a huge favor and practically solve the city’s homelessness crisis by taking that one building. It would just require taking a tiny fraction of Bezos’s wealth.

The German government is spending 100 billion additional euros on weapons. This money could build a million new apartments right now. Yet politicians from across the spectrum lament this is impossible.

The SPD and Die Linke caused Berlin’s housing crisis with massive privatizations in the early 2000s. Over two years ago, 59.1% of Berliners voted to socialize housing – and two subsequent governments have simply ignored this mandate.

When we see people suffering on the pavement, we assume that multiple systems must have failed. Because who would want this? Yet, as all studies about “housing first” have shown, it’s actually far more expensive to leave someone on the street than to put them in their own apartment. Homeless people have frequent contact with extremely costly emergency medicine, and jail isn’t cheap either. Unhoused people in Germany live an average of just 46.5 years.

Homelessness has the same function in a capitalist society that the pillory (the stocks) had in medieval times: humiliation as a form of social control. The government does remind us: “Work hard and obey your boss, or else we might do this to you!”

East Germany, despite being a very poor country, never had an eviction or an unhoused person. The GDR might have been a repressive dictatorship, but it was also a non-capitalist economy, and they didn’t let people suffer on the streets.

Capitalist Berlin, in contrast, will let you die on the street – or if you’re very lucky, they might give you an unheated wooden box.

This is a mirror of Nathaniel’s Red Flag column in Neues Deutschland. Reproduced with permission.

Letter from the Editors, 1st February 2024

“Anti-discrimination” cause repealed. Where now in defending Berlin Artists who support Palestine?


31/01/2024

Hello everyone,

We are still struggling with problems with our Server. Most people are getting this Newsletter, but some are not. While this problem remains, we will also post this Letter from the Editors on theleftberlin.com. We hope we can upgrade to a new server soon, which should remove the problem.

Our latest Palestine Reading Group is tomorrow (Friday) at 7pm. Until now, we have been studying texts which we would largely recommend. This week we will look at some texts which support Israel. You can find the recommended reading here. For this particular meeting, we will be using a slightly different format, which requires slightly more space. For this reason, we will be meeting this week in oyoun, Lucy-Lameck-Straße 32 (NOTE: not usual venue). The Reading Group takes place every week. on alternate Fridays and Sundays. You can find the exact dates, and the subject matter for the next few meetings on our Events page. Suggested readings are usually posted roughly 1 week prior to a meeting.

On Saturday, there will be a human chain around the Bundestag protesting against the AfD. Now, it is our joint responsibility as civil society to defend a togetherness in solidarity. On 3rd February, we will show a large action around the Bundestag buildings: We are the firewall! We call on everyone to no longer watch on as the right wing is normalised in Germany and Europe. The action is organised by Hand in Hand, who are our Campaign of the Week. If you would like to demonstrate alongside other international activists in Berlin, we will be meeting outside the U-Bahn Bundestag at midday.

Also on Saturday, there will be a launch of the new book Reading Kofman in Constellation (RKIC)! RKIC is a book of poetry, fiction, comics, film, and essays resulting from a reading group of the same name that took place at Hopscotch Reading Room in 2023. Sarah Kofman (1934–1994) was a multidisciplinary philosopher and thinker whose work touched on themes including but not limited to: metaphor, psychoanalysis, feminism, artistic experience, haunting, death, and food. The event will feature readings, refreshments, and a few surprises. It starts at 3pm at Stations, Adalbertstraße 96 next door to Cafe Kotti.

On Sunday, the campaign ‘Fund Healthcare Not Warfare‘ will be launched in Germany with screenings of “United in Anger” and “Love and Suppression”. From New York to London to Berlin – queer, healthcare and anti-war activists are uniting. ‘Fund Healthcare Not Warfare’ is a new coalition of anti-war, Jewish Voice for Peace, Palestine solidarity activists and healthcare movements to demand a permanent ceasefire now and an end to the Israeli occupation, apartheid and settler colonialism.  The films will be followed by a panel discussion and Q&A. The Event starts at 6pm at Tipsy Bear Berlin, Eberswalder Str. 21

The Berlin LINKE Internationals have their monthly meeting on Monday, 5th February at 7pm at Ferat Kocak’s office, Schierker Straße 26. This month’s meeting will be concentrate on the attacks on Berlin artists for supporting Palestine.  The discussion will be kicked off by a representative of the Arts and Cultural Alliance Berlin (ACAB) who have been organising demonstrations against Berlin’s misnamed “anti-discrimination” clause. This discussion will be preceded by a short discussion of Events organised by the group, including report backs from the Palestine Reading Group and the meetings on Apartheid Israel and Gaza, as well as coming events like the Gaza film and Küfa on February 10th, a possible meeting on Imperialism in Africa (postponed from last year), and Summer Camp at the end of June.

There is much more going on in Berlin. To find out what’s happening, go to our Events page. You can also see a shorter, but more detailed list of events in which we are directly involved in here.

If you are looking for Resources on Palestine, we have set up a page with useful links. We will be continually updating the page, so if you would like to recommend other links, please contact us on team@theleftberlin.com. If you would like to donate to people in Gaza, Fida’a, who spoke at our meeting last week on Gaza, recommends this GoFundMe campaign for medical professionals. She also recommends this call to escalate the pressure on our governments to end the ceasefire.

In News from Berlin, Berlin’s discriminatory “anti-discrimination clause” is withdrawn, warnings against the Nazi party Die Dritte Weg, and AfD sees rise in membership despite revelations of meetings with Nazis.

In News from Germany, the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance is launched, Judith Butler and others call for a boycott of Germany, transport workers to strike on Friday, and new survey shows that many East Germans feel left behind.

Read all about it in this week’s News from Berlin and Germany.

New on theleftberlin, we interview ACAB about the “anti-discrimination” clause and suppression of support for Palestine on the Berlin Art scene, the second part of Rasha Al-Jundi and Michael Jabareen’s photography/cartoon series It’s So Berlin!, Shav McKay looks at the German media’s reporting of Palestine, Dutch socialist Tobias den Haan looks at the Resistable Rise of Geert Wilders, Dr. John Puntis says why we all need to support the British junior doctors’ strike, and John Mullen reports from France about why the farmers’ protests are a problem for Macron’s right-wing government.

You can follow us on the following social media:

If you would like to contribute any articles or have any questions or criticisms about our work, please contact us at team@theleftberlin.com. And please do encourage your friends to subscribe to this Newsletter.

Keep on fighting,

The Left Berlin Editorial Board

French Farmers Give Macron a Headache

As Macron’s government, under new Prime Minister, Gabriel Attal, moves ever further to the right, once again a radical mass movement is shaking the country.


Last year, the biggest workers’ movement for decades mobilized millions across France in an attempt to defend retirement pensions. This year it is the turn of the farmers to revolt. On Tuesday, 6 000 tractors were present at 120 blockades, and at least sixteen motorways were immobilized. Regional government headquarters have been covered with manure, and a number of hypermarket distribution centres (as well as Toulouse airport) were paralysed. On the day that this article is published (Wednesday, 31st January), a column of two hundred tractors from the South of France is heading for Paris, intending to blockade the main wholesale food market of the capital at Rungis. In every town they pass through, locals express support and bring food. A “siege” of Paris and of Lyon has been announced.

France counts over 400,000 farmers, as against 100 000 in the UK. Over four decades, farmer income has fallen in real terms by 40%, and a quarter of French farmers live below the poverty line. In particular, sheep farmers, cattle farmers and fruit producers are often extremely poor. This, along with unsocial hours and isolation, can have tragic consequences. Statistics show that at least two farmers a week in the country commit suicide.

Slogans painted on the barricading tractors vary. They include the following: “I love my work, but I need to earn a living”, “We shouldn’t import food whose production is banned in France”, “Cattle farmers, wine producers, vegetable growers, one struggle !” or “ We want decent prices, not subsidies!”

Radical action works. The government has already made concessions, reducing taxes on tractor fuel, increasing compensation to cattle farmers hit by disease, and promising to put a little more pressure on the big supermarket chains, who use their market power to pay criminally low prices. This is very far from sufficient, and the vast majority of farmers are determined to continue the movement.

We must not see farmers as a homogeneous bloc. The largest farmers federation, the FNSEA, is dominated by owners of huge farms. The farmers’ movement can put forward progressive demands or reactionary ones. The Left should support moves to guarantee minimum prices for producers and to cut into the mega profits of the food and supermarket industries. But other demands, such as for the abolition of the new rule that 4% of land must be left fallow at any one time, to help restore biodiversity, and similar calls to scrap green regulations, must be opposed.

Defend green options

There are three major national farmers’ federations. The biggest, the FNSEA, (which got 55% of the votes in 2019 elections to choose farmers’ representatives) has a leadership who are hoping that the government will concentrate on scrapping green regulations and increasing agricultural subsidies, subsidies which benefit above all the biggest farms. In contrast, the left wing Confederation Paysanne (20% of the votes) is putting forward demands for minimum selling prices and a reduction of the profits of agrobusiness and supermarket chains. The Confederation says blockades should be mostly aimed at supermarket chains. Both federations are, meanwhile, protesting at new European Union treaties which aim at reinforcing the dictatorship of the market and allowing imports into Europe which are not subject to the same environmental and animal welfare rules as local production is.

Macron is hesitating before sending riot cops in, since the farmers have often been solid conservative voters. His interior minister even declared “We do not respond to suffering by sending in riot police” (which must be surprising news to the many strikers, antiracists and ecologists maimed by police on demonstrations in recent years). And farmers interviewed in the media said they were confident the police sympathized with them. This is likely to change as the actions go on, and armoured vehicles were in place around Paris Wednesday, while fifteen farmers have been arrested near Rungis. The situation is changing every day.

The most radical major workers union, the CGT, has called on its activists to attend farmers’ pickets and blockades and discuss common interests. The radical Left France Insoumise also called for support, supporting demands to freeze the profit margins of the supermarket chains and impose minimum pricing. In some towns left wing mayors have organized meetings in support. But some on the left mistakenly refuse to support the movement because of the right wing domination of the main farmers’ federation.

This week’s radical tactics were inspired by the Yellow Vest movement of a few years back, and by last year’s pensions protests, which were particularly spectacular in smaller provincial towns with a solid conservative tradition.

More and more of the distribution centres of supermarket chains are being targeted as days go by, and this is a welcome development. With a major one day teachers’ strike planned this week, a taxi drivers’ protest growing and bus drivers’ strikes in the offing, let’s hope the farmers’ example leads to more generalized revolt.

Why the British Junior Doctors’ strike is so important

Support doctors striking t o preserve a national health service


Becoming a doctor requires five years at medical school; this is then followed by two years of foundation training before entry into core/specialty training (three years for general practice and five to seven years for a hospital specialty). Only when this lengthy postgraduate period has been satisfactorily completed do doctors move from the ranks of ‘junior doctor’ (JD) into senior roles. The term JD is considered by some to be misleading since it encompasses not only newly qualified staff but others who have many years’ experience, leading some to call for a change in terminology.

JDs have been among many sections of the NHS workforce (nurses, physiotherapists, midwives, ambulance staff, radiographers, and consultants) to have taken strike actions throughout 2023 and during a time that Jeremy Hunt had declared the greatest staffing crisis in the history of the NHS and social care.

The first ever strike undertaken by JDs was in 1975 – with the second not until 2016 – over a new contract that sharply reduced the number of hours paid at higher rate and to which they were forced to concede. The third dispute is ongoing with 34 days of action throughout 2023 ending with an unprecedented six days in succession in January 2024. A further ballot is now planned from February 7th – March 20th seeking to extend the mandate for industrial action.

What is the strike about?

The BMA is asking for a 35% rise to restore pay to where it was 15 years ago, recognising this may need to be implemented over several years. The figure was arrived at by using the Retail Prices Index to assess the impact of inflation on salaries, arguing that since 2008 there has been a 26.1% loss of earnings. While the Office for National Statistics criticised this approach (advocating for the Consumer Prices Index) the Royal Statistical Society opined that RPI is the better indicator of change in cost of living, backing the BMA. Additional demands included that the Review Body on Doctors’ and Dentists’ Remuneration become more independent of government when making recommendations for pay awards, and that once pay had been restored, consideration be given to how such severe erosion could be prevented in the future.

Of the 75,000 whole time equivalent JD in training roles, around 50,000 are members of the British Medical Association (BMA), while smaller numbers are members of the TUC affiliated Hospital Consultants and Specialist Association and Doctors in Unite. For the BMA, 77% of those eligible to vote in the February 2023 ballot did so, with 98% voting in favour of strike action. Six months later the figures had barely changed at 71% and 98%. Public support has been strong, but given the BMA does not have an established strike fund (relying on voluntary donations), some doctors may find extending action increasingly difficult for financial reasons. Government has taken the stance that 35% is unaffordable and unreasonable, and has offered only a sub-inflation figure of around 11%. JDs have pointed out that to accept such an offer would be agreeing to a pay cut in real terms.

The JDs have appeared solid and well organised, sharing a wealth of useful information to guide effective strike action and gaining support from consultants (engaged in their own pay dispute). This has led to right wing opprobrium, for example, in Policy Exchange. Reports in The Telegraph have also suggested that a small group of “radical activists” must have taken over the BMA, putting forward such “revolutionary” demands as calling for an NHS Staff Charter, a fund to meet postgraduate medical examination costs, and improvement in representation of junior doctors in deliberations about rota and service design across the NHS!

It is not just about pay

There are many other reasons for JDs being disaffected, with 40% saying they are thinking of leaving the NHS. Causes include chronic vacancies, short staffing on any given day (1,400 doctor posts), burnout from experiencing the Covid-19 pandemic – including the huge scale of deaths, feeling undervalued by government, and ‘moral injury’ caused through being unable to provide the appropriate standards of care to patients. In addition, the old close-knit hospital teams offering mutual support have long since disappeared. Some observe that doctors have become ‘proletarianised’, their activities increasingly circumscribed by a dominant management body preoccupied with cost savings and budgets.

Other persistent grievances involve bureaucracy, lack of a quiet space to write up notes and order tests, outdated and slow IT systems, no provision for a restorative nap on night shift when quiet and no food availability, nowhere to safely store personal possessions/drinks bottle/packed lunch when at work, working long shifts with anti-social hours, no guaranteed breaks for rehydration, eating or even to use the toilet, and bitter memories of being refused PPE by some managers who wrongly insisted that Covid-19 was not principally spread by aerosol. Complaints also focus on strict training structures, the pressure to make an immediate career decision and a bullying culture at work.

Car parking costs have risen to around £1000/year, and child nursery care averages £1000/month. Of course plenty of other less well-paid staff feel these pressures too, and unsurprisingly, just as with JDs, many have come to regard the NHS as a bad employer. Note also that the average medical student debt at the start of their working life stands at £71,000. There are then mandatory recurrent costs in the form of medical Royal College membership subscriptions, General Medical Council (GMC) fees, and medical indemnity. Fees for college exams and during specialty training can add up to thousands of pounds.

On another front, with 8,728 vacancies across the medical workforce, the planned increase in Medical Associate Professionals (MAP) from 3,500 to 12,000 raises concerns that rather than appoint more doctors, workforce gaps will be filled by non-medical graduates. Although medical student places are being increased, retention is a huge challenge when around a third of medical students plan to leave the NHS within two years of graduating, and only 56% of those doctors who enter core training remain working in the NHS eight years later. Writing off student loan debt has been suggested as one strategy to improve retention. With unsustainable workload pressures, General Practitioner (GP) trainees are opting to work part time, meaning the NHS gains only one whole time equivalent GP for each two training places. JDs have raised questions as to why MAP are initially being paid more than themselves – despite having much less training and responsibility – and whether they are in competition for training opportunities. The development of medical apprenticeships as an alternative way into medicine piles on further worry as do bottlenecks in training which see career progression to senior positions blocked.

We must value and support staff to keep them in the NHS

A survey by the GMC found an increasing number of medical trainees experiencing burnout (emotional, physical, and mental exhaustion), with one in five junior doctors at high risk in 2022, compared to one in seven in the previous year. For some specialties, such as emergency medicine, this was as high as one in three in 2022. Doctors experiencing burnout are more likely to consider leaving the profession. A recent survey found that 18% of doctors considered leaving the profession in 2021 – up from 12% in 2019. Problems retaining JDs have knock-on implications for the number of consultant vacancies. A report on staff retention by the Nuffield Trust found that in the year to December 2021, one in 12 GPs left. In total, around 140,000 of NHS staff (one in nine/11%) left the NHS in the year to September 2021; this included one in 10 nurses and one in 18 consultants.

The most common reasons given for leaving were stress, shortage of staff and resources, and low pay.

Conclusion

It makes no sense to drive staff away from the NHS given the huge and increasing patient waiting lists. While there is now a workforce plan of sorts, throwing more staff into a system that many now consider to be a kind of mincing machine while not addressing retention is both costly and untenable. MAP should not be seen as the solution to this problem and must raise serious concerns over patient safety. Pay restoration should be an immediate priority, but there are many other things the NHS needs to do to become a good employer and show proper concern for staff and their wellbeing. A win for JDs would strengthen the pay demands and negotiating power of other staff groups. Ultimately, good patient care depends upon well-trained staff feeling supported and adequately remunerated and wanting to work in the service.

Geert Wilders and the roots of resentment

Wilders’s election victory might seem shocking, but it is the natural response of a depoliticised society. A Dutch socialist writes


30/01/2024

Last November, Dutch Far-right anti-Islam populist Geert Wilders achieved a landslide election win with his PVV party. Far from a sudden shift to the right, this is just the natural response of a society that has been depoliticised and left out in the cold by decades of neoliberal policy. A diagnosis of this ‘’Dutch disease’’:

Nothing out of the ordinary

Geert Wilders and his “Party for Freedom” (Dutch: Partij voor de Vrijheid, or ‘’PVV’’) clinched the Dutch general elections on the 22nd of November, marking the biggest triumph for the infamous Islamophobe. The resounding victory – totalling 23.5% of the vote share – translates to a staggering 37 out of 150 seats in the Dutch House of Representatives. If he can successfully form a coalition government with the other right-wing parties, Wilders looks poised to get closer to government than ever. 

News headlines from all over the world expressed ‘’shock’’ at the PVV’s election victory, calling it an ‘’earthquake’’ and ‘’a dramatic result that will stun European politics’’. But we should know this victory is far from surprising. Zooming out even the slightest bit will help us understand PVV’s win. 

Geert Wilders is not the first European far-right populist to make a career out of racism, white nationalism, and Islamophobia – nor is he the first to be successful at it. And contrary to what some media outlets portray him as, Wilders is not an ‘’outsider’’.

No humble beginnings

The Geert Wilders we know today is a direct product of the Dutch political establishment. He started his political career in the late 80s with the liberal VVD party – one of the country’s most prominent parties of the last 50 years – and has been a member of parliament for 26 years. Some of his most formative years were spent as a foreign policy assistant to Frits Bolkestein, then-leader of the VVD. Bolkestein is known for having been one of the first Dutch politicians to drive a hard line on immigration, especially from Muslim-majority countries, and Wilders would follow in his mentor’s footsteps.

His work for Bolkestein allowed him to travel to such countries as Jordan, Egypt, Iran and Israel. These trips filled Wilders with distaste and hatred for Islam and Muslim-majority societies on the one hand, and reaffirmed his love for Israel, which he later called ‘’a beacon of freedom and of prosperity, surrounded by Islamic darkness.’’

In 2006, Wilders founded his own party, the Partij voor de Vrijheid (Party for Freedom, or PVV) after splitting off from the VVD, embittered over its acquiescence to Turkey joining the EU. Over the 18-year existence of the PVV, its political programme has largely remained unchanged. Wilders has always campaigned on a toxic combination of white nationalism, xenophobia, climate denial, racism, and anti-Islam rhetoric. His latest election programme foresaw a complete block of new asylum seekers and a ‘’restrictive immigration policy’’. Wilders wants to ban dual citizenship, detain and deport illegal immigrants, and withdraw the temporary residence permits of Syrian refugees, since ‘’parts of Syria are safe.’’ His campaign plans more or less propose a ban on Islamic life, stating: “the Netherlands is not an Islamic country: no Islamic schools, Korans and mosques.“ Wilders is most famous for his virulent statements on Islam, and produced a horrible short-film in 2006 that sought to expose the ‘’inherent violent nature of Islam’’. Speaking about the film, he said:

“Fitna is the last warning to the West. We can choose to pass freedom on to our children or allow our freedom to sink into a multicultural swamp.’’

Despite migration, law & order, and Islam being Wilders’ main themes, his socio-economic politics are perhaps of a different character than many expect. PVV’s most recent election programme foresees tax-cuts on groceries, shorter work weeks, raising minimum wages, lowering energy bills and taking money from ‘’unnecessary’’ climate plans. His ideas have always been much less developed than those of other Dutch parties – many of them are plainly unserious in their ambition – but some of those promises of material betterment have definitely resonated with parts of the Dutch working classes. Even if some of its social politics sound more progressive than the Dutch political centre, the PVV is an extreme-right wing party, and it knows what to use to appeal to broader sections of society. 

Though, at the beginning, the PVV did not garner the broader support from the Dutch conservative establishment that it sought. Its main strategist left the party after mere months and claimed that Wilders ‘’had a natural tendency towards fascism’’. His own brother described Wilders’ character as hard-headed and ‘’uncompromising’’. Something extremely odd, but perhaps not entirely unsurprising, then, is the fact that he is the only official member of the PVV. Unlike the rest of the political parties within the Dutch system, the PVV does not operate as a member-based party, granting Wilders complete authority over both the party’s structure and its programme. Despite this, the PVV has been a constant factor in the Dutch political landscape and has been successful to varying degrees over the six elections in which it has participated.

The roots of resentment

The fact that this toxic cocktail of hate has finally led to a big election victory in the Netherlands should not surprise anyone. As internationalist leftists, we know that the efficacy of such rhetoric has been proven time and again in different countries around the world. Perhaps, the persistent image of ‘’the progressive Netherlands’’ put out by the country’s decades of (neo)liberal governments – something most Dutch leftists have never truly believed in – has now definitively been shattered. The Netherlands, with its overly sober and technocratic political culture, may long have seemed immune from such extremism and borderline fascist ideologies, but why would it be?

If anything, it is precisely because of this overly technocratic and borderline emotionless political culture of the Netherlands that far-right, antidemocratic movements are able to flourish. Like in other European contexts, large parts of the Dutch working class are alienated, inflation has hit hard, and the cost of living has gone up massively in recent years. The housing market is in shambles; the average person is unable to buy a house and many struggle to pay rent in Dutch cities, making the Dutch housing market one of the most overpriced in Europe. On top of that, the Netherlands is internationally known as a tax haven for multinational companies, and ranks as one of the most unequal countries in the world in terms of wealth distribution.

For almost 50 years, the country has been ruled by varying coalitions of liberals and Christian democrats. These parties have pushed Calvinist neoliberal narratives of ‘’individual responsibility’’ that have penetrated every corner of Dutch society. Everyday issues such as healthcare, public transport, housing, stagnating salaries, and cost of living have been decontextualised and stripped of their inherently political nature. To top it all off, the Netherlands currently has its longest-serving prime minister ever, VVD’s Mark Rutte. For over 13 years, the robotic technocrat Rutte has overseen various privatisations, enacted austerity measures and further contributed to societal depoliticisation, all while raking in several major scandals.

Pair these facts with the complete abandonment of the working classes by Dutch leftist parties, who over the last decades have shamelessly internalised the dominant neoliberal narratives, and the utter refusal of ‘’the political centre’’ to ostracise the far-right, who instead normalised their rhetoric and talking points, and it becomes clear how Wilders was finally able to win.

Prime Minister Wilders

As this article is published, Geert Wilders is still in coalition talks with the right-wing agrarian BBB party, the liberal VVD party and the Christian democratic NSC party. If they form a coalition, what can we expect of the Netherlands in the next few years? 

Without a doubt, this right-wing coalition will further criminalise people who seek asylum and will try to decrease immigration as far as possible. Emboldened by the recent EU agreement which seeks to do just that, Wilders will be able to make work of his decade-old racist plans. He will still have to operate within the skeleton of a liberal democracy, but the societal narrative has been pushed so far to the right that his ideas are more palatable than ever. The previous government even collapsed over VVD’s anti-immigration stance; PM Mark Rutte blocked the possibility of family reunification for refugees, after his party had helped create an ‘’asylum crisis’’ with years of defunding and underfunding agencies responsible for the asylum process. Terrible conditions in shelters ensued, leading to an unprecedented first-time intervention by Doctors Without Borders (MSF) in the Netherlands, and countless media headlines that helped erode public support for welcoming migrants and asylum seekers. The tone was set, migration became a major theme in these latest elections, and Geert Wilders happens to more or less own this issue in Dutch politics. He will continue to do so and seek to implement his campaign promises with the help of his right-wing coalition partners.

In the short term, this coalition will also continue to cover for Israeli war crimes. The Dutch governments of recent decades have always supported the Israeli occupation and policies of ethnic cleansing, current PM Mark Rutte allegedly even asked his Foreign Ministry to ‘’cover Israeli war crimes’’, but no politician is as big of a cheerleader for Israel as Geert Wilders. Having visited Israel dozens of times, as well as  spending two years volunteering in an illegal settlement in the Occupied West Bank as a teenager, Wilders’ support for the Zionist entity is truly boundless. Like Trump did in 2017, Wilders wants the Dutch embassy to be moved from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. His fanatical love for Israel is inextricably linked to his hatred for Islam, in a 2010 speech he said: ‘’The future of the world hinges on Jerusalem. When Jerusalem falls, Athens, Rome, Paris, London and Washington will be next’’. Wilders openly supports the policy of increasing illegal settlements in the Occupied Palestinian West Bank – or ‘’Judea and Samaria’’ as he calls it – which is ‘’an integral part of the Jewish state.’’

Wilders is also notoriously well-connected with European autocrats and far-right actors like Viktor Orbán, Giorgia Meloni, Marine Le Pen, Alice Weidel, Santiago Abascal and Matteo Salvini. Potential prime minister Wilders will no doubt seek closer friendships with these leaders and their countries.

Within the Netherlands, the crises are likely to deepen. A right-wing coalition spearheaded by Geert Wilders and the PVV will not and cannot provide any real answers to the growing alienation of Dutch working classes and the depoliticisation of young people. Geert Wilders’ promises to the average Dutch citizen cannot and will not undo decades of privatisation and the neoliberal erosion of communities. His hateful rhetoric will likely embolden and mobilise extreme right-wing forces to come out of the woodwork and claim their space in the new Netherlands.

While Geert Wilders will not singlehandedly plunge the sober Netherlands into fascism, one thing is clear: his racist plans and anti-Islam rhetoric enjoy the broadest support ever. Although not surprising, his electoral victory is alarming in the context of a pan-European rise of far-right ideologies. It is time for those who so often preach about the values of ‘’liberal democracy’’ to defend it with all their might, and for leftists all over Europe to relentlessly push back against these hateful ideologies. We know the ‘’other’’ is not our enemy.