The Netherlands: Tolerating a time bomb

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Leon de Winter writes in the International Herald Tribune op-ed section: “The murder of Theo van Gogh last year and the assassination of Pim Fortuyn in 2002 marked the end of the Holland of Erasmus and Spinoza. Their killings showed the cumulative effect of two forces that have shaken the foundations of Dutch civic society over the last 40 years: the cultural and sexual revolution of the 1960s and 1970s and the influx of Muslim workers during those years of prosperity.

Perhaps no country was affected as profoundly by the radicalism of the times as the Netherlands. In less than 15 years, most forms of traditional authority and hierarchy, the counterbalancing forces that made Dutch tolerance possible, were undermined. Hence today’s image of Dutch tolerance: marijuana served at coffee shops, police officers with hair as long as the Grateful Dead, full nudity on public television and, for those who prefer not to work, a government package of benefits that makes a toil-free life entirely feasible.” (IHT)

In essence, the writer claims that Dutch society is a unique combination of the permissive and the Calvinist, and that liberal/radical encouragement of the welfare state gave redundant North African ‘guest workers’ and their families a free pass, with the resultant growth of a simmering disenfranchised ghetto underclass with radicalized children whose intolerance and resentment ruined Dutch tolerance.

“Many of these young men have found an expression for their growing sense of frustration, alienation and anger in orthodox Islam. They have no use for Holland’s tolerance of alternative lifestyles, or for its professional blasphemers. Last Nov. 2 a young Islamic fundamentalist, born in Amsterdam to Moroccan parents, shot Van Gogh in the street and then tried to cut off his head. In a final statement at his trial last week, the murderer declared that he had killed Van Gogh for insulting the Prophet.”

The writer attempts to ‘normalize’ Pim Fortuyn, powerful spokesperson for the anti-immigrant mindset, as a “classic tolerant Dutchman” (in, among other ways, exploiting the fact that he was gay) and concludes that, “Perhaps what this country needs most of all is another unconventional, outspoken gay politician” and that “we must somehow stimulate young Muslims to identify with the Calvinist values of the majority.” I don’t claim to be an expert in Dutch social issues, but this argument has several flaws. The case is never really made that it was traditional Dutch tolerance that is to blame for the ‘time bomb’ of radicalized Muslim youth, and it seems too easy to blame Islamic fundamentalism per se for two individuals’ extremist acts. Certainly, the absorption of culturally distinctive immigrants is a challenge for every European society, but I am not hearing de Winter make any suggestions about how the Dutch polity or society should address the problem beyond accepting the unproven premise that “Calvinist’ conservatism (really, a stalking horse for xenophobia) be the accepted norm and that foreign ‘guests’ conform to its values. It is tempting to say that European societies have a long way to go in solving their class and racial issues, but then again the United States is several centuries further along in attempting to accommodate to the presence of its imported foreign laborer population and we still haven’t done a much better job of it… and that has little or nothing to do with Muslim fundamentalism.