Tax, healthcare, immigration: why Dutch people
voted for Geert Wilders
Some voters are filled with fear at far-right leader’s
rise but others who backed him voice anger and a sense of unfairness
Lisa
O'Carroll in Rotterdam
@lisaocarroll
Thu 23 Nov
2023 14.17 GMT
The triumph
of Geert Wilders at the Dutch polls is one of the biggest political upsets in
European politics and, just like Brexit, will send reverberations across the
continent. But in the Dutch city of Rotterdam, where the far-right Party for
Freedom (PVV) is now the biggest political grouping, the earthquake was met
with more of a shrug than a gasp.
“While he
said ‘enough is enough’ he is right: enough is enough,” said Jeannette, 34,
receiving a delivery of bags of potatoes for the chip shop where she works. “We
pay too much tax, too much for healthcare, too much for rent. We can’t take it
any more.”
Like
millions of other Dutch voters on Wednesday, Jeanette voted for Wilders,
largely, she says, out of anger that she and her family face a struggle to make
ends meet. Reeling off a litany of monthly costs she must pay out of her €2,422
(£2,106) a month net salary, she appeared to have been drawn to his positioning
as a champion of the ordinary person struggling amid the cost of living crisis.
“People
from the outside think we are OK here in the Netherlands. We are wealthy
compared to Belgium or Turkey, that is true. They don’t understand why people
voted for Wilders but if you are here you know why,” she said.
Jeanette
said she did not agree with all Wilders’ past anti-Islam declarations,
including a call for fewer Moroccans in the country and a ban on the hijab –
“If people want to wear that I understand.” But amid her socioeconomic
complaints there is a familiar whiff of resentment.
“We are a
wealthy country, but how do we in Holland have to pay that much and yet they
say to migrants: ‘Come on in, have what you like, we will give you
everything’?” she asked.
Jamie, 23,
a waitress at the Grand Cafe in The Hague, just half an hour from the port,
said only one of her circle of seven close friends had not voted for Wilders’
PVV, including one who had previously voted for the outgoing prime minister,
Mark Rutte’s party.
“He
[Wilders] is a bit harsh in what he says, but he is a straight-talker and says
it like it is. It is really a big change. Mark Rutte has been in for as long as
I can remember,” she said.
Like
Jeanette, she was drawn to Wilders for what he has said about housing and a
promise of free transport for elderly people. But she also supported his deeply
controversial policy on migration. On Wednesday the PVV leader vowed: “The
Netherlands will be returned to the Dutch, the asylum tsunami and migration
will be curbed.”
“I’m not
against migrants,” said Jamie. “They have to come through Belgium and Germany
to get here, but they come here, they don’t stay in the two neighbouring
countries because we are an open country, it’s better here.” She claimed this
was not fair.
Matthijs
Rooduijn, associate professor of political science at Amsterdam University,
says such views are common among Wilders voters. “When you look at the
electorate of the PVV in general, it consists of people who experience more
difficulties to get by. They are more lonely. They feel that they are being
neglected. They have tough lives basically, economically but also culturally,”
he said.
“The PVV,
of course, is not a party that is really leftwing when it comes to
socioeconomic politics, but it is a party that is also when it comes to
socioeconomics is not really rightwing … Wilders presents himself as there for
the poor: it’s also what people sometimes call welfare chauvinism. So he argues
that the people who have difficulties should be helped, but that is only true
for what he calls ‘Henk and Ingrid’, the Dutch names that he calls his voters.
And that’s not ‘Mohammed and Fatima’, so to speak. So it is welfare, but only
for, according to him, our people.”
Such
opinions fill Esperansa, a 20-year-old film and literature student, with fear.
Esperansa voted for the Frans Timmermans-led GroenLinks-PvdA alliance.
“I’m not
happy,” she said. “I never liked Wilders and his policies because he is an
extreme-right politician. Some of his policies are disgusting: his
Islamophobia, his ideas to forbid people from wearing the hijab or eating halal
meat, or to close the mosques.”
Referring
to Wilders’ decision to soften some of his rhetoric during the campaign, she
added: “I think it’s very stupid that a lot of people voted for him but Wilders
presented himself as milder than extreme.”
For
Franklin, a 71-year-old from Aruba, the result was not surprising if, like him,
you had followed all the debates. “It is to be expected. Holland has changed a
lot over the years and the big topics of discussion in the debates were
migration, housing, the cost of living for all candidates,” he said.
“[Wilders]
is a very experienced politician and knows how to censor himself. He advanced
his arguments in a very mild manner. Often opponents called him a wolf in
sheep’s clothing but people voted for him. The far right are growing everywhere
– look at Brazil, Argentina, the US, Hungary.”
Additional reporting by Senay Boztas
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