Do you care about the Dutch elections? No? Fine. I'll keep this short.
All the news is about Geert Wilders, the anti-Muslim right-wing nationalist who gained 20 seats in this week's elections. This is a big deal, no question. It was driven partly by immigration fears and partly by the fact that the current centrist coalition has been in power for a dozen years.
Still, even after big gains, the Dutch right wing parties as a whole ended up with only about 79 votes.¹ If every one of them entered a coalition, that would be enough for a majority of the 150-seat parliament. But the second-biggest party on the right, the CDA, won 20 seats and has firmly ruled out cooperation with Wilders. At most, then, he could put together a coalition of about 59 seats.
Except that the old ruling party on the center-something, the VVD, has hinted that it might cooperate with Wilders as long as he's not prime minister. That would put his party back into contention.
Alternatively, the center and leftish parties plus CDA could put together a majority and shut out Wilders completely. So it's possible that nothing will change at all. We'll probably know in a year or so, given how long it takes the Dutch to put together coalitions these days.
¹"About" because the Netherlands has a lot of parties and some of them are tricky to categorize.
The Euros are more tolerant than us of Islam anyhow. I can’t imagine what Americans would do if fresh off the boat migrants were chopping schoolteachers heads off and stabbing babies or rolling through plazas in big trucks every few weeks
Only so long before even the Europeans break and say enough is enough. Immigration policy should be decided through democratic means just like any other
On a related note, why haven’t we had an Islamic terrorist attack in so long, but Euros catch a few every year? Last one I can remember is San Bernardino. Maybe we just aren’t accepting many compared to the EU. Or are the Feds just really that good at stopping these things before they start?
I haven’t heard of anybody chopping teachers’ heads off or stabbing babies, but I found exactly one instance of each in France in the last 3 years so I guess this is a real thing. But in a bloc of 450m people, anything is possible, including grotesque crimes. I don’t hear of too many instances of schools being shot up while the police stand around and do nothing for 75+ minutes happening in Europe either, but I’m sure eventually it could happen like it did in this country of 330m people. When your population gets big enough, you eventually will have any imaginable human act happen within its borders.
However your non sequiturs aside, there are way more Muslims in Europe than there are in the US, which probably explains both (1) why Europeans are more tolerant of them (promixity to different people tends to breed more tolerance) and (2) why there are more acts of terrorism by Muslims in Europe (the more people you have of a certain group, the more likely it is you’ll have a really horrible one who does really horrible things).
" there are way more Muslims in Europe than there are in the US,"
And in particular more Arabs. Most of the large terror actions in the last decades were by Arabs.
"The Euros are more tolerant than us of Islam anyhow."
Really? In 2017 a Chatham House poll was taken of 10 European countries asking opinions on this statement: "All further migration from mainly Muslim countries should be stopped". Majorities in 7 of the 10 countries agreed. An average of 55% agreed that all further migration from mainly Muslim countries should be stopped, 25% neither agreed nor disagreed and just 20% disagreed. In no country did the percentage that disagreed surpass 32%.
It seems in Europe as in America, immigration is a dominant factor impacting politics. Biden may lose in 2024 due to the surge in migrants at the southern border. And then the orange monster returns to unleash havoc upon us.
BTW, a 2017 AP-NORC poll in the US found 60% of US voters supported Trump’s Muslim ban while only 28% opposed it. 84% of Republican voters supported it, and, surprisingly, 40% of Democrats also supported it.
It seems most people in both Europe and the US secretly want to end Muslim immigration. Mainstream politicians don’t know how to handle this information. People like Geert Wilders and Trump don’t care about appearing crass and racist, so they just openly embrace bans.
The Euros are more tolerant than us of Islam anyhow
I don't think that's remotely the case. In both Europe and the US Muslims face discrimination and prejudice. But nowhere in the US can governments ban traditional head scarves. And Muslims have compete and unfettered freedom to operate their own schools. Also, I believe most of the data suggest American Muslims as a whole are better integrated and enjoy higher socioeconomic status than their counterparts in Europe.
Mind you, it's hardly the case that US Muslims face no problems—and what's true of Seattle or New York may not be the case in rural Alabama. But stil...
Wilders’ main campaign pledge was to stop the “asylum tsunami,” which he blamed for various social problems including the country’s housing shortage and high health costs.
Lots of People all over the world are not happy about all this sort of thing, though no one seems to have an actual solution to the problem. Will trumps promise to deport them all get him enough votes to win? And if he does win, will he follow through? Check back in 18 months! Should be interesting.
The housing issue has no solve. People with money will gobble up good housing near job centers and transportation and they expect to be able to buy a certain quality of life that includes zoning undesirables out. See also, half the cities in California.
The housing issue has no solve
Of course it has a solve: prohibit any and all restrictions on the construction of housing. Society doesn't need any more "regulation" than a basic safety code. Make the rule: If it's safe, you can build it. Full stop. Combine that with a George-ite system of land rents to remove the financial incentive to amass property portfolios. The results would be truly revolutionary.
Sure, some locations are intrinsically more desirable than others, and the rich will always be able to out-bid the non-rich for the very best areas. But that's been true forever. And yet it's only in recent years that not just ritzy neighborhoods but entire metro areas, regions and in some cases countries (eg, Ireland) have become staggeringly unaffordable.
Western nations have simply become awful at building housing. The multiplying problems are predictable and inevitable.
This is exactly what I anticipated when I read the headline somewhere and ignored it.
Elsewhere in the EU: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/nov/24/dublin-rioters-could-face-jail-helen-mcentee-justice-minister-says
Too bad we don't have more than two parties so that we could have a coalition government that had to work together. Things might get done then we could potentially be rid of t-Rump and his conga line of mega's.
Transferable vote will give more parties a chance.
Without it, it is two-party until it becomes one.
Americans have coalitions too, they just happen before the election instead of after. Both the Democratic and Republican parties have lots of factions that would all be independent political parties if they could actually win elections on their own, but since our system essentially requires two-and-only-two political parties to exist at any moment in time, they coalition before the election to form the parties we have now.
In theory, it would be nice to have lots of political parties so that every voter could find the party that “perfectly” fits their distinct preferences and no voter felt like they had to hold their nose at the ballot box. In practice, path dependency is very real and there’s no way to truly get to that point without rewriting the entire constitution, which is not going to happen under either of our 2 political parties in the absence of a civil war or other catastrophic event.
Plus there is evidence that too much choice is also bad. Like in places where they have like 27 parties or whatever, some voters are turned off or confused or made anxious by the length of the ballot and don’t bother to go in at all or fill the whole thing out. (There’s a reason why lots of people hate shopping for health care plans or signing up for a 401k or filing their own tax returns, even if they’re free or low cost. Complexity itself is a barrier for many people.)
You ignored transferable vote, which does not require consitutional change, and let centrists in.
You also would need to get rid of the filibuster/supermajority thresholds and unlimited election spending and other things* to have a workable multiparty system. Otherwise the senator from the Southwestern Bisexual Mavericky Party funded by a billionaire could say “I’m gonna filibuster everything unless I get my petty issues resolved” that of course are the opposite of whatever the senator from the Texan Punchable Face Assholery Party funded by some other billionaire threatens to filibuster everything over… and one half of Congress is suddenly paralyzed. This happens too with just 2 parties, but those parties do have some power to pressure their senators to fall in line and end filibusters now, as witnessed by the movement of some republicans and democrats to get military promotions through. I think with dozens of new parties, the likelihood of more Sinemas and Cruzes to be elected increases.
*This is why I wrote above that basically the whole constitution needs to be rewritten…
It would provide more billionaires the opportunity to buy their preferred form of government.
Suppose we had three parties, say Democrats, "moderate" Republicans, and Wing-nuts. If none had a clear majority in Congress, the Wing-nuts could still threaten to prevent passage of the budget unless they got their demands.
Things often don't get done in multi-party countries.
What would stop the "moderate" Republicans and Democrats to come together and pass a compromise between them?
Their respective leaderships and the threat of being primaried.
This has been another edition of obvious answers to simple questions.
That is assuming that "moderate" Republicans are part of the current party, rather than another party. That is not obvious in the original message.
Why do you assume that?
Wilder's party only got 23.6% of the vote. This definitely represents a rise in anti-Muslim sentiment, but this may have been partly a reaction to the Hamas attack. An eventual coalition may not make much sense ideologically and could be decided by one or more of the minor parties.
A minority government that involves Wilders's party has been mentioned as a possibility. That would need either tacit or explicit agreement to cooperate but not take up any cabinet seats, which may be where the VVD is pointing. But that could only work if their seats would be enough to give the actual coalition partners (if any) a voting majority.
I don't know how often it happens in the Netherlands, but minority government has been the pattern in Canada recently. It can be a stable situation, but it can also fall apart very quickly if, say, the plurality party or its leader becomes massively unpopular at any point. (Just sayin', Justin and Jagmeet . . .)
I do give the Europeans credit for drawing lines and excluding particular politicians and political positions from respectability.
I don't know how often it happens in the Netherlands, but minority government has been the pattern in Canada recently.
I've read that, in the Netherlands, there's a pretty strong tradition of "party with the most seats gets to form the government" but I don't think it's binding. I'd like to think the other parties will at minimum keep Wilders from heading the government. I guess time will tell.
The population density of the Netherlands is 1353 people per square mile. It wouldn't surprise me a bit if many Dutch people oppose immigration just because the country is already full. In other words, anti-immigrant sentiment is not necessarily anti-Muslim sentiment, but if I understand correctly Wilders' party is the only one that opposes immigration.
Yes, I just returned from there and a common theme in conversations is that the Netherlands is "too full." And you see it pretty much in your daily life: epic traffic jams, crowded trains, bicycle paths becoming unnavigable with the hordes of e-bikes and scooters, long lines at supermarkets, etc. I think the worry about overcrowding is driving a lot of this rather than hostility to specific groups.
On one hand, you have the people saying "there's plenty of room and plenty of food, it's just a distribution problem". Then you have others claiming their preferred location is "too full". When the world was based around agriculture which needed a lot of labor, people could be more spread out. But with employers expecting butts in seats, anyplace with jobs is going to be "too full".
Office based work and lack of affordable housing are tied together. I was reading a bunch of whining from residents of Huntington Beach about having to build more housing in their leafy green paradise. Oh, the horror.
And then there's the folks screeching about ADU laws ruining their neighborhoods (protip, get all the crap out of your garages and start using them for their built purpose and that will alleviate much of the parking issue).
Hah in my neighborhood some houses like mine have garages you cannot safely park a car in, a small one car garage built into the house. But we have driveways and the larger models have 2 car garages that are more usable.