Dutch Socialist Leader in Fear of Muslim Party Members

Wouter Bos, the leader of the Partij van de Arbeid (PvdA), the Dutch Labour Party, is worried about the high number of immigrants in the ranks of his own party. Bos won the Dutch municipal elections on 7 March by catering for the immigrants, who consequently tipped the balance in favour of the PvdA. Almost half the elected PvdA politicians in major Dutch cities where the PvdA is the largest party, such as Amsterdam and Rotterdam, are now Muslims.

In an interview last Friday Wouter Bos said that he is worried about this situation. “We are bound to run into trouble with our new immigrant councillors,” he predicted. The PvdA leader said their “political culture” is often incompatible with Dutch politics, because the immigrants “conduct politics according to the culture of their home countries, where clientelism is the norm.”

Though Bos concedes that it was a risk to put forward so many immigrant candidates (wasn’t that a form of clientelism?) he defended his party’s decision to do so. In many West European countries the parties of the Left are actively catering for the growing Muslim vote. The Left realizes that the Third World immigrants guarantee its power base because these immigrants moved to Western Europe attracted by the generous welfare benefits that the parties of the Left promote. However, Bos said he had been obliged to put so many immigrant candidates on the PvdA list because otherwise the immigrants might start their own parties. “I consider a Party of Immigrants, with no indigenous voters, dangerous. But if we hold on to our strategy, we will manage to remain a party that defends the interests of everyone.”

In this month’s municipal elections 80% of the Muslim electorate voted for the PvdA. If this happens in next year’s general elections as well, Bos’s party will become the largest party in the Netherlands and the current center-right government will lose its majority. This will allow Bos’s PvdA to put together a left-wing coalition with the far-left Groen Links (Green Left) party and the Socialist Party (SP). The latter two parties are also popular with immigrants. They defend marxist economic policies, though they differ on moral issues. While the Green Left Party is ethically libertine, the SP is the only left-wing party in Western Europe to oppose abortion. Dyab Abu Jahjah, the leader of the Arab-European League, had called upon his Dutch supporters to vote SP.

Bos’s warning concerning immigrant politicians has led to angry reactions from indigenous Dutch and immigrants alike. Yesterday a native Dutch citizen wrote in a website comment:

“Wouter Bos has an image problem now that the PvdA has visibly become the Party of the Immigrants. [...] The party is bound to be the hostage of the Muslims [...] and will ultimately perish as a result of it. By then, however, Wouter Bos will have been Prime Minister of the Netherlands for eight years and will receive an advance payment to write his memoirs before emigrating to the United States, Australia or Canada...”

Fouad Sidali, an Amsterdam PvdA politician said about his party leader’s remarks:

The short answer is no. Conservatives in the European context have normally been for 'strong government' to repress 'antisocial behavior' of the traditional sort. Liberals other than in the UK have mostly been attached to anticlerical and religious disestablishment programs, Liberals now (such as the German CDU)in Europe are what used to be the right wing od the socialist movement. That should tell you where they stand. Europe is inherently statist in its approaches to almost any major issue. Even th UK. I remember having a discussion with an older lady from the UK on a long flight back to England. She was a Tory through and through but could not get her head around what the US Bill of Rights meant in empowering the individual. Particularly she could not grasp the purpose or meaning of the 2nd Amendment. (This was in 1999 before the real dam break of violent crime in the UK.) Her view was that the way to stop criminals was to outlaw civilian gun ownership and back it up with warrantless visits by the police. Her rationale was it was no different than the no warrant visits by Inland Revenue to check and see if the homeowner had a tax certificate for his/her telly. The whole idea of natural rights adhering to the individual struck her as nonsense. Obviously the HM's government knew better than some laborer or bookkeeper about issues such as crime control.

This is not an aberration. Even as strong an ally of liberty as Pope John Paul II was absolutely flummoxed by the level of 'confessional liberty' in the US. Not that he believed men shoulden't have liberty of conscience. It was the business that anyone could set up a church without so much as a by your leave by any 'responsible confessional authority'. This came about during one of his visits to the US when he (a) noted a number of storefront churches with some very odd names and (b) he had a discussion with some official from the Southern Baptist Convention about how the baptist church was organized. The Holy Father was amazed, and not in a negative way, about the ability of individuals and congregations to form and seek association or not and that clergy didn't have to be licensed to preach by specific churches.

These are two disparate examples of what is just the general mindset of people in Europe. They inherently expect some sort governmental or at least institutional approval for most activities. US liberal (remember Hillarycare) have the same mindset but in the draconian leftists 'force them to be virtuous by the power of the state' sense.

It is an excellent analysis, although I do believe there is also a difference in political culture between Britain and the Continent, sometimes as different as America is from Europe.

In general, British understanding of politics centres on customs and conventions-based understanding of social orders. This is not surprising given that Britain can only trace its institutional history back to the Dark Ages of Anglo-Saxon tribes, and its development of political institution is in an ad hoc manner over the centuries - whoever was in power added something to the institution that may not contravene what's already existing. Because of this, they believe the fundamentals of individual rights, liberty, etc are products of social developments over the centuries. It is simply common sense to them to see the rights of the people are granted from the Crown, although the Crown's power is restrained in a series of historical developments.

If you look at America from the other shoe, the chance is you will see America has a kind of French rationalism interwoven with British traditions, through the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights. In declaring people have inalienable rights and building government based on these ideas the British see your basis of belief from ideology rather than in social conventions that British concepts of individual rights come from. It may seem astonishing to you, but in the broad history topic of British colonial history and decolonization that is a very popular history topics in British universities, the United States's Founding Fathers are remembered as an example of colonialists not learning the "fist class" tricks of British governance and instead interwining some French philosophies onto the bastardized conception of British constitution.

Sometimes I always find that America vs Britain vs Europe is a lot muddled than we realize...

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