Sometimes you need to know what happened before to understand what you see. In the Annual Report 2017 the AIVD intelligence service wrote under the heading ‘right-wing extremism’ that supporters ‘of overpopulation’ fear that this ‘could lead to the extinction of the white race in the long term’.
October 2020 said Prime Minister Mark Rutte in the Senate to a PVV senator who spoke about depopulation: „The term ‘ompopulation’ comes from ‘Umvolkung’. That is a term from German Nazi literature. That’s where it started.”
Later in 2020, I looked up how often repopulation was used in parliament, and it turned out that one MP mentioned the term ten times after 2015: Martin Bosma (PVV).
On Tuesday, the same Bosma spoke during the daily procedure moment: the arrangement of work† He said that two D66 ministers have different opinions about an item regarding repopulation at Ongehoord Nederland, and wanted a debate about it. Not a very promising request.
Yet Sjoerd Sjoerdsma (D66) sought confrontation: “If Bosma and the PVV want to explain that they adhere to these extreme right-wing population-population theories,” they should do so, “but not in a debate.”
“It’s really bad,” said Caroline van der Plas (BBB), who wanted the chairman to intervene.
“A Nazi comparison,” complained Bosma. “‘The Far Right’ is a Nazi comparison.”
Some MPs called for calm, after which Freek Jansen (FVD) criticized that Bosma had been “made out to be half a Nazi”. He also addressed the President of the House, Vera Bergkamp (also D66): „You allow that. I find that remarkable.”
So it happened that after a suspension, the chairman judged that Sjoerdsma had gone beyond his means: “We just shouldn’t say things like this here.” Later she informed me that Sjoerdsma had “affected the dignity of the House”, and wrongly challenged it to a debate during procedural consultations.
Indeed, the agreement is that MPs will not debate – but members really deviate from this all the time.
So what remained was that this House and this President of the House no longer want to hear what the AIVD and the Prime Minister only dryly established a few years ago.
The irony was: this happened the day after the cabinet formally acknowledged that institutional racism had occurred in parts of the tax authorities in the recent past.
And here too it helped if you knew what had happened before.
When Rutte was asked about that concept in 2020, he still scoffed at “sociologist jargon”. And in March State Secretary Marnix van Rij (Finance, CDA) admitted that people had been regarded as fraud suspects because of their (double) nationality, surname or religion, but he only wanted to call this “discriminatory”.
Nevertheless, the coalition agreement states that institutional racism “has no place in society”. And so in May Van Rij worked towards the conclusion of institutional racism, whereby it was not clear whether officials were aware of the prejudices with which they disadvantaged citizens.
We were wrong – but it wasn’t necessarily wrong.
In the Council of Ministers on 20 May, when he defended his case, Van Rij received support from all parties, including the Prime Minister and Deputy Prime Ministers, but those involved say that his colleague State Secretary Aukje de Vries (Supplements, VVD) had difficulty with his conclusion. Only after a second council of ministers, last week, was he able to present his position to the media on Monday.
And what everyone in The Hague knows: policy officials and communication officers prepare ‘Q&As’ for this: all the questions journalists can ask, and all the options for answers to them.
“Journalists would be very surprised if they knew what is being prepared,” a former Director of Communications told me this week.
In this case, I was lucky: someone sent me Q&As made for the Secretary of State in this case.
Five pages of A4 in which you read back the dance that Van Rij performed with journalists on Monday: acknowledge institutional racism but prevent injured parties from being able to litigate against the state with guaranteed success.
Be noble – but keep your hand tight.
I placed as many interviews with Van Rij as possible next to the Q&As, and I noticed that this State Secretary followed the official instructions perfectly – but always in his own words. In The Hague you regularly hear that ministers literally shout Q&As in front of the camera. Van Rij certainly doesn’t do it that way.
In the best interview I found, Monday at news hour, it went like this. Asked whether a characterization as “a nest of Antilleans” does not indicate deliberate racism, he said: “It could be conscious, it could be unconscious, it could be intentional, it could be unintentional.” The Q&As stated: “It is impossible to determine or say with certainty whether there has been discrimination.”
The interviewer: are civil servants held responsible for this? Van Rij started a long speech about addressing people, confronting them, sending them to courses, etc. It came down to what the Q&As suggested: “No, I’m not going to report it again.”
And he kept dodging the question of why he didn’t apologize to victims of institutional racism. The Q&As showed why: “Just because we recognize institutional racism today does not mean there is discrimination in every lawsuit that is invoked.”
So where, on a superficial level, you found a different attitude in the cabinet on Monday than in the House on Tuesday afternoon, there was also a striking resemblance: civil servants or politicians who had not done their best before, could in principle count on the protection of the system.
It was already true for MPs that ‘the system’ came down to the very weak President of the House. And for civil servants that in principle they deserve some protection: they cannot defend themselves publicly.
But both issues also demonstrate a greater reality. Since the beginning of this century, the migration issue has determined political relations, because a majority of the electorate remains skeptical about migration.
It explains the growth of the new right and the fall of the old left; it’s the politics of 2022.
And as a result, politicians remain relatively blind to crypto-racism among officials and the use of Nazi terms by colleagues.
Another consequence is that the same politicians can be tough about newcomers. After Van der Plas, Bosma and Jansen stood up for Bosma on Tuesday afternoon, the House discussed a PVV initiative in the evening to no longer give status holders – admitted refugees – pre-emptive rights to a home. None of these parties could muster the compassion they had for Bosma in the afternoon for legally admitted refugees.
Sylvana Simons said: “To suggest that any group is at the root of the unprecedented housing crisis is nothing more than a lie from the xenophobic gut.”
And you really didn’t have to be a supporter of hers to see that in all those aspects of this week – the blindness to a Nazi term, the careful handling of institutional racism, the harshness on beneficiaries – this element was veiled in veil.
Every country eventually gets the politics it deserves.
A version of this article also appeared in the newspaper of June 4, 2022