After the debate it was about the debate. In the studio at Khalid & Sophie Raoul Heertje began by saying that he was “dismayed” by what he had just seen at the EenToday election debate. The ease with which it is said that no more foreigners can enter the Netherlands, because there are no more houses. “Wilders says it, but VVD now also says it, Omtzigt too.
Furthermore, writer Ilja Leonard Pfeijffer was there with a warning: in the fifth century BC things went terribly wrong with Athenian democracy and he saw similar dangers for today’s democracy. Jeroen Pauw next to him folded his hands and then put them in his own bosom: Wasn’t it “all of us” that “what is not normal has become normal”. Journalists, he said, “including the NOS”, the newspapers, all claim that Wilders had softened during this campaign. But was that true? Is his rise, the normalization of his ideas, due to a “mistake of journalism”, presenter Sophie Hilbrand asked Pauw.
The question and the topic were temporarily parked for a gloomy look at the polls. Peter Kanne from I&O Research sat at the table with fresh polls. In its bar graph, GroenLinks-PvdA is just as big as the VVD with 27 seats, and not the NSC of Omtzigt, but the PVV of Geert Wilders is now the third largest party in the country with 26 seats. The aversion to the left, said Peter Kanne, is greater than the aversion to Wilders. And then we were back to the question of who was actually responsible for the Wilders revival.
Hilbrand wanted to talk about The Netherlands debate at SBS6 last Thursday. “Oh God,” said Jeroen Pauw. He was the producer of that. Let’s look at an excerpt from that debate: Frans Timmermans answers a question from a lady from the audience who says that as a long-term ill person she can no longer pay her own risk in healthcare. She looks dissatisfied with his answer, her face lights up when Wilders bulldozes over him. Timmermans with his 15,000 euro redundancy pay may be able to wait for a solution, Wilders said, but “this lady cannot pay her 385 euros now.” After the broadcast it became clear that this lady was a PVV voter. She was smiling in the photo with Wilders, whom she met when she was on a plane with him on holiday to Hungary. Viewers thought that was crazy.
Pauw thought it was a shame that this fragment was shown and not the moment before. He explained at length why the editors had not deemed it necessary to tell all questioners in the audience which party they voted for. That wouldn’t have been necessary, as far as I’m concerned. But if ‘the media’ does engage in self-examination, I would rather zoom in on how you want such a debate to proceed. Do you let politicians finish or shout over each other, is the debate leader a playmaker or a driving force, do you want discussion or fuss? Wilders thrives on chaos, this was the kind of debate in which he can excel – the viewers thought he was the best and yes, that can explain those six extra seats in Monday’s poll. And polls, says Peter Kanne, have an effect on voting behavior.
Baudet hit hard
It One todaydebate was tightly managed and held in Ahoy in Rotterdam, the audience consisted of students. They clapped loudest for Rob Jetten (D66), who attacked Yesilgöz – “there is no migration crisis, there is a VVD crisis”, and who proved to be the only match for Wilders, who wants to counter the climate crisis with “his finger in the dike”. Around the same time, party leader Thierry Baudet (FVD) was among students in a Groningen café. He was hit hard on the head with a bottle, the last time, in Ghent, it happened with an umbrella. Someone with Khalid & Sophie could well have said that such an attack is also a danger to democracy.