The social media team of the VVD again did its best to annoy the people this week. There was, for example, a bombastic film in which Edith Schippers announced that he was a candidate for the list of candidates for the elections to the Senate, and a rushed hit vlog by Thierry Aartsen. He eagerly followed a story about status holders in Utrecht, who would have immediately resigned their jobs as soon as the municipality had promised them a rented house and benefits.
Aartsen, the carnival conservative who became known for his plea to promote flower parades to cultural heritage, argues in the video that it cannot be the case that status holders ‘divide into benefits en masse’, while we need those hands so badly. And: ‘You learn Dutch in the company canteen and not in the lecture hall.’ An argumentum ad Balkenendem and a remarkable overestimation of Dutch company canteens, all in less than a minute. You can’t stand on bent toes, Aartsen may have thought.
But the most important thing: the story whipped up by right-wing media didn’t make sense. When that became clear, Aartsen chose to double his bet, instead of apologizing. With a letter sent in boomerbode EW he described his own fake news as a ‘worrying signal’, which would fit into a broader trend in which more than half of the people who receive a residence permit in the Netherlands still do not work. That’s fine, but Aartsen has many more non-working hands to recruit from the home-mothering VVD supporters. But yes, they are white and manicured.
Although mentally and physically challenging, I’m afraid we need to learn to embrace Aartsen. Like colleague Daniel Koerhuis, he is a VVD sandbag who protects our country against the impending far-right spring tide, a last nail mat on which we can let the fascist bus run flat. Because no matter how clumsy their performances, it works. Everywhere I go in the Netherlands, it sounds that the VVD has ‘turned to the left’ and ‘must not walk on the leash of D66’. Aartsen and Koerhuis have the task of taking away that stubborn nonsense with their popular greediness, and they just do it well. Whether they mean it nobody knows, perhaps they go secretly to the Concertgebouw as just the two of them.
The fact that the VVD still manages to keep the hopeless mix of liberals and stupid conservatives together also has to do with the madness of the competition. It has been clear to Baudet for some time that his nihilistic revenue model is more important than actual power. Geert Wilders thinks he smells blood and tweeted this weekend that he will be prime minister, followed by his own people first. Painful for his Hungarian wife and remarkable for someone who doesn’t speak proper Dutch himself, but above all unbelievable. After all, that would have happened in the past twenty years. You don’t have to expect anything from JA21 and BBB, it’s all much too light for that.
But still: without the right-wing wing of the VVD, we would have had a far-right prime minister long ago. A reasonable and decent VVD, which would return to its liberal principles, will look too much like D66 and lose too many votes. They know that very well at the VVD; as long as Thierry Aartsen makes stupid videos and Daniel Koerhuis posts silly photos, the right-wing hordes are reassured. And we will be spared a far-right Prime Minister for a while. What you shouldn’t hold on to these days.