Posted by lynn in news, What we do | 6 Comments
‘Outwit Wilders – for democracy’s sake’
Green parties have good reasons to fight right-wing populism: it addresses people’s concerns in a way that goes directly against diversity and border-crossing solidarity. But they have also reasons to watch the way populists play the masses and the media very closely, because it is far more efficient than theirs, concluded an expert panel during Heerlen 9, last November in Amsterdam.
Les partis verts ont de bonnes raisons de lutter contre le populisme de droite : il répond aux préoccupations des gens d’une manière qui va à l’encontre de la diversité et de la solidarité transfrontière. Mais les Verts ont aussi des raisons d’examiner de près la façon dont les populistes s’adressent aux masses et approchent les médias a conclu un débat d’experts lors de Heerlen 9, au mois de novembre dernier à Amsterdam. Sur ce plan là les populistes sont beaucoup plus efficaces que les partis verts.
Suggested strategy: address non-intellectuals, be more present in society, simplify your message where possible and educate your politicians in that sense. See for full list end of article.
Follow-up: Øyvind Strømmen, one of the Networks’ team members, contributes to the Green European Foundations’ upcoming publication on right-wing populism.
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The Supporters’ Network hasn’t only tabled this issue because populist leader Geert Wilders has completely changed the political landscape in the Netherlands, until recently a haven of tolerance, and his Party for Freedom (PVV) might very well become the countries’ biggest. It is also extremely interested in finding out how he did it, because the Network itself tries to bridge the gap between politics – EU-politics in particular – and the ‘masses’. The key questions it wanted an answer to during this panel:
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Is the rise of the PVV comparable that of other fight-wing populisms, or are we talking very different responses to incomparable problems?
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If they are comparable, can the European Greens tackle them under a unified frame?
Jörg Haider
There are definitely differences – as Øyvind Strømmen, a Norwegian journalist specialising on the extreme right – pointed out. Some parties are close to neoliberalism whereas the PVV defends elements of the welfare state. And whereas in Germany populists are strongest in ‘white’ parts of the country, their Dutch counterparts have conquered poorer neighbourhoods where many migrants live.
Strømmen, Den Hollander
But there also are similarities. Populists play upon people’s fear of what is different, said Birgit Weiss, a political scientist who moved from Vienna to Castellon. ‘Jörg Haider did just that. And he disappeared because he broke taboos himself: taboos of homosexuality and corruption. But his original party has found a new ‘demon’, Heinz-Christian Strache, who systematically calls people with a migrant background ‘foreigners. And although most people have a foreign background nowadays, such a negative framing works: during the local elections in Vienna in October he won 27 percent of the votes.’
The reason so many people see foreigners a threat, she said, is that they blame them for putting their social benefits, level of well-being, and jobs at risk, a fear that is increased by the current economic crisis.’
A third factor populists bank on is the feeling many have that the ruling political and intellectual elite doesn’t take their concerns seriously. ‘Populists target the lower incomes’, a Dutch Green said, ‘people who have been thrown out of their jobs or live on the countryside, far away from the centres of power.’
Cultural Wars
If right-wing populism feeds on such concerns, how should Green parties respond? They shouldn’t, some Greens believe, because fighting the rights’ cultural wars distracts us from our own issues, and tempts us to play the adversary’s game. ‘Today’s real problems are the economic crisis and the way governments address it’, said Filia den Hollander, a visual artist and democracy activist and one of the strongest advocates of this option. ‘Governments first paid billions to save the banks and then cut the budget for welfare services to compensate for the deficit, thus making the poor pay the bill. We shouldn’t pay attention to Wilders who doesn’t address this problem at all, but reform the economy.’
Pelt + Weiss
The diversity in yourself
Most participants, however, see good reasons to accept the challenge. Cultural wars ARE the Greens’ core business, Birgit Weiss said, because they are about people’s freedom to live their own lives. To defend that value, she said, ‘we should stick to our own concepts and make people understand that all human beings are diverse: in religion, in values, in education, sexual orientation, and physical characteristics, and that, if you want to connect with others, you have to recognise the diversity in yourself and then try to find common grounds.’
Focusing on diversity, she added, is what the Viennese Greens did during the local elections of October. They chose a Greek-born translator with a Greek passport as their head of list – and won more than 12 percent and their first seat ever in the local government.
Priests
For Strømmen fighting right wing populism is about addressing issues many people care about. ‘Greens shouldn’t fight it for electoral reasons’, he said. ‘On the contrary, all parties in Europe are losing votes to populists, with the exception of the Greens. Greens might even win where populists are strong, because they are particularly successful where our main competitors, the social democrats, used to be strong. We should ‘outwit’ Wilders for the sake of democracy – by attacking these parties on their core issues and proposing Green solutions for them.
If we don’t, that is because we are afraid to be playing into Wilders’ hands, because we are gripped by fear, as if the extreme right had a magic wand. If we don’t, we are like the priests who speaks Latin with their back to the congregation.’
Pels
Demons
So fight. But how? ‘Not by demonising right-wing populism’, said Dick Pels, director of the research unit of GroenLinks, which together with the Green European Foundation is preparing a study on populisms in Europe. ‘On the contrary, we must try to understand and learn from it and address the questions it raises. What is wrong with Islam if so many people fear it? And is our democratic system beyond criticism?’
‘Populism also puts us before a media challenge, because it is better at communicating with people than the Greens. And it makes us understand that there is a sociological gap between educated people and the rest of the population, which explains many fears and anxieties. It makes us understand that our democracy in fact is a ‘meritocracy’, and that, if we are true democrats, we also should have a story for the less educated.’
Family reunification
Not everyone agreed. ‘If our message isn’t understood’, said Wanda Pelt from the Colourful Platform of GroenLinks, ‘we should educate people. Fear and discontent indeed are important reasons for extreme voting behaviour. But do we have to become populists just because populism is popular? Many of its statements, like those about family reunification and migration, just are not true. By the way, many higher educated people, and even migrants, vote for Wilders too.’
Suggestions for strategies:
- Don’t be afraid to address ‘right-wing populist’ problems like violence and insecurity, because many Green parties who are in government address those problems successfully. Make those answers known.
- Establish left-wing coalitions to counter right-wing populism. Reach out to initiatives in society, to bridge the gap between people and politics. Try to understand and tackle people’s hate against the left. Have personal answers; live up to what you preach. Look for popular, not populist spokespersons.
- Develop a media strategy aimed at non-intellectuals, be more present in society, simplify your message where possible and educate your politicians in that sense.
- Deconstruct the far right’s message.
And on the EU-level
- Set up a pan-European structure or network of people who know how to deal with xenophobia at the grassroots level.
- Campaign for a change of electoral laws which enables you to put non-national candidates on your EU lists, and for pan-European lists, for example through a citizen’s initiative – to make people think European when they vote.
- Find ways to make people like Europe.
The report’s introduction is confusing. It states that Green have to follow the right-wing populism’s way, i.e. going directly against diversity and cross-border solidarity. Do you see my point?
Point taken, confusion removed. Thanks!
I did not get a chance during the panel discussion, but the illustration used at top, which was also used in the leaflet, is simply not very good.
Wilders is not very likely to cooperate much with Vlaams Belang, and additionally the illustration shows Bert Eriksson – who was not directly involved with VB at the time – at a Nazi conference, not at all a VB-meeting.
While Vlaams Belang certainly carries a strong heritage of outright fascism (not Nazism, though), one should not – as Pels says – simply demonise the far right.
Point taken, please suggest alternative
To me the following quote is a perfect illustation of the way that populism is imposing is perspectives in Holland : ‘On the contrary, we must try to understand and learn from it and address the questions it raises. What is wrong with Islam if so many people fear it? And is our democratic system beyond criticism?’
So rather than disconstruct the subject of populism in Europe, does the Green dutch party want to address the racism in a better way?
Presented as it is in the text it sounds to me that the populism is considered as an oponion rather than a passion. This is to me where the problem starts. Populist are passionatly against the diversity and not “rationaly” against…
What does it mean then to learn from the questions that they are addressing on diversity in that condition?
In extenso it sounds clear that the green rather than addressing clear statements on there conceptions of the social reallity are willing to use the persepctive of the populists in order to conter them.
There is here a clear lack of vision when ones what to try to understand what is is wrong in “islam”. Because the “islam” that Wilders speaks about is a concept and not a reallity. It is a concept that is related to war and fondamentalists extrem figures. So the “islam” that he is talking about is not the same that people are confronted to daily. And with addressing the question of “what is wrong in it”, means acknowledging that extrem exemple as a norm regarding that religion.
Best regards,
Ps. Message sent from my phone so my excuses for the spelling mistakes
As Erkan says “Populist are passionatly against diversity and not “rationaly” against…”. Indeed!
What the leftist fail to realise is that Wilders is not a very clever man, but a man who consciously took a very specific ideological position. He does not have to be smart, just play his game to the end. In fact his voters are not merely “protest voters” but voters that really find the idea of unegalitarian policies very attractive. It is not what Wilders says, but HOW he says it, what they like. That is to say his openly and blunt rejection of any universal consequenses to any of his remarks or propositions. His entire citation list, on any subject, could be replaced by only one sentence: “all are equal but some are more equal and that’s us”. This is what he is communicating, not an Anti-Islam or pro-Islael agenda, or focus on social issues, those are just the carriers of his real message. The essence is an open rejection of universality as a working principle. This is what his voters vote for.
Now fighting that agenda would be foolish. Proving the xenophobe’s paradox..is useless. His voters want to hear this paradox and will know they voted on the right person if some leftist politician subsequently explains to them that, indeed, it is a paradox. This is like a picture of broccoli, captioned with the title “broccoli” hanging above a basquet of broccoli. Only idiot’s will find it instructive. The rest really knows already what it is. How clear do we have to make it to them.
To defend the multicultural values as in :‘we should make people understand that all human beings are diverse: in religion, in values, in education, sexual orientation, and physical characteristics, and that, if you want to connect with others, you have to recognise the diversity in yourself and then try to find common grounds’ Is even more foolish!!
Multi-culturalism, on the ground (it’s practical implementation in law or, projects etc.), needs to exclude itself from the virtual space in which identity is affirmed, if not to become instrumental in developing xenophobe narratives. It’s ideology relies on exploring this same space though to be able to invent the universal “meta” citizen. This effectively reduces the whole concept to a red herring; one that is playing straight into the hands of populists. They can easily fork the whole concept by either stressing it’s demagoguery qualities, or demanding practical implementation. Most people have realized by now that the West has failed to put its Multicultural ideas into practice. Populists can just claim to want them effectuated, reversing the red herring in the process.
Anthropologists that were founders or followers of cultural relativationist theory have in fact warned for its implementation in policy. J. H. Steward Steward and others have argued already in 1948 that any attempt to apply the principle of cultural relativism to moral problems would only end in contradiction: either a principle that seems to stand for tolerance ends up being used to excuse intolerance, or the principle of tolerance is revealed to be utterly intolerant of any society that seems to lack the (arguably, Western) value of tolerance. (Barnett, H.G. “On Science and Human Rights” in American Anthropologist 50(2) 352-355. June 1948)
Only a neo-socialist agenda will help the left. The left should minimise their popular liberal decorative issues. Wilders position is meant to deal with progressive Liberalism: Rightwing liberals and disappointed socialist voters are his grassroots. So universal class struggle is the answer. Green parties can be very important in this. We should not forget that the issue of ecology represents the hallmark of Gordian knots complicating the doctrine of “universality”, within the Liberal narrative.
The right wing Populists’ leverage is NOT the result of his actions, but of his political position – on the ideological chess-board so to say. Only the Liberal’s failure to realize that Populist’s are literally thriving on the principle of cleansing liberal values from universal consequences, can explain why they still don’t see that triumphantly proving the xenophobe’s paradox, as a strategy, only mobilizes more xenophobe voters.
Leftists here in Holland tendentiously CALL Wilders fascistic. They should stop that and finally realize what he really is, that is to say, a ruthless radical-rightwing/leftwing populist with a racist agenda identical to Karl Lueger’s in late 19th century Vienna – simply dispensing of the Liberal’s Pathos-ridden ideal of unanimity between political mobilization and administrative policy and using blunt racism as a decoy, This is what we are dealing with.
Best regards,
Lot Lievaart