The Right’s Model Nation
The Dutch left has been unable to counter the Islamophobic far right, and it will show in tomorrow's general elections.
On March 15, there will be general elections in the Netherlands — and it seems the country will not escape the trend of a rising radical right and the crisis of the center-left. Left-wing political parties as well are having difficulties, and social movements are struggling to find their way. A radicalizing far right with a virulent Islamophobia at its core has succeeded in altering the political and social landscape.
It is no use denying that for the Left, the situation is bleak. How did we get here?
The Model Capitalist Nation
Once described by Karl Marx as the model capitalist nation of seventeenth-century capitalism, the Netherlands always had a relatively small left and workers’ movement. Geographically small, but located in a commercially strategic position, the Dutch republic enjoyed a head start as a merchant-capitalist country in the seventeenth century. But this head start became a disadvantage with the onset of the Industrial Revolution.
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