The Netherlands Scared Me Yesterday

Yesterday, about a quarter of Dutch people forgot what made their country great.

I have long admired the country that developed the principles of liberty, equality, tolerance, and fairness that underpin my sense of what is best in humanity. They pioneered (imperfectly of course) the idea that international contact in the modern age could be based on mutual benefit instead of violence and exploitation (no offense Spain, England, or Portugal). They led the way in courage, tolerance, and human-centered innovation for the European experiment that to my eyes represents the best hope for humanity’s future.

This was not accomplished through a homogenous religious identity. It was not pale skin on everybody. It was not based on uniformity or intolerance at all. Quite the opposite. It was the understanding that I wrote about in my blog yesterday, that you are only successful if the other person is too, you are only free if everyone is free, that goodness only really exists when it is shared. That truth fundamentally relies on variety, coexistence, and plurality. It has no use for Islamophobic nonsense. It would never rant idiotic notions about the Netherlands leaving the EU. It would have honest conversations about problems and possible solutions instead of taking the cheap and foolish path of blaming the Other. The Netherlands I have long loved is a nation of grown ups. Yesterday the party that got the most votes was one of immaturity.

Maybe the Dutch are the victims of their own success. They took what could have been a swamp and built a wonderful country on it. But with that success came wealth, with prosperity came population growth, and with modernity came insulation from each other. Instead of mixing on the narrow streets and shopping in the same stores, they grew separated and distrustful. It’s a familiar story.

In the absence of Muslim friends, coworkers, and neighbors, they fell victim to the mistaken idea that the flailing souls on the news represent the wider group.

It’s a familiar story around the world, for example in my country. For example in me. Because I’m not just a willfully starry eyed idealist. I’m also racist.

As a repeat immigrant by choice, I have benefited from the welcome mat (including today, but I’ll write about the experience of signing up for Dutch health insurance another time). And I worked “immigrant jobs” alongside a panoply of nationalities becoming friends, including the shift from 11:00 PM Friday night to 8:00 AM Saturday morning, scrubbing searing hot metal by hand in a factory, coming out with fingers that felt like boiled sausages, my forearms a mosaic of burns. And despite spending the night among hard-working foreigners who others thought unemployed and lazy, on the way home when I saw loud youths swaggering around I would think “I wouldn’t want my sister to walk through them alone.” And I thought it more readily than the groups that look like me, without actually knowing either.

Frustration, even anger, filled me when I thought “Why would someone leave a country because of its problems…and then bring those problems with them?” Even “Don’t come here, ungrateful, and screw up this place too.” When I take my garbage out and the area around the bins is a mess, I think “no Dutch person did this.” How do I know?

We humans are a mess of flaws, foolishness, and contradictions. America is the land where it is self-evident that all men are created equal…and yet we figured it was fine to own a bunch of them, and nevermind women. I believe in the benefits and fundamental necessity of multicultural acceptance, yet racism lives within me, no matter how hard I try to root it out. And at their height, even as they were inspiring Rene Descartes, Baruch Spinoza, and John Locke to pioneer the principles of freedom and democracy, the Dutch were also butchering people in Indonesia and putting South Africa on the path to apartheid.

This global wave of Far Right brutality and illiberalism seems unstoppable. And it has valid roots in the anger at an unfair system, and fears of Tomorrow. But a more informed, more mature populace will realize that this is exactly the wrong response to those threats. I had hoped the Netherlands would follow that better path.

However, even if the largest party yesterday was one of xenophobic foolishness, they still received only a slice of the total vote. Now it remains to be seen if the larger, higher minded majority can form a coalition to rule the Netherlands with the wisdom it has shown in the past, and the grace it will need in the future.