Media: "HAMAS, HAMAS, HAMAS, TERRORISM, STAND WITH ISRAEL, ANTISEMITISM SKYROCKETING"

Elections: Far-right surge

It's only a shock in the sense at this point

I translated the reaction of the general-secretary of the Belgian Workers Party to the Dutch election results. I think it makes a lot of sense.

"The election results in the Netherlands are tough but not unexpected.

The cocktail of decades of blind austerity, bureaucracy and frantic marketization had already exploded on March 15 this year (when the BBB [= right-wing farmers party] won the election).

No lessons were learned from that. On the contrary. The centre-right parties copied the rethoric of the extreme right that keeps on kicking downward, to the people who have the least. Perhaps it is better to look at those at the top?

Public utilities were privatized; public services stripped; education and health care came into the hands of professional managers; child care became a haven for private equity funds; the social rental sector became a shadow of what it had once been; and the Dutch labor market became the most flexible in the entire European Union: one in three workers has a flexible employment contract.

Wages remained static and profits went through the roof. Harrowing poverty increasingly came alongside obscene wealth. Over a million Dutch people sank below the poverty line. According to the latest counts, there are 32 thousand registered homeless people. Food banks that still had a meager six thousand clients in 2008 have seen that number increase to 120 thousand fourteen years later. Meanwhile, the number of millionaires reaches a record high: as many as 317 thousand citizens own assets of more than a million euros.

That is the policy of the last two decades. And those policies were pursued by the centrist parties, all of them. If we want to stop the extreme right, it can only be in breaking with those neoliberal policies, rather than now preaching headlong more of the same centrist policies.

And yes, it can be done. If we dare to look upwards instead of downwards."

To add one thing to this analysis: the collective profit of all non-financial companies in the Netherlands was higher than all the wages combined. Total wages were 330 bilion euros, total profits of non-financial corporations were 344 billion, and profits of financial corporations were 190 billion. That means 534 billion euros in profits for 330 billion in wages.

Shock for Europe

No pretty sure this is fairly normal for Europe.

how is an anti-islam populist winning a shock for europe? what would be shocking about honky devils electing a honky devil?

Death to America

We should just let the sea reclaim us, our country was a mistake.

only shocking to people who didn't expect continental Europe to remain horifically racist

The sad thing is, this isn't even a shocking up-set. The Netherlands has been flirting with right-wing populists ever since the rise of Pim Fortuyn. And PVV was already getting a significant number of seats in previous elections. The balance was now just slightly changed because the neoliberal right in the form of VVD fucked up governing so hard that a fair number of liberal votes that used to go to them ended up getting split between neoliberal center-right (NSC) and neoliberal center-left (GL-PvDA).

In somewhat better news, other chud-adjacent parties (FvD, BBB) also didn't really perform well. Which means any extreme agenda items PVV may have aren't going to survive a coalition.

did the tulip people elect him because he was anti-eu/nato? (apart from being violently racist, which naturally appeals to garden people) Doesn't matter, the eu will pull a meloni on him anyway.

Sometimes I can understand where Brexit is coming from, if I was British, being distinct from Europe would be a point of pride. (Yeah, I'd have to be Bri'ish, but my point stands).

This is the mf they are electing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z_L5rhea4K0

Will this effect the monarchy or are these guys supportive of it?

imagine my shock

Anti-Islam? In 2023?