It was a strong example. Immediately after the announcement that the threatened D66 leader Sigrid Kaag would shed a tear on TV because her daughters fear for her safety, her critics began to crow triumphantly. In The Telegraph scorned columnist Marianne Zwagerman about “the exodus of the Kaag elite” and Kaag’s half-Palestinian daughters who “cannot even formulate three sentences in Dutch on national television”.
Elite hatred with a ‘nativist’ slant, it seems to fit the book perfectly The Return of the Native. Can Liberalism Safeguard Us Against Nativism? that Professor of Sociology Jan Willem Duyvendak recently published with his colleagues Josip Kesic and Timothy Stacey. He recently launched it in New York, where he resides at the Graduate Center of The City University of New York.
What is “nativism”? In the book, the authors analyze the Dutch political discourse as dominated by the idea that ‘real’ Dutch people, understood as a homogeneous group, should be the norm in politics and society. According to Duyvendak, the political success of that romantic-nationalist idea cannot be explained by purely ‘objective factors’ such as migration or economic globalization. Rather, right-wing parties have successfully established a dominant ‘narrative’ about Dutch citizenship.
The authors successively dismantle related ‘myths’, such as the unhistorical image that the Netherlands embraced a naive ‘multiculturalism’ that ‘failed’, resulting in a populist reaction. That image of the recent past was established when ‘monoculturalism’ started to set the tone after Pim Fortuyn. In reality, the Netherlands never pursued a consistent, unambiguous multicultural policy. It is one example of several in the book, how facts suddenly appear in a new light through a successful political message.
This diagnosis is not new, but its systematic elaboration on the theme of ‘nativism’ is. Duyvendak, who has previously published on social movements and ‘feeling at home’, raises the question himself: why yet another book about this populism?
Don’t you know by now?
“A lot has indeed been said and written about populism, Islamophobia and anti-black racism, but not in their mutual connection. What we show is how these forms of exclusion form an integrated whole in what is internationally called ‘nativism’. The idea that ‘real’ Dutch people are part of an unambiguous cultural community. ‘Islamic criticism’ is not about a theological debate with the Reformed or Catholics, for example, but about the question of whether or not being a Muslim is compatible with what would be ‘real’ Dutch. You can also see this in the excitement about Zwarte Piet. The point is: who is allowed to talk about that tradition and who is not?”
It is precisely its own, liberal elite that is seen as un-Dutch
You sigh a little.
“It is a depressing subject, especially when you look at the consequences: political and social polarization and intolerance. Also towards ‘native’ Dutch people, because being born here is not the criterion par excellence for nativists. It’s not about per se foreignersbut om foreigness. The own, liberal elite is then also seen as ‘un-Dutch’, see the aggression against Kaag. They betray our culture, or Dutch nationality.”
In your opinion, objective factors play less of a role than the right-wing ‘narrative’ that appeals to people. But why is that so appealing?
“Yes, that’s the big question. Globalisation, migration, economic uncertainty, the effects of a government retreating are all relevant factors for the rise of nativism. But as explanations they fall short. They are necessary conditions, but not a decisive cause. They do not yet explain why voters are drawn to the radical right and not, for example, to the SP or other left-wing parties.”
Once the explanation was: the right thrives best on this ‘breeding ground’, a term that is missing in your book.
“A term like ‘breeding ground’ suggests that under certain circumstances nativism flourishes anyway, as a natural development. That’s just the question. It is also always about concrete, local interpretations that should appeal to the imagination. Germany took in a million refugees, but anti-migrant sentiment is no stronger there than in France, which had only 40,000. Or look at Spain or Greece, where left-wing parties emerged for a while in times of crisis. Moreover, whether migrants integrate well and are economically successful is also not decisive, see the history of European anti-Semitism. The better Jews integrated, the more virulent nineteenth-century anti-Semitism became.”
Fortuyn got groups to the polls that had never voted before
How come then?
“It seems a bit of a circular argument: that the radical right is so successful is due to the success of their narrative. But it cannot be fully explained by objective factors. Right-wing parties have succeeded in interpreting social developments in a convincing manner for large groups. You can see it now at BBB, with farmers as true Dutch people who are oppressed by the elite. That was very cleverly done, you have to give them that.”
Why does that narrative appeal so much to the imagination in the Netherlands?
“It would have made a difference if social democracy had not embraced the Third Way, market thinking and neoliberalism in the 1990s. But what certainly also plays a role is that since depillarization the Netherlands is no longer a ‘country of minorities’, but that a fairly large, stable majority has emerged here with a liberal-progressive self-image, which, remarkably enough, is not necessarily tolerant . Certainly not in relation to minorities that are suspected to be less enthusiastic about gender equality, for example. And no doubt there is also an anthropological or existential side. In times of uncertainty, people are prone to divide-and-conquer rhetoric, where a concrete group is ‘blamed’ for what goes wrong. Migrants, or the elite. It still has great appeal.”
Isn’t that a denial of the conscious choice of voters? You can also say: it is right-wing emancipation.
“You can have a whole political science discussion or political parties reflect what voters think, or whether they lead the way and voters follow them. I am more of that second school, the interpretation that politicians give to social developments is reflected in the population after a while. People are given a perspective, a way of seeing society and themselves.
“That does not detract from their legal capacity or emancipation, which certainly plays a role. Fortuyn got groups to the polls that had never voted before. That is the emancipation of mainly practically trained people, which you now also see at BBB. The 1960s have also arrived for them.”
The radical right has the idea that as a citizen you are attacked from all sides
Didn’t populist protest parties exist back then?
“Yes, but at the time they still made themselves small compared to the established power, the current ones no longer do that. The message now is rather: who do those people in the west think they are? We provide their food, they depend on us! Protest parties are now much more assertive, like the student movement back then. Everyone in the Netherlands is now articulate.”
What do you think successful left-wing populism would look like?
“Not the way it is being tried now, that is too reactive. Parties such as GroenLinks argue against right-wing nativism that tolerance or respect for human rights are the ‘real’ Dutch values. But then you go along with nativism, you just give it a different interpretation. Of course you can show that some liberal values come into their own here, but they are not ‘typically Dutch’. If you want to talk about the content, you first have to let go of that discourse about what is and what is not really Dutch. Without that ballast you can exchange experiences and discuss which values we think are important to share.”
In the book you emphasize that people want to belong, ‘belonging’. But with which group, if you reject nativism?
“Empirically speaking, people belong to many groups. Nowadays these are usually ‘lighter’ communities than was the case under pillarization, but there is still a lot of self-organization and caring. You have to build on that, without that test of ‘real’ Dutch nationality.”
The appeal of nativism is that there is a connection to the environment, the city or the soil where people grew up
Some activists and protest movements also seem to be in favor of a somewhat harder model: the struggle against the system, a new communism.
“Of course you have to keep an eye out for socio-economic dividing lines and class relations. But not everything can be reduced to that. Class is also culture. There is a tendency on both the right and the left to make a total package of all kinds of social issues.
“The radical right has the idea that as a citizen you are attacked from all sides: by the elite, by Bill Gates, by transgender people. You are against vaccines and therefore for Putin. This is how you create maximum victimization. But why should it all be connected? You also see it on the left, in a party like Bij1, where the concept of ‘intersectionality’ makes individuals the hub of all kinds of oppression: gender, ethnicity, class. They all ask for recognition, as if they are all equally relevant everywhere and also interconnected.”
What’s against that?
“It leads, among other things, to the requirement to be completely yourself, your countless identities should not be put in the way. But that is impossible and undesirable. The mayor of Amsterdam and other policymakers say this all the time: everyone in this country and this city should be able to be themselves. We all understand that it is mainly about the defense of gay rights or those of other minorities, but as a general policy line that is actually a very strange starting point. You cannot be completely yourself in a shared public space, you are never completely at home there.”
That sounds very classically liberal. A neutral public space?
“Not coercively, as in the French, republican model. Rather in the British liberal tradition. The appeal of nativism is that there is a connection to the environment, the city or the soil where people grew up. I don’t want to detract from that, we all accept that there is such a connection. But the question is: how exclusive is your right to that ground? What do we want to share with others, even if they are not ‘from here’? A substantively valuable conversation about this is not possible as long as you stick to a nativist idea of real and fake Dutch people.”
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