It was a direct and unequivocal threat that right-wing populist MP Pepijn van Houwelingen from the Forum for Democracy (FvD) made in the Dutch parliament on Wednesday. “Your time will come because there will be tribunals,” he hurled at colleague Sjoerd Sjoerdsma. The left-wing liberal had asked van Houwelingen to distance himself from statements made by his party leader Thierry Baudet. He had previously compared the government’s corona policy with the Nazi policy in a tweet and referred to the unvaccinated as the “new Jews”.
A threat with “tribunals” in which war criminals are generally tried – in the middle of the parliament? Even if the Netherlands have recently got used to increasingly heated arguments and a certain brutalization of customs in The Hague, this is a new low point in political culture. Sjoerdsma saw a limit crossed. He said indignantly that he had not experienced anything similar in nine years as a member of parliament. She was ashamed of Baudet, the left-liberal parliamentary group leader Sigrid Kaag had previously declared, “he hurts people with his words”.
The Dutch right is radicalizing. This is especially true for Baudet, who has risen to the rescue of all freedom-lovers from an allegedly threatening corona dictatorship including Orwell-like total surveillance by means of QR codes and who is increasingly appearing as if he is preparing for an imminent final battle. He considers the corona virus to be harmless.
The political competition watched with disgust and some fascination as Baudet shed the shell of the nostalgic conservative and turned out to be a right-wing extremist hardliner. He met the right-wing French politician Jean-Marie Le Pen and the American alt-right propagandist Jared Taylor, performed at the Flemish right-wing extremist meeting Ijzerwake and is extremely skilled at the art of Dog whistle, that is, playing with terms, symbols and memes through which identitary circles communicate with each other and express their attitudes.
Fact-free statements on climate change and vaccination
He recently wrote the word Holocaust in quotation marks. He just shrugs his shoulders about obvious racism in his supporters and in the youth organization of the FvD. Most recently he came out with fact-free and increasingly extremist statements on climate change and vaccination and is now calling for “resistance”. His party, the FvD, sits in parliament with five members after several splits.
How do you deal with such people? Ignoring your provocations so as not to pay more attention to them? Or face up every time to defend against the beginnings? Left-wing politician Sigrid Kaag admitted on Twitter that it was a “dilemma”. Justice Minister Ferdinand Grapperhaus stated “hurtful words against the Jews and the Jewish community”, nothing more. The Netherlands have not yet found a recipe.
But some consider the measure to be more than full, it is time for clearer announcements. “The time has now come, we have to make it very clear that this is not ok and that we have to do something about it,” said the Jewish columnist Natascha van Weezel in the daily public service talk show Op1 after the uproar in parliament. Van Weezel reported hundreds of threats and abuse that she received from right-wing circles. The author and FvD expert Chris Aalberts says that Baudet’s statements are now a “danger to the state”. The politician has long since left the parliamentary route. His questionable strategy must be denounced. In fact, van Houwelingen’s “tribunals” could also be more than a threat: the one supported by Baudet Activist group “Police for Freedom” has founded an “independent” police force with its own “research service”. Baudet himself has long been calling for a kind of parallel state with its own institutions.
But what exactly should be done to stop him and his supporters is largely perplexed. In Parliament almost anything can be said under the protection of freedom of expression without the Bureau interrupting the MEPs. The incumbent parliamentary chairman could have sanctioned van Houwelingen, but did not. And what about the media that offer Baudet a lot of space? The response from Op1 was significant. Do not invite people who threatened others, was the reason on Wednesday evening why no representative of the FvD was invited to the show.
The way through the courts is arduous
However, the editorial management hastened to add that this was by no means to be understood as a permanent exclusion of Baudet, as a kind of “cordon sanitaire”. In other words, if the right-wing MP is not threatening anyone, he should step back in front of the television camera.
In the end, the only thing left is the judiciary. You can expect charges of sedition or the like, which judges will have to deal with. However, the evidence is not easy, warned the chief prosecutor Rutger Jeuken in Op1. For example, van Houwelingen must be specifically proven to have planned a criminal offense. Years ago, the trial of Geert Wilders showed how laborious such evidence can be. For a hate speech against Moroccans, the critic of Islam received only one conviction for “insulting a group”. He is by no means purified. Wilders also recently threatened political opponents with a “tribunal” in a video.