Is Anyone Answering Right Wing Populism In Europe?

I just spent some time in Tuscany with one of my oldest friends, Toon Janssen, a guy I met in the '70s when I was living in Amsterdam. Toon's from decidedly working class Amsterdam Noord and he's been working as a school teacher in the crime-ridden Bijlmer. He doesn't have a single white student in his classes.

Inevitably our attention turned to Dutch neo-fascist, Geert Wilders who-- post trial-- has seen his following and his power grow immensely in the "liberal" Netherlands. In Europe "liberal" usually means neo-liberal (i.e.- conservative). The Dutch government is a neo-liberal right-wing coalition of their version of America's corporatist Republican Party and corporatist Democratic Party. Wilders is adamantly anti-immigrant, particularly anti-Muslim immigrant. And the Dutch are buying his racist claptrap... albeit mostly for economic reasons. The economy is tight and the jobs market sucks. Wilders' pitch against migrants from Morocco and Turkey sounds a lot like Steve King's pitch against Mexicans-- although even worse.

Toon wrote up some of his ideas for us this afternoon: "Today it was made clear by the Centraal Planbureau that the deficit made a rise of 0.2% to 3.7 and unemployment will rise to 9% soon to come, breaking all records. In fact now it's officially exposed what all Dutch people already know. Wilders makes gain out of this. He was little in the news these days, but that was a strategy. Without showing up or making statements his star is rising immensely. But now he calls Rutte a champion In destroying jobs and ruining Holland. He calls him the worst premier Holland ever had. He wants no cuts at all while the government wants to cut 16 billion euros + even 6 more to commit to Rehn's wishes. But he says Rutte destroys jobs (150,000 gone in just one year while Romanian and Polish workers take over), our money is slowly becoming worthless, inflation rises skyhigh and export is so much less, no investments in Dutch companies while we are an export oriented country-- all the result of cuts, and cuts and cuts, which is the policy. And not only cause of cuts but also of raising taxes, what Howie always calls Paul Ryan's Austerity Regime in America. This cabinet wants to frighten people about losing their jobs and while they are frightened new tax rises are inaugurated. All signals are turned to red, he says. Belgian economy is even better than the Dutch, even while that country was without a government! What Holland needs according to Wilders is lower taxes + no support of European countries like Greece etc. + also we better buy Dutch products so our companies get more air. New elections are vital to get rid of Rutte and his 'socialist' gang since Holland is almost drowning (a statement that appeals to the Dutch a lot), new elections even already tomorrow. I'm pretty much sure that Wilders star will grow even while he does almost nothing. The things he says are very appealing to anybody who lost security or stands at the edge of losing it. A lot of people are very afraid indeed and the political athmosphere in Holland is quite negative indeed. All too bad."

Cross the Channel for a moment and I'll tell you a little something about a big story in England that you probably missed in America. It's about how the Labour Party just tried-- and failed-- to articulate England's own problem with foreign workers. The corporate media, on an anti-Labour rampage at the moment, made sure Labour's message would be mangled beyond comprehension, which isn't very difficult while the inept and stumbling Ed Miliband is party Leader. From the Guardian coverage:

Labour has backed down on claims that Tesco and Next are examples of "unscrupulous employers" over their use of foreign workers.

The party became embroiled in a row after the shadow immigration minister, Chris Bryant, briefed newspapers that he would criticise both firms for favouring foreign workers over Britons. But just hours before he was due to give a keynote speech on the issue, Bryant was forced to retreat from his case as Tesco and Next accused him of making basic errors. The senior Labour MP insisted he had meant more generally that "sometimes there are negative sides of migration in terms of the labour market."

The controversy has added weight to concerns that Labour is failing to articulate its key policies this summer. It has also overshadowed Bryant's other messages about the exploitation of foreign workers and sham marriages.

Bryant was forced to clarify his position on BBC Radio 4's Today programme, saying the extracts had not conveyed the fullness of his argument.

In the text of his speech, due to be delivered on Monday but leaked over the weekend, Bryant had said: "It is unfair that unscrupulous employers whose only interest seems to be finding labour as cheaply as possible will recruit workers in large numbers in low-wage countries in the EU... Take the case of Tesco … they recently decided to move a distribution centre in the south-east. The new centre is larger and employs more people. But it has been alleged that the staff at the original site were told that they could only move to the new centre if they took a cut in pay. The result? A bigger percentage of the staff at the new centre are from eastern bloc countries."

Speaking later on the BBC, Bryant said he used the word "unscrupulous about another category of people", not Tesco and Next. He said those firms actually "often go the extra mile" to employ British workers, but can find it difficult to get local staff.

"Both Tesco and Next have had to use non-UK nationals in their new operations … in relatively large numbers. My question is, and always was going to be and still remains today, when we have 1 million unemployed youngsters under the age of 24 and a very high level of long-term unemployment, is there a way we can regulate labour markets better so foreign workers are not exploited, as happens in some cases, not specifically Tesco and Next, and also make sure local workers stand a better chance?"

He added: "I don't think it is unscrupulous to employ migrant workers."

Bryant was also pulled up on a mistake in the speech suggesting Tesco had opened a new distribution centre in Kent, when it should have been Dagenham, in Essex.

Challenged on his errors, Bryant told his interviewer: "You're wanting to get into very specific details which are contested and I'm not sure that's that fruitful."

OK, back to Holland... or at least to Wilders' negative influence on Europe. The Economist noted this week that where Holland was once at the center of the movement towards European integration, Wilders' populism has pulled the country in the opposite direction. Last month Wilders announced he would hold talks with right-wing parties in other countries about forming an anti-Europe bloc in the European Parliament elections this autumn. He has since spoken with Marine Le Pen’s National Front in France, a party similar to Wilders’s Freedom Party, and with the fascist-leaning/racist Northern League in Italy. Having shattered the multi-cultural Netherlands, which once brokered the integration of Europe, Wilders is now proposing to undertake Europe’s dismantling.

Wilders’s party has taken advantage of rising Dutch anger over the euro crisis in the past two years by shifting the focus of its criticism from Islam to the EU. That strategy failed in elections last autumn, when the Freedom Party lost seats, but it seems to be paying off now. Dutch Euroscepticism is reaching unheard-of heights: a Gallup survey in early June found voters split evenly, 39% each, on whether to exit the EU entirely. Most recent political polls put the Freedom Party in a close scrum for the second-largest share of the vote, and one poll has it in the lead. The other strongly Eurosceptic party, the far-left Socialists, is doing nearly as well.

This spells trouble for the government, a coalition between the centre-right Liberals and centre-left Labour, for whom leaving the EU is not an option. Mark Rutte, the Liberal prime minister and a polished salesman, has been pitching voters a mixed message: on the one hand, the EU is the key to solving the economic crisis; on the other, the EU’s excesses must be tamed. In Germany in June he echoed the aphorism of Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, that Europe’s economies are “all in the same boat.” At the same time, his foreign minister, Frans Timmermans, was unveiling a list of 54 policy areas that the Netherlands believes should stay in national hands rather than be handed to the EU, and declaring that the time of an ever-closer union in all policy areas is past.

Anti-European feeling in the Netherlands is rooted in the deteriorating economy. The country weathered the first years of the euro crisis relatively unscathed, maintaining its AAA credit rating and a 4.5% unemployment rate, the lowest in Europe. With their privileged economic position, the Dutch blamed profligate southern Europeans for demanding support from the north. In 2011 they led the AAA countries (along with Germany, Finland and Austria) that demanded Europe harden its 3% budget-deficit limit as part of the price for that support. Mr Rutte still claims the strong enforcement powers granted to Olli Rehn, the EU’s budget commissioner, as a personal achievement.

Yet as deficit-cutting progressed across Europe, the Dutch economy turned south. It has now been in recession for six quarters, with output 1.8% lower in May compared with a year earlier and unemployment rising to 6.8 %. Every economic projection has proved too optimistic. As revenues shrank, the Dutch missed the 3% deficit target they had themselves helped establish. Humiliating visits from Mr Rehn demanding ever-greater austerity have lent weight to Mr Wilders’s charges that the government is slashing spending and raising taxes merely to satisfy Brussels.

During his latest visit in June, Mr Rehn demanded that the Netherlands push through an additional €6 billion ($8 billion) in austerity measures in 2014, on top of those already planned. Mr Rutte will have to pass a revised budget in September though it is not clear whether he can. The Liberal-Labour coalition has a comfortable majority in the lower house of parliament, but is in the minority in the Senate, a sleepy constitutional body whose technical power to block the budget the opposition has now decided to use.

Worse, Mr Rehn’s demand has blown up a “social accord” reached in April, in which the government, labour unions, and business groups all signed on to a budget deal along with a set of labour-market reforms. The accord was a classic example of the old Dutch “polder model” of collective decision-making by different social stakeholders, and was intended to create support for the budget that would induce minority parties to vote for it. But the unions have now withdrawn from the deal. More remarkably, the powerful head of the country’s main business lobby has also come out against the cuts, recommending that the government demand to be granted an exception.

Should Mr Rutte manage to push through the cuts, it could improve Mr Wilders’s chances in the European elections. Mr Timmermans, one of the most pro-European voices in the cabinet, wants to turn the debate away from whether voters like or dislike the EU towards the role the EU ought to be playing. But with public resentment running high, that sort of subtlety will probably be lost.

Here's an ugly choice: choosing between Wilders-style right-wing populism or the bankster-backed Establishment self-serving, neo-liberal claptrap. Europe will really be just like America then! Except they don't have Sarah Palin, or anything like her. Who do you think paid her to do this, Rand Paul or Chris Christie?