Marjolein Faber, the prospective minister for Asylum, Immigration and Integration, had a script and she was sticking to it. The MP for the far-right PVV party no longer believed that refugees were complicit in a programme of omvolking, or the deliberate destruction of native people and cultures in Europe through “population replacement”. She had been “perhaps too fierce” in her critique of the government’s asylum policy, but now she was on the verge of taking a seat in cabinet she had “no problem at all with fully distancing myself from [the term]”. “My party and I despise everything to do with the Nazis and their ideology,” she said.
Four years ago Faber was rebuked by the prime minister, Mark Rutte, for arguing in a Senate debate that the government was pursuing an “agenda of omvolking“. Rutte explained that the word derived from the German Umvolkung, the Nazi-era term for the perceived dilution of German identity, which needed to be corrected through a process of “re-Germanisation”. Ethnic Germans in areas such as the Sudetenland in Czechoslovakia were in danger of being assimilated into an alien culture, and the only way to save them was to retake these regions by force. Similar arguments were advanced to justify Russia’s occupation of Crimea in 2014 and the full-scale invasion of Ukraine eight years later.
Faber was speaking at the Dutch parliamentary hearings to grill the ministerial candidates – a new procedure intended to make the appointments more transparent. Along with the PVV’s other candidates, she was repeatedly questioned about whether her policies would be guided by a racist conspiracy theory. Her reply sounded like a retraction (and I have to admit I described it as such), but on closer examination it was a minor shift in her position. “I don’t believe in a plan or conspiracy,” she said. “But there are very concerning demographic developments… [and] it is very legitimate to have big concerns about them.” The core of the message had not changed, just the paper it was wrapped in.
But Faber’s change of tone wrong-footed her inquisitors. The PVV is renowned for never regretting or apologising for anything. Geert Wilders spent a decade in court defending his right to insult Moroccans and hurled more insults at the judges when he lost. Faber’s colleagues, such as Reinette Klever and Chris Jansen, split hairs and shuffled their feet when invited to distance themselves from omvolking terminology, but solemnly promised that they would not use such language as ministers. Klever claimed it was a demographic term rather than a theory, relying on a skewed interpretation of a United Nations report into Europe’s increasingly geriatric population. Jansen said he stood behind the infamous “fewer Moroccans” rallying cry that landed Wilders in court, but would not tolerate it at his ministry because it might create an unsafe working environment.
Faber’s script worked because it blunted the attacks of the MPs’ panel and drew them into a semantic debate that ignored the practical consequences of having far-right ministers in government. She batted away question after question about the language and theory of population replacement by simply stating that she would not utter the same words as a minister. It was the linguistic equivalent of Wilders’s pledge to put his plans to close mosques and leave the European Union into cold storage. And it meant Faber entirely evaded being scrutinised on the details of the “strictest asylum policy ever”. Hardly anybody questioned her on the implications of freezing asylum applications, abolishing the quota system for local councils enshrined in the so-called “spreading law”, or barring settled refugees from social housing, all measures that will put more pressure on a chronically overstrained accommodation system. The growing threat of a new crisis at the Ter Apel reception centre, where conditions two years ago were condemned as “inhumane” by the Red Cross and a baby died while sleeping on the floor of a sports hall, went unmentioned. Nobody asked how soon the enforced deportations mentioned on page four of the coalition agreement will begin.
Geert Wilders is no fool. He understands that Dutch voters are mostly unmoved by academic discussions about dubious racial theories. Faber parried the opposition’s questions with a verbal sleight of hand, while Wilders could dismiss them as “sour leftists” obsessed with terminology. “You want us to call omvolking a conspiracy theory? Fine, here you go.” Such terms are disposable for Wilders, as long as his candidates “speak the language of ordinary men and women”. Language matters, sure, but what really matters in politics is whether you can claim to have delivered on your promises. For Wilders the only thing that really counts – that has ever counted – is whether he can continue to champion the cause of shutting the borders and punishing immigrants for causing society’s problems. And that when he fails, he can blame the “sour leftists” for denying the will of the people.
WordsForPress 