by Bruce Bawer
A timely reminder to the elites that rural deplorables exist.
During the year or so between my first visit to the Netherlands, in
August 1997, and my move to Amsterdam from New York, I not only put
myself through a one-man crash course in Dutch; I also read every book I
could find about Dutch history, society, art and culture, customs and
character. But one key fact that I somehow missed entirely, and that
only recently found its way onto my radar, is that the Netherlands is,
after the U.S., the world’s largest exporter of agricultural products.
At first blush it seems impossible. Yes, the U.S. being #1 is a
no-brainer: nobody has anywhere near as much first-class farmland. But
the Netherlands, which is 1/231 the size of the U.S.? Really? To travel
across the Randstad, the crescent-shaped urban conglomeration that
contains most of the major cities, is to imagine that this little land
must be a significant agriculture importer. How, then, can it
possibly beat out giants like Russia, Canada, Brazil, Indonesia, and
Australia? Well, as it happens, most of those giants are near the top of
the export list: Brazil for coffee; Indonesia, palm oil; China, rice;
Canada, oats. But if they’re not at the very top of the list, it’s
because Russia and Canada are largely tundra, Brazil and Indonesia
mostly jungle, and Australia almost entirely desert.
But the Netherlands? What’s the secret? One word: innovation. Which
shouldn’t come as a surprise. Much of its current farmland wouldn’t
exist if not for the reclamation of land from the sea – a practice that
is now some seven hundred years old and that, thanks to extraordinary
technological innovations during the previous century, has more than
doubled the country’s area.
Last year, in an article for Dutch Review, Jesse
Rintoul summed up some of the more impressive recent examples of
innovations in Dutch farming. The University of Wageningen, thanks to
“an alternative soil composite made of coco peat and rock wool,” managed
to grow bananas in the Netherlands’ not-exactly-banana-republic
climate. A company called Nijsen/Granico produces “about 90,000 tons of
animal feed a year entirely from human food waste.” And in Rotterdam,
there’s a “floating farm” that feeds cows “with leftovers from local
restaurants.” The Dutch, notes Rintoul, have sought to “produce twice as
much food using half as many resources.”
You’d think the Dutch would be immensely proud of these
accomplishments – proud to be able not only to feed themselves but to
sell their agricultural products all over the world. Alas, during the
last couple of decades, as the Netherlands’ agricultural sector has
grown, so has the number of Dutch legislators who either are hard-core
environmentalists or are pathetically eager to obey the globalists at
the UN, EU, and World Economic Forum, who are using climate- scare
rhetoric to solidify their power.
So it is that while the Dutch government has done precious little to
reverse the alarming changes wrought by mass Islamic immigration in the
Netherlands’ largest cities, it’s chosen to take on – with well-nigh
unprecedented imperiousness – its agricultural sector, to which no
Dutchman should express anything but gratitude.
The conflict bubbled over in 2019, when a research institute
complained that farmers – or, rather, cows – were responsible for an
excessively high level of Dutch nitrogen emissions. Soon left-wingers
were speaking solemnly of “the Dutch nitrogen crisis.” The European
Court of Justice accused the kingdom of violating EU environmental
regulations. A member of the lower house in The Hague proposed cutting
in half the number of animals on Dutch farms. The same year, 2019, saw
passage of the Climate Act, which called for closing down thousands of
farms with the purported goal of cutting nitrogen emissions in half by
2030. Last year the Agriculture Ministry issued a draconian order that
called for a well-nigh total halt to farming in some parts of the
country.
In response to all this bullying, the farmers took action. Thousands
of them used their tractors to block roads, impede food deliveries, and
surround government buildings. There were many arrests. But Marine Le
Pen supported them. So, in a 2022 speech, did Donald Trump, who
condemned the Dutch “climate tyranny.” Having lost support from the
Christian Democratic Appeal (CDA), the political party that had
traditionally championed agricultural interests, the farmers and their
allies formed the BoerBurgerBeweging (BBB), or Farmer-Citizen
Movement, which quickly drew into its ranks conservatives who resented
the international globalists for riding roughshod over national
policy-making processes that were none of their damn business.
When I was first reading all those books about the Dutch, one point
that was made repeatedly was that they were a highly civilized people
whose political debate (and, for that matter, corporate decision-making)
was characterized by amicable deliberation and compromise. Impassioned
mass protests of the kind that are routine in France were uncommon.
Power plays were nearly unheard of. When gay people began to call for
same-sex marriage, there wasn’t rage on one side and hysteria on the
other – there were temperate discussions. In 2001, as a result, the
Netherlands became the first place on earth to institute same-sex
marriage.
But from the beginning, the showdown over agriculture was different.
It wasn’t a matter of Dutch people hashing over an issue with other
Dutch people. Instead, politicians and bureaucrats, at the behest of the
UN, EU, and WEF, were issuing ultimatums to Dutch farmers – and, to
everyone’s surprise, the farmers, instead of rolling over and accepting
their fate, put up a mass resistance that, at it core, was of a piece
with the British vote for Brexit, the American election of Trump, the
protests by “yellow jackets” in France, and the truckers’ uprising in
Canada.
The trucker parallel makes particular sense, given that, as Dutch commentator Eva Vlaardingerbroek put it in a recent YouTube interview
with Jordan Peterson, the Netherlands and Canada “are both pilot
countries for the WEF,” with Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte, like his
Canadian counterpart Justin Trudeau, frequently receiving praise from
WEF chairman Klaus Schwab for his abject servility – sorry, commendable
cooperation. At the behest of globalists, charged Vlaardingerbroek, the
Dutch government was “fighting a war of attrition against our farmers.”
The wishes of Dutch citizens, long known for their proud liberty and
uncompromising self-government, now mattered less than directives
originating far – well, not all that far (Brussels, Strasbourg, Geneva) –
from the kingdom’s borders.
Well, that all changed on March 15. In provincial elections, which
showed the highest turnout in years, the BBB won 137 out of 572 seats – a
stunning victory. In every one of the Netherlands’ twelve provinces,
the BBB became the top party while Rutte’s VVD lost 17 of its 80 seats.
The VVD’s partners in the governing coalition all experienced major
shrinkage, too: the D66 lost 9 of its 41 seats, the CDA dropped from 72
to 43, and the CU declined from 31 to 22. Since the provincial councils
will proceed, on May 30, to elect the Senate – the upper house of the
Dutch legislature – the BBB will now (barring some freak development)
become the largest party in that body.
News media in the Netherlands and abroad used the word “shock” to
describe the BBB’s upset win. It was as much of an upheaval as the
Brexit and Trump victories, and like them it provided metropolitan
globalists with a timely reminder that the deplorables exist. Not that
the BBB didn’t find support in the cities, too: the German newspaper Die Welt noted
that its urban vote count was impressive, an apparent reflection of a
widespread feeling “that the government cares about all kinds of things
but not the prosperity and security of ordinary citizens.”
Needless to say, the BBB’s triumph means that the government’s plan
to stick it to the farmers is almost certainly dead. But where does that
leave the Islamic crisis? Will the farmers be on the right side of that
issue? Geert Wilders, the face of public resistance to the Islamization
of the Netherlands, seems to think so: as soon as the contours of the
March 15 vote became clear, Wilders tweeted his congratulations to the
BBB for having crushed Rutte’s government and declared the readiness of
his Freedom Party (PVV) to work together with the farmers. Alas, the PVV
ended up losing 6 out of 40 seats, while Thierry Baudet’s
immigration-critical FvD had a disastrous night, dropping from an
impressive 86 seats to a mere 15. Sad news, that. Still, at the moment,
for the most part, things do seem to be looking up for the
anti-globalist cause in the Netherlands.
Bruce Bawer is a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center.
Source: https://www.frontpagemag.com/in-a-dutch-election-globalists-lose-big/
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