This presentation explains the right-wing parties' development and support in the Netherlands. Pim Fortuyn Lijst and Wilders has been analyzed and compared on theoretical perspective

1. Lijst Pim Fortuyn (LPF)
Netherlands

2. Pim Fortuyn
• Originally a supporter of communism, Fortuyn later joined the Labour Party
before enentually turning to the right-of-centre in the early 1990s.
• But he was always an iconoclast, and when Fortuyn finally took to the political
stage himself, it was as leader of a nascent party called Leefbaar
Nederland (Liveable Netherlands).
• Pim Fortuyn made his first appearance in the political arena in November
2001, when Leefbaar Nederland chose him as first candidate for the
administrative elections in Rotterdam.
• Leefbaar Nederland choose Pim Fortuyn as their lead candidate in November
2001. All went as planned, for several months, and Leefbaar Nederland began
to climb in the opinion polls - to a possible 25 seats, a great success for a new
party.
• “The Netherlands is full, preferably zero immigration, all borders closed, no-
one enters the country without an iris scan, no Muslim immigrants, the Islam is
a backward culture, Muslims are a dangerous minority in society, deport
Netherlands-Antillians even though they have a Dutch passport “ (Interview
with De Vollkskrant)
• He proposed to modify the article 1 of Dutch constitution, which prohibited
discrimination.
• The day after, Leefbaar Nederland removed Fortuyn as its candidate. This was
the moment when Fortuyn decided to run, alone, for the administrative
elections
• He created a new party called Lijst Pim Fortuyn (LPF),
(I am the savior)

3. • In media reports Fortuyn is referred to as a 'maverick’(başına buyruk)
and 'an outsider’
• He was part of the political class in the Netherlands, with enough
academic background for at least a junior ministry, if he had kept to a
standard career path.
• In the years before the election, Fortuyn was a well-known talk-show
guest, columnist, and speaker.
• He wrote several books about the decline of the country, and the
failings of the elite - not a very unusual theme, as such. "Against the
Islamisation of Netherlands Culture"
• This is what set Fortuyn apart from the other anti-immigration
nationalists among the political class: he did not hide behind
'integration problems' as an excuse for limiting immigration, he
promoted a fundamental anti-immigrant cultural nationalism.
• He was not isolated from national politics, but part of it. Of course
Fortuyn shocked people, even in the Netherlands, by his lifestyle - by
telling interviewers explicit details of his sexual activities, for instance.
• Then, on May 6th, Fortuyn was shot and killed in the car park of public
broadcaster NOS. His killer was apprehended within minutes and
police rushed to publish a description of the man. He was not Muslim,
as many at first suspected. Volkert van de Graaf was a white Dutch
environmental activist.

4. • Established on 14 February 2002
• The party leader: Pim Fortuyn
• After the break between the party leader Pim Fortuyn and the Party Leefbaar
Nederland
• 2002-2008
• When Pim Fortuyn decided to found the LPF in February 2002, the elections were
only three months away.
• With no party organisation present, he had to rely on a number of friends to set up
an administrative centre and recruit sufficient candidates to contest the elections.
• Although the LPF established a very elaborate party organisation, including a youth
organisation and a think tank, the level of organisational institutionalisation
remained low.
• Especially the members of the party elite failed to identify with the party, putting
their own interests before those of the party. (lack of willingness to achieve a
common goal’)
• Many people had agreed to join the LPF list or become a (junior) minister, because
they were personal friends of Fortuyn.
• Others had signed up after they heard Fortuyn speak and strongly identified with
his message and persona.(Fortuyn-feeling)
Lijst Pim Fortuyn (LPF)
At your service!

5. • Commentators outside the Netherlands have tended to see Mr Fortuyn's
rise as part of a growth of far-right politics across Western Europe, likening
him to Jörg Haider in Austria and Jean-Marie Le Pen in France.
• Mr Fortuyn preferred to liken himself to Margaret Thatcher or Italy's Silvio
Berlusconi.
• Certainly it is untypical of far-right politics to be openly gay, to complain
about Islam mainly because of its social liberalism, and to worry about
immigration for fear that it would make Dutch society less tolerant.
• The manner of his murder, apparently by a militant vegan enraged by Mr
Fortuyn's willingness to legalise mink-farming.

6. • His political beliefs were summed up in three words:
• liberalism,
• populism
• nationalism.
• Criticism of the welfare state was central to his liberalism,
• Humaliation for the political elite central to his populism
• Rejection of European integration to his nationalism.
• At the same time, Fortuyn was an advocate of libertarian ethical
rights,he was violently opposed to Islamisation and immigration, and
was prone to a sense of nostalgia with respect for the recent past (the
1950s rather than 1968).

7. • Fortuyn ran on an anti-Islam, anti-immigrant platform. He claimed
that Islam presented a threat to Western values of openness and
liberalism, and wanted to restrict all immigration to the Netherlands.
• In national-populism, the ‘people’ and the nation tend to overlap: the
nation is not equal to the citizenry but to the ‘people’, a term with an
historical, ethnic connotation.
• The national-populism of Fortuyn and Wilders calls for the
disappearance of an ‘alien’ minority culture to preserve a mythical,
homogeneous ‘Dutchness’.

8. Fortuyn’s reputation got 26 largely
unknown candidates elected to the 150-
seat Dutch parliament, and put them into
power in a short-lived coalition
government. From zero to 26 seats was a
record for any new party in the
Netherlands, let alone a party with a dead
leader.
Pim Fortuyn got 17% of the vote in the May
2002 elections in the Netherlands
That was about the same percentage as Jean-
Marie Le Pen in the French Presidential
election, a few weeks earlier.

9. • The first Balkenende cabinet lasted for only 87 days, and new
elections were called for 2003, in which the LPF, without its
charismatic founder, started its stark decline that ended with an
official dissolution in 2008.
• But Pim Fortuyn’s ideas have fundamentally changed the shape of
Dutch politics. He gave voice to an entire class of voters who felt
disenfranchised by the established political order. He opened a vein of
populism in the Dutch body politic, the same vein Geert Wilders has
so successfully tapped since.
•

10. Voters for LPF
• not protest voters, but an ideological voting block with a clear ideology:
Holland Blank!, White Holland
• majority with a racist view of the state, and the xenophobic anti-immigrant
block which largely coincides with the Fortuyn voters.
• They believed the Dutch people to be inherently superior, in possessing an
exclusive and inalienable right to the Netherlands, which the others lack.
• They found it legitimate, to exclude the rest from the Netherlands and its
wealth.
• The Lijst Pim Fortuyn did indeed seek immigration restrictions on ethnic
grounds. They supported inherited citizenship, meaning that a child can
acquire citizenship purely by its biological relationship to its parents. Those
are the four racist characteristics of ethno-nationalism listed above.

11. • The Lijst Pim Fortuyn also proposed racist policies - another reason to
categorise the party as racist. The party advocated a special age limit on
marriages with foreigners: 21, not 18. This is explicitly designed to limit the
flow of partners from Turkey and Morocco.
• The party also wanted income limits on marriages, according to the
nationality of the partner
• No foreign partner would come to the Netherlands to enter into a
partnership, unless the Netherlands partner has an income 30% above the
national minimum wage.
• The test applies only when the incoming partner is non-Dutch. These rules
also apply to so-called 'gay marriages' - registered partnerships with the
same legal status as a marriage.
• The Lijst Pim Fortuyn also sought age limits on family reunification: legal
immigrants can at present bring their 'children' to the Netherlands,
meaning their children under 18. The LPF wanted to lower that to 12.
• They proposes the integration courses for immigrants which costed €
6000, it should be paid in advance.

12. • The DOGS!!! THE DIRTY FILTHY TYPHOID MUSLIM DOGS!!! SEND THEM TO
THE GALLOWS!!! DROWN THEM IN PIGS BLOOD!!!
• It is time to arise. All the sick left-wingers and immigrant pigs will pay for
this!! Fortuyn is dead, officially confirmed. It is time to burn them.
Nederland Erwache !!!
• It is very clear what is behind this!!! This country has been taken over by a
filthy Muslim Jihad. We must allow no Muslim to survive here!!!
• Take care LEFTWING HOLLAND your days are numbered. Pim was and is
our man, Pim stands for freedom, freedom for the DUTCH PEOPLE. Death
to the traitors.
• "Isn't it time that the Netherlands is once again for the NETHERLANDERS.
Isn't it time that foreigners learn to obey the Netherlands laws - if not, send
them home, that is better for us. THE NETHERLANDS FOR THE
NETHERLANDERS"

13. Radical Right in Netherlands
• For many decades radical right parties were unsuccessful in the
Netherlands. While radical right parties in Austria, Belgium, France, and
Italy flourished in the 1980s and 1990s, the Dutch CD never mustered more
than a couple of percentage points in national elections and had collapsed
by the mid-1990s (Dorussen 2004; Mudde and Van Holsteyn 2000).
• This changed when Pim Fortuyn founded the LPF three months prior to the
2002 elections. His party did extremely well in the polls, even after the
murder of Fortuyn on 6 May 2002, and gained 26 seats in the Second
Chamber of the Dutch parliament.
• Populism has been around in the Netherlands, it also affected some
centrist parties, such as the and the Christian Democrats and People’s Party
for Freedom and Democracy.

14. • In 2005 Geert Wilders, an independent MP who had left the center-right People’s
Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD) in 2004, founded a new, one-man party,
the Party for Freedom (PVV).
• The new party’s ideology was, from the beginning, anti-immigration – most
specifically against Islamic immigration .
• This was similar to the combination of anti-immigration ideology and liberalism
already observed in Pim Fortuyn’s discourse
• Throughout the years, Wilders’ ideology changed in some respects. His anti-
establishment stance, however, remained as a defining feature of his party.
• Protest and ethnocentrism have been found to be strong predictors of support
for the PVV in the Netherlands,
• The PVV was able, right in its first elections in 2006, to secure 5.7% of the votes, a
number that increased to15.5% in 2010, with 24 chairs.

15. • 2006- 9 seats
• 2010- 24 seats
• 2013- 15 seats
• 2015 – ISIS attacks, refugee crisis, eurosceptism increased
• 2017- 20 seats
Dutch far-right Freedom Party leader Geert Wilders takes a
selfie with French far-right Front National party president
Marine Le Pen.

16. Siyasi Parti Lideri Oy Oranı Milletvekili
Sayısı
VVD Mark Rutte %21,3 33
PVV Geert Wilders %13,1 20
CDA Sybrand van H. Buma %12,4 19
D66 Alexander Pechtold %12,2 19
GL Jesse Klaver %9,1 14
SP Emile Roemer %9,1 14
PvdA LodewijkAsscher %5,7 9
CU Gert-Jan Segers %3,4 5
PvdD Marianne Thieme %3,2 5
50+ Henk Krol %3,1 4
SGP Kees van der Staaij %2,1 3
DENK Tunahan Kuzu %2,1 3
FvD Thierry Baudet %1,8 2
15 Mart 2017 Hollanda Genel Seçimi
Katılım Oranı: % 81,9

17. Theoretical explanations
Demand Side Theories (socioeconomic
developments)
Supply Side Theories
Single Issue Thesis – Anti islam- anti immigrant / Pim
Fortuyn, Wilders
Political Opportunity Thesis (zero migration policy-
Pim Fortuyn)
Protest Thesis Mediazation Thesis
The Social Breakdown Thesis- (insecurity causes to
ethnic nationalism) – Pim Fortuyn, Wilders
National Traditions Thesis
The Post Material Thesis Programmatic Thesis (Wilders)
The Economic Interest Thesis Charismatic Leader

19. THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION
Gizem AY