November 23, 2006
A new platform, the Dutch election and conspiracy theories
I am on a new platform this morning – or so they tell me. As I understand it, this means that there have been some changes made to the way the blog looks and operates. This should make it easier to read and respond to – and incorporates some exciting new features like trackback and permalink. Please don’t ask me to explain further.
I slightly regret the fact that I am in London not The Hague this morning. I had been thinking of going to cover the Dutch elections. But I kept reading that the Dutch crisis was over. After the murders of Pim Fortuyn and Theo Van Gogh, it was back to politics as normal. Naturally, that is excellent news – if true. But it has to be admitted that it made the election a less interesting story.
As it turns out, however, the poll results have shown that “fringe” parties are gaining in support – which hardly suggests complete contentment with the current status quo. The biggest gainer was the left-wing Socialist Party led by the charismatic Jan Marijnissen, who became something of a star by the leading the opposition to the EU constitution – in the Dutch referendum of last year. His party is now the third biggest in Parliament.
The Pim Fortuyn list, named after the murdered anti-immigration leader, has lost all its seats. But they seem to have simply transferred across to another Islam-allergic party, the Freedom party, led by Geert Wilders – who advocates an immigration freeze and a ban on the building of new mosques
I read in the FT this morning that Wilders is still living in hiding. It seems to me a disgrace that the Dutch government is unable to take the necessary security measures to ensure that its leading politicians are able to live in their own homes. I met Wilders a couple of years ago and he complained to me then that he was having to live at secret addresses – and was being moved every night – for fear that he would be murdered by radical Islamists. Even then, it seemed extraordinary testimony both to the level of the threat – and to the Dutch inability to cope with it. This after all was the country which was once famous for the fact that its royal family cycled around town on bicycles.
Surely this swing from complete relaxation about security to complete paranoia is excessive. After all, British politicians were almost always able to live in their own homes throughout the period of IRA terrorism in the 1970s and 1980s. My assumption was that the Dutch would have got their act together by now. Apparently not. Under the circumstances, it’s almost surprising that Wilders did not get a larger sympathy vote.
Finally, it struck me that the last two subjects I’ve written about – Lebanon and Russia – have a certain similarity. It is not just that in both cases an assassination or attempted assassination was at the heart of the story. It is also that they are both parts of the world which attract extraordinary conspiracy theories.
When it comes to poor Alexander Litvinenko – and the news on him this morning is not good – it has been suggested to me that it is way too obvious to suggest that friends of Vladimir Putin might be behind the attempted killing. On the contrary, some Russians suggest, the attempted murder of Litvinenko makes Putin look bad. Therefore, it must be Putin’s enemies who have done it – perhaps one of the London-based oligarchs.
A similar contorted logic is applied to the murder of Pierre Gemayel. Take a look at a posting on the subject in this blog and at this article in the Guardian. Once again, a knowing question is asked – cui bono? who stands to benefit? Because the finger for the killing is being pointed at Syria, clearly it must be Israel or the United States who are manipulating events. Well, call me naïve – but I cannot see that it is in either America or Israel’s interests to create another failed state in the Middle East.
“It has been suggested to me that it is way too obvious to suggest that friends of Vladimir Putin might be behind the attempted killing (of poor Alexander Litvinenko). On the contrary, some Russians suggest, the attempted murder of Litvinenko makes Putin look bad. Therefore, it must be Putin’s enemies who have done it – perhaps one of the London-based oligarchs.”
There’s a problem with this argument, I would suggest. It implies that the oligarch, or whoever, is so thoroughly evil as to find it expedient to murder an innocent man for a political purpose or for revenge against President Putin. I just don’t see this as remotely likely. Is there any candidate amongst the oligarchy-in-exile who is could be capable of such a wicked act? Not likely, don’t you agree?
Posted by: Jeremy Putley | November 23rd, 2006 at 4:25 pm | Report this commentHello Gideon, I think the Brighton bombing of 1984 showed that the UK government never was secure, equally was unable “to cope effectively” with the IRA terror that turned the UK into the country with the highest survey camera density in the free world. Perhaps the UK Government was both prepared to take its chances and also prepared to dramatically increase surveillance on society as a whole. The Netherlands is playing catch up to a threat that continues to exist in the UK as well.
Posted by: jvd70 | November 23rd, 2006 at 5:48 pm | Report this commentCall you naïve?- okay you are exceedingly naïve, and possibly wilfully blind. Israel and the US may have many reasons to create a failed state- especially if the alternative is a state that challenges Israeli/US foreign policy in the region. The world is littered with examples where larger countries have intervened to cause states to fail. Many of those examples involve the US.
Posted by: Hari Balaraman | November 23rd, 2006 at 8:23 pm | Report this commentEven if it weren’t in the interest of the US or Israel to do something, why do you assume they act rationally. The “cedar revolution” is almost discredited - because its principal backer, the US, supported the large-scale boming of Lebanon. It would almost certainly be in the US interest to break up the post-war consensus behind Hezbollah.
Regarding the Dutch government getting it’s act together to protect anti-immigration politicos and comparisons with the UK government’s protection of the same during IRA campaigns - there is a big difference. The IRA aimed to take out politicians and not get their operatives killed or caught in the process, something that is not quite the same for Islamic extremists
Posted by: Jonathan Mackley | November 24th, 2006 at 11:03 am | Report this commentHari Balaraman, on March 14th, 2005, approximately one million people participated in a pro-democracy and largely anti-Syrian rally in Beirut. Since Lebanon only has 3.8 million people, more than a quarter of the entire population took the trouble of going to Beirut to be counted. Not a single western liberal democracy, including the US and Israel, has been anything but thoroughly supportive of their ambitions.
Israel, if I recall correctly, was invaded by a Hezbollah raiding party who killed and abducted Israeli soldiers on Israeli soil. The response was almost exclusively limited to operations against Hezbollah units and infrastructure.
There doesn’t seem to be any positive consensus behind Hezbollah. The March 14th movement is not at all supportive of Hezbollah’s wars and power grabs. Only last year 95% of the 500 directly elected members of the European Parliament adopted a non binding resolution calling upon European countries to characterize Hezbollah as a terrorist organisation. If there is consensus it is that Hezbollah is quite the nasty bunch.
Jonathan Mackley, the nature of the IRA threat is only different in detail from Islamic terrorism, the broad goal is to accomplish changes in policy through terrorizing a civilian population and seeking to murder politicians. I can’t understand how a notable British columnist can consider it a disgrace that Wilders cannot move around freely when the same scenario could very easily play out in the UK; the circumstances are not at all dissimilar.
Posted by: jvd70 | November 25th, 2006 at 12:51 am | Report this comment