On Pamela Geller and her allies: How a Lunatic, Racist Blogger Is Fanning Hate against Muslims

Pamela Geller only came on my radar a few weeks ago when she invited Geert Wilders to speak in New York on 9/11. Before that, I only had some passing knowledge of her antics (there is only so much time I can devote to tracking the antics of these racists and fundamentalists). But now she is Wilders bedfellow so her rhetoric is no longer some passing interest for me. Her rhetoric now has the chance to influence my local national politics which makes her 10x more personally dangerous.

Here is the thing, though: discussions on race, in The Netherlands are pretty different from their North American counterparts. I would say they are more insidious and diluted in a sense. Since the Dutch state labels non Dutch people as “allochtoonen” (I have explained this before in other entries, but for clarity, I’ll just say “allochtoon” is a term appropriated from bio sciences and it defines any organism non native to a given ecosystem; in Dutch state parlance, anyone who is not born in The Netherlands is an allochtoon; also, anyone who is born of at least one allochtoon parent). In the “allochtoon” classification, they have also established categories of otherness by defining “Western allochtoonen” (anyone who is born of Non Dutch European, North American, Australian or New Zealand parents or anyone who was born in one of these regions). The rest of us are “Non Western allochtoonen”, which means there are laws that target us specifically. For instance, we are forced to go through integration courses (these courses are not just meant to teach the language, they also include learning to cook Dutch dishes and the aim is not so much to give tools to navigate the country as much as they are assimilation paths to remove as much foreignness as possible). It would be too long for this post to address how the course materials further stigmatize foreigners or how the institutionalized racism actually permeates everything that goes on in these courses.

But that’s neither here nor there, I just wanted to give context into what it means that Geert Wilders (at the moment, the biggest political party in this country) is an effective ally of Pamela Geller. What it means is this: these fringe ideas in the American political landscape now have a potential test ground. It is no longer a question of “What if Pamela Geller and others like her ever held government positions”, now, for me, and 16 million Dutch people, this is our daily reality. We now wake up wondering if the talks of government coalition have moved forward and Wilders is, indeed, now the one calling the shots.

Since the discussions of race happen over here in a different semantic context, Dutch media is reluctant to report on these matters in ways that are more common in North America. They just don’t see these matters as one of People of Color vs. whites. They have made every effort to bury their colonial past and try to remove race from the equation so, instead, they have claimed biology terms to define otherness (which is even more subtly insulting, reducing race to a mere situational matter). So now, this anti Muslim rhetoric has the potential to include much more than the “Muslim other” because, Dutch constitution doesn’t allow the passing of laws that target a specific religion (and honestly speaking, Wilders is the biggest political party at the moment but not big enough to be able to change the constitution), so, any potential new laws designed to target Muslims in The Netherlands will indeed make their lives impossible, while at the same time have to include every other “Non Western foreigner” in the country. How is this not a matter of race? How is this not framed in our local media as the racist garbage it really is? Wilders has, so far, managed to avoid being openly called “racist” by claiming his intentions are purely based on religion. He knows that’s not the case but in a country that has diluted racial matters to the point that they are almost unrecognizable for the vast majority of people he has the advantage of ignorance. Most people, the majority of his voters, just don’t know better.