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Netherlands general election 2017

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    Netherlands general election 2017

    Good piece on the invisible racism of the mainstream and its normalisation of the extreme right.

    This definitely seems applicable to the UK as well as the Netherlands.

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      Netherlands general election 2017

      Another decent take.

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        Netherlands general election 2017

        Some of the words that have come out Rutte's mouth made Pim Fortuyn's views look mild.

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          Netherlands general election 2017

          Rutger Bregman noted this morning in the Graun that Rutte's "I hate multiculturalism" was basically indistinguishable from some late 90s far right politician saying "When we get in power, we will eradicate multiculturalism" and that sentence earned him a short spell in chokey.

          I love the Netherlands and the integration stuff is just totally irrational. The Dutch have the most clubby, basically insular local culture I've ever seen (admittedly I am not a hugely well-travelled person, not by choice!). This is a country that chucks little flag toothpicks on their hors d'oeuvres of melba toast and filet americain. A lot of Dutch learners will tell you they've met Dutch people hostile to them learning the language.

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            Netherlands general election 2017

            The whole reason why I am employed outside of the Netherlands is because I have no career prospects there, simply due to having the wrong surname and ever so slightly different accent.

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              Netherlands general election 2017

              antoine polus wrote: The whole reason why I am employed outside of the Netherlands is because I have no career prospects there, simply due to having the wrong surname and ever so slightly different accent.
              I hope you won't mind me asking, but what happened to you when you lived there (in terms of xenophobia/racism)?

              (I've just read your post #1293401 about Dutch employers never interviewing foreigners, I think that's what you wrote. I used to go the Netherlands almost every year in the 80's and 90's, I even did some voluntary work there one summer, I'm really saddened to read and hear what's been happening there in the last 10 years or so - I haven't properly returned in 20 years -, but not surprised one bit).

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                Netherlands general election 2017

                Vulgarian Visigoth wrote: Given the obsession of Houllebecq and his ilk with paedophilia I must ask: would you leave your child alone with this man?





                Yes, but "ça c'était avant" as the French say (approx. = that was then) to mark a rupture with the past, it's usually meant in a humorous way.

                The "nouveau" Houellebecq has arrived, I saw him on the French telly two months ago, and he almost looks (and talks) normal now (that was on the main evening news bulletin):

                https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2RyJ83sl2JU

                I was somewhat taken aback as he looked like a right cave man only a year or so ago (and I've noticed that he now tends to brag a fair bit, he seems to be far more confident and boastful, and that's new. I remember him saying in another programme 3 or 4 months ago, half-jokingly, that he thought he was the best author in the French language, or in the top three, or something ridiculous like that. He may have been under the influence, I don't know, may have been joking - he looked dead serious when he said it though, but that doesn't mean much for him, he could well still have been joking - but he came across as a right prat at that particular moment).

                I heard somewhere - literary programme on the radio I think it was - that his publisher, Flammarion, had "had a word" with him after one particular programme or literary festival last year where he was barely audible, and that since then he'd spruced up. Not sure how true it is but he has certainly cleaned up his act. I really liked his debut novel, Extension du domaine de la lutte, but not so much the rest, the 2 other novels I've read by him anyhow. Haven't read his latest offerings, the subject matter just doesn't appeal to me).

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                  Netherlands general election 2017

                  Kev7 wrote: I hope you won't mind me asking, but what happened to you when you lived there (in terms of xenophobia/racism)?
                  I did get chased by rock throwing teenagers when I was a kid who told me to "fuck off back to England." England?! Can you believe it. Bizarrely, I later became friends with these assholes and played street football with them every day for three hours from the age of 14 to 18. In the end, the main reason one of them hated me was because he was a Feyenoord fan and I supported Ajax. I call that progress. Luckily, it was Amsterdam, so all the others hated him as well.

                  But what annoyed me much more than any rock throwing teenagers was the cold shoulder attitude from professional classes at work. At work I'd get the casual daily reminder that I am different and that I don't belong. You walk into work soaking wet and say, in fluent Dutch (having lived there since childhood), "wow, the weather is pretty bad today." The first thing your colleague decides to say back is, "Is it better in Ireland then?". OK, so that's not a racist comment, but there's something unsettling about it that's almost even more disturbing than actual full-on racism.

                  (I've just read your post #1293401 about Dutch employers never interviewing foreigners, I think that's what you wrote. I used to go the Netherlands almost every year in the 80's and 90's, I even did some voluntary work there one summer, I'm really saddened to read and hear what's been happening there in the last 10 years or so - I haven't properly returned in 20 years -, but not surprised one bit).
                  There is a general attitude to hire somebody called Jeroen or Anouk, even if they are not as well qualified as the other candidates. It's partially subconscious discrimination, and partially because the Dutch job market is based mostly on judging the character of the candidates and their ability to 'fit into the team' and less so on actual skills and merit. And when you have a company filled with native Dutch people, a native Dutch candidate is going to be more clued into the social nuances of the workplace, how to be chummy with the job committee, etc. Of course, this is totally the wrong way to run a company. If you hire different character types then it is statistically more likely that one of your staff is going to come up with a correct solution than when you have a staff of clones all approaching a problem in the same way, but this penny has yet to drop in Dutch HR culture.

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                    Netherlands general election 2017

                    Thanks for your answer Antoine.

                    Ignorance really is the same massive problem everywhere it seems. With the advent of the Internet 20-odd years ago, I thought that, maybe, this incredible tool would help people to be less inward-looking, to be more curious, more open-minded and eventually more tolerant towards others and other people's cultures but nope, it doesn't seem to have made that much of a difference in this department.

                    I can't say that I've directly suffered from xenophobia here in England, not in a sustained, systematic "institutional" way anyway (what you experienced in the Netherlands if I've read you correctly), but I have met my fair share of very ignorant people feeding on stereotypes and prejudice who "just did not like the French" (including in my wife's family - turned out that pretty much none of them had been to France before... I rarely took it personally as the same people did not like the Germans, the Welsh, the Southerners, the Irish, ginger-hair people, ginger-hair Irish people etc.) and several times this detestation manifested itself quite aggressively/antagonistically (those particular ones were not the full shilling I hasten to add).

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                      Netherlands general election 2017

                      I actually think that, despite all the Tory and Trumpian rhetoric, that the UK and the USA are still the countries where one is more likely to be hired on merit. Much more likely so than continental Europe, anyway.

                      Leave won the Brexit referendum because enough people were upset about mass migration from Eastern Europe. But the UK is much further away from Eastern Europe than places like the Netherlands, Belgium, Denmark or Austria. But the migrants preferred to go to the UK. You know why? Because the UK job market actually gave them a fair shot. It was the UK that was, up until Brexit, embracing a borderless Europe much more strongly than continental Europe was. The same European politicians (pricks like Guy Verhofstadt) who now accuse the UK of being insular have for years assisted their own countries in running their jobs and housing market like an elite members only club. Perhaps if more countries had been like the UK, Eastern European migration would have been distributed equally across the continent and Brexit would have never happened. Something to think about.

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                        Netherlands general election 2017

                        Friends (in the TEFL/translations racket) in Italy tell of how quite large businesses would almost invariably trust the translation of marketing bunf/manuals to some niece or nephew of the boss man with barely high school English rather than employing a native speaker. In Spain it was quite common for directors of language schools to speak nothing but Spanish/Catalan (native English speakers only seemed to reach director level at the big legit schools). Which was handy for them in Labour disputes.

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                          Netherlands general election 2017

                          Coalition-building negotiations still have some way to go, I think?

                          At least 4 parties needed in order to achieve a parliamentary majority:

                          https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_general_election,_2017

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                            Netherlands general election 2017

                            Evariste Euler Gauss wrote: Coalition-building negotiations still have some way to go, I think?

                            At least 4 parties needed in order to achieve a parliamentary majority:

                            https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_general_election,_2017
                            The relevant party leaders seem to be working quite productively towards a VVD-CDA-D66-GroenLinks coalition. VVD/GL is quite far apart, so it remains to be seen whether something can be worked out. But they've been at it for weeks now, and everybody seems happy with the progress.

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