Far Right Win In Dutch Elections Shows How Quickly The Right Is Rising In Europe

• by: C.J. Polychroniou

Geert Wilders – Photo: nl.wikipedia.org

Geert Wilders’s election is an ominous harbinger. The hour has come for Europe to stymie the spread of the far right.

The dramatic victory of the far right provocateur Geert Wilders in the recent Dutch elections is yet another extremely worrisome sign that Europe is shredding the veil of tolerance and becoming more brazenly exclusionary. Indeed, the spread of far right radicalization across the continent signals that Europe is engulfed in a profound political, social and moral crisis.

Wilders’s Party for Freedom, or PVV, which has been on a long ascent, took 37 of the 150 seats in the Second Chamber. This was 20 more seats than it won in the 2021 elections, while the other parties lost seats, making the extreme right the largest party in the national parliament. The radical left was hit the hardest, losing nearly half of its elected representatives.

Wilders’s political career has been built around anti-Islam and anti-immigration rhetoric. In fact, in 2016 he was charged with inciting hatred and discrimination against Dutch Moroccans. He always had a solid base of voter support, though it was never previously strong enough to allow him to become a power broker in Dutch politics. Obviously, the political dynamic has now changed, and Wilders is in the process of seeking possible governing coalitions. Eager to become prime minister, Wilders said he is willing to moderate his positions, but that’s only because he is having a hard time luring partners to form a coalition government with his far right party.

As undoubtedly one of Europe’s most blatantly racist politicians, Wilders’s campaign called for an end to asylum for all refugees, the “de-Islamization” of the Netherlands and a Brexit-style referendum on the European Union (EU). He was seen as a political outsider, but pollsters got it wrong. Nonetheless, that more Dutch voters turned to Wilders’s message at this point in time should not come as a surprise to anyone. Across Europe — north, south, east and west — far right parties have broken into mainstream political consciousness as many voters are fed up with establishment parties. Italians were hardly surprised when Giorgia Meloni’s radical right Brothers of Italy won a clear majority in Italy’s 2022 snap general election.

Once considered fringe organizations destined to political invisibility, Europe’s far right movements and parties have gained ground with frustrated working-class and disappointed middle-class citizens, including youth voters. Moreover, they are having an impact as both right and center-left mainstream parties have adopted an anti-immigration stance while they push the neoliberal agenda even harder, catering to the needs and interests of the rich and the business class. The result of all this is that more voters turn to the far right as anti-immigration policies gain increased support and neoliberalism shreds the social safety net and widens the gap between the haves and the have-nots.

The Netherlands endured 13 years of neoliberal rule led by the People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy, or VVD, a center-right party which promoted the interests of private enterprise and big business and paid little attention to the needs of the average citizen. A scandal over government efforts to reduce child welfare payments by subjecting thousands of low- and middle-income families to scrutiny and falsely accusing them of obtaining benefits illegally alienated a sizable segment of voters, as did the Groningen gas affair, in which the authorities put gas profits before the safety of surrounding communities. Such scandals, along with rising concerns about the cost of living and housing shortages, played a major role in the growing mistrust of the government and fueled the perception that a wind of change was needed in Dutch politics. Moreover, the VVD had decided to make immigration a key campaign issue, so one should not be surprised, as Dutch author and editor Auke van der Berg told me over email, that many voters ultimately opted to select “the original (PVV–Wilders) and not the copy.”

Naturally, Wilders’s victory stiffened other far right leaders’ resolve to carry on with their campaign against a cosmopolitan and multicultural Europe. Congratulations poured in from Hungary’s Viktor Orbán; the Italian deputy minister and leader of the extreme-right party, Matteo Salvini; and France’s Marine Le Pen. But as French Minister Bruno Le Maire said of Wilders’s election win, this was a consequence of “all the fears that are emerging in Europe” over immigration and the economy.

Indeed, while fearmongering around immigration is surely a factor behind the rise of the far right in Europe, economic issues such as declining standards of living and economic inequality may in fact be the key driver behind the spread of anti-immigration sentiments. The European Union integration project has long been seen by large segments of the continent’s citizenry as undermining national sovereignty and strengthening neoliberal economic policies harmful to the working class. Still, we can’t ignore the role racism and Islamophobia have played, as it is specifically migration flows from non-European countries that have been touted as a threat, and none more so than Muslim migration. The unjustified fear among those who are calling for tougher immigration laws, as many Dutch citizens have been doing over the years, is of Islam. The problem, for them, is that the immigrants are Muslim, not that they are immigrants. Europe welcomed Ukrainian refugees. But as political scientist Lamis Abdelaaty said, “Europeans see Ukrainians as White and Christian, similar to the way that many in European countries see themselves.”

At this point, the question is not whether the far right is surging in Europe, but rather how national governments and the EU alike intend to counter fascism and far right extremism. Fear of the “Other” and the consequences of neoliberalism (economic insecurity, poverty, inequality and deteriorating living standards) are among the main causes behind the increasing public support for far right parties. Left unaddressed, and especially amid organizing conducted via the internet and social media, hard right politics will only grow, and far right violence will likely increase. What took place recently in Dublin, where hundreds of radical right rioters went on a rampage over unconfirmed reports on social media that three children had been stabbed by an “illegal immigrant,” may be a prelude to what the future holds for Western societies unwilling to address the factors that contribute to the spread of far right ideologies.

The rising tide of the far right is terrifying and monstrous, but it’s still possible for effective resistance to interrupt this nightmare. Europe’s far right ideologues mix nationalistic and social stances, just like their predecessors did in the 1920s and 1930s. The answer to the threat they pose in the 21st century is clear: tackling the root causes of economic inequality and ensuring that no one is left behind. The return of the social state and the expansion of democracy are the best tools available for fighting fascism and far right extremism. They worked in the past and can still work today.

The far right is a menace to decent society. The hour has come for Europe to face the monsters.

Source: https://truthout.org/articles/far-right-win-in-dutch-elections-shows-how-quickly-the-right-is-rising-in-europe/

C.J. Polychroniou is a political scientist/political economist, author, and journalist who has taught and worked in numerous universities and research centers in Europe and the United States. Currently, his main research interests are in U.S. politics and the political economy of the United States, European economic integration, globalization, climate change and environmental economics, and the deconstruction of neoliberalism’s politico-economic project. He is a regular contributor to Truthout as well as a member of Truthout’s Public Intellectual Project. He has published scores of books and over 1,000 articles which have appeared in a variety of journals, magazines, newspapers and popular news websites. Many of his publications have been translated into a multitude of different languages, including Arabic, Chinese, Croatian, Dutch, French, German, Greek, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish and Turkish. His latest books are Optimism Over Despair: Noam Chomsky On Capitalism, Empire, and Social Change (2017); Climate Crisis and the Global Green New Deal: The Political Economy of Saving the Planet (with Noam Chomsky and Robert Pollin as primary authors, 2020); The Precipice: Neoliberalism, the Pandemic, and the Urgent Need for Radical Change (an anthology of interviews with Noam Chomsky, 2021); and Economics and the Left: Interviews with Progressive Economists (2021).

Was The Sphere The First Geometrical Form Made By Humans?

• by: Deborah Barsky

Deborah Barsky – Photo: PHES-CERCA

Important scientific advances are changing what we know about the technological, social, and cognitive traits of our ancient human ancestors.
The invention of the first stone tools was a hugely significant milestone along the human evolutionary highway, one that would change our lifeways and, ultimately, distinguish our genus Homo from all other living beings on the planet.
Many very significant discoveries have been brought to light only over the last 25 years or so, deepening our knowledge about where, why, and how the first primitive technologies occurred.

Meanwhile, a state of angst resulting from our growing alienation from Nature is sharpening our need to understand how the evolution of technology has brought us to this point.

In order to understand this phenomenon, it is vital that we turn our gaze toward the distant past.

Stone tool making is often lauded as the characteristic that defines us as ‘human’. Indeed, the first member of our genus was fittingly named H. habilis– meaning, ‘handyman’ for this very reason. But we now know that stone toolmaking appeared more than 3 million years ago in Africa: even before our genus emerged on the scene. This underpins evidence suggesting that other non-Homo primates, like the robust Paranthropus, were also capable of making stone tools.

Of course, our primate cousins, like chimpanzees and bonobos, often come to mind when we look for behavioral analogies for toolmaking among other animals, while we often forget that many other creatures, including crows, elephants, and even octopus, also make simple tools and use them for sustenance-related activities.

Hominins probably began to use stones for throwing, pounding, breaking, or crushing other materials. Systematic methods designed to break stones intentionally evolved only much later, probably when hominins began to exploit the sharp edges on broken stones to carry out a variety of tasks, such as scavenging protein-rich viscera and meat from large mammal carcasses.

This groundbreaking discovery heralds the Oldowan and the beginning of a very long period of relative cultural stability. For more than 3 million years, hominins used toolmaking to carve out their own niche in the paleolandscapes, where they thrived alongside other animals.

This behavior would prove to be a successful adaptive choice, one that resulted in increasing the density of hominin populations, who would soon spread out of Africa into Eurasia.

The subsequent Acheulian cultural period, characterized by standardized stone tools with preplanned morphologies, broadly associated with H. erectus sensu largo, replaced the Oldowan in different parts of the globe between 1.75 and 1 million years ago.

In spite of relative cultural stability, pioneering archeologists like Mary Leakey remarked more than half a century ago that evolutionary changes can in fact be recognized in the latter phases of the Oldowan and Early Acheulean layers in the Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania.

One of the most important is the shift from non-standardized flake-core industries to preconceived tool types, among which, ‘spheroids’ are both the first and the most representative.

As their name suggests, spheroids present a rounded morphology, formed by adjoining faceted surfaces. While extremely rare in Europe, they have been found elsewhere in Africa and the Near East, India, and Asia, in contexts ranging from as early as 1.8 million years ago, up to around 300,000 years ago.

Yet, in spite of their ubiquity, these mysterious stone balls continue to puzzle archeologists, whose opinions remain divided as to whether they were purposefully made following a planned stone-knapping strategy or, alternatively, if their rounded shape was obtained accidentally as a result of prolonged hammering carried out with the same stone.

Up to now, the famous tear-shaped bifaces of the Acheulian, broadly associated with H. erectus sensu lato, were commonly believed to be the first deliberately shaped object ever made by our human ancestors.

But if indeed it can be demonstrated that spheroids were made using a preplanned stone reduction strategy, this would imply that the sphere was the first geometrical shape ever manufactured by early humans.

Recently, renewed interest in these mysterious stone balls has been driving archeologists to develop innovative scientific methods to resolve this central issue of ‘intentionality’: are spheroids manufactured tools or simply extensively used hammers?

While the issue remains unresolved to this day, researchers are making headway in addressing the many questions shrouding our knowledge about spheroids.

For example, one recent study applied cutting-edge 3D analytical methods to study a collection of stone balls from the Early Acheulean Levantine site of ‘Ubeidiya, allowing for the first time to identify patterns suggesting that a purposeful manufacturing process to produce almost perfectly spherical stone balls did indeed exist.

Meanwhile, other strategies involving experimental archeology are helping scientists to test these theories. Results show that even expert stone knappers find reproducing stone spheres using prehistoric technologies a daunting task requiring complex volumetric planning and deep knowledge of stone fracture mechanics.

While we endeavor to discover the gestures and cognitive processes required to make these tools, we also ask ourselves what spheroids might have been used for. Some have suggested that they were tools for butchery, while others have proposed that they were tools for processing meat or plant fibers. The dimensional standardization of these fist-sized objects is sometimes alluded to in support of the idea that spheroids could have been used as projectiles. Some archeologists have suggested that spheroids could even have had some kind of cultural or symbolic significance.

As we advance in scientific research about the past, so do we uncover the deep complexity behind the ancient technologies that have made our species so unique.

By Deborah Barsky

Author Bio:
Deborah Barsky is a researcher at the Catalan Institute of Human Paleoecology and Social Evolution and associate professor at the Rovira i Virgili University in Tarragona, Spain, with the Open University of Catalonia (UOC). She is the author of Human Prehistory: Exploring the Past to Understand the Future (Cambridge University Press, 2022). Deborah is presently leading a project with the IPHES-CERCA funded by the Gerda Henkel Foundation in collaboration with researchers from the Computational Archaeology Laboratory of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Tel Hai College (Upper Galilee).

Source: Independent Media Institute

Credit Line: This article was produced by Human Bridges, a project of the Independent Media Institute.