Far Right Populism and Women: The Normalisation of Gendered Anti-Muslim Racism and Gendered Culturalism in the Netherlands

ABSTRACT

The paper approaches the rise of far right populism in Europe with a feminist lens and on the background of the discursively constructed sexist and racist features of the current moral panic. It is argued that we can follow up a continuum of normalised culturalist gendered discourses in Europe, and for some time, in the Netherlands in particular. The paper is organised by looking, first, at the place of gender in far right discourses and the role of women in far right-wing populist parties. Second, a feminist critique of processes of normalisation is presented, helping to clarify the term ‘culturalism’. To illustrate the dynamics of gendered culturalism and the way it impacts the everyday life of Muslim women in the Netherlands, some interview sequences of an empirical study with female Dutch-Moroccan citizens are discussed. The experiences of the women illustrate how far right populist perspectives and prejudices entered their daily lives, and which counter strategies, the women used to resist intimidation.

KEYWORDS:

• Islamophobia
• gender
• migration
• far right populism
• PVV
• Moroccan-Dutch female citizens
• ‘Nativism’
• normalisation of gendered culturalism

Acknowledgement

I would like to thank the two anonymous external reviewers for their helpful and overall constructive feedback on the earlier draft. Further I am very grateful to all my interviewpartners for their trust and honesty in sharing their stories of vulnerability, political activity and hope.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Ulrike M Vieten (Ph.D.) is Queen’s University Research Fellow at the Institute for the Study of Conflict Transformation and Social Justice.

Notes

1. Writing in March 2016, it turned out only a minority of three men who have been traced by police were refugees, however the majority of attackers were of Moroccan, Tunisian, and Algerian background (Mortimer 2016).

2. This country study was part of an international and comparative research project (2010–2012) looking at nodes of social complexity and inclusion of ‘new’ citizens in Britain, Germany, and the Netherlands. The project was part of the interdisciplinary research group ‘Inclusive Thinking', P.I. Professor James Kennedy, University of Amsterdam; funded by VSBfonds, Utrecht. I would like to thank also Professor Halleh Ghorashi for enabling, encouraging and supporting me throughout my research.

3. I am referring here only to the Netherlands. For reasons of space, I am not able to elaborate on Britain or Germany (see e.g. Vieten 2016).

4. See the Everyday Sexism Project (http://everydaysexism.com/)

5. According to the FRA (European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights) ‘Dignity’ report (2014), ‘more than 30 per cent of all women in the EU reported experiencing sexual or physical violence in their life time, mostly from a family member or intimate partner’ (11).

6. In 2007, Akkerman and Hagelund stated in their conclusion, ‘that the radical right has certainly not become mainstream, some space for the left and the right to act in common sense to have opened up in the often polarized field of immigration politics’ (2007: 214). Nearly 10 years later however, this looks different.

7. De Koster et al. (2014: 597) analysed the relevance of apparently ‘cultural progressive’ views in voting for far right parties in the Netherlands, and found that overall, ‘new-rightist voting proves strongly driven by ethnocentrism’.

8. Most interviews had been conducted in English, but on three occasions my interview partner preferred to talk to me while answering my questions in Dutch. I posed the questions in English.

9. We will learn later that this perception of a genuinely ‘tolerant’ society narrative is not shared, automatically.

10. Apart from 'Amal', cited later, all names of my interview partners are not their real names.

11. A Cooperation body for Moroccans.

12. The Dutch parliament (with a slight majority) decided in March 2016 to review this binary terminology, arguing to abandon it.

13. [Je bent geen mens meer, het zijn ook allemaal dierlijke termen die hij gebruikt. ‘Ze planten zich voort als konijnen’, allemaal van dat soort dingen, hij kan niet eens meer op een menselijke manier over je spreken. We hoeven niet allemaal met z’n allen door één deur te kunnen of elkaar aardig te vinden, maar waar begint het als je mensen niet meer ziet als mens maar als de laagste diersoort. Dat vind ik toch wel heel erg, dat raakt me best wel diep. Net zoals dat ‘kopvoddentax’, dus al die vrouwen die een hoofddoek dragen hebben geen hoofd maar een kop. En het is geen doek of een sjaal maar een vod. En daarover betaal je belasting want je vervuilt de straat, net zoals we hondenpoep hebben. Dus je wordt vergeleken. Dat kan toch niet? In het parlement].

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the VSB – Dutch funder supporting the overall research.