Op zondag 22 augustus was het gehucht Steenstrate bij Ieper in Vlaanderen het decor van een merkwaardig samenkomen. Een kleine 5.000 nationalisten herdachten op een afgelegen weiland de gevallenen uit de Eerste Wereldoorlog. Dit gebeurt normaliter op de traditionele IJzerbedevaart, nu een week later. But the radical currents of the Flemish movement has since… Read more
To give an overview of the history of the Yzerbedevaart, do you have to write a history of Flemish nationalism. This goes back to the last century. However, the immediate cause for the beginning of the pilgrimage was the Flemish suffering in World War I, that's why I have this historical sketch here… Read more
With extreme right parties in government in Austria and Italy, and Jean-Marie Le Pen contesting the run-off in the 2002 presidential elections in France, few people will dispute their continuing relevance in the politics of Western Europe. Indeed, ever since the first small electoral successes of parties like the Centrumpartij in the Netherlands or the Front National in France in the early 1980s, the extreme right has been the most discussed group of parties both in and outside of the scholarly community. Thousands of newspaper articles and hundreds of pieces of scholarly work have been devoted to extreme right parties, predominantly describing their history, leaders or electoral successes, as well as proclaiming their danger. Remarkably little serious attention has been devoted to their ideology, however. This aspect of the extreme right has been considered to be known to everyone. The few scholars that did devote attention to the ideology of the contemporary extreme right parties have primarily been concerned with pointing out similarities with the fascist and National Socialist ideologies of the pre-war period. If the similarities were not found, this was often taken as ‘proof ’ that the extreme right hides its (true) ideologies, rather than as a motivation to look in a different direction.
How intolerant towards native Dutch immigrants? Almost
25 year assesses the Social and Cultural Planning Office (SCP) public opinion on
immigrants and publishes regularly about. In the late eighties, early
ninety we see a slight hardening of the climate of opinion, but according to the
SCP there are generally few changes. Just About 80% of the
population thinks that natives and immigrants should have equal treatment
have at distribution issues, such as housing and employment.
Just About 13% of the indigenous population rejects
immigrants. Just About 50% of the indigenous population is against immigration
opposed.
Regarding this last NIPO found in 1998 a different outcome:1 not
half, but three-quarters of the native Dutch against further
Immigration opposed. There is - according to the NIPO - a growing support for
immigration restrictions while confidence in integration and
adjustment of immigrants decreases. NIPO found this trend going on
Polls in the years 1993, 1995 en 1998.
Eind 1999 showed another NIPO survey, one third of the Dutch
opposes the granting of asylum to political or economic
vluchtelingen.2 thirds of the Dutch have supported policies
government for political refugees who fear for their own country
their lives to give asylum. About half of the respondents felt that
seekers give nuisance. Further thought about forty percent that asylum seekers
on average, are more criminal than Dutch.
Read more in the monitor