Farmers' protest party win shock Dutch vote victory

[Doc]

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-64967513

Farmers' protest party win shock Dutch vote victory
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8 hours ago

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Leader of the BBB political party Caroline van der Plas reacts to the results for the Provincial Council elections in Bathmen, the Netherland
IMAGE SOURCE,SEM VAN DER WAL/EPA-EFE/REX/SHUTTERSTOCK
Image caption,
A stunned Caroline van der Plas said that Dutch voters had spoken
By Anna Holligan & Paul Kirby In The Hague and London
BBC News
A farmers' party has stunned Dutch politics, and is set to be the biggest party in the upper house of parliament after provincial elections.

The Farmer-citizen movement (BBB) was only set up in 2019 in the wake of widespread farmers' protests.

But with most votes counted they are due to win 15 of the Senate's seats with almost 20% of the vote.

"This isn't normal, but actually it is! It's all normal citizens who voted," said leader Caroline van der Plas.

The BBB aims to fight government plans to slash nitrogen emissions harmful to biodiversity by dramatically reducing livestock numbers and buying out thousands of farms.

But its appeal has spread rapidly beyond its rural heartland, on a populist platform that represents traditional, conservative Dutch social and moral values.

Shocked by the scale of their success, Ms van der Plas told supporters that voters normally stayed at home if they lost faith in politics: "But today people have shown they can't stay at home any longer. We won't be ignored any more."

A left-wing Green-Labour alliance is also on course to win 15 Senate seats, while Prime Minister Mark Rutte's four-party coalition is poised to fall back to 24 - down eight seats.

Turnout in Wednesday's vote, estimated at 57.5%, was the highest for years and the biggest loser of the night was the far-right Forum for Democracy party.

For rural voters, the main incentive for backing the BBB was to protest against cuts in nitrogen emissions, according to an Ipsos poll for public broadcaster NOS.

But voters also turned out in force for the Greens, and environmental groups warned that the Netherlands' problems were not going away.

"Restoring nature is just as necessary today and tomorrow as it was yesterday," tweeted Natuurmonumenten.

Why Dutch farmers are protesting over emissions cuts
The run-up to the vote was dominated by the sight of farmers' tractors on the streets of The Hague and outside the venue that hosted a pre-vote leaders' debate.

Tractors at the Provincial House of North Brabant during a demonstration in Den Bosch, the Netherlands, 14 March 2023
IMAGE SOURCE,JEROEN JUMELET/EPA-EFE/REX/SHUTTERSTOCK
Image caption,
Tractors took part in a noisy protest on the eve of the vote in the southern city of Den Bosch
Commentator Ben Coates described the result as "something of an earthquake in Dutch politics".

Although their policies are very much focused on opposing the government's environmental policies, he told the BBC most people would characterise them as a right-wing, populist party that was quite anti-EU, anti-immigration and in favour of banning burkas for Muslims.

Standing before supporters on Wednesday night, Caroline van der Plas wore her trademark green nail polish and a ring featuring an upside-down Dutch flag, a symbol of the anti-government protests.

The daughter of an Irish mother and a Dutch father, she lost her husband Jan to pancreatic cancer as the protests took off in 2019. She is unlike any Dutch party leader - and for many voters, that is her appeal.

She had to step back from public campaigning last year because of death threats. She was told the same fate awaited her as Pim Fortuyn, a populist leader assassinated days before the 2002 Dutch general election.

Speaking to the BBC during a visit to farmers in the rural east, she sprang to her feet in mid-sentence to avoid a bee, explaining she had been stung as a toddler and had been terrified ever since.

[SteveFoerster]

I guess that will make them harder to ignore?

[neverfail]

I guess that will make them harder to ignore?

Farmers would make up a very small percentage of the Netherland's population (in line with other developed countries) and so her party could not have done nearly so well without the add-on support of a massive protest vote from the country's urban population. Protest votes like that tend to be will-of-the-wisp affairs; they are rarely, if ever, sustainable.

[Doc]

I guess that will make them harder to ignore?

Farmers would make up a very small percentage of the Netherland's population (in line with other developed countries) and so her party could not have done nearly so well without the add-on support of a massive protest vote from the country's urban population. Protest votes like that tend to be will-of-the-wisp affairs; they are rarely, if ever, sustainable.

Lets wait and see if the new green polices will end the European food shortages.

https://search.brave.com/search?q=nethe ... ktop&tf=pm

[neverfail]

I guess that will make them harder to ignore?

Farmers would make up a very small percentage of the Netherland's population (in line with other developed countries) and so her party could not have done nearly so well without the add-on support of a massive protest vote from the country's urban population. Protest votes like that tend to be will-of-the-wisp affairs; they are rarely, if ever, sustainable.

Lets wait and see if the new green polices will end the European food shortages.

https://search.brave.com/search?q=nethe ... ktop&tf=pm

Until I read that link I was unaware that there was shortage of certain foodstuffs in Europe.

[Doc]

I guess that will make them harder to ignore?

Farmers would make up a very small percentage of the Netherland's population (in line with other developed countries) and so her party could not have done nearly so well without the add-on support of a massive protest vote from the country's urban population. Protest votes like that tend to be will-of-the-wisp affairs; they are rarely, if ever, sustainable.

Lets wait and see if the new green polices will end the European food shortages.

https://search.brave.com/search?q=nethe ... ktop&tf=pm

Until I read that link I was unaware that there was shortage of certain foodstuffs in Europe.

IN the UK they keep claiming it is due to Brexit However they are having short shortages everywhere. Last year it was in the Netherlands where they plan to combat it by getting rid of some of the unlimited farm land to make way for immigrant housing.

[neverfail]

Until I read that link I was unaware that there was shortage of certain foodstuffs in Europe.

IN the UK they keep claiming it is due to Brexit However they are having short shortages everywhere. Last year it was in the Netherlands where they plan to combat it by getting rid of some of the unlimited farm land to make way for immigrant housing.

If I know anything about Dutch farmers they bhave a history of being efficient food producers and with being adaptable to change.

The UK and Netherlands are not stuck with only what they can produce but have the option of importing from more distant food surplus countries. I hope that the don't pick mine as a potential supplier. Food prices have been rising here too.

[Sertorio]

The BBB's ideas in respect of the Ukraine:

https://boerburgerbeweging.nl/fractieni ... waarderen/

Oorlog is geen grapje. Oorlog is lijden en verdriet. Een hel voor moeders en zonen, vaders en dochters. In die hel bevinden de burgers in Oekraïne zich nu al een jaar. Toch vechten zij door. Bijna een jaar na de Russische invasie in Oekraïne is het land nog niet gebroken en de soevereiniteit nog niet opgegeven. En er blijft hoop.

Maar de BBB steunt de inwoners van Oekraïne niet alleen omdat het het juiste is om te doen; het voortbestaan van Oekraïne is ook in het belang van de Nederlandse veiligheid. Poetin bouwt aan een herleefd Russisch Rijk dat zich uitstrekt van de Elbe tot de Stille Oceaan. Oekraïne is niet het eerste slachtoffer van de Russische expansiedrift. Georgië, Moldavië, Wit-Rusland en Kazachstan moesten er al eerder aan geloven, bij wijze van Russische invasies en coups. Mocht Oekraïne vallen, dan staat Rusland aan de poort van onze Poolse en Baltische bondgenoten en daarmee aan de onze. Offer Oekraïne, en we zullen Polen moeten offeren. Offer Polen, en we zullen Duitsland moeten offeren. Offer Duitsland, en er is niemand meer om ons van het schavot te redden.

Machine translation (checked by me):

War is no joke. War is suffering and sorrow. Hell for mothers and sons, fathers and daughters. The citizens of Ukraine have been in that hell for a year now. Yet they fight on. Nearly a year after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the country has not yet broken and sovereignty has not been given up. And there remains hope.

But the BBB doesn't just support the people of Ukraine because it's the right thing to do; the continued existence of Ukraine is also in the interest of Dutch security. Putin is building a revived Russian Empire stretching from the Elbe to the Pacific. Ukraine is not the first victim of Russian expansionism. Georgia, Moldova, Belarus and Kazakhstan have already had to believe it before, by way of Russian invasions and coups. Should Ukraine fall, Russia will be at the doorstep of our Polish and Baltic allies, and therefore ours. Sacrifice Ukraine, and we will have to sacrifice Poland. Sacrifice Poland, and we will have to sacrifice Germany. Sacrifice Germany, and there will be no one left to save us from the scaffold.

From my personal experience, the Dutch are pretty rational people, but this position on the Ukraine is full of incredible errors:

1. Russia has never shown it dreams of Empire. It's all a fantasy.

2. Moldova, Belarus and Kazakhstan have not been the victims of any Russian action. Belarus and Kazakhstan are two fully independent countries, and Belarus is also a sovereign state which entered into a Union with Russia still to be materialized.

3. Why giving up on the Ukraine would mean giving up on Poland, a NATO country? Or Germany? Poland and Germany are acting as enemies of Russia, not the other way around. If Poland is at risk, it is exclusively because it has decided to be aggressive at the address of Russia. And Germany has never been threatened by Russia.

As long as people replace rational thinking with propaganda they will follow irrational policies. Which is the case of this BBB.

[neverfail]

From my personal experience, the Dutch are pretty rational people,

Mine also! We are in agreement on that.

...but this position on the Ukraine is full of incredible errors:

Even the Dutch are only human.

1. Russia has never shown it dreams of Empire. It's all a fantasy.

Not a fantasy but something they prefer to keep hidden.

2. Moldova, Belarus and Kazakhstan have not been the victims of any Russian action. Belarus and Kazakhstan are two fully independent countries, and Belarus is also a sovereign state which entered into a Union with Russia still to be materialized.

You failed to mention Georgia and for good reason: "good" in the sense that including reference to this country would have made a nonsense of your claim. Putin's Russia militarily intervened to carve out two Russian protectorates within its boundaries and these are still there today. This was consumated presumably to remind Georgian governments that "Russia is the boss in this part of the world": that Georgia should in future abstain from building ties with the Western democracies that might remove this country from the Russian sphere of influence (and power).

Belarus, ruled by a client dictator of Putin's (a Putin proxy) reliant on Russia for support is not by any stretch of the imagination "fully independent". It is living proof of a former Soviet republic "on hold" awaiting future incorporation into the Russian Federation at a time of Putin's choosing.

("Rome was not built in a day and it was built of small bricks")

3. Why giving up on the Ukraine would mean giving up on Poland, a NATO country? Or Germany?

The precedent of Russia's invasion of Ukraine treating that country's soverignty with contempt (following its earlier treatment of Georgia; annexing of Crimea etc) marks its autocrat ruler out as untrustworthy - just as Adolf Hitler did with his imperialist serial annexations of neighbouring countries in the late 1930's - in case you miss the resemblance as you have pointedly, repeatedly done. By mid-1939 Hitler had established such a loose cannon rogue reputation in international matters that the two greatest Western demiocracies of the day, The United Kingdom and France (but significently MINUS the United States; then wallowing in an irresponsible isolationism) were forced to make a stand against him with regard to the fate of Poland. The only reason today why the Western democracies (which now includes all of the European countries up to Russia's weatern frontiers) are not at war with Russia by now to remove this rogue from the international scene for good is because Russia's ownership of a thermonuclear arsenal to match that of the United States - and that (like a lot of the equipment used by Russian soldiers presently in Ukraine) is an inheritance from the Cold War era Soviet Union; not something that Putin has himslef ordered created as a measure of his might and provenance.

The point is that Putin today, like Hitler in the 1930's, creates international uncertainty and anxiety. If there is truth in the allegation that the current war in Ukraine is serving as a "proxy war" for Western interests then it is only because the alternative, a fully fledged invasive NATO war against Russia, would trigger off a nuclear armageddon - unthinkable.

Ukraine is suffering that war with Western support on its side because it is (patently) the lesser of two evils.

So wake up, Sertorio! - and cease sitting in judgement behind your computer keyuboard, acting like God on His heavenly throne on the final day of judgement.