Extreme Rhetoric to Political Power: The Threat to Diversity

Life Matters News Digest No. 67 November 2023

What the hell is going on? The normally entirely reasonable, fluent English-speaking, balanced Dutch, have voted extreme right-wing Geert Wilders into a majority position in the Netherlands Parliament!

Fortunately, although Wilders' PVV ("Freedom Party") gained 37 seats, the other 113 seats won are divided among 13 parties, few of which are as extreme as the PVV. Wilders clearly won this time, after decades in politics, because he tempered his rhetoric and put some more extreme parts of his manifesto "in the fridge," as he described it.

That doesn't mean they will not come "out of the fridge" if he gets into power, though power sharing with other parties usually means more moderate compromises are reached.

Some of Wilders' more extreme policies included the end of freedom of movement in the EU, a referendum on the Netherlands staying in the EU ("Nexit"), closing mosques and Islamic schools, banning the Quran and preventing women from wearing the hijab in public buildings.

His anti-foreigner/immigrant policies, if allowed full rein, would also extend to stopping international aid, the end of granting asylum for refugees and withdrawing from the 1951 UN Refugee Convention.

With the Netherlands' immigration more than doubling last year to 220,000 (including refugees from Ukraine) and a shortage of 390,000 homes, buying houses or renting are now both extremely expensive. Wilders knew he could light the touchpaper if he sounded "more reasonable" and addressed those concerns.

Inevitably, his success has been celebrated by other right-wing leaders across Europe, including France's Marine Le Pen, Spain's Vox Party leader Santiago Abascal and Hungary's pro-fascist-Russia leader Viktor Orban — none of them tasteful "bedfellows" in my book.

Wilders in his election campaign said, "We have to think about our own people first," and talked about "closed borders" and "zero asylum seekers," and on winning the election, proclaimed that he would "Make the Netherlands No.1." Number one of quite what I am not sure. Spain's Abascal's slogan is "Make Spain great again," which sounds horribly familiar.

Considering that almost all of us are a huge genetic mixture, as any ancestry/genetic DNA test will tell you, most of these blatantly nationalistic slogans are nonsense, meaningless or vague. Unfortunately, they do appeal to the prejudiced and those under economic, employment and social pressure. When life is hard it is just so much easier to focus your blame on someone else of a different nationality, race, sexual preference or colour.

In the 2017 election campaign, Wilders referred to Dutch Moroccans as "scum". Trump and many of his right-wing soundalikes in Europe and around the world make similar veiled, and not so veiled, remarks about anyone they perceive as "different".

Many of these nationalistic and populist leaders claim not to be "far right" but "the voice of the people" or the party of "extreme necessity," in some way saving their respective nations.

Hitler's "unchangeable" 25-point Plan for his National Socialist German Workers' Party in 1920 was a similarly vague, slogan-ridden mixture of hope for the "downtrodden" workers and an attack on Jews, who were more economically successful at the time, and the "foreigners" who had dared to suppress German rights in the Treaty of Versailles at the end of WWl. And we know where that led.

To be fair, Giorgia Meloni, Prime Minister of Italy since 2022, who also has extreme right-wing antecedents (she says, "Mussolini did a very good job for Italy"), has so far been fairly modest in her policies, supporting Ukraine rather than Russia for example.

This, of course, may be just the ploy used by all politicians on the political spectrum, to get the popular vote in the first place and then to impose the power later.

Either way, as a left-leaning centrist, I find these movements towards extreme nationalism and authoritarian rule-based systems disturbing. As I see it, it is that which makes us different which is to be celebrated, whether that be colour, race, religion, sex or choices.

It is the mixing of cultural differences that created America and shaped European and Asian cultures. It is the mixing of cultural differences that created jazz and rock and roll and influenced tens of thousands of artists across the world. It is the mixing and sharing of backgrounds and ideas that spurred the development of modern technology from which we all benefit.

I will stand by John Donne's 1624 lead: "No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main."

Countries that retreat into extreme nationalism and cultural exclusion will eventually wither and die, extreme narrowmindedness shutting out every influence that could make a culture blossom and grow.

Diversity is the fertiliser of invention and creativity - we must guard it with our voices and actions and with our hearts, our minds and our souls.

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Homecoming: Scythian Treasures Returned to Ukraine

Talking of the Netherlands, in 2013, four museums in Ukraine's Crimea lent the Allard Pierson Museum in Amsterdam 1,000 items from their collection of Scythian artefacts, much of it made from gold.

The Scythians were warriors, horsemen and agriculturists from the steppes who lived around the Black Sea and Crimea between the 7th and 3rd centuries BC. The fabulous treasures they created include rare gold neck ornaments and a solid gold helmet.

After the occupation of Crimea by Russia, the museums, now under the control of Moscow, demanded the return of the treasures. This resulted in a ten-year legal battle in the Dutch courts, finally resolved in Ukraine's favour in the Netherlands Supreme Court in June.

Last week, the first 565 items were returned safely to the National Museum of History of Ukraine in Kyiv, where they will remain until Crimea is safely once again Ukrainian territory.

The Russia-installed governor of Crimea says they will get the artefacts back by "achieving the goals of the special military operation," i.e. by capturing all of Ukraine. I sincerely hope not - that would be a problem for all of us.

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The Weed-Spreading Habits of the Maned Wolf

This beautifully elegant creature is called a Maned Wolf, though, in fact, it is neither a wolf, fox or wild dog, but the sole inhabitant of a genus called Chryochon.

It inhabits the grasslands and shrublands of South America, though it is most common in Brazil, where its omnivorous diet consists of 50-70% fruit and vegetables (including sugar cane, roots and tubers) and then small mammals such as voles and rabbits, birds, and sometimes fish.

Its preferred food is the "Wolf Apple," a tomato-like fruit that looks like an apple but has the texture of an aubergine or eggplant. The wolves often defecate on the nests of leafcutter ants where, in a symbiotic relationship, the ants harvest the dung to fertilise their fungi garden but then dispose of the wolf apple seeds. This aids in the plants' dispersal, thereby ensuring more wolf apples for the Maned Wolf!

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The wolves only come together between November and April (in South America's spring and summer) to mate and are monogamous for life, though they do not hunt in packs and spend most of their time alone.

The Maned Wolf, with its long deer-like slender legs, can be as tall as 110 cm (43 inches) at the shoulder, its height being an evolutionary development to help it see above the long grasses. The same reason is probably why humans changed from walking on all four legs to standing upright on two, it helps to see all of the environment better.

Another interesting fact about the Maned Wolf is that its urine, which can be smelt by other animals a mile away and is used to mark its territory, gives off a scent similar to marijuana. So much so, that the police were called to Rotterdam Zoo in 2006 to "track down the persistent marijuana smoker!"

The Maned Wolf is listed as a threatened or near threatened species on several red lists and there are only a currently estimated 5,000 left outside of Brazil. Its only natural enemies, apart from man, are pumas and jaguars.

If you have access to BBC iPlayer, check out the Planet Earth lll episode of "Deserts and Grasslands," where the Maned Wolf is featured.

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Wondering What to Get Your Pet For Christmas?

Well, there is still time to make something. Take a leaf out of Chris Newsome's book.

One summer's night, Chris noticed a toad on his porch, and as it came back night after night, he decided - as you do - that it needed a hat!

So he made a pink top hat out of lightweight foam paper and added a feather plus a monocle in "Wind in the Willows" style:

Mr Toad seemed content and nonplussed, so Chris made him a baseball cap:

And lastly, Chris made Mr Toad a stetson, complete with a lasso:

Chris was surprised when his toad hats got reactions worldwide, with many contacts asking questions and interviews with Huffington Post, Buzzfeed, Bored Panda and many other media outlets.

He also thought it hilarious that a bit of fun with a 5-minute hat and a photograph turned into something that so many people wanted to see and enjoy. I hope it brought a smile to your day.

Though Chris's dog Daisy was less impressed!

Credits: My thanks to Karen for input. Photo Credits: Emmanuel Dunard/AFP/Getty Images/ Politoco.EU, Yves Horman/Reuters, Statista/Martin Armstrong, Forbes Magazine, Flavio Los Scalzo/Reuters/France 24, Global Images Ukraine/Getty images, National Museum of History of Ukraine/X x 4, Sean Crane/BBC Studos/Financial Times, Chris Newsome/Imgur x 4.

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In general, I have tried not to make this newsletter political in any way, but with the world so divisive, so split between extremes of left and right, that is becoming almost impossible.

Social media is also making it very difficult to say any thing, without that becoming quickly politicised too. Having an opinion is jumped upon and attacked, often with non-sensical arguments based on rumours or conspiracy theories.

So, I think I will go ahead and express my thoughts anyway and "roll with the punches." To say nothing and keep it all inside is the cowards way out.

I am therefore, glad that hostages are being released from Gaza and Palestinians from jails in Israel.

I note that both sides are releasing the less controversial prisoners first. Women, children and non-Israelis from the Hamas side and women and teenage boys (often just detained but not charged) from the Israeli side. There is still a long, long way to go.

The massacre of so many Israelis by Hamas and associated Islamic groups is unforgiveable, and I can understand why Israel wants revenge and the extermination of Hamas.

I am angry, however, that Israel's retaliation has now killed almost 15,000 Palestinians, including - worst of all - 6,000 children. Most of those deaths will be of innocent by-standers.

There can be no justification at all for such slaughter, which increasingly feels like genocide.

Israel's government is foolish if it thinks that this is going to go any way to finding a solution. The world's 14.3 million Palestinians will neither forgive nor forget.

Having said my piece, until the next time, take good care of yourself - and be kind to your neighbours and caring, generous and patient with those less fortunate than we are.

All good wishes,