A Dutch demagogue stirs up his followers in a campaign against immigrants.

Appealing to the public’s fears and nativist passions, he declares the culture of the immigrants antithetical to Dutch values and denounces their religion, which “scandalises Christians”, as a kind of infectious disease.

In speeches and essays, he claims that the faith of these immigrants, while perhaps sincerely held, “does not have God as its source”.

If they cannot be converted, they should be expelled from the country and sent back to the lands from which they came.

Sounds familiar?

It certainly recalls Geert Wilders, whose Partij voor de Vrijheid (Party for Freedom, or PVV) set the tone in the Netherlands’ just-completed election, which was won by other parties that appropriated parts of his xenophobic message.

In fact, it is a description of one of Wilders’ spiritual ancestors, the Calvinist theologian Gijsbert Voet (Gisbertus Voetius), the self-proclaimed protector of the Dutch nation, who later became the rector of the University of Utrecht.

The foreigners against whom he was inveighing in the 1630s were the Sephardic Jews who, at the turn of that century, began fleeing the Inquisitions of Spain and Portugal and had found refuge (and prosperity) in Amsterdam, and the Ashkenazi Jews arriving more recently to escape pogroms in the east.

Fortunately, cooler heads prevailed, and Voet’s anti-Jewish campaign had little lasting influence on public policy in the Netherlands.

The Jews were allowed to practice their religion openly, live where they wanted and enjoy — as well as contribute to — the economic and cultural flourishing of the Dutch Golden Age.

Wilders, while lacking Voet’s scholarly credentials, represents no less of a threat to the Dutch tradition of openness, freedom and toleration.

His diatribes against Muslims and his self-proclaimed defence of “Dutchness” are all calculated to appeal to the basest ethnic proclivities of citizens.

The PVV has argued for the closing of all Islamic schools, the required “assimilation” of all immigrants (whatever that means), and even the prohibition of halal (Islamic) slaughter.

These and other measures are meant to make the Netherlands a hostile place for Muslims.

Centuries before Wilders arrived on the scene, and just a few decades after Voet was fulminating against a Jewish presence in the Dutch Republic, the Dutch-born philosopher Baruch Spinoza — himself of Portuguese-Jewish background — was composing a powerful set of arguments against a politics of fear.

SOURCE:   MORE:   http://jordantimes.com/opinion/steven-nadler/wilders-vs-spinoza