Abstract. Lately it is often stated that multiculturalism has failed. But is it true that a multicultural society based on equality of culture, religion, nationality, etc. has proven to be Utopian? With no doubt the public space is increasingly buzzing with voices that question multicultural integration and talk about European identity, national identity, Islam vs. the West, etc. This paper will discuss why the multiculturalist project ended up in an apparently bigger quest for national identity and in an increasing culturalist Manichaeism. The idea that there is an apparent deficit in the multicultural paradigm was picked up on by several right-wing populist parties throughout Europe. These parties adopted a narrative on the incompatibility of Western European and national culture with what is perceived as “Islamic” or "immigrant" culture. By reference to the propaganda from the Dutch populist politician Geert Wilders, this paper focuses on this discourse and analyses why these ideas are so widespread accepted in a country traditionally perceived as the best example of how to implement multiculturalism and sustain a tolerant society. In this manner, this presentation will try to show that the way in which the right-wing populist parties connect the narrative on the multicultural deficit with the narrative on Christian and secularist roots of European or national culture is one of the main reasons for their electoral success.
Introduction
Since Weber proclaimed that on behalf of the rapid industrialisation and modernisation of society we were heading towards a religion-free society, for years this idea seems to be the hidden consensus among academics. If modernity increases, religion would disappear from the public sphere. In line with this paradigm, many scholars have for example been discussing the functional differentiation of society. The theory of functional differentiation implied that religion would lose his role as an overarching signifier and would become a subsystem in society among many other subsystems like politics, economics, etc. The loss of the grand religious narrative would not only mean a decrease of religiosity, but would drive religion to the private sphere. In other words, in a modern age religion would become a set of private beliefs. Nevertheless as history evolved, this thesis became falsified. Religion didn’t move to the private, it stayed in the public sphere fighting for its influence. It even became clear that the resurgence of religion in the public sphere should be perceived as one of the markers of our century.
Nowadays society according to Beaumont and Baker, is “caught in a series of contradictory dynamics, including simultaneous and dialectical processes of secularisation alongside the growing deprivatisation of faith and it re-emergence as a shaper of cultural, political, economic processes.”[1] Even though more and more attention has been paid to the re-emergence of religion in the public sphere, it stays widely unrecognised. Therefore the main goal of my research is to bring back into discussion two “tabooed” themes: on the one hand the important role of religion in nowadays politics and international relations and on the other hand nationality or national identity as still one of the most important identity markers which is increasingly used in nowadays politics.
During the past two decades, the radical right has re-emerged as an electoral force in Western Europe and this re-emergence has often been explained as a result of the increasing global migration, the deficit of democracy, the economic situation in Western European countries, etc. Against all those theories, I will try to show that right-wing populism in Western Europe is a specific form of post-secular and post-Christian nationalism and that its electoral success can be explained through the way in which this politics use narratives on national identity connected with the secular-Christian roots of European culture. In this paper I will specifically focus on the interconnectedness of this narrative on identity and the secular-Christian roots as primordial identity marker with the idea of the multicultural failure. Several right-wing populist parties have picked up on this idea that multiculturalist society has failed and are depicting this failure as a logic result of the multiculturalist leftist ideology that intends to equalise all cultures and identities and doesn’t pay attention to the importance of national identity. I will discuss this with a concrete example from the right-wing populist Geert Wilders in the Netherlands.
Historical background of right-wing populist parties in the Netherlands
Right-wing populism in the Netherlands is not an entirely new phenomenon. During the twentieth century, populist parties have – sporadically – appeared in the Dutch party system. The difference with the quite solid position that the new right-wing populist seems to have nowadays is that those parties never stayed for a long period of time. It was only at the beginning of the twenty-first century that more and more populist parties entered the political stage. Especially since 2006, the electoral success of Geert Wilders Freedom Party is the clearest sign for the radical change of the traditionally political space. Nevertheless, Wilders success cannot be seen independent from the previous rise of Pim Fortuyns star in 2002.
For decades, the Netherlands has been governed from the centre, consisting of a stable coalition of between two and four parties from the centre-right or centre-left. The increasing electoral success of right-wing populist parties thus implied a total redefining of the political landscape. The ability to cooperate despite difference and make decisions on political level is represented by the poldermodel. The poldermodel stands for the ability of the system to always achieve consensus between parties and to form coalitions. This consensus decision-making is perceived as something „typically Dutch‟. With the rise of populist parties, starting with the Pim Fortuyn List (Lijst Pim Fortuyn) and followed by the PVV, this harmonious poldermodel seems to lose stability and a new division between left and right seems to emerge. The 2010 conquest of Wilders‟s PVV resulted in a right-wing instead of centre-right government and dealt the deathblow to the stable polder-politics in the Netherlands.
Pim Fortuyn who was a columnist and a former sociology professor, founded his party List Pim Fortuyn after he was expelled from the newly formed party Liveable Netherlands (Leefbaar Nederland). His party could immediately count with a big electoral support. But Fortuyn would never see the success of his party, because he was murdered on the 6th of May 2002, shortly before the elections. The LPF won 17 percent of the vote which equals 26 of 150 seats in the parliament. In the subsequent elections four years later, Geert Wilders would enter the party system. One needs to notice that in the years passed, the popularity of the populist decreased heavily and because of that it was even more surprising that Geert Wilders entered the stage. Wilders, who originally was part of the Liberal Party, founded his Freedom Party on Feb 22 2006 as a statement against the discussion about the Turkish EU-membership. In the 2006 elections, Wilders received 5,9 percent and nine seats. The initial appeal of his party was quite similar to the LPF but more radical concerning immigration and integration. Four years later it became clear that Wilders had been able to collect a stable and extensive electorate behind him and had clearly become more popular. Wilders Freedom Party was the big winner of the 2010 elections with gaining a total of 15,5 percent and 24 seats, coming close to the amount of support that the LPF had gathered in 2002. Since that time there has been a lot of effort to explain this quite sudden rise of right-wing populism in the Netherlands but most theories tend to only take the decline of the traditional party into account or blame the traditional parties not to be able to supply an answer to the demands of the electorate. In my opinion rather than analysing the systematic or structural deficits that might influence the rise of right-wing populism, it is interesting to look at another level and questioning what is the content of these politics that resonate with the electorate and why it resonates more than the traditional party politics.
Post-secularism
As I mentioned in my introduction, there were a couple of academics forty, thirty years ago, claiming that it was time to bring religion to his grave, dug by modernity. Years later, almost all of them decided to revision their thesis. As Casanova for example points out correctly, the loss of function and the trend towards a higher degree of individualisation didn’t imply the loss of influence of religion in political and personal sphere.[2] This conscience resulted in the formulation of the so-called post-secularity thesis. In the post-secular society, religion maintains a public influence and substantial relevance.
When we recognise this post-secular situation, we need to pay more attention to the possible role of religion in politics. In concrete terms this means that it is important to look for the influence of religion in different fields of research like politics, economics and international relations. Furthermore, this means that we need to take the power of religion and religious communities serious when reflecting on politics, urban space, migration, communities, etc. In my opinion we also need to take this serious because I believe that the increasing presence of religious power in the public sphere opens a space for discourses on religion-based reactive identities. This kind of reactive identity is a contested identity in order to distinguish between what is the “self” and what is the “other”. When this kind of religion-based identity construction is connected to the national identity, like it is done - as I will show - in the new right-wing populist parties, it gets very tricky.
Post-Christianity
In connection to this, the secularisation thesis also implied that Christianity in Western Europe would be the kid that would get thrown away with the bath water. This idea is strongly connected with the conviction that Western European culture and history is characterised by some kind of glorious evolutionary ascent of moral success story. This narrative depicts European culture/history as a historical process beginning with classical Greek civilisation, Roman law and Christianity passing through Enlightenment secularism and with having its culmination in the “End of history” a la Fukuyama with liberal democracy, capitalism and the rule of law. Even if the secularisation thesis might be revisioned, this idea hasn’t been. On a societal level, Christianity is still perceived as an influence factor that belongs to the past, not to the present. But it is exactly this historicising view on Christianity that in my opinion constitutes a fertile soil for the reification and essentialisation of Christian identity. As a result, Christian identity is seen as an invariable constitutive element of European culture and as such is used as another identity border.
Leitkultur, roots and heritage
The increasing level of global migration resulted in an increased multiculturalism and multiconfessionalism in Europe. As I mentioned before, the pluralist character of society culminated in an increasing quest for identity. A lot of voices were posing the question which elements constitute the identity of Europe. The resources for the reconstruction of national or supranational identity are to be found in collective memory, history, mythical narratives, symbols, etc. We can see this process of reconstruction of national identity emerging in the context of the growing pluralism of society. This reconstruction is based on national symbols, national myths and talks about the common grounds and the common cultural roots. As a result of this reconstruction of identity, the idea came up that there exists something like a “Leitkultur” in Western European culture. This Leitkultur is linked to dominant values coming from an idealised past. The roots of European culture are humanist, Christian, secular, etc. and are not chosen randomly as might be thought. The emphasis on the Christian-secular and humanist roots of European culture are chosen to make a clear statement against the increasing migration from Islamic countries.
The culture of these countries is in the same way perceived as a homogeneous entity and connected to the idea that this culture is theocratic, non-secular and therefore incompatible with the values on which European culture is based. In order to be able to integrate in this culture, assimilation to European values is essential which in this case means the rejection of the religious identity. This is a very strong statement, but there is not enough awareness for the fact that the claim about “Leitkultur” is an anti-religious claim. Post-Christian Europe has given up its institutional Christianity, but therefore reinvented Christianity in terms of realisation of Christian heritage. This realisation means an essentialisation of the Judaeo-Christian identity of Western European nations and provides necessary drawing of identity borders as a reaction to the growing Muslim presence in society.
The paradigm is following: if you want to be European, you should assimilate to the Christian-secular values of our society (whatever this might mean) and since Islam isn’t compatible with neither secularism nor Christian-humanist values, the only way to assimilate (integrate?) is to give up your religion. Furthermore this results in a strange asimilarity in the interpretation of concepts. You can be Muslim, but you should not adhere to Islam. My thesis is, that in the very conception of European culture as based on aforementioned roots, there is no place for Islam or for being Muslim at all. To overcome this problem, some scholars like for example Bassam Tibi have been looking for the possibility of something like an “Euro-Islam”. These concepts believe in the parallelism of two identities, being Muslim and being European at the same time and refer to the Indian situation in which is claimed that they have been able to create a situation where you can be Muslim and Indian at the same time. In my opinion this generates several problems.
The idea of drawing identity borders is in itself not a negative process but starts to have negative consequences when it is linked to a feeling of superiority or with the underestimation of the “Other”. The concept of an „indigenisation „of Islam in European culture is difficult. Doesn’t it do injustice to the very essence of Islam? Doesn’t this indigenisation really means a „Christianisation„ of Islam? I am not sure if this is the solution or the solemn way to achieve a integration of Islam in European culture. The idea of an Euro-Islam is in my opinion still dominated by a „Master-Slave“ dialectics and I believe that this dialectics always bears a lot of conflict potential in it. Integration might be easier achieved when both sides adopt an almost “culture relativist” acceptance of the other. Only then, the defensive and reactive answers in the form of extremism and populism as a result of the sensed threat to identity might decrease.
Nationalism / national identity
A second tabooed feature of right-wing populist politics I want to focus on is national identity I already touched upon before. In the last couple of decades a certain resurgence of nationalism became apparent. One can see a widespread (re)construction of national identity which functions as an identity border drawn against the “other”. This development might come as a surprise for some academics in the same ways as the apparent resurgence of religion. On behalf of a traumatic past and because of the globalisation of economy, the internationalisation of political institution, etc. nationalism has been declared an antic artifact. But for Hobsbawn “The urge to express ones identity, and to have it recognised tangibly by others, is increasingly contagious and has to be recognised as an elemental force even in the shrunken, apparently homogenising, high-tech world of the end of the twentieth century.” This resurgent form of nationalism is characterised by different features like for example the fact that nationalism is not necessarily an elite phenomenon but “nowadays is more often than not a reaction against the global elites”. Furthermore, this contemporary nationalism is “more reactive than proactive, it tends to be more cultural than political, and more oriented towards the defense of an already institutionalised culture than towards the construction of defense of a state.”
The resurgence of nationalism shows a different type of nationalism, namely a cultural expression of it. Cultural nationalism does not aim to preserve the nation-state, but to regenerate the national community by creating, preserving or strengthening a people’s cultural identity when it is felt to be lacking or to be threatened. The cultural nationalist regards the nation as a product of its unique history and culture. Cultural nationalism perceives the nation as distinct on behalf of the its culture which is the essence of the nation. This kind of cultural nationalism can be perceived as a defensive reaction against the sensed loss of national autonomy and sovereignty as a result of the increasing globalisation and supranational organisation. But there is more. The reinvention and reification of national identity based on cultural roots and heritage are mediated through myth memories and national symbols in Geert Wilders politics. As I will discuss later, we can see a neo-ethnic interpretation of national identity and a re-emphasis on national history, symbols, etc. From the ethno-symbolic perspective, this could be perceived as a form of nationalist practice.
Culturalist Racism
Now we discussed this border drawing of national identity against Islam in right-wing populist politics, we still need to answer the question: what kind of beast is this? Since I like to be a bit provocative, I will state that the anti-Islam discourse which is more widespread and sadly not only linked to right-wing populism can emerge so easily because we believe that we have learned from the racist tragedy during the Second World War. We are very aware of racist discourse and there is done a lot of effort to avoid racism in public space. The problem is that we should not think of racism in a monolinear way, but rather as being able to diffract like light diffracts through a prism. In Foucauldian terms I think of racism as a discursive practice which is characterised by a certain logical structure. We can think of the anti-Islam politics as a discursive practice with the same logic as the “old-fashioned” biological racism. In short: racism doesn’t need to be linked to biological race to be racist.
The anti-Islam racist discourse is a masquerading discourse. Luckily there is more and more attention for this different form of racism, calling it “cultural(ist) racism”. This kind of racism as I said before, essentialises values of the own culture against values of the other culture. This results in statements as “people are equal, cultures are not.”. And: there is no problem with Muslims, but with Islam. The cultural racism, racism without races, is as Pierre-Andre sees it “differentialist racism” Differentialist racism sees a culture as uncommon and impossible held common; it maps the differences instead of the possible commonalities. A second problem is that the anti-Islamic discourses are not only a part of “ordinary peoples thinking, but also involves the academic, political and elite sphere. I will call this racism “meta-racism”. As meta-racism, anti-Islamic propaganda is seen as an objective reaction to a factual situation. Negative reactions on Islam are perceived as a legitimate reaction on an overflow of Muslims in society. This of course, is not the fact at all. Still, if intelligentsia, politics and elite keep on claiming this overflow, a lot of people get the idea that the subjective resentment has an objective root and is therefore legitimate. We do not live in a post-racial era.
Othering and neo-colonialism
The making of normative distinctions based on cultural criteria result in the production of the Other. In this discussion it is the Islamic Other that is produced through the alignment of a homogeneous European culture. We could say that this alignment of group identity there is a two-sided neo-ethnic interpretation of identity. With neo-ethnicity I mean, according to Olivier Roy, the construction of an ethnic group, which previously did not exist as such through a limited set of differential patterns isolated from a more complex and diverse cultural background. In right-wing populism and in a lot of mainstream media as well, Islam is perceived as a totalised unity of communities and forces which are radically distinguished from the equally totalised, Christian or secular, liberal and democratic West. These opposites are described dichotomous and are giving positive predicates to the West and perceiving „the East‟ as something negative. Differences for example are seen in terms of: modern-retarded, enlightened-traditional, rational-emotional, etc. Those discourses do not pay any attention to the diversified nature of Islam and Muslim presence in Europe neither to the diversified nature of European culture. As for Christianity, in Islam the differences are national, generational or depending on class and education. But right-wing populist discourses reduces this historical, cultural and social complexity and an interesting question is why those „reductionist‟ discourses, are resonating at large with peoples anxieties, feelings, fears and opinions about non-Christian religiosity in society.
The perception of the „East‟ or the „Arab World‟ as a monolithic „other‟ is not as new as might seem. One of the most important contributors the analysis of the perception of the West towards an „East‟ and vice versa, is Edward Said. He discussed those topics in the perspective of Western European colonialists. Said understood this practice of „monolithic perception‟ as the epistemic violence of the West. The colonial Orientalism contained images of odalisques and „strange-looking‟ men. The current neo-Orientalism has leading images like: burka-wearing women and Mosques. This perception and the conception of the „Orientalist Other. is only possible because of an equal conception of an „own. European „Occident.. This Neo-Orientalism or neo-colonialism is linked with occidentalism. Occidentalism is a word with different meanings, but for our discussion here and intertwined with the discussion of Neo-Orientalism, we use the critical terminology of Coronil and Mignolo. For them, Occidentalism is a form of euro-centrism and a construction of a hegemonic „Self.” And this is, in my opinion, exactly what his happening in the discussion about national and European culture.
The multicultural deficit in the perception right-wing populist parties
Now I will come to the last part of my talk. I want to focus now on how multiculturalism is perceived in the right-wing populist parties and how the idea of a failed multiculturalism emerged. Furthermore I would like to link this whit he aforementioned concepts and try to show that it is exactly this linkage that provides these politics with a very strong appealing character which leads to the support of a highly emotional electorate and therefore to electoral success. Multiculturalism according to Geert Wilders is something that destroys the roots of the national culture. The idea is that the liberal multiculturalist Left can me made responsible for “selling” the national culture to the multiculturalist project in which it lost its original strength and became weak among the pluralism of cultures. Therefore, because of this weakening of national culture on behalf of multiculturalism, it is multiculturalism that fosters the Islamisation of Europe. In the same linked with all that has been said above, it is the culturalist argument which lies beneath the insult to multiculturalism. Cultures in a culturalist perspective are not equal. Therefore, as multiculturalism tried to see all cultures as equal, it was doomed to fail. Right-wing populist politics like Geert Wilders party politics explain the apparent failure of multiculturalist integration not on the level of policy-making but perceive this failure as an inherent logical result of the presumed relativist nature of the multiculturalist project.
Conclusion
By means of a conclusion, there are a few points I hope I have been able to make. First of all, the emergence of right-wing populist parties in the European political landscape and especially in the Dutch political space and the way in which those parties use religion as a constitutive element of national identity on the one side and how they oppose this identity to the religious Islamic identity, show that religious plays an increasingly important role in the public space. Therefore I state, that the post-secular and post-Christian space is partially responsible for the smooth emergence of these party politics.
Furthermore I tried to point out, that the way in which the national identity is reconstructed through narratives on cultural roots and in connection to national symbols, myth memories, etc. are an ethno-nationalist practice and the right-wing Populist Party politics of Geert Wilders should therefore be considered as a branch of nationalism.
Thirdly, I believe that the depiction of the multiculturalist project as a project that “sold” the national identity and which enables the growing Islamisation of national culture and the way in which this is connected to the importance of the preservation of national culture, is an important element that needs to be taken into account when explaining the electoral success of these parties. Because of its emotional appeal, the ethno-nationalist interpretation of national culture and the emphasis on preserving the national culture in opposition to the “dangerous” Islam, leads to a high resonance with the electorate.
[1] J. Beaumont & C. Baker, post-secular sicties. Space, theory and practice, continuum international publishing group, London, 2011, p.5.
[2] J. Beaumont & C. Baker, post-secular sicties. Space, theory and practice, continuum international publishing group, London, 2011, p.5.
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