| Publicity: | Once they were renowned for their easygoing attitude to just about everything including marijuana, gay marriage and legalised euthanasia. To be Dutch was to be inclusive and proudly multicultural, socially progressive and accepting of difference. |
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| Today, it’s spun 180 degrees and is speeding in the other direction. Friction has grown between ethnic communities and minorities such that the government has declared its experiment with multiculturalism over. New laws have been passed making it much harder for prospective immigrants. They must now speak Dutch and show they’ve hit a basic salary scale before they’re allowed to join relatives already living there. And there’s a push to outlaw face coverings, and stop the construction of mosques. |
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| “I would not want to live or my children or grandchildren to live in a country where the ideology of Islam becomes more dominant every day, because the more Islam you have in a society, the less freedom you will have.” Geert Wilders, Freedom Party. |
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| The public face of this anti-immigration movement is the populist, nationalist Geert Wilders. |
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| Wilders dismisses criticism that he’s intolerant telling ABC reporter Eric Campbell he’s actually fighting on behalf of freedom and humanist values and saying out loud what many privately believe but are too afraid to express. |
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| “We are telling the truth not about the people but the ideology of Islam. We are saying that all cultures are not equal. It might be politically incorrect, but I believe our culture is superior to the Islamic culture of unequality, intolerance and violence.” Geert Wilders, Freedom Party |
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| While the majority of Dutch see him as an extremist, and he lives under armed guard 24 hours a day, he still has plenty of support, sometimes from rather unlikely quarters. Foreign Correspondent talks to gay activists who are grateful that he is championing their rights and defending them from gay bashings, many of them carried out by Muslim immigrants. |
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| Other moderate Dutch Muslims feel frightened by the emotions Wilders is stirring up, and worry that his rhetoric will incite violence against them. So far, though, the violence in the Netherlands has gone the other way, with two previous high-profile anti-Muslim campaigners - the outspoken Pim Fortuyn and filmmaker Theo van Gogh - being murdered. |
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| It’s a heady, dangerous mix of race, religion, politics and emotion with strong feelings on both sides. |
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| Series of CUs. Man smoking, putting on make up | Music | 00:00 |
| Amsterdam Gay Pride Festival |
| 00:12 |
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| CAMPBELL: It’s the gayest day on Amsterdam’s busy gay calendar. | 00:19 |
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| Music | 00:23 |
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| CAMPBELL: The annual Gay Pride Festival is an exuberant, high-energy celebration attracting revellers from around the world. | 00:28 |
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| Music | 00:36 |
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| CAMPBELL: Even in the conservative hinterland, most Dutch are proud of this reputation for tolerance, but of late, something very queer has happened here. These minorities have become scared of another minority. | 00:45 |
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| Music | 00:58 |
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| HILDO: “I have friends who are Moroccan, and it’s not Moroccans in general, | 01:02 |
| Hildo | there’s always a group within a group and they spoil it for the rest of the group”. | 01:07 |
| Hildo at home with friends from drag act putting on make up |
| 01:12 |
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| CAMPBELL: Hildo, known professionally as April Summer, leads a popular outgoing drag act, SPARKLEZZZ but lately going out has become an ordeal. For the first time in their life they’re fearful walking the streets of Amsterdam. The reason? Moroccan street gangs targeting gays. HILDO: “A couple of years ago we were very proud to just walk down the street and everybody was clapping | 01:16 |
| Hildo | and wanted to make pictures of us. Now we have a little bit more problems on the streets, so now we just say well let’s get a cab maybe to make sure that nothing’s going to happen on the way”. | 01:43 |
| Gay Pride festival | Music | 01:55 |
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| CAMPBELL: It was once unthinkable in this reputed gay paradise, but a recent spate of highly publicised bashings, most of them by migrant youths and more than a third by Moroccans, have some here wondering if Islam is to blame. HILDO: “Yeah, yeah, I think that they strongly believe in their religion and if their religion says that our way of living | 01:59 |
| Hildo. Super: | shouldn’t be right or we shouldn’t be proud of that because their religion says so”. | 02:22 |
| Campbell approaches Geert Wilders for interview | CAMPBELL: So for many Netherlanders their new hero is not a dyed blond Lady Gaga but a very different blond bombshell. Meet Geert Wilders, arguably the biggest critic of Islam in Europe. | 02:29 |
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| GEERT WILDERS: “I would not want to live, or my children or my grandchildren, to live in a country where the ideology of Islam becomes more dominant every day, because the more Islam you have in a society the less freedom you will have”. | 02:50 |
| Hildo | HILDO: “What I like about the thing that he is saying, that we should keep sharp; that if they don’t accept the way that we live together here in Holland that’s, well then that’s more their problem and if they don’t like it, then they should go back to or go to another country where there is less tolerance like here”. | 03:07 |
| Geert. Super: | GEERT WILDERS: “You are not a racist or a fascist or whatever if you say I’m proud that our country’s based on values that are based on Christianity and Judaism and Humanism and we stand for Christians, we stand for homosexuals and we stand for the rights of women, for independent journalists – for whatever”. | 03:26 |
| Mosque | Music | 03:45 |
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| CAMPBELL: Geert Wilders savaging of Islam has made him one of the nation’s most popular politicians. | 03:50 |
| Muslims on street | Music | 03:56 |
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| CAMPBELL: He wants to end immigration from Islamic countries, outlaw headscarves and stop the construction of any new mosques. He’s likened Islam to communism and the Koran to Mein Kampf. | 04:00 |
| Geert interview | GEERT WILDERS: “I see Islam as more ideology than a religion. It’s not to be compared with Christianity or Judaism, it’s more compared with other totalitarian ideologies, like communism or fascism”. | 04:18 |
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| CAMPBELL: “Even so, do you understand why a law-abiding patriotic Dutch Muslim feels insulted when you compare the Koran to Mein Kampf?” | 04:32 |
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| GEERT WILDERS: “My aim is not to insult people, let’s make that clear, but Islam says that you should follow the example of Mohammed. And if I say that Mohammed was a warlord, he was a terrorist and maybe a terrorist worse than Bin Laden ever was at the time. Look at what he did in his time in the past, in his Medina time. This is not the example to follow”. | 04:41 |
| Produce market | CAMPBELL: A clear majority of Netherlanders see him as an extremist, but he’s successfully tapped into fears that Muslim migrants aren’t conforming to Dutch values. In last year’s election, his Freedom Party won 15% of the vote, giving it 24 seats and the balance of power in parliament. Yet just ten years ago this country was proud to call itself multicultural. | 05:04 |
| Abdelkader | ABDELKADER BENALI: “If you talked about Islam or headscarf, people would talk about it in a very exotic way, | 05:40 |
| Abdelkader. Super: | they would reflect on it as something very exotic, something nice. We were proud of having here a lot of exotic people wearing headscarves or being from Muslim countries – that was something to be proud of – part of your tolerance.... tolerance system”. | 05:45 |
| Amsterdam canal general views | Music | 05:59 |
| Abdelkader before marathon | CAMPBELL: Abdelkader Benali can often feel the odd man out. He’s a Dutch citizen, an acclaimed Dutch writer and an enthusiastic Dutch marathon runner. But in a crowd like this, he stands out as Moroccan. | 06:13 |
| Runners register for marathon | Music | 06:28 |
| Abdelkader before marathon | ABDELKADER: “You can’t get more Dutch than this. CAMPBELL: ‘Not many Moroccans here.’ ABDELKADER: No, no, no. | 06:32 |
| Runners at starting line | It’s a very Dutch affair. Three million people running, all of them white. I feel a bit scared. So I have to be on top. CAMPBELL: Well good luck! ABDELKADER: Thank you. | 06:37 |
| Marathon starts | Music | 06:46 |
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| CAMPBELL: The fact is the white Dutch community and the Moroccan Dutch community aren’t really running in the same race. Integration has been painfully slow. Many long-term migrants don’t even speak Dutch. | 06:51 |
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| Music | 07:04 |
| Marathon | CAMPBELL: Many in the white Dutch community are now casting nervous sideways glances at their neighbours. | 07:09 |
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| Music | 07:16 |
| Abdelkader | ABDELKADER BENALI: “Now the fact we have a blond guy from the south of the Netherlands who looks like Mozart, being part of the government and he can say things like we should get rid of the Muslim population, we should shoot the Muslim terrorists in the knee, is how he calls the Moroccan criminals.... people looking out of their window and seeing that those exotic people that came from Morocco, Turkey that they were not so exotic at all, they were a reality and this is causing a lot of unease”. | 07:22 |
| Campbell on boat in canal | CAMPBELL: They country’s unease with immigrants particularly from Muslim countries is a fairly recent phenomenon. | 07:54 |
| Campbell on boat. Super: | For centuries, the Dutch were sea-going people -- traders, pirates, colonists and migrants who settled the far corners of the globe, but in the 1960 s the government and business groups decided to bring foreigners here to do the kind of low paid dirty jobs the Dutch people no longer wanted. And to get the cheapest labour possible, they targeted mainly illiterate pheasants from poor villages in Morocco. No one seemed to mind that they were Muslim. | 08:05 |
| Abdelkader and Campbell outside butcher’s shop | ABDELKADER BENALI: “So this is the butcher (shop) of my father. I grew up in the butcher (shop) when I was a child, and my father started a butcher (shop), one of the first Islamic butchers in the ‘70s”. | 08:38 |
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| CAMPBELL: Benali’s family came to the Netherlands when he was four years old. In those days Moroccans were only expected to stay and work here for a couple of years. | 08:48 |
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| “And your father’s still working here?” ABDELKADER BENALI: “Yeah he’s still here, yeah, yeah, yeah. | 08:58 |
| Abdelkader and Campbell enter butcher’s shop | CAMPBELL: No attempt was made to teach them Dutch or help them integrate but most Moroccans not only decided to stay, they brought out their extended families as well. | 09:03 |
| Campbell greets Abdelkader’s father | While many, like Benali, integrated, others found it harder to fit in. Not speaking the language or understanding Dutch customs, a kind of parallel society sprang up. But until the terrorist attacks in New York, nobody wanted to criticise it. | 09:14 |
| Abdelkader with father | ABDELKADER BENALI: “I’m asking how does he see the future? He says my life is over so I don’t worry about it. Then I ask him what do you think about your children and grandchildren who grew up here? And he says I don’t know”. Before 9/11 we had this idea of tolerance | 09:33 |
| Abdelkader. Super: | which also meant you accept each other as you are, you accept the differences, but you don’t enquire too much into the differences, you are just happy to have those people around or not, but you don’t enquire too much. You go to the Islamic butcher who’s cheap, he’s cheaper than a Dutch butcher. You buy his meat, but you don’t enquire too much into his religion, because this is part of our tolerance. You let people live. After 9/11 suddenly all those issues of identity and religion and where are you from, and migration became main topics”. | 09:49 |
| Still. Geert as young man | CAMPBELL: Geert Wilders developed his hostility to Islam as a young man when he lived in Israel. | 10:23 |
| Muslims in street | His views hardened back home when he became a conservative councillor in a tough migrant area and was mugged. | 10:29 |
| Campbell talks to young Muslim men | CAMPBELL: ‘Have you heard of Geert Wilders?’ In communities with a high Muslim population you can feel the animosity towards him. | 10:38 |
| Qasim | QASIM: “Oh, don’t mention that name, don’t mention it. What did you say? Yeah, we’ve heard it. I don’t want to hear it, man. I want to see him dead… absolutely… 100 per cent… right away. INTERPRETER: “Why?” QASIM: “I don’t know. He makes his money putting other people down. That’s not an honest way to make a living”. | 10:46 |
| Geert | GEERT WILDERS: “Fortunately almost for seven years now I live under 24 hour protection a day, every day a year whether I’m in Holland or abroad. I live with my wife in prison cells, not as a prisoner but to be safe... and in safe houses. It’s not fun, but on the other hand I won’t be silenced, because I only use democratic means and if I would give in to people who use non-democratic means who try to silence you by wanting to kill you or threatening to kill you, then it’s the end of democracy”. | 11:05 |
| Rotterdam waterfront | Music | 11:42 |
| Qasim and friends/Muslims in street | CAMPBELL: Qasim and his friends, Samet and Kerim, live in the Netherlands’ second largest city, Rotterdam. | 11:50 |
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| As Europe’s largest port it’s attracted the most migrants. More than half the citizens are of foreign descent. The poorest suburbs endure constant hooliganism. | 12:04 |
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| It’s ethnic crime as much as religion that’s building support for Wilders. | 12:19 |
| Qasim and friends | QASIM: Yeah, we cause trouble. SAMET: “But not really bad”. QASIM: : “Just innocent stuff like being loud. But not punch in windows or get into trouble with police”. | 12:25 |
| Policeman with Samet | CAMPBELL: As we were filming, Samet found police were looking for him. POLICE OFFICER: “It could be that one day you’ll be invited for interrogation”. | 12:43 |
| Police car drives away | YOUNG MUSLIM MAN: “The police think they have the right to say whatever they want. We don’t have any rights. | 12:51 |
| Qasim and friends | Often there is work, but I don’t want to look for a job. They’ve taken me to look for a job but we get welfare”. |
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| Dutch city streets | Music | 13:11 |
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| CAMPBELL: Throughout much of the Netherlands you wonder what all of the fuss is about. While Muslims are concentrated in the big cities, they only make up 6% of the population. Most of the country is still decidedly, almost alarmingly, blond - yet a common complaint is that Dutch culture is under threat. | 13:19 |
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| Music | 13:41 |
| Geert. Super: | GEERT WILDERS: Now our government, because of our influence, declared the total failure like the failure of the multicultural society. | 13:47 |
| Dutch parliament building | CAMPBELL: Geert Wilders’ minority vote has made him the kingmaker. Last year he swung his support behind a coalition of the Liberal Party and Christian Democrats to bring a right leaning government to power. | 13:55 |
| Parliament | In return, the government has taken a tough line on immigration, declaring multiculturalism to be dead. | 14:10 |
| Migrant English classes | Prospective migrants must now speak Dutch and show they can work, before they can join relatives in the Netherlands. The policy isn’t specifically targeted at Muslims, that would be contrary to EU rules, but Geert Wilders insists that is the intention. | 14:25 |
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| GEERT WILDERS: “In the Netherlands, we propose that you should have 120, 130% | 14:47 |
| Geert | of the minimum wage and you have to earn it before you can get your spouse over from a certain country for instance -- which has an effect that less people from non-Western countries will come to Holland”. | 14:51 |
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| CAMPBELL: “So you’re not specifically saying we’ll take less people from Muslim countries but the rules will have that effect”. GEERT WILDERS: “Exactly | 15:05 |
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| and the effect will be that people from non-Western countries in reality it will be mostly Islamic countries will decrease in the next four years by a lot, possibly up to 50%”. | 15:12 |
| Muslims on street | CAMPBELL: From 2013 the government will also outlaw full face cover. Geert Wilders wanted the ban to go further, demanding what he called a pollution tax on headscarves. | 15:25 |
| Esmaa and Hajar | ESMAA: I would be the first one who would go against this. I would walk around in my headscarf just waiting to be arrested. | 15:41 |
| ‘Halal Girls’ excerpt |
| 15:48 |
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| CAMPBELL: The Halal girls, Esmaa and Hajar Alariachi are the first women in Europe to host a national TV program in headscarves. | 15:50 |
| Esmaa and Hajar | “What made you decide to wear headscarves?” ESMAA: “We were forced. This is what he would like to hear”. (laughter) | 16:01 |
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| CAMPBELL: “So you’ve grown up in the Netherlands, you feel 100% Dutch, do you?” ESMAA: “We were born and raised in the Netherlands, so we don’t have any choice”. CAMPBELL: They’re comedians who see Geert Wilders as a joke, but they’re serious about their | 16:07 |
| Muslims on street | national identity and worry about the support he’s mustering. | 16:23 |
| Esmaa and Hajar | ESMAA: “Yes I feel Dutch, I am Dutch, but I have a lot more to offer than only Dutch things, and there is not such a thing as typical Dutch. It doesn’t exist. It’s a myth”. CAMPBELL: “But a lot of people seem to like that myth. They seem to look back to a past era where everybody looked the same”. ESMAA: “Yes, because they feel threatened by ‘the other’. And ‘the other’ is someone who doesn’t look like them and who has a sauce. I consider myself a Dutch citizen with a spicy sauce on top, and people are scared of spicy, because if you put it in your mouth, oh you know it tastes hot. | 16:26 |
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| HAJAR: “Because I wear a scarf, because my name is foreign, because maybe they heard or they know I have Moroccan parents, so you will not be totally considered as Dutch. | 17:03 |
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| For example, here in Holland if you have a | 17:13 |
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| father and a mother born here in Holland, have a Moroccan background, so maybe they have parents who are from Morocco but they were born and raised here, and they would have a baby and they would register this baby at the municipality, they will write down that this baby is Moroccan-Dutch. They will never write it down as totally Dutch, even though the parents are born and raised here. And that’s quite interesting to see how people actually want to see us here in Holland, always as Moroccan-Dutch”. | 17:15 |
| Security forces/Anti-Wilders rally in Germany | Music | 17:46 |
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| CAMPBELL: Geert Wilders has been taking his campaign against multiculturalism way beyond the Netherlands. | 17:54 |
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| Music | 18:00 |
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| CAMPBELL: In October we filmed his visit to Berlin to support a German anti Islamic party. The security was as tight as for a US Presidential tour with three security rings around the venue. | 18:06 |
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| Outside, young Germans accused him of being a fascist. | 18:23 |
| Geert in conference | Inside, he was warmly welcomed by supporters who insist he’s fighting fascism. | 18:27 |
| Geert addressing conference | GEERT WILDERS: “My friends, we do not wish to and should not, accept the unacceptable as inevitable without trying to turn the tide”. | 18:35 |
| Geert supporters in America SUPER: |
| 18:49 |
| Geert takes stage | SPRUIKER ... Our keynote speaker today, Geert Wilders, personifies, yeah cheer, I want a cheer! [applause] Woohoo! That’s right. He came all the way from Holland. | 18:54 |
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| CAMPBELL: We also caught up with him in New York, another stop on his international crusade to halt the spread of Islam to the West. | 19:09 |
| Geert addresses crowd | GEERT WILDERS: “Ladies and Gentlemen let me start by saying, No Mosque Here!” | 19:17 |
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| CAMPBELL: He hasn’t always been this welcome. In 2009 he was banned from entering Britain, but successfully appealed. Last year, Dutch critics tried to prosecute him for hate speech, but lost the case. The attempts to silence him have only made him more of a hero to his followers. | 19:24 |
| Geert addresses crowd | GEERT WILDERS: New York stands for freedom, for openness and for tolerance, indeed New York is rooted in Dutch tolerance. | 19:44 |
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| CAMPBELL: But his international reach may have had some disturbing results. | 19:54 |
| Norwegian island | Music | 19:59 |
| Still. Anders Breivik. Massacre aftermath | CAMPBELL: On July 22nd, Anders Breivik, a so-called Christian fanatic, went on a killing spree in Norway. He shot 69 political activists, mainly teenagers as they gathered at an island holiday camp. His stated aim was to punish politicians for being soft on the spread of Islam. | 20:05 |
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| Music | 20:27 |
| Manifesto graphic | CAMPBELL: In a manifesto justifying the slaughter, he mentioned Wilders thirty times. | 20:33 |
| Still. Geert | Since the atrocity Geert Wilders has avoided journalists. This is the first time he’s agreed to discuss it. | 20:40 |
| Geert. Super: | GEERT WILDERS: “My heart goes to the people in Norway, something terrible has happened and it’s terrible that he mentioned me in his manifesto. What can I do about it? But it’s terrible that he did, and I believe--- because he really acted as Islamic radicals would act, not according to the law”. | 20:54 |
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| CAMPBELL: “But is there a risk you’re stirring up dark emotions?” GEERT WILDERS: “No, look, once again, | 21:15 |
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| we are not stirring up any emotions, we are telling the truth about, not a people, but the ideology of Islam. We are saying that all cultures are not equal. It might be politically incorrect but I believe our culture is superior to the Islamic culture of inequality, of intolerance and of violence. This is not stirring up any nasty emotions, it is telling the truth and the preservation of who we are”. | 21:19 |
| Abdelkader. Super: | ABDELKADER BENALI: “You know, before the killings of Breivik in Oslo I looked at Geert Wilders as also a product of our society -- as being very Dutch in his sort of way, a maverick, an anarchist, a conservative anarchist, a populist, but somebody I could understand and I took what he said as baloney. | 21:49 |
| Muslims on street | But after Oslo, they were repeating things he was saying in parliament, I got really scared because they were actually a call to war on people like me”. | 22:11 |
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| Music | 22:21 |
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| ABDELKADER BENALI: “What does it mean for you as a citizen when you are Moroccan or Turkish | 22:24 |
| Abdelkader | or black? What does it mean? It means you do not belong. | 22:28 |
| Qasim and friends play football | It means that you are going to discard or take two, three million Dutch with non-Dutch roots out of the picture. | 22:31 |
| Abdelkader | This is very dangerous, because it brings down social texture. | 22:37 |
| Mosque | And I think Geert Wilders is undermining it, then things can get very bleak”. | 22:41 |
| Credits: | Reporter: Eric Campbell Editor: Garth Thomas Camera: David Martin New York segment producer: Marie-Louise Olson Producer: Vivien Altman | 22:50 |