PVV launches Eastern-Europeans hotline

[Phalanx300]

mbassadors protest at PVV's anti-eastern European website

Monday 13 February 2012

The ambassadors of 10 central and eastern European countries have sent an open letter to political party leaders protesting about a website set up by the anti-immigration PVV to collect complaints about their nationals.

According to Polish news agency PAP, the letter asks parliamentary party leaders to distance themselves from this ‘regrettable initiative’. Poland’s prime minister Donald Tusk is also aware of the commotion, PAP said. Tusk said there are limited protest options open because the website is the initiative of a politician, not the government, website Polonia.nl reports.

Jobs

PVV leader Geert Wilders said in a reaction to the ambassadors’ letter that it was a ‘waste of paper’. The website is not focused at individual countries but at collecting information about the public nuisance and pressure on jobs, Wilders is quoted as saying by the Volkskrant.

On Friday evening Europe’s justice commissioner Viviane Reding said the website is ‘an open call to intolerance’.‘The PVV website completely goes against European principles,’ Reding said.

‘In Europe, we support freedom. We support an open continent where citizens can move, work and study where they will,’ Reding said. ‘We solve our problems by showing more solidarity, not by telling tales on fellow citizens.’

Complaints

The website, launched on Wednesday, asks people to report complaints about central and eastern European immigrants in the Netherlands.

'Do you have problems with people from central and eastern Europe? Have you lost your job to a Pole, Bulgarian, Romanian or other eastern European? We want to know,' the website states.

‘Europe can get stuffed,’ Wilders said in a reaction to Reding's statement. ‘We’ve had more than 32,000 reports. The website is a hit.’ It is not clear how many of the reports are genuine.

http://www.dutchnews.nl/news/archive...at_pvvs_an.php (Just a quick link)

-----

Was suprised there wasn't a tread about it yet, so what are your thoughts on the whole thing? Seeing that other countries now also feel that they must complain?

[Condottiere 40K]

Change the format to make it register complaints about all Europeans harassing Hollanders.

[Treize]

‘In Europe, we support freedom. We support an open continent where citizens can move, work and study where they will,’ Reding said.

Speak for yourself.

[clone]

Speak for yourself.

seconded

[Treize]

seconded

I, for one, do not want free movement with countries like Romania and Bulgaria.

BTW I have some nice Polish colleagues. I find the prejudice towards Polish labourers kind of stupid. The only thing that we have to look out for is an 80's redux. The last thing we need is another wave of uneducated immigrants.

[Basil II the B.S]

There is no thread because some people just love to play the racism card against Wilders. But Poles etc are white, so everything goes..

[Jom]

There is no thread because some people just love to play the racism card against Wilders. But Poles etc are white, so everything goes..

Racism isn't just about skin colour, and "racist"/"racism" isn't even mentioned in the OP's article — intolerance is, which kind of turns your point into a non-point.

[Phier]

intolerance is, which kind of turns your point into a non-point.

Intolerance... its kinda funny how a word which is really not a negative word has been twisted to mean basically the same as the worst kind of racism.

[Jom]

Intolerance... its kinda funny how a word which is really not a negative word has been twisted to mean basically the same as the worst kind of racism.

Being intolerant towards other humans simply because they come from another country is pretty negative, and it's nowhere near the "worst kind of racism". The worst kind of racism is institutionalised, codified racism, where people are divided into different racial groups and then categorised in a hierarchy of superiority according to those groups, with different rights then being accorded to each person based upon his or her imagined race.

[Phier]

Being intolerant towards other humans simply because they come from another country is pretty negative, and it's nowhere near the "worst kind of racism". The worst kind of racism is institutionalised, codified racism, where people are divided into different racial groups and then categorised in a hierarchy of superiority according to those groups, with different rights then being accorded to each person based upon his or her imagined race.

No you are put into the same group by people who like to use it.

He's racist and he's intolerant are used interchangeably.

There are some aspects of human behavior which should not be tolerated.

[Basil II the B.S]

Racism isn't just about skin colour, and "racist"/"racism" isn't even mentioned in the OP's article — intolerance is, which kind of turns your point into a non-point.

Clear demonstration of what I was talking about.
Had Wilders targeted (once again) Muslims, we would have had another on how racist he is.
But he targeted the Poles..
And you tell me it's not even racism, it's intolerance.

The irony, isn't it? You are making a difference between Muslim-bashing and Poles-bashing, which is racist.

[Dr. Croccer]

Clear demonstration of what I was talking about.
Had Wilders targeted (once again) Muslims, we would have had another on how racist he is.
But he targeted the Poles..
And you tell me it's not even racism, it's intolerance.

The irony, isn't it? You are making a difference between Muslim-bashing and Poles-bashing, which is racist.

Even though the people calling him a 'racist' are an utter minority, but, hey, self-victimisation is a tried and tested substitute for actual debate and arguments, and has become the standard one for most Islamophobic groups these days. God, if I got a cent for everytime someone about being called a 'racist' and heavily exaggerate it, I'd be rich.

I also fail to see where Jom said that bashing Muslims was 'racist' and bashing Poles wasn't. I kinda thought his entire point was that both were just intolerant bigotry.

Is there anything they could do as a minority party? It seems odd to not vote for them for not doing what they promise if they can't do that unless they had more people voting for them.

They're actually currently the most powerful party. They're technically part of the opposition but give support to the minority government, giving them a slight majority. This means that they've got tremendous influence over the government and could push through alot by means of backdoorpolitics, by threatening to withdraw that support and leave the government defenceless in parliament. They have a lot of influence on decision making while also still holding up the façade of a popular party rallying against the establishment.

The entire shtick of the PVV is that they were supposedly the one party who would listen to the people and wouldn't get bogged down in parliamentary politics. And they have, expect that they've completely bogged it down. Wilders' popularity has been primarily based upon his ability to create controversy in which he can present himself as a defender of freedom against the evil PC state. It's worked, to an extent, but now it's failing, because of a fundamental problem in the party, which is that it has no answers. It's an anti-party, it's entire effort is directed towards criticizing the government, but actively avoiding taking the reigns of power itself, well-aware of the fact that this would just anger their electorate. By now Wilders has put himself in a sticky position. His party is large enough to exact significant influence upon government, and that is expected by his followers, but he lacks the willpower and power to actually address the 'Muslim Question', so to speak. His doctrine thus far has been to actually avoid it, it's rather strange. The entire party is based upon heavily Islamophobic ideas, but has no satisfactory answer to them. Just deporting them all isn't supported by the vast majority of the people within the party, so you get this strange, two-faced ideology in which the party constantly rails against Islam being terrible, while simultaneously trying to avoid presenting itself as too extreme. And eventually many voters got sick of it.

It's not as if enacting any of his planned policies would've helped either. Denmark is in the same situation, with a similar party supporting a minority government. The difference is that they were considerably more dogmatic and honest and actually made full use of their power in order to enforce harsh laws upon minorities in order to enforce assimilation. Long story short, that didn't work, if anything, it backfired quite a bit. There's still plenty of impoverished Muslims about, and the popularity of the party has decreased. They should've either enacted no discriminative legislation, or just deported all the Muslims. Half-arsing it only reserved the integration and lost them public support, and the PVV is probably well-aware of that, hence why it's avoiding being assertive in its anti-Islamic sentiment.

[.L.]

Clear demonstration of what I was talking about.
Had Wilders targeted (once again) Muslims, we would have had another on how racist he is.

Wait, we're not having a fit over how racist he is? ONE person, ONE said that he was intolerant not racist. Even if that's the case, he's still a little piece of .

[Jom]

Clear demonstration of what I was talking about.
Had Wilders targeted (once again) Muslims, we would have had another on how racist he is.
But he targeted the Poles..
And you tell me it's not even racism, it's intolerance.

The irony, isn't it? You are making a difference between Muslim-bashing and Poles-bashing, which is racist.

I'm not telling you anything except what was said in the article, and the word "racist" isn't mentioned once. And I'm not differentiating between anything here, just promoting actually reading the OP carefully instead of making spurious assumptions about it.

Wilders, in his own words, hates "Islam, not Muslims", but I'm glad that you're being honest here, more honest than he is in fact, that he does indeed target Muslims. However, like any demagogue, he needs to occasionally change tack to encompass the flavour of the month, as Muslims are looking a bit tired as a scapegoat these days.

[Thorn777]

This is what happens when your just out to satisfy employers, dont take those seriously that see their wages and job-security decline because of the pressure or even become unemployed, and dont make sure those Poles live in normal conditions but instead live cramped up like a can of sardines often even exploited as well paying horrendous rents.

Why would anyone affected like this EU? Im surprised even thats its just a "hotline" yet. Though it speaks for itself so many signed that petition.

[Phalanx300]

I believe Elsevier said that there are already 43.000 complaints. What I'm suprised at is how other European countries are reacting. Surely if there are problems we should look into them?

[Phier]

Polish girls are hot.

My complaint is we don't have more of them here (and we have a lot).

[Thorn777]

prostitution, yay!

[NotYetRegistered]

I doubt that the PVV will ever even look at these reports.

[Dr. Croccer]

Geert has realized, as a result of his recently declining support, that Muslims have lost their position as the prime targets for populism, and has now turned on the Poles, which is guaranteed to get him alot of votes from disgruntled working class folk.

Can't say I'm that against it. Mass migration of the Poles to here has negative consequences for both our countries.