AMSTERDAM — Zaid Belmahdi likes to spend at least part of his weekend at the Tropics Cafe.
A lived-in social club in a small dusty strip mall at the terminus of a tram line, a long ride away from the city’s world-famous canals, museums and parks, the place smells of apple-flavored hookah smoke and strong mint tea. Dim purple lights give the establishment the feel of dusk, even on a bright sunny weekday. Old and young men sit on low couches, talking, fussing with their phones and watching TV. Belmadhi, who is 19, has been coming to the cafe for a year.
“I’ve known most these guys for years,” he says.
Belmahdi, whose parents were born in Morocco, and the café’s other mostly immigrant clientele are more than just regulars, however. They have become the most important political subject of this year’s parliamentary elections in the Netherlands, scheduled for Wednesday.
Geert Wilders, the head of the nationalist Party for Freedom, has made brisk political business denigrating descendants of immigrants from non-Western countries — especially Muslims — painting them as outsiders. He even portrays them as criminals and a burden on the country’s impressive social welfare system. All this despite the fact that Belmahdi and many like him are born in the country, speak perfect Dutch, go to the best universities, volunteer in the community and contribute to society in every conceivable way.
A recent Dutch survey showed that 64 percent of respondents opposed imposing a U.S.-style travel ban that focuses on Muslims. However, 90 percent of respondents who identify with Wilders’ Party for Freedom do favor such a ban.
The reason such xenophobia finds an audience in this liberal and well-to do country is tied to identity, integration and — in this election season — national politics.
“They feel a lack of security and you see them react to Muslims and refugees — and they say, ‘My problems are their fault’,” says Jesse Klaver, the head of the Green Party, before a party event, of Dutch voters.
Wilder’s rhetoric has become more extreme since the last election in 2012, when his party earned some 15 seats, just 10 percent of the 150-seat parliament. He has recently started calling for the closure of mosques, banning of the Koran and tightening of borders. When his nationalist views were rewarded with the high poll numbers in December and January, the world press — which had gotten both the Brexit vote and the U.S. election of Donald Trump so wrong — took notice.
On the day he officially started his campaign in late February, Wilders — who has been convicted for hate speech — made sure to call Moroccans “scum” In English and in front of rolling cameras.
A few days before the election, polls indicate that things have changed. The Freedom party is no longer poised to win the plurality of seats in the government, a prize which, without a willing coalition party, would have been symbolic anyway. Current polls suggest that the right-wing party is on track to win some 25 seats. However, most other parties are not doing better and most experts agree that the next government will consist of a coalition of at least four different parties.
“This year there is not going to be a big winner and everyone expected there to be one,” says Peter-Paul Koch, a political observer who runs a polling analysis website, referring to the Freedom Party.
Meanwhile, some of the country’s most popular politicians, like Ahmed Aboutaleb, the mayor of Rotterdam and Khadija Arib, the speaker of the parliament, are not only Muslim but were actually born in Morocco — making them the very people so maligned by their colleagues across the aisle.
But as Klaver and others on the left vow to fight the rise of xenophobia and populism, the mainstream parties further to the right seem willing engage fears in society.
During a recent debate, Sybrand van Haersma Buma, who leads the Christian Democratic party, which stand s to win the third most seats and will likely be part of the governing coalition, talked about the importance of children knowing and singing the national anthem, in a clear nod to those who fear that Dutch culture is getting lost.
Mark Rutte, the country’s prime minister and the head of the People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy, the mainstream conservative party, wrote an open letter in a newspaper, warning immigrants to behave or else leave the country.
When Wilders called for fewer Moroccans in 2013, Belmahdi says his brother, who was then just 7 years old, cried for fear. “I was 16, I understood he was only a stupid politician.”
Belmahdi and many of his friends see such calls as political posturing. The ascendancy of Donald Trump as U.S. president, who rode his anti-Muslim immigrant messaging into the Oval Office, has made people here wary of anti-immigrant rhetoric and trusting polls.
“Trump started as a joke,” says Belmahdi, “we watched him very closely here in Holland.”
Life goes on for Belmahdi. He and his friends were nominated for a community award for their work in creating Future Up, a group that works with disenfranchised neighborhood children, many of whom are challenged by straddling both Dutch and immigrant worlds.
Next year, Belmahdi plans to run for city council with D66, a liberal party, poised to make significant gains in parliament this week.
He plans to run for parliament in the next election, which — if the coalition government formed after this week’s elections proves to be stable — could be in five years.
“Just watch, in 12 years, I’ll be the prime minister,” he says.
More from U.S. News
Key Elections in the World in 2017
The Dutch Plan to Create International Abortion Fund
Learn More About the Netherlands
Dutch Elections Will Test Country’s Populist Direction originally appeared on usnews.com
