The political legacy of Nazi concentration camps: the case of the Netherlands

Abstract

Do traumatic events from the (distant) past affect political attitudes in the present day? This paper explores the political legacy of the Holocaust with two empirical studies investigating the effect of exposure to Nazi concentration camps on modern-day, far-right voting in the Netherlands. The first study employs county-level voting data (N = 352) while the second study employs individual-level voting data (N = 1,344) from the 2021 Dutch parliamentary election. Overall, these studies provide evidence that elevated exposure to Nazi concentration camps leads to reduced support for modern-day, far-right politics in the Netherlands. Examining the political legacy of Nazi concentration camps in the Dutch context quantitatively for the first time, this paper attests to the salience of the (distant) past in modern politics, shedding light on the often-neglected role of history in shaping contemporary, far-right political attitudes.