What Is New about Dutch Populism? Dutch Colonialism, Hierarchical Citizenship and Contemporary Populist Debates and Policies in the Netherlands

Abstract

This article discusses how Dutch politics of citizenship in the (colonial) past and the present create distinctions, distribute status, rights, opportunities, securities and wealth and how they evoke agency. This process is analysed first by exploring the politics of citizenship in colonial times; second, the implications of political decolonisation for citizenship are discussed; third, present day dynamics around Dutch populism and how they connect to autochthony and Islamophobia are discussed; fourth, a present-day example of the phenomenon termed ‘citizenship alienism’ will be analysed. These historical and contemporary discourses demonstrate how through the years, Dutch majoritarian politicians have constructed a distinction between ‘conditional’ versus ‘unconditional’ citizens through references to a mythical core Dutch nation. The politics of inequality under populism are in that sense not new, but, rather, present-day expressions of a much older Dutch political phenomenon.