In the Netherlands, hardly a day passes without furious citizens besieging town halls, often successfully demanding a ban on asylum seekers. On Saturday, Sept. 20 at The Hague, riot police only just managed to keep violent demonstrators from storming an empty Parliament.

The brutal murder, a month earlier, of a 17-year old Dutch girl named Lisa has fanned the flames of anti-immigration fury. Lisa was dragged from her bicycle in the middle of the night while returning to her home village of Abcoude after an evening partying in nearby Amsterdam. The suspect is a 22-year old African asylum seeker, possibly from Nigeria, who was arrested in a refugee center nearby. He is also accused of sexual assaults on two women in Amsterdam, who barely escaped with their lives.

The criminal or anti-social behavior of many asylum seekers dominates the campaign leading up to parliamentary elections on October 29 which, according to all opinion polls, the Freedom Party (PVV) of anti-immigration politician Geert Wilders stands to win, as it did in 2023. 

In his first reaction to Lisa’s murder, which horrified the nation, Mr. Wilders announced that, under his rule, the more than 300 centers for asylum seekers (AZC’s) in the country would be closed forthwith. 

The police remain tight-lipped about the suspect, assuming that he is Nigerian but uncertain of his identity. He only recently arrived in the country. Nothing is being divulged about his asylum claim, nor whether he lived in the AZC near the scene of Lisa’s death where he was arrested. This has led to speculation that he used it as a ‘hotel’ from where he preyed on women and girls. The Council for Asylum Seekers, the government’s regulatory body, has a lot of explaining to do. The center in question, housing around 800 people, is heavily guarded by police to prevent it from being stormed or worse by irate citizens as has happened in Britain.

In this toxic political climate, the left accuses Mr. Wilders and others on the radical right of spreading hatred against non-Western immigrants in general and asylum seekers in particular. Wilders co-inspired, they argue, the protests by more than a thousand football hooligans at The Hague, with scenes of violence rarely seen in this country. Two police cars were set on fire, and attempts failed to set ablaze the offices of a center-left party deemed pro-immigration. Yobbos belted out slogans like “Sieg Heil,” yelled nasty things about Jews, and proudly flaunted T-shirts emblazoned with “white power.”

The hatred of foreigners of the criminal variety has united Dutch football hooligans, normally at each other’s throat, in violent protests. At The Hague, a black-clad army of football fans from all over the country, accompanied by members of extreme right-wing fringe movements, had hijacked what was to have been a peaceful demonstration, notably “for woman’s safety on our streets.” Here, too, Lisa’s fate was uppermost in people’s minds, inspiring the hard-core political and hooligan elements to honor her on huge banners before taking on the riot police. 

An odd alliance has thus seen the light between tough young men looking for “bother” and women and girls understandably scared of men in crowded AZC’s all over the country. 

Well before Lisa’s murder, people had complained about the foreigner’s behavior against (very) young girls and women. Villagers started organizing vigilante groups, making citizens’ arrests during patrols armed with sticks and intimidating dogs.

Immigration was not the only  reason why at The Hague bovver boys took to the streets. The perceived denigrating of Dutch culture and the Netherlands’ colonial past by the left and leaders of ethnic minorities came a close second. Perhaps on a par with the housing crisis that asylum seekers are partially blamed for, as they are prioritized on waiting lists for social housing once their applications get approved.

The abundant research by Dutch mathematician Jan van de Beek on the high criminality rates among male asylum seekers used to be anathema to the Dutch left. It cherished its own pundits, judged less alarmist. Now, after Lisa’s murder, the united front has started to crack. 

Progressives had argued, in response to hateful messages about “rapefugees,” that women’s lack of security in public spaces is “a man’s problem,” be they foreigners or Dutch. That Lisa had possibly fallen victim to a migrant, is therefore deemed a minor detail. A female columnist in the usually woke newspaper NRC begged to differ and came close to sharing the views of Dr. Jan van der Beek, who deems “frightful” the over-representation of asylum seekers in all aspects of crime in the Netherlands.

During many years, politicians and left-wing media were quick to ridicule people objecting to asylum seekers coming to their town. This pattern has started to change since early this year. Not only are the protests of the erstwhile yokels taken seriously, in quick succession their wishes are granted. Public broadcaster NOS, distrusted by the right, estimates that these last few months the mayors of at least 15 towns and villages scrapped plans to ‘welcome’ AZC’s. Protests, often violent, outside town halls had a lot to do with it, even though mayors are loath to admit it.

Within the same week in late September, uprisings took place in at least five small provincial towns. In the seaside resort of Noordwijk, stars of the Netherlands’ best watched tv-reality show cheered the protesters on. Everywhere, demonstrators in front of town halls, violent or otherwise, mentioned Lisa’s fate, fearing the same would happen to their daughters.

Supposing the popular anger again leads Mr. Wilders’ party to victory, chances are that it will be a Pyrrhic one. In November 2023 he came in first, only to squander his political capital in less than a year of endless bickering with his three coalition partners under the inexperienced Prime Minister Dick Schoof. No-one on the moderate right wants to again play second fiddle to the authoritarian Wilders. He cuts a lonely figure, living under constant threat of assassination by Islamists, unable to go out and meet the voters unless surrounded by a phalanx of bodyguards. He had heeded their warnings not to attend the rally in his honor at The Hague that had started peacefully, but ended in violence and tears in an already highly-strung political climate.

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