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<h2 class="f2-p _balance-text f3 f2-ns f1-l lh-title ma0"
style="line-height: 1.2em;">Dutch government falls as deaths
mount in COVID-19 pandemic</h2>
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<div class="f7 f6-ns f5-l b"><span><a class="no-underline
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href="https://www.wsws.org/en/authors/Alex-Lantier">Alex
Lantier</a></span><span>, <a class="no-underline
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href="https://www.wsws.org/en/authors/Parwini-Zora">Parwini
Zora</a></span></div>
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<div class="f7 normal black-60 mt1"><time
datetime="2021-01-20T06:38:57.000Z" class="dn-p ">14 hours
ago</time></div>
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<p>On January 15, Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte announced
his government’s resignation ahead of national elections
scheduled for March 17. He will head a caretaker government
until then.</p>
<p>Rutte claimed that his resignation aimed to redress the
wrong committed in a 2013-2019 welfare scandal, where the
Dutch state falsely accused 26,000 parents of dual-national
families of welfare fraud, improperly forcing them to pay
back tens of thousands of euros in child benefit. “With this
decision, the government wants to do justice to all those
parents who have been unprecedentedly wronged,” Rutte said.
“The rule of law should protect citizens from the
all-powerful government, and that has gone horribly wrong
here.”</p>
<p>The welfare scandal is a state crime: tens of thousands of
families, selected by Dutch welfare agencies via ethnic
profiling of those holding Moroccan or Turkish dual
citizenship, were financially ruined and humiliated. This
cold-blooded ethnic selection of citizens to be ruined is a
disturbing sign of growing fascistic sentiment within the
state machine, implicating the entire Dutch political
establishment. What is driving Rutte’s resignation is not,
however, a national crisis, let alone Rutte’s supposed
contrition over his government’s anti-Muslim policies.</p>
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<div class="relative overflow-hidden "><img class="db
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<figcaption class="db avenir f7 f6-m lh-title black-60 tc
pt3 ph3">Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte (Arno
Mikkor/Wikimedia Commons)</figcaption></figure>
<p>Rutte brought down his own government amid mounting anger
among workers internationally at the ruling elite’s “herd
immunity” policies on the COVID-19 pandemic, and as Dutch
deaths in the pandemic hit 13,000. Governments across Europe
are tottering after US President Donald Trump incited a mob
to storm the Capitol in Washington on January 6 in an
attempted fascist coup. Rutte resigned only a few days after
Matteo Renzi pulled out of Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe
Conte’s coalition government, and Estonia’s government fell
over a corruption scandal.</p>
<p>Rutte’s resignation comes as the bourgeoisie
internationally debates a turn to authoritarian forms of
rule, against mass anger building in the working class at
austerity and “herd immunity” policies.</p>
<p>With the resignation, Rutte aims to weather the storm, win
re-election and continue his policies, including “herd
immunity” and inciting anti-Muslim hatred, with as few
changes as possible. Above all, the resignation aims to
perpetuate the political fraud that the Dutch bourgeoisie’s
policy is liberal and democratic, while it in fact continues
a murderous, ever more fascistic policy on the pandemic and
against the rights of the working class—especially of
immigrant workers.</p>
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<p>Rutte’s demagogic claims he is sorry his government
“unprecedentedly wronged” immigrants are belied by the
political establishment’s defense of successive ministers
from various parties who oversaw the persecution of the
child benefit recipients.</p>
<p>Economy Minister Eric Wiebes, from Rutte’s own People’s
Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD), resigned. He brazenly
said he did not feel guilty for ruining welfare recipients:
“For a long time, I searched for what I could have done
differently. I don’t feel guilty, but I do feel extremely
responsible. I walk around with that, it won’t leave me
anymore. I have not been able to discover what I could
reasonably have done differently to prevent this. That only
makes it more sad.”</p>
<p>Finance Minister Wopke Hoekstra, now an election candidate
of the Christian-Democratic Appeal (CDA), shamelessly
declared his profound sympathy for the parents: “The
conversations with the parents touched me deeply. Through no
fault of their own, they have been brought into serious
trouble by the government. This cannot and must not happen
in our rule of law, and we must ensure that it never will
happen again.”</p>
<p>As former Social Affairs Minister Lodewijk Asscher resigned
as a Labor Party (PvdA) candidate in disgrace over the
scandal, the PvdA hailed him. PvdA chairwoman Nelleke
Vedelaar declared, “Lodewijk shows what characterizes a real
leader: decisiveness, vision and idealism. On behalf of the
entire party, I would like to thank Lodewijk incredibly for
his tireless efforts for the party and the future of social
democracy.”</p>
<p>As for the Green Left Party and the petty-bourgeois Maoist
Socialist Party (SP), they are politically implicated by
their decision to join and promote the toothless special
parliamentary committee that investigated the scandal in
November-December 2020. Green Left parliamentarian Tom van
der Lee and SP parliamentarian Renske Leijten sat on the
committee and signed its report. While they titled the
report “Unprecedented Injustice,” they sent no high-ranking
politicians or officials to jail. A better title for their
report would have been “Unprecedented Impunity.”</p>
<p>These parties are now working to promote the state machine
and whatever illusions can be stimulated that these
elections will end state corruption and criminality. Green
Left Party chairman Jesse Klaver said: “The House of
Representatives must rectify the mistakes it has made in
recent years, so that a start can be made on restoring the
welfare state as quickly as possible.”</p>
<p>The SP, whose leader Lilian Marijnissen hailed the
parliamentary committee report on the scandal as “very
tough,” reacted to Rutte’s resignation by issuing a
statement titled “Welfare Benefits Scandal: It’s not the
End, it’s the Beginning.” It wrote, “In part thanks to SP
parliamentarian Renske Leijten, the benefits scandal was
revealed. … We are pursuing our fight for a just
government.”</p>
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<p>In fact, the endless protection of the Rutte government by
the Green Left Party, the SP and their various political
allies has primarily benefited Rutte himself. He has been
prime minister since 2010, including throughout the period
when welfare agencies persecuted the parents. His relentless
inciting of anti-Turkish sentiment in the 2017
elections—going so far as to order Dutch police to expel
visiting Turkish officials from the Netherlands—helped
incite the xenophobic climate in which these abuses
occurred.</p>
<p>Nevertheless, despite all the coverage of the welfare
benefits scandal, Rutte’s VVD leads the polls with between
35 and 43 percent of the vote. Second behind the VVD is the
far-right Party for Freedom (PVV) of Geert Wilders at around
25 percent.</p>
<p>More astute sections of the bourgeoisie are speculating
that this will allow Rutte to win a second term, despite his
utterly reactionary record. The <em>Financial Times</em> of
London wrote: “Ironically, a government collapse may end up
protecting Mr Rutte by apportioning responsibility [for the
pension scandal] on all four coalition parties, rather than
just the prime minister. The Dutch go to the polls on March
17. Should Mr Rutte emerge victorious—as polls suggest—the
scandal will be yet another political pitfall that he has
successfully swerved.”</p>
<p>Above all, this scandal reveals that, throughout the
pandemic, as Rutte refused a lock-down and thousands
needlessly died, he had the support of virtually the entire
political establishment. Apart from neo-fascists like
Wilders, the rest—especially the cynical middle class
parties falsely marketed by the media and the ruling elite
as the “left”—bent over backwards to protect him.</p>
<p>The elections will solve none of the issues facing the
working class. Not only have all of the principal parties
supported “herd immunity” policies, but all of them are
complicit in the stoking of xenophobic and Islamophobic
sentiments. The historically unprecedented event of a
fascist coup being attempted in Washington is a warning as
to the fascistic forces being strengthened not only by those
like Wilders, but above all by the policies of the Rutte
government and the parties that have protected it.</p>
<p>Fighting this requires a turn to the international working
class, and the building of a movement in the working class
across Europe for general strike action against “herd
immunity” policies, the growing danger of fascism, and the
capitalist system, based on a socialist perspective.</p>
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