ABSTRACT
The neoliberal elements of the Dutch New Right form a complex assemblage with ideas drawn from another powerful intellectual movement, that of US neoconservatism. Following the work of Justin Vaïsse, the neoconservative movement can be subdivided into three periods: its early origins in the Cold War liberalism of the 1950s and 1960s, its rightward shift in the 1970s and 1980s culminating in the alliance with Ronald Reagan, and finally the most famous period in the 1990s and 2000s, when neoconservatives emerge at the forefront of the War on Terror. In the Netherlands, US neoconservatism is generally associated with the fallout of 9/11, when a series of right-wing authors proclaimed their affinity with neoconservative ideas. But neoconservative ideas had been circulating among Dutch intellectuals long before 9/11. They played an essential role in the debates on national identity, Islam, integration and immigration of the 1990s, which has generally been ignored by scholars and journalists. This chapter focuses on three important political and intellectual figures: the leader of the right-wing liberal party Frits Bolkestein, the conservative social democrat journalist H.J. Schoo, and the new atheist Paul Cliteur.
