ABSTRACT
The Dutch New Right is not a simple copy of its Anglo-American counterparts. Due to the exceptional impact of the progressive wave of the 1960s and 1970s, the Dutch current had to contend with an overwhelming progressive common sense on the ‘social issues’ that were the subject of the culture wars in the US: sexual morality, abortion, euthanasia, drugs. As a result, the Dutch countercurrent came to incorporate to a much larger degree the progressive sexual, anti-authoritarian and secular ethos that had become engrained in the Netherlands. While politicians such as Bolkestein still opposed gay marriage and defended Christian morality in the late 1990s, that soon changed. In the wake of Pim Fortuyn, Dutch New Right intellectuals embraced the Enlightenment and progressive values such as individualism, secularism, women’s equality and gay rights, presenting themselves as the true defenders of the accomplishments of Dutch culture against the ‘backward culture’ of Muslim immigrants. Drawing on the work of sociologist Angela McRobbie, this chapter describes the Dutch revolt as a ‘complex backlash’ against the legacy of the 1960s. Put differently, it is a countercurrent that selectively incorporates elements of the tendency that it opposes, while contesting that tendency on a broader set of terrains.
