Hiddema: the 'civilized' nationalist?

In the perception of many journalists and citizens, Baudet and Hiddema are conservatives but not really radical or extreme right politicians. But is that perception correct or do we encounter a radical ideology underneath the civilized image?

Hiddema, the best dressed, renowned criminal lawyer

“Now I like to give the stage to the number two of our list, renowned criminal lawyer, for years the best dressed man in the Netherlands. He will join us in the House of Representatives to bring order to justice. We are very excited to work with him, Theo Hiddema” with these words Baudet introduces Hiddema at the party congress of 2017. 

Through this quote Baudet co-constructs Hiddema’s image. Image is the description of ‘the portrait of identity fashioned out of cumulating patterns of congruence across all manner of indexical signs’ (Maly, 2016: 269). Hiddema is known for his dressing skills. He always wears a suit with tie and pochet and when he wears glasses he most often puts his glasses on the tip of his nose. You will not see a laugh with teeth on Hiddema’s face, his laugh is a smile with a closed mouth. His gaze is straight and sometimes rigid and his overall attitude is elitist and static which is strengthened by his carefully trimmed moustache. 

Hiddema, just like Baudet are read as dandies: nicely dressed men. Intellectuals even. In the PowNews video De Baard their dandy attitude is visible. Baudet had a beard challenge. The challenge is over and Baudet accompanied by Hiddema went to the barber. During the video Hiddema' his statements are fitting to a well-groomed man: “You can see all those beetles fleeing. (...) Can you cut those nose hairs, I can see them from here.” (Hiddema) During the video Hiddema is smoking, even inside which is forbidden by law. In one hand he holds a cigarette while the other hand is in his pocket. His gait is nonchalant on the one hand and elegant and dominant on the other hand.

Hiddema is known for his speech, when you analyse his voice it is slightly inside and monotonous, but with his feeling for giving accents in a sentence and well use of words he became famous as a speaker in court and in the media. He is understood as good communicator: “Hiddema is a great consumer of text […] his oratorical ability has made him a phenomenon in the courtroom, a welcome guest in the media and a society figure. (De Jong, 2014).

Baudet and the media are using these indexical signs to portrait Hiddema as a successful, rational and civilized man. The style Hiddema is using is a rhetorical way of speech fitting his lawyer image. Through his successful lawyer career people are still influenced with that vision. The media depicts Hiddema as an intellectual which is exactly what Hiddema wants, since Baudet and Hiddema profiling themselves as successful intellectuals. This profiling is visible through their oratorical argumentation in reply to the critics. They speak from a self constructed 'superior' intellectual position, framing journalists and media as 'low' quality papers: “That’s a nice piece of lazy, lame journalism of the highest level and the Volkskrant very worthy I can tell you. In order to frame Baudet in the right way, they also committed character murder on Willem van Hanegem.” (Hiddema)

By giving a reply on such a way he puts himself above the journalist which strengthens his elite attitude. Hiddema knows what issues he can address since he can win oratorical the debate. The issues Hiddema addresses in the political field are most often regarded to crime, law and justice and immigration. These issues can be related to his successful law career, by addressing these issues he builds his message of a lawyer that knows what he is talking about. 

Image, style and issue create the message. This message ‘is about is about mobilizing all semiotic means to persuade the audience that you are the one that will answer their needs’ (Maly, unknown). Hiddema's performs as an civilized, well-educated man and addresses issues with his knowledgeable law and justice career. Therefore he creates a trustworthy, well-educated, experienced message.  Through his well-defined rhetorical way of speech and civilized appearance Hiddema's his straight away statements doesn’t look that harsh and radical. His image is well defined and influences the message and to understand the message it is important to look further to the discourse of the party.

Style vs discourse

So the image cannot be disconnect with the message. Therefore we need to explore the discourse of the political party FvD since the image has an impact on the understanding of the discourse. How they talk, look and perform will affect the outcome of the idea of having a radical discourse. Therefore I will now analyse the parties discourse regarding national culture and diversity.

The FvD wants to promote Dutch culture and history by educating citizens in schools and by mass media the Dutch. The nation, and the national culture has to be revived and revalued, because “Over the past decades, attempts have been made to alienate the Dutch from its history and cut its culture. This should not only stop, it should be reversed.” (Forum voor Democratie). The globalist or the so-called party-kartel with is kosmopolitan dreams and their oikophobia have deconstructed that Dutch culture.

The true Dutch culture is seen as in decline, and therefore urgent action is needed. This decline, according to Baudet and Hiddema, is amongst other things the result of migration. “Due to the arrival of large groups of (Islamic) immigrants, a number of achievements and core values of our society have come under pressure. The party has ignored this problem for the past thirty years - making it completely out of hand and allowing entire population groups to face each other.” (Forum voor Democratie)

Through the immigration problems they define not only their perspective regarding integration and remigration, but also on what a healthy nation is. n their opinion the Dutch people should decide who stays and who is not welcome since that culture cannot blend with the Dutch culture.  “Asylum policy by Australian model: The Netherlands decides for itself who is being cared for here. Immigrants with extreme political ideas that are not in line with our Western civilization should be immediately deported to the country of origin.” (Forum voor Democratie). In principle,  all religions are welcome, but in practice, the Islam is defined as undermining or incompatible with the Dutch values. The Islam, or the so-called Islamization, is in their discourse, seen as the origin of the problems. 

By making the Dutch culture superior to others FvD's creates radical statements that undermine the equal treatment of religions and the separation between church and state and thus undermine the fundaments of Enlightenment. This cultural policy can be distinguished as ‘a classical anti-Enlightenment concept of the nation as an organic ethnic community that connects all its member through the Dutch language and other classic ethno-cultural characteristics’ (Maly, 2016: 273) 

Integration between the sheets

This anti-Enlightenment ideology also becomes obvious when Hiddema and Baudet talk about the ideal type of integration and the survival of the nation. Baudet's comments on 'homeopathic dilution ot Duthc culture' caused a hughe media hype. Hiddema, when asked to respond to this discourse, seemingly distances himself when he says: '. "The political critics are linking racism and sexism to FvD. Since Baudets thinks that ‘Dutch are better than foreigners, but also man are better than women and white is better than black’ (Verburg, 2017). Most often people think that Baudet and Hiddema share the same opinion, also in regard with these racism and sexism. Hiddema suggests to have a different opinion:“(..) I don’t have to follow the party leader blind” (Theo Hiddema, PowNews)? But then he goes further by saying that:  “The best integration is through racial blend. When all the Moroccans mix with Dutch females there is no problem. Then we do not need integration committees and experts. Integration under the covers.” (Theo Hiddema, BNNVARA)

When we analyze this statement, we see that Hiddema and Baudet are in fact saying the same thing. Dutch culture is under threat and in order to save it, we need to thing about the reproduction of that culture. In the above quote, we see that Hiddema uses an ethno-cultural definition of the national culture. TCulture is deeply embedded in the ethnic background, that why he pleads in order to save Dutch culturepleads for racial blend. Dutch culture can be saved if Moroccans marry real Dutch people and reproduce Dutch Culture.

The question than is can his statement be seen as an act of racism and sexism? According to Hiddema his statement doesn’t contain racism and sexism since he pleads: “I have advocated the sexual mixing. Is that racist? I do not think so. On the contrary”. What we see here, is that he limits 'racism' to the exclusion on the basis of 'biological' criteria and as such frames himself as not being racist. But of course, he still advocates that Dutch culture is the only acceptable culture and identity. And that Moroccans are only welcome if they become real Dutch mens.

In that sense we see how his radical ethno-cultural nationalism also constructs a cultural racism ‘Racism was created historically and became interdependent with the ideology of nationalism […] racism and nationalism arose together, are often articulated together and have an influence on each other (Miles, 1989: 9) By saying Moroccans need to mix with Dutch females Hiddema promotes ethnical-cultural nationalism which interferes with the feeling of racism by putting Dutch culture in the Netherlands as more important than Moroccan culture. More even, Hiddema frames 'Islam' as a fixed and unchangeable culture:

This idea of racial blend is racism since it depicts Islamization as a problem and want to solve the problem by trying to create superior inhabitants.  All though, Hiddema does not believe his idea of racial blend will work since he says:  “There's one category of people that won't be liberated (bevrijen), which is the Islam. They won't be liberated, they focus on beliefs.” (Theo Hiddema)

The idea of racial blending, and his essentialist definition of the 'islamic other' doesn’t only show the radical nationalist perspective of Hiddema, but refers also to his conservative an Anti-Enlightenment ideology. The Anti-Enlightenment is showed since the idea of racial blend is typical for the ideas of the 19th century modernistic ideas. When we scratch the surface, we see that hidden under a message full of charismatic rhetoric, dandyism and elite attitude, we encounter an old radical ideology. 

A civilized, well-educated anti-Enlightenment nationalist

Up untill today, we see that most mainstream media reproduces the message of Hiddema and Baudet as civilized, conservative nationalists. Most  'messengers of message', journalists and intellectuals don't focus on this radical ideology. Hiddema and Baudet are treated as intellectuals, as popular politicians and as the decent alternative to Wilders. If they make explicit radical claims, these claims are understood as exception, irony or miscommunications but rarely as indexes of their ideology. 

When Hiddema talked about 'negro's' this was framed as 'unwelcome": “Of course that is completely correct, but that does not mean that it is normal to use the word" negro ". I understand that this term is popular again in certain circles, non-politically correct circles, but you can go too far in that. Hiddema is undoubtedly no racist, but "negro" is really outdated today.” (van der Galien)In many instances they fail to detect the radical anti-Enlightenment discourse of these dandies. But when you analyse his discourse, Hiddema can be depicted as a conservative nationalist. The radical nature of their nationalism can be formulated in their controversial discourse ideas regarding homeopathic dilution or the ethno-cultural blend. 

Therefore Hiddema’s ideas are Anti-Enlightenment since he is not in favour of change. His philosophies can be considered as a 19th century modernist.Through his radical thoughts regarding nationalism and Anti-Enlightenment he performs his issues as a racist and sexist, but through his well use of image and message people do not see him immediately the discourse of a populist. Therefore the media doesn’t depict Hiddema as a populist, all though he still plays with the voice of the public and puts himself above.

References

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