As the world is closely following the election campaign in the US, a small country in the North of Europe is making a new, political start. Only two years after Geert Wilders’ right-wing Freedom Party (PVV) burst into the Dutch House of Representatives (the third largest party to come out of the elections), the nation was called to the polls again after Wilders withdrew his support to the minority government of Mark Rutte’s centre-right liberal party (VVD) and the Christian Democratic Appeal (CDA), due to divergences over austerity. Perhaps Wilders was counting on Dutch Euroscepticism, which showed its face so clearly in the 2005 vote against the EU constitution. Indeed, Wilders argued – as Daniele Albertazzi and Duncan McDonnell explain in Twenty-First Century Populism: The Spectre of Western European Democracy – that the Netherlands should retain its independence and reduce its contributions to the European Union.

Renowned, for centuries, for its (religious) tolerance, cultural and religious tensions have grown fast with the advent of many Arab immigrants over the past few decades. Critical events such as 9/11 have not helped the situation: when Moroccan youth set out to celebrate the attacks publicly, discussions about respect followed. Respect for the Muslim community, that is, which simply interprets similar events in a different way, so sociologists claimed. This sounds excessively tolerant, but is it not merely political correctness? Politicians in particular are fearful of touching delicate issues and being accused of political incorrectness, and so prefer to ignore the immigration issue altogether.

The first politician (though not in the common sense of the word) to break this “taboo” was Pim Fortuyn, spokesman of an explicit anti-immigration policy. Fortuyn turned Dutch politics upside down with his flamboyant character and down-to-earth vocabulary. His critique of Islam – a “retarded culture,” in his words – provoked many debates about tolerance and freedom of speech. His assassination, just before the elections in 2002, was nevertheless a shock for both adversaries and supporters, and left a deep wound in Dutch society.

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Read more: Holland Playing Safe: Pro-EU Parties Win the Dutch Elections