A Postprogressive Nation: Homophobia, Islam, and the New Social Question in the Netherlands

Abstract

Sexuality is pivotal to the moralization and culturalization of politics in the Netherlands. Culturalists of various stripes represent the presence of (post)migrants and especially Muslims as disturbing to the Dutch moral order. They insist on the need to educate (post)migrants culturally and morally, to include them as citizens in a European or Dutch moral community, and to mold them into “well-integrated” citizens. Certain ideals of sexual freedom are mobilized in an “individualization” offensive directed at Muslims, who are asked to show their loyalty to a dominant secular and liberal order by unequivocally embracing gay rights and sexual freedom. While “homonationalism” is an operative component of right-wing populist rhetoric, its salience is clear beyond the neonationalist right. The chapter examines “progressive” articulations of homonationalism in the Netherlands, focusing on the “moralist reinvention” of social-democratic and social-liberal discourses in the context of the neoliberal Netherlands.

This chapter is a slightly revised version of “A Post-Progressive Nation: Homophobia, Islam, and the New Social Question in the Netherlands,” in National Politics and Sexuality in Transregional Perspective: The Homophobic Argument, ed. Achim Rohde, Christina von Braun, and Stefanie Schüler-Springorum (London: Routledge, 2018), 19–38. It is being reproduced by permission of Taylor & Francis Books UK. I would like to thank my friend Merijn Oudenampsen for allowing me to use his concept of “postprogressive” in the title of this chapter. Many thanks also to Professor Peter Geschiere for his many important remarks on an earlier version of the chapter. And thanks to Marco Derks for his important remarks on this chapter’s second incarnation.