Wybren Van Haga is a Dutch cultural conservative, libertarian, and entrepreneur. Following a decades-long affiliation with Volkspartij voor Vrijheid en Democratie (VVD), a year spent as an independent MP, and then a brief stint at Thierry Baudet’s Forum voor Democratie (FvD), van Haga struck out on his own.
In July of 2021, he founded his own party, Belang Voor Nederland (BVNL). Alarmed by the direction Dutch politics is heading, through this party, van Haga seeks to promote and preserve hard-won individual freedoms whilst curtailing the size of the state.
Two days before the country’s parliamentary elections, Mr. van Haga sat down with The European Conservative to talk about—among other things—ugly communist architecture, oppressive political elites, and how a return to personal autonomy and responsibility can slow down, if not halt, the West’s headlong plunge into decadence.
We met van Haga in his modest office in The Hague, not in the ‘Binnenhof’—a building complex which for centuries has been the beating heart of Dutch politics—but its decidedly less impressive temporary stand-in, while the former is under renovation.
As a member of the VVD party since 1982, you have a lot of political experience. You have been a member of the VVD since 1982. Were you actively engaged in politics ever since?
Well, I started campaigning when I was 10, I believe with my mother. But I became a member of the Dutch Liberal Party, the VVD, when I was 15 years old. And I only really became active in 2002, I think. Then in 2010, I became a city council member in Haarlem. I did that for two periods, eight years. And then I became a member of Parliament, here in this ghastly building.
What’s ghastly about it?
Well, it’s a Soviet-style structuralist building. A prison for civil servants. And anything that breathes democracy is not here. So it’s absolutely horrible. But anyway, I like it. A lot of people working here are good, but when you enclose them and confine them in a communist prison, then it does something to them. If you look at all the concrete, it’s tasteless, brutalistic, and it breathes the Soviet Union. And our normal parliament, the Binnenhof, is fantastic. It’s what you imagine the parliament to be.
So what keeps you entering this building every single day as a politician?
I’ve got four children, and I really hope they will not see the end of this country. I hope they will grow up in a country like I grew up in, a free country where, if you worked hard, you could earn a decent living, you could buy a house, you could start a family. That’s hardly possible anymore.
You’re touching on the various crises that the Netherlands is currently undergoing. There is the housing crisis, for instance, and then there are liberties that are being violated, such as during COVID.
COVID was a very special episode, because suddenly the government had an excuse to dominate us, to start a totalitarian regime during which most of the people thought that the government was actually caring for them. But of course, now we know they weren’t.
But you say “several crises.” In the Netherlands, everything is in crisis now. There’s no topic that you can’t call a crisis. We’ve got the immigration crisis, the housing crisis, the energy crisis, the food crisis. They’re even talking about water shortages now. And everything is coming down to climate change. But of course, it’s not climate change. It’s the government spiraling out of control. And the government is growing like a cancer. It’s getting bigger and bigger, with more civil servants making all sorts of silly rules. And at the end of the day, the people are suffering.
Would you lay this at the feet of the VVD party? They are nominally center-right but act like globalists.
Oh, the VVD, the Liberal Party, has gone through several phases, depending on who was the leader. Mark Rutte, who’s been leading the party for 14 years, is a left-wing liberal. And so he enjoys coalitions with left-wing parties, like the Christian Union, which is sort of a green, left-ish, semi-communist party with one hand on the Bible and the other hand in Moscow.
The problem in the Netherlands is that we don’t have a system where the winner takes all. You have 21 parties in Parliament now. So you’re forced to form a coalition to have a government. And the VVD is the most right-wing of all the left-wing parties. So as long as they play well, politically, there will always be a place for them. But there are some “locked-up seats,” for instance from the PVV, the Freedom Party of Geert Wilders. They will never join a coalition.
So you predict the PVV will not be allowed into any coalition, even if Pieter Omtzigt’s NSC will be the kingmaker, as many expect it to be?
Yes. Omtzigt is a very decent politician, very smart. Got a PhD in econometrics. He will probably be the next prime minister, which is fine for me, personally, because he’s a politically capable person. Of course, he’s far more left-wing than I am. BVNL, my party is an economically right-wing party, probably the most right-wing of all the parties here, when it comes to the economy. We think that if you work hard, you should be able to get rich, be happy, and buy a house or two or ten. And if you fail, if you don’t do anything, you should get nothing. It’s as simple as that. Pieter Omtzigt stems from the CDA, the Christian Democratic Party, and he’s really left-wing economically.
We’ve got some differences, but if you look at the whole spectrum, then he’s probably the best candidate to become the prime minister. If it were my choice, I would pick Pieter Omtzigt as the prime minister, and then hopefully a center-right government where my party would also be able to play a role. But it will never happen, because Omtzigt and VVD’s Dilan Yesilgoz have already excluded Geert Wilders’ PVV and Thierry Baudet’s Forum for Democracy (FvD).
FvD, your former party?
Yes. For 38 years, I was a member of the VVD, the Liberal Party. And then for five months, I joined the Forum for Democracy before founding BVNL.
Did you choose to leave the VVD because the party changed course and has gone left-wing?
It’s gone through stages. When Joris Voorhoeve was the chairman of the VVD, it was a horrible left-wing party. When Frits Bolkestein was the leader, it was a decent right-wing party. And with Mark Rutte, it changed more or less to liberal opportunism.
How do you define “liberal opportunism?”
Normally, a liberal would say it’s freedom and responsibility, and that’s it. I want the individual to be free. You are in charge of your own life, your own body, your own marriage, your own children, and so on. It’s up to you. That’s a liberal. When it becomes opportunism is when you think ‘well, I want to win the elections, which group should I tell stories to?’ For instance, they argue if you give more social allowance, more money to the people who don’t work, they get more freedom. The electorate grows, but it’s not liberalism. You’re just making a lot more people dependent on the government. And that’s absolutely horrible. And you’re infringing on the rights and individual freedom to excel, to explore, to work. So, I think under Mark Rutte, the VVD lost even its liberal wings.
Poverty and inflation are also among the current crises, and many people can’t make ends meet as everyday life is almost too expensive. As a libertarian, would you say there is still some role for the government to help people in certain circumstances?
Definitely. I’m not 100% libertarian; I think there is a role for the government. The government should build roads, public transport, hospitals, and so on. And if somebody in our society, our community, really can’t cope, whether he or she is disabled, or whatever reason, then we should help. That’s normal human behavior. But we’ve got 1.2 million people in the Netherlands who are not motivated to work. And it’s not because they’re not motivated themselves, but the government is discouraging them from working with all the allowances. Once you start working in a job that doesn’t really pay well, like a mailman, then you will lose a couple of hundred euros a month or so. We call this the “poverty trap.”
So to answer your question, yes, I think we should, as a group, as a community, help the people who really can’t help themselves. But the difference between the people who will get help, and the people who work should be big enough for the people to be motivated to participate. The incentive is completely gone. And this huge group of people dependent on the government, of course, will vote for the sitting government because they get more money. But it’s very bad for the individual. You don’t develop anything sitting at home; watching Netflix is not good for anybody.
So then you made a jump from the VVD to the FvD.
Well, not that fast. In September 2019, I was kicked out of the VVD because I’m an entrepreneur. They really can’t handle entrepreneurs because there are no other [entrepreneurs] left in the VVD. They claimed there was an agreement that I wouldn’t participate in my enterprises anymore. As far as I recall, we never made an agreement because Dutch law is very clear about that.
I read that they cleared you on that. There was no malfeasance or anything toward the party.
The main problem is that in politics, it’s all about integrity. And integrity is a weapon. My point of view is that nobody has 100% integrity. Nobody. And so it can be weaponized. They always use the phrase “integrity goes beyond rules and regulations.” Yeah, that’s strange, because then it means it’s subjective. And then somebody else tells me when my integrity is gone, which is bollocks, because nobody has full integrity. Everybody has lied maybe in his life, or has paid somebody without paying tax, or just has done something wrong. But anyway, the VVD said it was all about integrity, and we will kick you out. And it was a very painful experience.
Were you maybe a bit too critical of the way the VVD was going, and this was just an excuse to get rid of you?
The thing is, entrepreneurs are independent. They think independently, they behave independently. Normally, they would join the Liberal Party in the past, when it was a party full of entrepreneurs. But in a functioning party, which is part of the government, they want dependent people that they can steer towards whatever they want, telling them how to vote. Especially when it came to the energy crisis with the Groningen gas field, it was complete nonsense. In 2018, the government decided to close the biggest gas field in the European Union, with still 600 billion cubic meters left in reserve. I couldn’t agree with that.
And now the war in Ukraine and the sanctions on Russia have even exacerbated the crisis.
It’s a really weird crisis because before, we were sovereign. We produced our own energy. And then we decided to close down the Groningen field and nobody thought about what would happen if Putin closed down the gas supply. I raised this question even back then, before the war. Of course, it has now materialized, but nobody gives a toss. We’re importing shale gas from the U.S. at 20 times our former production price. In Groningen, it cost 5 cents to produce a cubic meter of gas. Dirt cheap. Of course, in 2018 we were already scaling back on energy production, but before that, we were completely self-sufficient. And we could be self-sufficient now, if we had prepared properly before closing Groningen. We should have built five or six nuclear power plants, at least.
Why is self-sufficiency becoming the enemy? Not just in energy production, but also in relation to agriculture and food, as the farmers too have become a target under the Rutte government.
If a family is sovereign and self-sufficient they can decide on whatever they want. If a community or a province is sovereign, that’s the same thing. Now, if a country is sovereign, who cares about the European Union? They may trade and may do things together, but it’s always on a mutual basis. But when you’re dependent on other countries, then it’s far easier to globalize or to create the United States of Europe, for instance. And so you see that everything that every country produces has to be crumbled, has to be crushed.
For instance, we used to be a fishing nation, we’re doing away with that completely, it’s all gone. The farmers are the same thing, we’ve got members of parliament who are saying we should get rid of half of our farmers. Really strange, because we are getting to a point with rising food prices where we can’t supply our own food anymore. And then we become dependent on France, Ukraine, Romania, and so on. But Romania and Ukraine will become dependent on us for other things. And then, of course, you can’t do anything without each other anymore. It sounds nice, but it’s dependence. It’s a socialist, collectivist, Marxist way of looking at things. In the Soviet Union, there were five-year plans for the economy and complete strategies to move entire populations to other areas if they felt it was better. And we are basically doing the same thing now. This dependence is very destructive.
Do you see the Dutch people recognizing this? There is a right-wing shift after all, at least in the polls.
That’s what the media tells us. But what you’re actually seeing is that the right-wing parties are becoming more left-wing.
What is restricting this globalist idea is that we’ve still got a country. We’re speaking the same language and have the same culture. We’ve got all sorts of silly—but we think they are nice—celebrations like Santa Claus and Black Pete, but they are not important. What’s important is the culture, the distinct culture of a certain group of people who are living on a certain spot on the Earth. That’s important because they cling together, they feel they are one of a kind, they recognize each other. And of course, we can still be nice to other people. In the past, of course, it was all secluded, and now, these globalists are trying to mix everything around. In a Marxist or a communist society, mediocrity is the absolute goal. So then there are no differences anymore, everybody will earn the same, and it will be equally horrible for everyone, which makes the government extremely important because then the government controls everything.
Is this why your party stands for a complete stop to asylum seekers coming to the Netherlands?
Yes. It’s good to help people, but you can help them over there. Help them in the region. We are spending €6 billion per year on foreign aid. That’s fine, but I would like to stop that as well because it usually ends up in the pockets of all sorts of strange dictators. If you want to spend some money, make sure that you actually help Syrians, and close to Syria. Why are we helping all the Syrians here, and on top of that, why are we helping people from Nigeria, Eritrea, Algeria, or Morocco here? It’s really weird. I can’t see any reason why we are having 1,500 people per week now entering the country, throwing away their passports, and getting a house, social allowances, and free medical care.
Can you tell us a bit about the controversial asylum centers in Ter Apel?
It’s an industry. So the migrants first go to Ter Apel, that’s the first point of contact. Then they get into the system. Usually, they throw away their passport before they go there. The moment they get a [refugee] status, they can stay here. And after five years, you get a passport. We’re dishing out Dutch passports like candy. And you wonder why? If it’s really about helping people, there are better ways to do that.
I was there last week. People were telling me that they are completely desperate. They can’t go on holiday anymore, because you get people just breaking in the windows and sleeping in their beds. The children can’t even go to school on their bikes, because it’s not safe anymore. People would like to help other people who are in need. But if it’s an industry, and you’re blatantly being overrun by God-knows-who, then there’s no point anymore. These people are suffering, and we are not helping them. The credo of the VVD’s Secretary of Immigration has always been ‘the more asylum seekers, the better.’
Some people just enjoy everybody running through our borders and benefiting from everything here. The strange thing is, everybody tells us it’s because of the European Union and the treaties we signed. It’s not. Denmark, Finland, Switzerland, and a lot of countries limited their refugee intake to around 1,000 people a year. We got 1,500 per week; it’s just completely gotten out of hand.
How do you see your party BVNL’s role after the election?
I hope the party gets as big as possible and that we actually join the government and start sending away half of the civil servants and reducing all these silly expenditures. For instance, we’ve got a €35 billion ‘climate fund’ and a €25 billion ‘nitrogen fund,’ which we will abolish right away. They exist only to buy out farmers and transform their lands into wastelands and swamps. It’s completely ridiculous.
Then we have the housing crisis, but the biggest problem there is migration. In 2022, the net result of immigration was 228,000 people—they have to live somewhere. We built 90,000 houses in the same year, that’s not enough.
Migration is a danger to our culture, but also very expensive. This whole immigration nonsense costs the Netherlands €24 billion a year. Leftist politicians are saying that if we don’t admit everybody in, then there’s going to be no one to take care of the elderly. This is nonsense. The population may grow, or it may shrink. If it shrinks, then you’ve got more empty houses, home prices will fall and rent will become cheaper. Classes will get smaller, hospitals will be less full. It’s not necessarily bad. If you have an average birth rate of 1.9, like in the Netherlands, you have a stable society. Our government is destabilizing it by importing millions of people from different cultures into the country, which contributes nothing to our society. The percentage of people that you allow to enter into your country should always be marginal so that you can always absorb them.
Can you define ‘Dutchness’?
Well, I’m half-English. But my mother used to say that the Dutch would fight over every square centimeter. Everything is a problem, and they are very harsh, very direct. But when there’s a war, the Dutch are nowhere to be seen. The English are the opposite: you don’t talk about your problems, but when there’s a war, they’d go all guns blazing down to the Falklands and back, and they’d always win the war. Of course, I feel more Dutch than English, but I think we talk too much and act little.
Should the Netherlands take more initiative in Europe then?
Not at all. I think we should withdraw and let everybody have their own culture. Let Hungary be Hungary, let Poland be Poland, let Austria be Austria. Orbán said the same thing, that he’s the prime minister of Hungary, so he takes care of the Hungarians and nobody else. That’s why we call our party the ‘Interest of the Netherlands.’ We will vote, in any circumstance, for the interest of the Netherlands. That’s what we’ll do. Because, frankly, the Netherlands is on a decline, with weak leaders and decadent people. We should recognize this and change the course of our society.
Unfortunately, it has to become a lot worse for us to realize this. Once people have no food, no water, and they are sitting out there in the cold, they will look at the government and ask ‘What the hell did you do to us? We’ve got free gas in Groningen, we’ve got water all over the place, we had the best farmers and fishermen in the world, but now we’ve got nothing because we were saving the climate. Now we’re hungry and cold.’ That will be the moment when they realize that the people sitting here in this ghastly building were working in their own interest with all these perverted motives for whatever jobs they wanted to have, and not in the interest of the Netherlands.
