Yeah, this is the story foreign media always come up with, and I don't know how often I've had to dispel the fiction that the SP are against mass immigration or somehow different than their counterparts in other Western European countries. Gastarbeid en Kapitaal, written in the 80s, was critical of immigration, but since the SP entered parliament in the 1990s they have always voted along with the other left-wing parties when it comes to immigration, integration and crime. In 2006, the SP did not win 26 seats on a platform of less immigration: they rather employed the tactic of being silent about the issue (they know their base doesn't like what they do) and if asked about it attribute all disparities between Dutch and immigrants to socio-economic inequality. Not convincing to someone like me and, I would think, to someone like you. They can come back when they genuinely become critical of immigration. Other than that they are, indeed, part of the anti-globalization left, but if that means opening the borders to all of the third world and erasing our culture anyway, then I'm having none of it.
Probably the wrong place to ask this, but who is the SP's base any way? Are thez *shudder*
actually working class?
My impression of Europe's hard left parties is that they tend to be mostly supported by middle class lefties, but GL seem to have that demographic in the Netherlands.
