Right-Wing Extremism in the Netherlands:why it is still a marginal phenomenon

Paper presented at the Symposium Right-Wing Extremism in Europe Organized by the Academy for Politics and Current Affairs of the Hanns Seidel Foundation, Munich in cooperation with the European Centre for Research and Action on Racism and Antisemitism (C.E.R.A.), Paris at Berlin, 3 – 5 November 200

The organisational and ideological development of Green Left

In 1991 the Communist Party of the Netherlands (CPN) dissolved itself into the new organisation GreenLeft, founded in 1990. Thus, GreenLeft may be considered the major ‘post-communist party’ in the Netherlands. Yet it is not the only one. A minority of former CPN-members established in 1992 the New Communist Party (NCPN). And there is also the Socialist Party (SP), founded in 1971 under another name (Communist Unity Movement in the Netherlands – Marxist Leninist) by former members of the CPN (and some young people without a party history). However, in this chapter we will focus on the organisation and ideology of GreenLeft. Before doing that, we will present a brief survey of the genesis of this party, followed by a description of its party organisation and ideology as it has developed through time