Humanity Under Siege: The Government’s Strategy of Dehumanization under Faber

No, this is not about incompetence. It’s a choice. A policy of exclusion signed by the far right and fully tolerated by the system.

On April 3, 2025, the Netherlands became a little darker.

The Minister of Asylum, Marjolein Faber, refused to sign off on royal honors for five volunteers from the Central Agency for the Reception of Asylum Seekers (COA). Five people who selflessly offered time, support, and expertise to help refugees find their footing were deemed politically “inconvenient.”

The Minister didn’t mince her words: “Their work goes against my policy.”

That phrase sums up an entire political strategy – one that doesn’t merely aim to “regulate” migration, but to fully dehumanize. Faber doesn’t want refugees. She doesn’t want to see them, doesn’t want anyone to help them, doesn’t even want them to exist.

Faber knows exactly what she’s doing

This is not a misunderstanding or an exaggeration. The public may think Faber is “inexperienced” or “impulsive.” Wrong. Every move she makes is meticulously calculated such as:

• Suspension of state funding for the National Structure Supporting Foreign Nationals.
• Withdrawal of the Distribution Act, which aimed for fair accommodation of refugees.
• Circumvention of parliament with emergency legislation to “reform” asylum law.
• Cancellation of rights to shelter, food, and healthcare for undocumented people.
• Complete sabotage of the LVV program, the bare-minimum effort at coordinated care.

Faber is building a regime of political exception. Those who are not “authentic Dutch,” who lack documentation , who seek asylum are cast as internal enemies. And the state organizes itself around suppressing them.

Normalized Fascism

This policy is not new. For over 30 years, the Netherlands has nurtured the idea that the “undocumented” must live under constant pressure , banned from working, excluded from welfare, healthcare and housing. What’s different with Faber is the intensity and the shamelessness.

Faber’s “argument” is both simple and horrific: if we show compassion, more will come. Sadly, this line of thinking is now echoed even on social media.

That is why life for refugees must be made as unbearable as possible, even for those who have been granted asylum (statushouders) should not be helped to integrate. They must remain “foreign,” “unwanted.”

Not just outsiders, people who can never belong.

Parliament’s silence is complicity

The outrage over the denied honors led to a marathon parliamentary debate and motions of censure. All were rejected. Government coalition partners – even the “moderates” – rallied around Faber. Wilders praised her.

And the opposition? At best, they criticized her for “poor handling.” In truth, they once again avoided confronting the real driving force behind this policy: the fascist ideology of the PVV.

Rather than attacking the core of this xenophobic agenda, they criticize the PVV’s stance on Russia, avoiding any real mention of racism, Islamophobia, or fascism.

This isn’t an accident. It’s a deliberate retreat by the “center-left” into the far right’s agenda. Even on the refugee issue, many in the so-called “progressive bloc” condemn Faber , not because she’s inhumane, but because she’s not effective enough.

Built to be forgotten not to be changed

Faber is framed as an “outlier.” An “extreme figure” who’s gone too far. In reality, she’s the institutional face of a policy long in the making. The same logic that presents fascism as something imported, rather than homegrown, still prevails.

What’s happening today in the Netherlands is not a deviation. It’s the new normal:

• A policy that enforces total exclusion.
• A state that treats compassion as a threat.
• A system that doesn’t want to help the vulnerable, it wants to break them.

At this point, neutrality is complicity

Faber’s policy is fascism in practice. Not because it echoes history, but because it embeds exclusion, national purity, and the criminalization of difference as pillars of governance.

And this cannot be countered with “remarks” and polite objections. It must be met with rupture. With organized political resistance. With social movements willing to bear the weight of solidarity once more. With a voice that is clear, combative, and non-negotiable.

Faber is not the problem. She is the symptom of a system that has been grooming us for years to accept institutional racism as normal.

Jean Clamence