national fabric. In practice, this meant many Dutch people behaved just as inconsistently as the British did, claiming to be completely relaxed about immigration while getting quite annoyed with immigrants. Weighing the tradition of tolerance against the need to act decisively, the Dutch were never sure quite how far to go. In 2011, for example, Wilders was put on trial for hate speech after making inflammatory comments about immigrants, but then acquitted by a judge who said his comments were ‘acceptable within the context of the public debate’. Five years later, in the wake of the furore
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