A few weeks after I arrived in the Netherlands as an exchange student in 1982, the Dutch held an election. I followed it as best I could, but I didn’t speak the language yet. One night, during the television time allotted to political parties, I watched the amusingly low-rent presentation of the Centrumpartij (Center Party). As I remember, it was just a dorky-looking dude sitting at a desk and speaking into the camera, flanked by the Center Party logo of a traffic sign proscribing turns in either direction and the slogan “niet rechts, niet links” (not right, not left).
The next day, in gym class, somebody asked me which party I would support if I could vote. “Centrumpartij,” I said, laughing. “Niet rechts, niet links.” An older student pulled me aside. “You probably shouldn’t say that,” he told me in English. “Those guys are fascists.” With that, I stopped telling people I liked the Center Party.
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