FAST MARATHON
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RECALLING THE
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THE QUIET, AND DELICIOUS,
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PAGE 16 | WELL
PAGE 18 | CULTURE
PAGE 19 | TRAVEL
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INTERNATIONAL EDITION | FRIDAY, MARCH 17, 2017
Populists fall
short as
wary Dutch
scatter votes
The ascent
of paranoia
in politics
Ivan Krastev
Contributing Writer
THE HAGUE
OPINION
SOFIA, BULGARIA As I follow the news
and listen to politicians these days, I
am struck by the extent to which
America and Europe are awash in
conspiracy thinking. Conspiracy theories have replaced ideologies at the
heart of politics. They mobilize people
to take to the streets; they connect
political leaders to their followers.
They decide the outcome of the elections.
But as the saying goes, “Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean
they aren’t after you.”
Russian hacking of the servers of the
Democratic National Committee was
not a conspiracy theory but a fact.
Neither was it a conspiracy theory that
the United States was snooping on the
chancellor of
Germany and the
Conspiracy
president of
theories have
Brazil. Most of
the corruption
come to
scandals in the
dominate
Western world
our world.
right now are not
Can our
conspiracy theories, either. They
democracies
are actual consurvive?
spiracies.
Yet is the
existence of bona
fide conspiracies a good enough reason
to view everything happening in the
world in that light? Is the epidemic of
mistrust that is tearing apart
democratic societies making us more
or less free? And does the rise of a new
kind of citizen — let’s call him or her
the “paranoid citizen” — imperil our
democracies?
In Poland it was the shared belief
that the death of President Lech Kaczynski along with 95 other members
of the Polish elite in a plane crash near
the Russian town of Smolensk in 2010
was an assassination rather than an
accident (a claim that was officially
rejected) that correlated with voting
for the now governing right-wing Law
and Justice party in the last parliamentary elections — probably more than
education, income level, church attendance or any other factor.
In the United States, very few
Democrats cast doubt on the argument
that President Trump is in the pocket
of the Kremlin. Across the aisle, few of
the Republican faithful are willing to
publicly disavow Mr. Trump’s unsubstantiated claim that he and his campaign were wiretapped on the order of
President Barack Obama; fewer still
will contest the lie that protesters
against the new president are paid by
leftist billionaires.
New communication technologies
(social media in particular) and the
KRASTEV, PAGE 14
Country’s record turnout
may be harbinger of other
elections to come in E.U.
BY ALISSA J. RUBIN
DRONES, PAGE 5
NETHERLANDS, PAGE 5
ROBIN UTRECHT/EUROPEAN PRESSPHOTO AGENCY
The far-right politician Geert Wilders, facing reporters at center, on Thursday in The Hague. Mr. Wilders gained seats but appeared to fail in garnering support for his extreme views.
A watchful eye on wildlife
LIWONDE, MALAWI
Drones tested in Africa
for potential to combat
profound poaching crisis
BY RACHEL NUWER
Night has fallen at Liwonde National
Park, but the trespassers are clearly visible. Three hundred feet in the air, a thermal camera attached to a Bathawk
drone tracks their boat, a black sliver
gliding up the luminous gray Shire
River.
“They’re breaking the law by coming
into the park,” said Antoinette Dudley,
one of the drone’s operators, pointing to
her computer screen.
More than two miles from the boat,
she and her partner, Stephan De Necker,
are seated in a Land Cruiser that serves
as their command center. A monitor
attached to the driver’s seat displays the
drone’s vitals, and another behind the
passenger’s seat streams live video
from the camera, operated with an old
PlayStation console.
“Let’s give them a scare,” Mr. De
Necker said. With the tap of a few keys,
he switches on the drone’s navigation
lights and sends it beelining toward the
boat.
The reaction is instantaneous: The
boat makes a U-turn, high-tailing it out
of the park.
Africa is in the midst of a profound
poaching crisis: The continent’s elephant population declined by 30 percent
from 2007 to 2014, much of it because of
poaching. At least 1,338 rhinos were
killed for their horns in 2015 alone. Criminals are becoming increasingly militarized in their tactics, and efforts to stop
them have had little success.
Liwonde has lost about 50 elephants
and two rhinos since 2014 to poachers. In
August 2015, the Malawi Department of
National Parks enlisted the help of
African Parks, a nonprofit that specializes in rehabilitating struggling protected areas.
Since taking over operations here, the
group has confiscated upward of 18,000
illegal snares, made over 100 arrests, installed more than 60 miles of electric
fencing and removed 261 elephants to
RACHEL NUWER
A drone on the lookout for poachers at Liwonde National Park in Malawi.
another reserve.
But African Parks also has embarked
on an unusual high-tech experiment,
calling in a drone team from South Africa. With funding from the World Wildlife Fund, including a $5 million grant
In musicals, avoiding the treacle trap
Tim Minchin on the joys
and pitfalls of adapting the
movie ‘Groundhog Day’
BY ELISABETH VINCENTELLI
COLE WILSON FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
Tim Minchin, who wrote the music and lyrics for “Groundhog Day,” said he had to find
a way around mawkishness without help from the irony of Bill Murray in the film.
Y(1J85IC*KKNMKS( +\!"!$!#!=
from Google, drones are being tested
here in the first systematic evaluation of
their potential to combat poachers.
UAV & Drone Solutions, the company
that employs Ms. Dudley and Mr. De
The far-right politician Geert Wilders
has fallen short of expectations in Dutch
elections, gaining seats but failing to
persuade a decisive portion of voters to
back his extreme positions on barring
Muslim immigrants and jettisoning the
European Union, according to early results and exit polls.
The results were immediately
cheered by pro-European politicians
who hoped that they could help stall
some of the momentum of the populist,
anti-European Union and anti-Muslim
forces Mr. Wilders has come to symbolize, and which have threatened to fracture the bloc.
Voters, who turned out in near-record
numbers on Wednesday, nonetheless rewarded right and center-right parties
that had co-opted parts of his hard-line
message, including that of the incumbent prime minister, Mark Rutte. Some
parties that challenged the establishment from the left made significant
gains.
The Dutch vote was closely watched
as a harbinger of potential trends in a
year of important European elections,
including in France in just weeks, and
later in Germany and possibly Italy.
Many of the Dutch parties that prevailed favor the European Union — a
rare glimmer of hope at a time when
populist forces have created an existential crisis for the bloc and Britain
prepares for its withdrawal, or Brexit.
“The Netherlands, after Brexit, after
the American elections, said ‘Whoa’ to
the wrong kind of populism,” Mr. Rutte
told a wildly enthusiastic crowd, excited
that his party, the People’s Party for
Freedom and Democracy, had come in
first among the parties and lost fewer
seats than it had feared.
“Today was a celebration of democracy, we saw rows of people queuing to
cast their vote, all over the Netherlands
— how long has it been since we’ve seen
that?” Mr. Rutte said.
Alexander Pechtold, the leader of
Democrats 66, which appeared to have
won the most votes of any left-leaning
party, struck a similar note underscoring the vote as a victory against a populist extremist.
“During this election campaign, the
whole world was watching us,” Mr.
Pechtold said. “They were looking at
Europe to see if this continent would follow the call of the populists, but it has
now become clear that call stopped here
in the Netherlands.”
In the Netherlands, the results betrayed a lingering distrust of turning
At lunch on a brisk winter day, Tim
Minchin was digging into a 10-ounce filet
mignon at a New York steak house.
Meat helps him fight off jet lag, he explained. And lately, his schedule has
turned him into a vegetarian’s nightmare.
Mr. Minchin had flown in from Los
Angeles to drop by rehearsals for
“Groundhog Day,” an adaptation of the
1993 time-loop movie comedy and his
second Broadway show after the hit
“Matilda the Musical.” Next, this lionmaned Australian composer and performer was off to Hungary and Croatia,
to play Friar Tuck in a new Robin Hood
feature. “If it becomes a franchise, I
want to be an action superhero,” he said,
maybe joking and maybe not.
For his legions of fans — some so dedi-
cated that they have tattoos of his lyrics
and, er, his face — Mr. Minchin, 41, already is a hero. NBC Universal, however, wasn’t as impressed: Shortly after
that steak lunch, the studio shut down
“Larrikins,” an animated feature Mr.
Minchin had been working on for four
years as co-director and songwriter,
thus inflicting a setback on a career that
until then had been cruising along
nicely.
Since 2005, when he presented his
breakthrough
comic-cabaret
solo,
“Darkside,” at the Edinburgh Festival
Fringe, he has toured internationally
with his bitingly satirical songs (documented on popular live albums and
DVDs), and his passionate admirers
have helped propel him from intimate
clubs to fronting symphony orchestras
in arenas.
Mr. Minchin’s résumé has also expanded in new and often improbable directions: In just the past five years, he
has portrayed Judas in a concert tour of
“Jesus Christ Superstar,” Rosencrantz in
Tom Stoppard’s “Rosencrantz and
MINCHIN, PAGE 2
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Issue Number
No. 41,682