That is a problem all over Western Europe, which is really annoying. The extreme right (and unfortunately also the not so extreme right) is fomenting a lot of this, but fortunately on a local level they are not yet very effective unless you go into the smaller towns. I spend a lot of time in two places in NL, a small town (40K population) and one of the larger cities (by Dutch standards) 300K pop. Obviously there is a world of a difference between the two but overall, and compared to other countries that I'm familiar with I'd say we are still doing ok. Whether it will remain like that I would not dare to say. Agreed that LGBT minorities, trans people have it harder than it was a few years ago and this really irks me. Again, here too the extremists are pushing for this and in turn they are making a lot of people feel like this is now normalized again to the point where they no longer need to hide their bigotry. At the same time: this was always there, it was just better hidden.

Another problem is that the rise of social media has given bigots the world over a large enough echo chamber that they feel supported, even though their direct environment does not support them.

> Lately even people who were formerly nice have become rabid racists.

This is not something I have seen yet but that could be luck of the draw.

> And in a recent election the extreme right won more than a third of the votes.

Indeed they did. But: that percentage wasn't all that different in previous years overall, if you add up the various splinter groups. They were just less vocal and they did not have international ties the way they do today. This is an extremely dangerous development.

> Where I live in Spain it's honestly a lot more tolerant.

I believe you.

> Although even here the extreme right are on the rise, unfortunately.

Yes, it is like a cyclic thing that is driven by the loss of lessons learned from the past. NL is in a particularly difficult spot here with our history in Surinam, former dutch Indonesia and the slave trade. We've done some very ugly things and a lot of that required de-humanization of other people to a degree that it still stains our culture in a very significant way.

Lots and lots of crimes were committed, lots of mistakes were made. It will take many generations to come to some kind of new equilibrium. It certainly won't happen in my lifetime, and probably not in my kids' lifetimes either.