The extreme right continues to normalize. The success of the PVV, the Freedom Party, in the parliamentary elections held in the Netherlands on Wednesday proves this once again. Normal, but not ordinary.
• Also read: In Europe, the far right continues its advance in a worrying context
Not trivial when you read the front pages of the Dutch newspapers the day after the vote – “Earthquake!”, “Tidal wave!”, “Clap of thunder!” – and hear the reactions from European circles camped near Brussels: “ A nightmare!”
The chairman of the PVV, Geert Wilders, is a well-known personality. Since 1998 he has held a seat in the “Tweede Kamer”, the local lower house. We like to compare him to Donald Trump, but Wilders preceded him in provocation and extremism by almost twenty years.
The 60-year-old politician has built his entire career on opposing immigration from Muslim countries. He made condemnation of the “Islamization of the Netherlands” a recurring theme in his election campaigns.
Islamophobic, day and night
He called Moroccans “scum,” compared the Koran to Hitler’s “Mein Kampf,” and his life was turned upside down by the death threats he received and continues to receive, particularly for suggesting a competition featuring caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed organize.
Wilders is constantly accompanied by six plainclothes police officers and only receives visitors if they have been previously authorized, searched and accompanied at all times. He lives in a state-provided apartment building that is completely bulletproof. He is taken from his home to his office in Parliament in an armored police vehicle, himself wearing a bulletproof vest.
His criticism of the “tsunami” of asylum seekers in the Netherlands appears to have resonated with the population, but analysts note that he managed to expand his electorate by also capitalizing on dissatisfaction with the cost of living.
The extreme consequence of a sad life
The Dutch – well, quite a few of them – behave no differently than Marine Le Pen’s growing electorate in France or Donald Trump’s ardent supporters. Western societies are changing – especially color – and that annoys many people.
However, we must not ignore the creeping impression that everything is getting more expensive even as inflation falls, that we can no longer find affordable housing, that salaries are rising a little, but in the end the same people are always getting rich.
Our AFP colleagues traveling through Venlo, Geert Wilders’ hometown, particularly noted the comment of a Muslim of Turkish origin who, on condition of anonymity, admitted that he had voted for the PVV. “We are all poor, Wilders might be able to change something.”
The success of Wilders, like that of Giorgia Meloni in Italy, or the spectacular progress of the Sweden Democrats in a dozen years, like that of the Finns Party in the last decade, seem to confirm the inability of traditional parties, even in rich societies, to respond to the fears expressed by more and more people everywhere.
Geert Wilders
Photo AFP
- 60 years
- Founder of the Freedom Party (PVV)
- With 37 of the 150 seats in the Dutch parliament, the PVV received more than twice as many votes as in the 2021 election.
- No mosques, no scarves, no Koran: the PVV manifesto is openly anti-Islamic.
- Wilders, who advocated for a “Nexit,” promised a referendum on whether or not the Netherlands should remain in the European Union.
