The Freedom Party won the legislative elections in the Netherlands on Wednesday. Even if he will have to deal with other political tendencies to form a coalition government, the far-right candidate Geert Wilders emerges as the big winner in this election. A consecration for this anti-Islam, anti-EU “Donald Trump of the Netherlands” – and under police protection since 2004.
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“I have been in politics for 25 years and this is the happiest day of my life, we have become by far the first party” in the Netherlands. Geert Wilders did not hide his joy on the evening of Wednesday, November 22, when celebrating the victory of his far-right party – the Freedom Party, PVV – in the Dutch legislative elections.
After 98% of the votes were counted, the PVV won 37 seats out of 150, far ahead of the 25 seats of the Labor-Green alliance led by former European Commissioner Frans Timmermans, and the 24 seats of the People’s Party for Freedom and Freedom. democracy (VVD) of outgoing Prime Minister Mark Rutte. Even if he will have to find an agreement with other political groups to govern.
At 60, Geert Wilders has already won a victory that had eluded him for several years during the last elections in the Netherlands. His party is now at the top of the bill, and he wants to make it known. The PVV “can no longer be ignored”, enthused Wednesday evening the one nicknamed the “Donald Trump of the Netherlands” or “Captain Peroxide” – in reference to his peroxide hair similar to that of the former president the United States.
Beyond the hair resemblance, the two men also share a taste for outrageous and populist remarks. “Rather jovial at the start, the man locked himself into the role of anti-Muslim, anti-foreign, anti-European crusader,” summarized Le Monde in 2017.
Hatred of Islam as a trademark
Geert Wilders was born in 1963 in Venlo in the south of the Netherlands, near the German border. He grew up in a Catholic family with his brother and two sisters. His mother is half-Indonesian, a fact he rarely mentions – and for good reason: Indonesia is home to the largest Muslim population in the world.
His interest in politics began in the 1980s, according to his older brother. “He was neither clearly left nor right at the time, nor xenophobic. But he was fascinated by the political game, the struggle for power and influence,” Paul Wilders told the German magazine Der Spiegel in 2017.
His hatred of Islam seems to have developed later, from the first years of his political career which began as a liberal deputy of the VVD in 1998. After the attacks of September 11, 2001, then the assassination of the Dutch far-right leader – and anti-Islam – Pim Fortuyn a year later, “Wilders understands that there is a move to be made and hardens his speech to establish himself as Fortuyn’s heir”, as Mediapart explains.
He left the VVD in 2004, the same year that polemicist filmmaker critical of Muslims Theo van Gogh was assassinated. It was from this moment that Geert Wilders was placed under police protection, after Dutch law enforcement discovered that he was also on the list of the murderer of Vincent van Gogh’s great-grandnephew. .
“Captain Peroxide” then founded his current party, the PVV, in 2006. Hatred of Islam then became his political trademark: he notably compared this religion to Nazism and the Koran to Adolf Hitler’s “Mein Kampf”, which led to him being prosecuted for inciting hatred. In 2008, he broadcast on the Internet a criticized film, “Fitna”, which provoked strong reactions in the Muslim world. Lasting fifteen minutes, the video conflates Islam and terrorism, mixing verses from the Koran with archive images of the September 11 attacks, Madrid and London.
Each time he claims “freedom of expression”. But he ended up being convicted of discrimination in 2016 for promising “fewer Moroccans” in the Netherlands. This will not then prevent him from treating Moroccans as “scum” or from proposing caricature competitions of the Prophet Mohammed.
Life under protection, “Nexit” and xenophobic manifesto
Threatened with death on multiple occasions, Geert Wilders has lived as a recluse for years and surrounded by a significant security system when he travels, as when he went to vote on Wednesday in The Hague.
To compensate for his physical absence, the “Donald Trump of the Netherlands” relies in particular on social networks (more than 1.2 million subscribers currently on X) to disseminate his populist ideas. His party’s first electoral success took place during the 2010 legislative elections, where the PVV established itself as the third political force in the country behind the VVD and the Labor Party.
He then had a “short experience of a quickly aborted right-wing coalition” with the VVD and the Christian Democrats between 2010 and 2012, as recalled by the Swiss media RTS.
In addition to his Islamophobic and xenophobic ideas, Geert Wilders is also hostile to the EU and the euro, and therefore declares himself in favor of “Nexit” – the exit of the Netherlands from Europe. This does not prevent him from being a candidate for the 2014 European elections and from being elected to the European Parliament, where he aims to create a Europhobic group alongside Marine Le Pen – who was also one of the first to congratulate him after his victory on Wednesday. A project which aimed to “destroy the EU from within”.
Although he is close to several European far-right movements, Geert Wilders does not traditionally belong to this ideological movement. The populist leader has a smoother face than his European acolytes on social issues, notably defending the fight against homophobia and the right to abortion.
During this legislative campaign, Geert Wilders tried to tone down his anti-Islam and anti-EU rhetoric and focus on voters’ concerns other than immigration, such as the rising cost of living, in order to to expand its electorate.
Despite a polite facade, the PVV manifesto has retained in this campaign the xenophobic tone dear to Geert Wilders for more than 20 years. It read: “Asylum seekers enjoy delicious free buffets on cruise ships while Dutch families have to cut back on shopping.” Chase away the natural, it comes back at a gallop. But this time as the first party in the Netherlands.