Geert Wilders62 years old and with two decades in the Dutch Parliament, is seeking this Wednesday his second consecutive victory in a Dutch parliamentary election. This time, His chances of touching power are rather remote.. The premature end of the legislature was due to him last June, when he removed the five ministers from his Freedom Party (PVV) of one coalition in which it was the dominant force. It sounds crazy to think that the rest of the right-wing spectrum will not have been chastened. Wilders had been formally left out of that alliance, due to the veto of his allies to give him a position in the Government. But destroying a coalition “from within” and trying to remain essential for the politics of Netherlands It is not incompatible for this about trump who practices Islamophobia without complexes.
Wilders (Venlo, 1963) is the only leader of the PVV, a one-person party which he founded in 2006 after leaving the liberal ranks. He is known as “the Dutch Trumpist”, although the political origins of this old fox of the far right European Union predate the Republican’s first accession to the White House. The nickname is assigned to him due to his ideological kinship with the devotees of Donald Trump What are the Patriots for Europe, the Hungarian group Viktor Orbán. Added to the political closeness is its histrionic character and the platinum blonde hairas associated with his image as Trump’s orange toupee.
Almost two years ago, in November 2023, he achieved his first victory against the odds. He elevated the PVV to the position of the most voted force in a Dutch parliamentary election. It obtained 37 seats, of the total of 150 in the Chamber of The Hague. He first took a self-aggrandizing selfie with his deputies, to then negotiate a government alliance with three partners.
He aspired to access the position of head of government that the liberal held for 14 years. Mark Rutte. It was revenge against the seasoned Dutch politician, who between 2010 and 2012 made him an ally of one of his executives. That association exploded both politically and humanly. Wilders and Rutte said goodbye as bitter enemies. Wilders and his party were discarded for years in the multiple balancing exercises with which Rutte remained in power, before becoming NATO Secretary General.
Wilders’ victory in 2023 was followed by a coalition of which the PVV would take the reins, although the head of the Government remained in the hands of the technocrat Dick Schoop. His partners vetoed his presence in the Cabinet, which Wilders accepted as a sacrifice rather formal. From minute zero, Wilders managed the Government from the outside.
The hard line elevated to the impracticable
The 11 months that Schoop’s coalition endured were an example of some unsustainable demands even in these times of majority hardline at European level. The flag of this furious far-rightist, son of a Dutch man and a woman of Indonesian origin, is the battle against islamthe immigrationhe asylum and the fight against climate change. He has moderated his speech somewhat. He has put aside some of his past obsessions, such as the closure of mosques or the banning of the Koran. But he maintains the lock on immigration which, in its ideology, threatens the Dutch open society. An open society in which, for Wilders, only two sexes fit, man or woman. To his Islamophobia he has incorporated the loyalty to Israel.
He is the most threatened politician in a country who on two occasions has experienced the murders of two enemies of Islam: the far-right leader Pim Fortuynin 2002, and the filmmaker Theodore van Goghtwo years later. In the current campaign, he temporarily suspended some events, including a televised debate, due to threats considered real, but without consequences.
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