The Weird and Worrying World of Wilders: Some thoughts on the Dutch far right leader Geert Wilders

In further disturbing evidence of what historians and political scientists have called the ‘mainstreaming’ of the extreme right in Europe, the controversial Dutch far right leader Geert Wilders announced on 16th May, 2024, that he has come to a coalition agreement with three other party leaders, which will take the Netherlands sharply to the right. Wilders said excitedly: ‘We are writing history today’.

Wilders’ PVV (‘Party for Freedom’) has also said it wants ‘the strictest-ever asylum regime’ and aims to opt out of European Union migration rules. With characteristic outspoken glee, Wilders himself added: ‘The sun will shine again in the Netherlands. It is the strongest asylum policy ever’.

Observers of the far right, and commentators on ultra-nationalism and populism more generally in Europe, have watched the rise of Wilders (pictured) and his anti-Islam creed with a growing sense of bewilderment and alarm. For many years this rather strange and disturbing man, whose main political friends in recent times have been the French far right leader Marine Le Pen, the Italian Prime Minister (and former neo-fascist) Georgia Meloni, and the Hungarian rightwing Prime Minister Victor Orban, remained very much on the fringes of Dutch politics and society. He seemed to prefer it that way, too.

However, in the November, 2023, elections to the 150-seat Dutch House of Representatives, the PVV managed to win 37 seats, making it the largest party for the first time. Wilders quickly declared himself the ‘Prime Minister in waiting’ and said he would work with other parties for a ‘new politics’. But there then followed weeks and weeks of near-stalemate. Long, protracted and tumultuous negotiations, and much behind-the-scenes horse-trading, eventually resulted in the coalition agreement announced on 16th May, and Wilders is clearly ecstatic with the progress he has now made. He evidently believes his time has come and that destiny beckons.

But who is this worrying politician? Nicknamed ‘Captain Peroxide’ by some journalists, due to his highly distinctive bleached blonde bouffant hair, it would be easy to stereotype him as merely eccentric or slightly ‘mad’. Whether accurate or not, he has a reputation as something of a ‘loner’, ill-at-ease socially. His party has often been described as a ‘one-man band’, created solely to serve his giant ego.

Yet Wilders is notably skilled at playing the political game and is undoubtedly manipulative, able to turn on the charm when required, but also adept at fanning the flames of anti-migrant prejudice when he sees opportunities to do so. In particular, he has also echoed Donald Trump in making extensive use of social media and twitter (now called ‘X’), seeking to bypass the traditional media and reach out directly to supporters and potential voters.

For those unfamiliar with Dutch politics, it is important to have some background information on his life and career, as Wilders (depressingly) is likely to become a regular player both in Dutch affairs and in wider EU politics in the near future. His strident xenophobia and anti-Islam views have played a major role in his political outlook in the past (he has regularly stated, for example, ‘I hate Islam’), so it will be interesting to see whether he seriously curtails some of this for the sake of sharing power with three other parties. On past evidence, one suspects he will find it difficult to do so.

The Nature of the PVV

Wilders founded his ‘Party for Freedom’ (PVV) in 2006, with a declaration of independence from The Hague ‘elite’, an openly anti-Muslim stance, and a promise to enshrine the ‘dominance of the Judeo-Christian tradition’ in the Dutch constitution. The party entered the Dutch parliament in the same year, with 5.9% of the vote and nine seats. But, for many critics, the PVV was hardly a ‘normal’ party in the conventional political sense. The eight other elected PVV representatives at the time appeared to be a very amateur and secretive parliamentary group, and were forbidden from giving public interviews by Wilders, their leader. In fact, in many ways, Wilders was not just the leader of the party – he dominated the party, was the only ‘formal’ member, and appeared to many commentators to be the party. Strangely, the party had no formal structure as such. Although he denied it in interviews, Wilders operated a kind of fascistic ‘leader principle’ in the way he led and dominated the party, and evidently tolerated no internal dissent or criticism of his authority.

On the other hand, Wilders himself was keen to raise his public profile and cultivate the media, and often acted as his own one-man public relations machine, happy to speak to journalists, but only as long as they avoided certain topics. While he liked to present the PVV as an anti-establishment party, with himself as a populist ‘outsider’ taking on and opposing powerful vested interests on behalf of ‘the people’, Wilders still emphasised that the PVV was a ‘respectable’ party, which actually stood (he claimed) for Dutch liberal values, individual rights, and tolerance.

Indeed, ever since that initial breakthrough in 2006, Wilders has loved to frame his political programme around a defence of freedom of speech and equality. He has rejected accusations that he is illiberal, asserting instead that he is actually defending ‘liberal’ values. Thus, when it has come to his statements on Islam over the years, he has sought to distance himself from other anti-immigrant and rightwing nationalists by arguing that his animosity is aimed not at Muslims themselves, but at their ‘totalitarian’ belief system. He once told USA Today, for example, that: ‘Dutch values are based on Christianity, on Judaism, on humanism. Islam and freedom are not compatible’.

At one stage, in a seemingly calculated jibe made in 2007, Wilders called the Koran ‘the Mein Kampf of a religion that aims to eliminate others’. To academic experts, this association by far right leaders of anything they dislike with ‘Nazism’ has become quite a common discursive strategy utilized by ultra-nationalist movements and their leadership cadres. Always hyper-sensitive to accusations that they themselves have roots in, or are part of, the wider extreme right family, such leaders often seek to deflect these criticisms by projecting the term ‘Nazi’ on to their opponents.

To this end, Wilders also made a short 17-minute film, Fitna, in 2008, which was released on to the internet, and which portrayed Islam as an inherently ‘violent’ religion. Again, in this film, Wilders referred to the Koran as a ‘fascist’ text. The film ended with a call from Wilders for the defeat of ‘Islamic ideology’, which he compared to Communism and Nazism. To his critics, this seemed to be a deliberately provocative act, designed to present Wilders as a kind of ‘martyr’ who was bravely defending Dutch national identity and, in turn, West European ‘civilization’. It was a good indication of how he thought of himself as some kind of ‘heroic’ figure fighting a lone battle on behalf of the silenced majority.

Ultra-nationalist Islamophobe

In fact, in a highly simplistic and questionable way, Wilders has often sought to portray Islam as one single monolithic creed which, in his estimation, only looks backwards to an archaic past. In 2008, for example, speaking to the UK’s Observer newspaper, he stated: ‘I believe the Islamic ideology is a retarded, dangerous one, but I make a distinction… I don’t hate people. I don’t hate Muslims’. He added: ‘I hate their book and their ideology’.

Similarly, in the 2017 Dutch General Election campaign, Wilders claimed that he was fighting against the ‘Islamisation’ of Europe and alleged: ‘We have a fifth column in the Netherlands. If your loyalty lies elsewhere then get out. No dual citizenship any more. And shut the borders’. He also called for the closure of Mosques and a ban on the sale of the Koran. Such language was remarkably similar to that used by Marine Le Pen in France, who Wilders remained in close contact with. The exact same sentiments were also a major feature of Wilders’ 2023 election campaign, and it is now plain that Wilders has succeeded in pushing the Netherlands into a version of ‘culture wars’ over Islam and immigration, a pattern that follows the ideological strategies of other ultra-nationalist parties in Europe. He has regularly promised to ‘de-Islamicise’ Holland.

At times, this criticism of Islam has taken on a particularly ugly and openly racist dimension. In 2009, for example, Wilders proposed a so-called ‘head rag tax’ (his exact words) for hijab-wearing women in the Netherlands. Similarly, in his 2017 General Election campaign, he dismissed Moroccans in the Netherlands as ‘scum’, and one of his 2017 election slogans was ‘Make the Netherlands ours again’.

Moreover, Wilders has been more than willing to ‘network’ across borders and make rabble-rousing speeches at far right rallies in other countries. A typical example of this came in June, 2018, when, at a ‘Free Tommy Robinson’ rally held in central London, Wilders took to the stage to speak in support of Tommy Robinson (AKA Steven Christopher Yaxley-Lennon), one of the founders of the English Defence League (EDL). A notorious far right activist, Robinson had been imprisoned for contempt of Court in May, 2018, after he had livestreamed some footage of the defendants in a grooming gang case, breaking a reporting ban.

According to Wilders in his speech to the rally attendees, Robinson was ‘the greatest freedom fighter of Britain today’, and he called on the British government to ‘set him free’. Wilders also proclaimed to the crowd a ‘message to governments everywhere’, in which he said: ‘We will not be silenced. We will not be intimidated’. He claimed, using familiar Wilders-style populist language, that he was speaking for ‘the people’.

It is for all the above reasons that academic scholars, experts on the far right, and other commentators should keep a close watch on Wilders. He appears to have persuaded a significant number of people in the last six months or so that he is a normal and ‘mild’ politician, more a Eurosceptic nationalist than a serious threat to democracy, but the evidence suggests otherwise. He has patently relished his ability to stir up ethnic tensions through inflammatory language and ‘double-speak’, and when people do react strongly to his provocations, such as Muslims, he adopts a ‘see, I told you so’ attitude i.e. it is ‘minorities’ who stir up trouble and divide society. It is all part of his conviction that multiculturalism is a form of despotic control and is alien to Dutch values.

Significantly, to my mind, some of the most damning and damaging criticisms of Wilders over the years have come from members of his own family, such as his mother, his two sisters, and his brother. Some of this gave revealing insights into the psychology of Wilders and his behaviour. Speaking to Der Spiegel in 2017, for example, his elder brother Paul Wilders alleged that, when Geert Wilders was a teenager, he was ‘a horrible pest, egocentric and aggressive’. Moreover, speaking to the Times newspaper in 2017, his brother Paul also warned that the unrest stirred up by his younger brother and his PVV campaigns against Muslim immigrants could lead to social turmoil on the streets. He said he believed that Geert Wilders had ‘heightened tensions’ across the Netherlands.

He said he had first decided to speak out against his brother when Geert Wilders had tweeted a picture of the then German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, with blood on her hands, and which blamed an Isis terror attack in Berlin on her welcoming policy towards migrants. Paul Wilders also said that he had been ‘horrified’ to learn that his brother had tweeted a picture that had been digitally altered to show the leader of the Dutch liberal D66 party supposedly taking part in a demonstration with Islamist extremists, and that his brother was playing a ‘dangerous game’.

Paul Wilders also said that his two sisters and elderly mother had also been concerned at the type of life Geert Wilders was living, estranged from normal social interaction. The PVV leader, said his brother, would not listen to criticism nor discuss the fears of his own family; Paul Wilders said he despised what his brother Geert stood for and the way he acted. Paul Wilders added: ‘He is not accustomed to anyone standing up to him. That’s a pity. Not only for him as a person but for everyone’. Paul Wilders also explained that he himself had received death threats from a hardcore of people from the PVV.

Geert Wilders responded by severing all contact with his brother. In the same year, and undoubtedly equally uncomfortable for the thin-skinned VPP leader, it was revealed that Wilders’ own mother was opposed to her son’s political party and its policies, and was too embarrassed to vote for him. Defenders of Wilders tried to dismiss all this as personal ‘tittle-tattle’ and idle gossip and, in one sense, the historian must tread very carefully with such evidence. Yet these revelations were still arguably useful in helping observers assemble a better picture of the VPP leader and how he conducts himself and thinks.

The Future?

Wilders originally constructed the VVP very much as a personal political vehicle, and has always tended to stamp on any signs of internal party factionalism. Although there have been some outbursts and desertions by disenchanted actvists from his party over the years, his response has been to re-emphasise the need for strict discipline and party unity. It will therefore be interesting to see how his party will stand up to the inevitable strains and compromises of being part of a coalition government, while very much under the glare of public and media scrutiny.

Wilders loves to present himself as vox populi – the ‘voice of the people’ – and he remains, of course, notably media-savvy. He can also be blatantly opportunistic when he thinks it is necessary – he has sought to tone down some of his more divisive assertions of recent years about religion and, instead, focused during his 2023 campaign more on housing and the economy. He also sought to paint environmental action on climate change as a fresh form of totalitarian ‘tyranny’.

There were clearly sufficient numbers of Dutch voters who were prepared to given him the benefit of the doubt and reward him with their support in November, 2023. But for how long, and to what extent, Geert Wilders will be able to maintain this appeal will be fascinating to watch for historians and observers of the far right.

Dr. Steven Woodbridge is a Lecturer in History and Politics

(Images: Wikimedia Commons)