EU leaders should take note but it's too simplistic to say populists are taking over, says Katya Adler.

The unexpectedly meaty win for controversial, hard-right politician Geert Wilders in Wednesday’s general election in the Netherlands set international headlines on fire.

Right-wing nationalists across Europe rushed to congratulate the populist politician, sometimes dubbed the Dutch Trump - partly for his dyed, bouffant-like hairdo, and partly for his famously firebrand rhetoric.

Geert Wilders’ publicly expressed views - including linking Muslim immigration with terrorism and calling for a ban on mosques and the Quran - are so provocative that he has been under tight police protection since 2004.

Wilders was convicted of inciting discrimination, although later acquitted, and he was refused entry to the UK back in 2009.

But Europe’s far right believes their views have now become more mainstream.

  • iainEnglish
    3·
    7 months ago

    I’m afraid of this becoming a slippery slope. Suffrage (both active and passive) are very important rights that should never be infringed.

    You can see the slippery slope in action in America: mass incarceration is being used as a way to take away voting rights from black people. Any loop hole will always be used by the people in power to remain in power.

    It’s not hard to predict that the right would classify “socialism” as “lying about the economy” and try to take suffrage away from socialists, or whatever they consider socialists that day.

    • qaz@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      7 months ago

      … mass incarceration is being used as a way to take away voting rights from black people.

      So you’re saying they’re arresting black citizens specifically to take away their voting rights?

      • boredtortoise@lemm.eeEnglish
        2·
        7 months ago

        I’m not the one you’re quoting but that seems to be a sought-after side effect. War on drugs was specifically aimed to incarcerate low-income minorities