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.

  • JdW@lemmy.worldEnglish
    2·
    7 months ago

    But that’s hardly the point.

    Look, I am not saying Wilders is not a creep. But their success right now is despite him and his anti-constitutional viewpoints. There was room for a big populist party with mass appeal and they fill that void. And the media is misrepresenting his voters. I am not one of them, and would never be, but I do know quite a few of people that switched to PVV and they did so because they felt he would work to get the lower middle class and elderly a better standard of living, something all other parties seem to fail to deliver on.