Win or lose, Wilders
Nobody wants to form a coalition with him but that may suit the far-right, peroxide-blond populist, writes Ishaan Tharoor
The Dutch have been voting in parliamentary elections overnight that, unlike most events in the Netherlands, are being closely watched around the world.
It is the first major electoral contest in the West since United States President Donald Trump’s shock victory. And in the form of Geert Wilders — the far-right, peroxideblond populist whose party might gain the biggest share of seats in Parliament — there’s a globallyrecognised protagonist (or antagonist) through which to tell the tale.
Wilders’ anti-Islam politics have shadowed his country for the better part of a decade and now seem to have captured the wider antiestablishment discontent sweeping the West. But he could ultimately be as relevant, if not more so, outside his nation’s borders than within.
“There are two very different stories about [the] elections,” explained Financial Times columnist Simon Kuper. “A foreign story, which is all about Wilders and whether he can complete the populist treble after Brexit and Trump; and a Dutch story, in which Wilders isn’t even the main character.”
The fragmentation of the Dutch political scene means Wilders is unlikely to become prime minister even if his Freedom Party, or PVV, comes first or second in the election. The winning party will need to entice several others into a governing coalition, and none of the mainstream Dutch parties is willing to include Wilders.
Wilders may also be uninterested in the horse-trading that traditionally characterises coalition politics — nor is it clear that he should be.
“With a larger group of MPs behind him, and a new narrative of an election stolen from the people, he will have even more ammunition to attack from the sidelines,” said Dina Pardijs of the European Council on Foreign Relations. “Wilders can stay compromise-free until the moment where something fundamentally changes in the Netherlands.”
It’s not clear what “something fundamental” could be, but Wilders has made political hay out of terrorism fears and Muslim integration in Europe.
His vehement opposition to Islam has won him strong support in the US, too. In 2010, I watched Wilders in New York City as he addressed a motley crowd of American Islamophobes and European ultranationalists opposed to the construction of an Islamic community centre a few blocks away from where the twin towers once stood. He warned darkly — and, it seemed then, hysterically — of the city that was once New Amsterdam turning into New Mecca.
That message has gained traction in recent years in the US.
The blood-and-soil ethnic nationalism espoused by Wilders is taking root in a country that has long defined itself in opposition to the “old world” of Europe and its petty tribalisms.
Right-wing American activists, such as conservative provocateur David Horowitz, have helped funnel hundreds of thousands of dollars into Wilders’ movement. According to the New York Times, a US$120,000 ($173,060) donation made by Horowitz in 2015 was the single largest individual contribution in the Dutch political system that year.
Wilders, in other words, knows where his bread is buttered.
“If he compromises in order to join a coalition government, he becomes almost a standard Dutch politician, and therefore less interesting to the Horowitzes,” Kuper wrote.
“More exciting to stay pure, and remain the only Dutch politician who is heard abroad, better known than