The
man who invented Trumpism
Geert
Wilders’ radical path to the pinnacle of Dutch politics.
By NAOMI
O'LEARY 2/23/17, 4:00 AM CET Updated 2/23/17, 7:15 AM CET
VENLO, Netherlands —
Long before Donald
Trump upended the American political landscape, Geert Wilders was
rewriting the electoral playbook in the Netherlands, stomping
ruthlessly over convention and being rewarded with votes.
Not only are the two
men alike in their peculiar blond hairdos; they share a talent for
using controversy to dominate the news cycle and a tendency to forgo
a hefty party apparatus in favor of a skeleton team of campaign
loyalists and social-media blitzkriegs.
Wilders admires
Trump and encourages the comparison, delighted to cast his campaign
as part of a global populist wave if it adds momentum ahead of the
March 15 vote, in which polls indicate his Freedom Party (PVV) is
neck-and-neck with Prime Minister Mark Rutte’s People’s Party for
Freedom and Democracy (VVD).
“It’s the
revenge of the rust belt,” said Tim de Beer, an opinion and policy
research expert at the Dutch polling firm Kantar Public. “The
Netherlands was among the first to have this revolt.”
But Trump and
Wilders differ in important ways. Trump’s lack of focus is
completely at odds with Wilders’ singular, dogged determination to
pursue his proclaimed mission: stop Islam in the Netherlands. And
where Trump is a newcomer to politics, Wilders is one of the
longest-serving lawmakers in the Dutch lower house, with a formidable
command of parliamentary procedures.
A product of a
turbulent period in Dutch politics, when assassinations roiled the
country following the 9/11 attacks on the United States, Wilders
lives under 24-hour police protection.
In recent years, his
politics have become ever more radical, as his shock-style
anti-Muslim rhetoric drove up his share of support. Wilders has
reshaped the political sphere in his own image, extrapolating the
threats on his person into a global peril, and dragging the Dutch
middle ground to the right.
LIMBURG LOYALISTS
geertcap_Wilders
grew up in Venlo, a small border city with Germany close to some of
the poorest pockets of the Netherlands. Traditionally a hub of
logistics and cross-border commerce, legal and otherwise, Venlo lies
in the heart of the Dutch “Catholic south” — poorer but, locals
say, more fun-loving than the austere Calvinist reaches of the north.
Today, the street
where Wilders grew up, an unassuming row of red-brick houses on the
fringes of the town, is festooned with the red, yellow and blue flags
of carnival, a riotous annual street party that is a linchpin of
strong regional identity.
Wilders grew up the
youngest, with a brother and two sisters. The family was Roman
Catholic, in tune with the conservative community around them, though
Wilders is not religious. His father, who worked in a local company,
was of old Limburg stock — the southernmost province of the
Netherlands in which Venlo is found.
Wilders often
celebrates Limburg and Venlo — “the most beautiful province”
and a “city of fun and pleasure” — in speeches and tweets. He
relishes speaking Limburgish, a relative of German and Dutch, and
maintains a clique of Limburg loyalists who speak the dialect
together, including a childhood friend he brought with him from the
old neighborhood to The Hague.
Wilders is mostly
silent about the other side of his family tree. His mother was born
in what is now Indonesia. She arrived in the Netherlands as a baby
after her parents fled the collapsing Dutch colony that would later
become the country with the world’s largest Muslim population.
Wilders’
grandmother never stopped missing the colonial world she had left
behind. Sometimes, on special occasions, dishes from “Tempo Doeloe”
— the good old days — would be prepared.
“I remember ‘rice
tables,’ we called it,” Wilders’ older brother Paul, an angular
man of 62 who runs an IT company, said over a cup of Earl Grey tea in
a cafe in Utrecht, the city where he now lives. “Well, it took two
or three days. The table was full of all sorts of food.”
Old school writings
by a 10-year-old Wilders unearthed by Dutch media reveal an early
commanding tone. “On 7 January 1974 petrol is rationed,” read the
article in a school newspaper about the oil crisis. “Everyone must
abide by this. Not only you but …
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!EVERYONE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”
His political turn
came in his early 20s when, after completing his military service and
studying at the Open University, he found work at the social
insurance administration, and was shocked by its dysfunction.
It was the start of
a life-long contempt for Dutch bureaucracy and the tradition of the
poldermodel — the consensus-based decision-making that takes its
name from the cooperation required to keep the sea from flooding the
low-lying country.
“I experienced
first-hand the degeneration of the poldermodel in full force,”
Wilders recalled in his 2005 autobiography of his years as a civil
servant.
One night in
Wilders’ apartment in Utrecht, he debated with his brother: Which
political party he should join? He chose the VVD, the party of his
current rival, Prime Minister Rutte.
Wilders worked his
way up, writing material for the party leader, the immigration critic
Frits Bolkestein and becoming a local councilor in Utrecht in 1997.
He also noticed that a lot of Turkish immigrants seemed to live in
his Utrecht neighborhood, Kanaaleiland. He didn’t like the way it
was changing.
In those early days
in politics, Wilders transformed himself. He took media training
classes, sharpening up his Limburg-accented speech. He bleached his
brown hair, a joke, according to one former friend, but it got him
such instant attention that he decided to keep it.
When he got elected
to parliament in 1998 on the electoral list of the VVD, the
toweringly tall blond caught the attention of the media and his
colleagues in parliament.
His appearance
wasn’t the only thing grabbing attention. Wilders quickly earned a
reputation as a rebel who refused to toe the party line. (Some people
are “married to the party” he noted dismissively in his 2005
autobiography.)
“There are two
Wilders. The guy in the camera lens, and the guy you sit with in his
office, or in an airplane or a restaurant. That’s a completely
different person. He plays a role.”
TWO WILDERS
geertcap_Wilders was
deeply suspicious of Islam long before three airplanes were flown
into the Twin Towers and the Pentagon in New York and Washington D.C.
in 2001.
Before attending
university, he traveled in the Middle East, visiting Egypt, Syria and
Iran. Arriving in Israel in the early 1980s as a teenager with a
bohemian head of brown curls, he spent all of his money in a week,
and ended up picking peppers and melons in a Moshav in the Jordan
valley. He stayed more than a year. It was the start of a life-long
infatuation with the country he now sees as the frontier of a
struggle between barbarism and civilization.
But it was 9/11 and
its destabilizing effect on Dutch politics that gave his politics
their defining shape. The attacks in the U.S. gave rise to a
different type of politician. Pim Fortuyn, an openly gay
conservative, shook up Dutch politics with his outspoken views on
immigration and Islam.
Sitting on the
benches of the VVD, Wilders was frustrated at his party’s restraint
and inability to compete with the rising star. And when Fortuyn was
assassinated by an environmentalist in 2002, Wilders picked up his
mantle. He became increasingly critical of Turkey’s bid for
European Union membership. The country was a “Trojan horse,” in
his view, that didn’t belong in the “Judeo-Christian” world.
The issue led to his
final break with the VVD in 2004. Armed with a few cardboard boxes
from his old office, he set out to form his own party.
Shortly afterward, a
second assassination rocked the Netherlands. Theo van Gogh, a
filmmaker, was killed by a young Dutch Moroccan who said he was upset
by the director’s short film “Submission,” which was critical
of Islam. It was to be a fork in the road for Wilders.
Two key things
happened. First, a former journalist named Martin Bosma came across
the scene of the murder when he was out to buy bread one morning. The
murder of van Gogh, Bosma writes in his autobiography, spurred his
decision to join Wilders to build a new party from a small room in
The Hague. He became Wilders’ most valuable ally.
Second, police
investigating the murder discovered the killer, Mohammed Bouyeri,
also had designs on Wilders, and placed the young parliamentarian
under police protection. Since that date, November 4, 2004, Wilders
has lived under 24-hour protection. Locked inside a security bubble,
he cannot spontaneously go for a walk or easily attend public events.
Together, Bosma and
Wilders created something like a “virtual” party. It had no
members beyond Wilders himself, and it forwent expensive
headquarters, public funding and a conventional campaigning
apparatus.
Geert Wilders, left,
delivers a 2012 speech entitled "Their Brussels, our
Netherlands" as Martin Bosma, center, and Fleur Agema look on in
The Hague | Robin Utrecht/AFP via Getty Images
Geert Wilders, left,
delivers a 2012 speech entitled “Their Brussels, our Netherlands”
as Martin Bosma, center, and Fleur Agema look on in The Hague | Robin
Utrecht/AFP via Getty Images
By chance as well as
by necessity — threats to his life made it difficult for Wilders to
campaign conventionally — the two men were early adopters of
internet politicking. They set up websites and email lists and, when
the moment arrived, moved quickly to harness social media.
Wilders soon figured
out how to leverage his hunted status to cause drama and lend himself
freedom-fighter credibility on the international anti-Islam alarmist
lecture circuit. His 2005 autobiography was written from the
prison-like safe house where he lived for a time with his wife
Krisztina, a Hungarian former diplomat, in the military complex Kamp
Zeist outside of Utrecht.
He also learned how
to dominate the news cycle from within safe walls.
He became the
consummate opposition politician, using his deep knowledge of
parliamentary procedures to campaign from within the House of
Representatives, and coaching protégés to do likewise. (Although
resentment against elites is a founding feature of his politics,
Wilders is himself an absolute insider. Only three lawmakers have
been in parliament longer than his 6,694 days.)
Wilders severely
restricts media access to the party. Attempts to contact it, or any
of its lawmakers, are typically met with a wall of silence. This is
combined with carefully rationed pronouncements designed to outrage
and grab headlines. Wilders specializes in coming up with insulting
compound words, such as straatterroristen (“street terrorists,”
or foreign-looking men hanging around); haatpaleizen (“hate
palaces,” or mosques); or his infamous kopvoddentaks proposal (a
“head rag tax” on headscarves).
Twitter was a
natural fit for Wilders, and it is now his primary venue for public
comment. His election manifesto for 2017 was posted as a single, one
page image on Facebook and Twitter, but its proposals — shut all
mosques, ban the Quran — were reported internationally, unlike the
largely-ignored tomes of his rivals.
Over the course of
Wilders’ life under armed protection, his views have become
increasingly radical, casting Islam and the West as ancient enemies
locked in a civilizational war for survival. In 2005, his manifesto
allowed that not all Muslims were dangerous, noted the importance of
freedom of religion, and advocated that only radical mosques should
be closed. Nowadays, he claims there are no moderate Muslims, just
liars, or people who haven’t read the Quran.
“His driving force
is the idea that the culture as we know it in Europe and Holland
should be saved from Islam,” Geert Tomlow, a former party candidate
and friend, said.
To pursue this
mission, colleagues say Wilders created a steely public persona that
contrasts deeply with his private person.
“There are two
Wilders,” said former PVV lawmaker Wim Kortenoeven. “The guy in
the camera lens, and the guy you sit with in his office, or in an
airplane or a restaurant. That’s a completely different person. He
plays a role.”
The private Wilders
— a man with a mischievous sense of humor, and doubts and
insecurities he never displays in public — is increasingly rarely
glimpsed, according to those who know him.
Underlining Wilders’
sense of peril, a member of his security team was recently suspended
on suspicion of leaking details to a criminal organization. “He has
an anxiety problem with new people and new faces. He has a lot of
trust issues. You don’t reach him anymore,” Tomlow said.
An uncanny ability
for verbal recall, which has made him an excellent mock interviewer
when training new lawmakers for parliament, means he is not a man who
forgets a slight.
“He has this hard
disk in his mind, and he really remembers everything you do and say,”
Tomlow said. “Every nuance, every comma.”
A DANGEROUS GAME
geertcap_As the
elections draw closer, a large graffiti message in black and white
was painted across on a railway bridge outside Wilders’ hometown of
Venlo.
“How, Geert?” it
read, a reference to criticism that Wilders’ promise to make the
Netherlands “ours again” is not backed up by concrete policies.
Locals in Wilders’
old neighborhood echoed the sentiment, several saying that while they
may agree with his arguments, they wouldn’t back a man with a
one-page program for government.
“I don’t know
who to vote for but I certainly won’t be voting for him,” said
Ans Stals, a woman with thick-rimmed glasses, aged 55. “He doesn’t
set out clearly what he will do.”
Jannes van Dijk, a
19-year-old first-time voter attending a nearby school, said the
Freedom Party would not get his vote although he agreed with Wilders
on many things.
“Foreigners come
here and they don’t work. We have to pay for them and they just sit
on the couch, that’s the problem,” van Dijk said. “I agree with
him on that, but there are more politicians that think that. He just
gets the attention.”
And there is one
voter Wilders is certainly not winning over: his older brother, Paul.
“I don’t vote
for my brother because I do believe he is playing a dangerous game,”
he said. “His primary scapegoat is Muslims. What he’s aiming at
is from my point of view merely political power.”
It was during
Wilders’ early years in parliament with the VVD, around the turn of
the century, that Paul first felt he needed to talk to his brother
about his political views.
“I noticed the
start of a certain narrow-mindedness, which I believed could well
turn out to be serious. And indeed it did,” said Paul.
It wasn’t a
confrontation. Paul probed his brother with questions, saying he
wanted to better understand his reasoning. “In the beginning, he
was sort of open to at least discuss,” he said. “It didn’t help
that much, because he’s a strong-headed man.”
Since then, in his
brother’s view, Wilders has pursued an increasingly lonely, sad and
dangerous path. The last straw for Paul came when Wilders posted a
photograph of a bloodied German Chancellor Angela Merkel after a
terrorist attack on a Berlin Christmas market killed 12 in December.
His protest has come
at a cost.
“Either you’re
with him or if you’re not. If you do criticize him, you’re out.
Instead of making the distinction between the man and his ideas, he
cut me off. Twitter, whatever, you name it, there’s no way for me
to contact him,” Paul said.
He decided to speak
out ahead of the election because he fears his brother’s rhetoric
could lead to violent social unrest.
“My brother has
said, in case me and my voters don’t get what we want — that’s
a free translation — there could well be a revolution,” he said.
“That’s like putting out a fire with gasoline.”
Political tension is
something Paul is familiar with. For more than a decade, he and his
family have endured death threats. Previously, these came mostly from
Muslims, according to Paul. Now, most arrive from hardline Wilders
supporters who know of Paul’s views.
There is more
opposition in the family. Paul is confident that his mother, now in
her mid-80s, won’t be casting her ballot for her son. “I’m
pretty sure my mother has not and will never vote for my brother or
his party,” he said.
THE CHURCHILL OF
HOLLAND
geertcap_The Freedom
Party is a strangely hollow operation. It barely features in
municipal or regional politics, despite consistently topping opinion
polls, mostly because it lacks organizing power and suffers a dearth
of suitable candidates.
Being a public
figure within the Freedom Party comes with a social cost due the
party’s divisive positions and the prospect of danger from Islamic
extremists. Wilders abandoned an attempt to submit candidates to run
for local government in his native Venlo in 2009 due to a lack of
suitable options.
His party has been
rocked by a number of defections and scandals: One lawmaker was
arrested for getting into a brawl; another was accused of threatening
to urinate in the letterbox of a neighbor.
Wilders has also
alienated staff with an autocratic leadership style that, in the view
of several defectors, limits the party from reaching its full
potential.
Former colleagues
describe him as a workaholic who demands the same dedication from
those around him. Colleagues on holiday with their families, even as
far as a transatlantic flight away, fear the call that forces them to
return for an ordinary party meeting. Two party employees are
currently suing for overwork.
“He believes he is
the Churchill of Holland,” said Tomlow. “He believes he can save
Holland.”
Yet ultimately, the
biggest barrier to Wilders becoming prime minister may be Wilders
himself.
His idiosyncratic
leadership style is a weakness in the fragmented Dutch political
landscape, which requires multiple parties to band together and hash
out complex programs to form a government. A series of political
rivals have ruled out working with him.
But in other ways,
Wilders has already won.
“Mainstream
parties have shifted to the right,” said Matthijs Rooduijn, a
political sociologist at Utrecht University. “He has changed Dutch
politics.”
Rutte, the prime
minister, has imitated Wilders’ rhetoric on immigration and
multiculturalism throughout the campaign. And a constellation of
small parties offer voters a sanitized version of Wilders’
Euroskeptic, low-tax, tough-borders program.
If the Freedom Party
underperforms in the election compared to polls, as it has in the
past, there will be a crowd of hopeful successors, waiting for
Wilders to call it a day and retire to work the lecture circuit in
the United States.
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