What is Forum for Democracy (FvD)?

 

What is Forum for Democracy (FvD)?

Last update: 27-01-2026

https://npokennis.nl/longread/7583/wat-is-forum-voor-democratie-fv-d

 

Thierry Baudet is the founder of Forum of Democracy (FvD). The political party will participate in the national elections for the first time in 2017 and will have two seats in the House of Representatives. FvD was first seen ideologically as the distant cousin of D66, but now they have moved to the extreme right-wing spectrum.

 

Editor: Leonard Ornstein

 

How did Forum for Democracy (FvD) come into being?

Baudet is one of the initiators of Geen Peil, the political party that did not win a seat in national politics in the 2017 parliamentary elections. What is possible is to set up a national, advisory

referendum

 on the agenda. Together with the website GeenStijl, the EU Citizens' Committee and the (then) think tank Forum for Democracy, a vote is taken on an issue that everyone initially thinks they will never succeed in getting the population excited about: an association agreement between the European Union and Ukraine.

 

Baudet and journalist Jan Roos - campaign face of GeenPeil - are against such a treaty. To be allowed to call a referendum, they must collect at least three hundred thousand signatures in six weeks. They eventually collect 443,000 signatures. This stunt of size provides Baudet and Roos with a lot of publicity. But the government refuses to implement the decision of the referendum (no to the association agreement).

 

Baudet himself cites the disappointment and frustration of this as the reason for founding his own political party: the unwillingness of politicians to convert the outcome of the referendum into political action. When Baudet announced in September 2016 that he was going into national politics with his own political party - Forum for Democracy - there was initially great skepticism. Isn't it getting 'way too busy' in the right-wing, political corner? The brand new political party manages to get into the House of Representatives with 2 seats in the 2017 elections.

 

It is getting busy on the right: after Jan Roos, Thierry Baudet also wants to participate in the elections, with the Forum for Democracy.

 

Together with criminal lawyer and lawyer Theo Hiddema, Baudet has formed a two-man faction for years. The party has its greatest success in the Provincial Council elections in March 2019. FvD then participates in all provinces and receives a large number of votes. It even becomes the largest party and then co-governs in various provinces. Because of the big win, Forum will also become a major party in the Senate. It goes from zero to twelve seats, making it the same size as the VVD.

 

Even then, it appears that Baudet does not shy away from controversy and sometimes uses loaded terminology. It is linked to the extreme right, and which many take offense to. In 2017, for example, Baudet spoke out against "homeopathic dilution of the Dutch population" with "all the peoples of the world". This evokes associations with the alt-right movement.

 In his book Oikophobia he uses the word dilute again, there it is about the "dilution of national identities".

 

At the FvD party congress in 2017, Baudet dropped the term 'boreal Europe' for the first time. A term used by the far-right politician Jean-Marie Le Pen in 2015. Namely, to indicate that Europe originally had only a white population, and that this should remain the case. This statement, among others, costs Le Pen his membership of his own party, Le Front National, in addition to anti-Semitic remarks. Baudet uses the term 'boreal' again in his victory speech in the Provincial Council election in 2019: "Just like all those other countries of our boreal world, we are being destroyed by the very people who should be protecting us." Baudet is referring here to the social elite. This evokes a lot of resistance, also in their own circle.

 

In the corona pandemic years – between 2020-2022 – Baudet's messages, especially his tweets, are becoming increasingly controversial. He is being summoned to court by the CIDI, the CJO and four Jewish war survivors. Because, like his party members, he has repeatedly made comparisons between corona measures and the Second World War, both inside and outside the House of Representatives. On November 14, 2021, Baudet posted a tweet in which he called unvaccinated people "the new Jews" and "looking away excluders the new Nazis and NSB members". Other messages follow in which he links the persecution of the Jews to the corona measures and cabinet policy. The judge rules that he must delete the offending tweets. He is also banned from using images of the Holocaust in the context of the debate on the corona measures. Baudet himself calls it an "insane, incomprehensible verdict".

 

Within the House of Representatives, too, there is increasing discomfort about Baudet's radical stance and fierce, personal attacks. These can be directed against journalists and scientists, and also against members of the cabinet. For example, Baudet makes Finance Minister Sigrid Kaag suspicious by stating in a budget debate that she studied at a 'spy training' (Oxford University). According to Baudet, it is "little more than in fact a training institute for Western secret services". If Baudet continues to do so, despite exhortations to stop it, Kaag and the rest of the government will resign.

 

What does FvD think?

Forum wants to formulate answers to the 'uncontrolled immigration, the hopeless euro, the deteriorating education, the unsustainable healthcare system', according to the party website. The most important theme according to FvD is the reform of the political system in a direct democracy. When the party was founded in 2016, you could still characterize it as the distant cousin of D66. Because the core of the program was the introduction of various forms of direct democracy, such as referendums and elected administrators. According to FvD, referendums are the means to 'make the

party cartel' and reduce the power of the 'political elites'.

 

According to Thierry Baudet, our democracy is in crisis. The established political elite, 'the party cartel', is too powerful.

 

Baudet's party is with some of its views against Wilders' PVV, especially the right-wing conservative views. Strengthening national sovereignty, heavier penalties for violent crimes, asylum policy based on the Australian model (selective reception of refugees and only temporary labour migrants) and lowering taxes by cutting back on development aid. It is also committed to preserving Dutch heritage and leaving Dutch traditions such as Sinterklaas unchanged. 'I love Zwarte Piet', he tweets on November 14, 2021. Later in a broadcast of Ongehoord Nederland he states: "I really see in the attack on Black Pete the systematic, unstoppable breakdown of the Netherlands". Such a statement about Black Pete fits in with the pattern of previous years.

 

I really see in the attack on Zwarte Piet the systematic, unstoppable breakdown of the Netherlands.

Thierry Baudet in a broadcast of Ongehoord Nederland

 

In 2018, his book Oikophobia: the fear of one's own will be published, in which Baudet writes that the uniqueness of the Netherlands is being destroyed. "Because of multiculturalism and open borders, which bring tens of thousands of immigrants into our country every year and put further pressure on social cohesion every year. By the European Union, which deprives the inhabitants of our country of control over their lives and sets up a bureaucracy that can overrule the national parliament on almost any point." And don't forget the modern arts, "the alienating sounds of atonal music; the incomprehensible scaffolding and colour stripes in modern museums; the terrifying structures that rise in every city." The fear of losing the familiar, of seeing one's own Western culture perish, because it is not cherished and will not be overshadowed by other cultures, such as Islam, is a central theme of Forum for Democracy. Other politicians, such as Geert Wilders, express the same fear.

 

Gradually, FvD takes more strongly divergent positions. For example, with regard to the invasion of Ukraine by the former Soviet Union. On Twitter, Baudet calls Putin "the leader of conservative Europe and wonderful guy" and then refuses to condemn the war. As a result, the party becomes politically isolated in parliament. In 2022, the executive committee of the House of Representatives reprimanded Baudet for refusing to report his ancillary positions. He will be suspended for a week.

 

A majority of the House of Representatives also supports a proposal by Jesse Klaver of GroenLinks to investigate 'whether political parties, politicians and interest groups in the Netherlands are financed with money from Russia'. Despite all the fuss and scandals, Baudet's party knows how to attract people. In January 2025, it is still the party with the most members.

 

No evidence has yet been found of payments from Russia to FVD. Parliament is demanding an audit by the Court of Audit in 2022.

 

What makes people leave FvD?

Baudet has become more extreme over the years. He has come to believe in conspiracy theories. On his own YouTube channel Forum Inside, Baudet calls it a 'dick story' in a video that people have been on the moon. Electric cars are 'an invention of the devil' and the FvD leader does not believe in global warming.

 

Confidants who were involved in the party from the beginning, such as lawyer Theo Hiddema and co-founder Henk Otten, have also resigned. Not just these men. Former history professor Frank Ankersmit, banker Paul Frentrop and former VVD senator Robert de Haze Winkelman also left FvD.

 

Why are prominent FvD members leaving the party?

In 2020, there was great unrest about Nazi, homophobic and anti-Semitic statements made by members of the JFvD youth wing in private WhatsApp groups. The party announces its own investigation, but for many party members this is not enough. A split is taking place in the party. More and more senators, members of parliament and prominent party members are leaving, including prominent FvD members Annabel Nanninga, Joost Eerdmans, Nicki Pouw-Verweij and Eva Vlaardingerbroek. Eerdmans and Nanninga will start their own party, JA21, in December 2020. Some other former FvD politicians agree. One of them, Wybren van Haga, splits off and starts his own party; What is Belang van Nederland (BVNL)

 

In the 2021 parliamentary election, FvD still manages to retain 8 seats despite the crisis. But due to the ongoing unrest within the party, the Provincial Elections in 2023 will only yield two seats in the Senate. In the parliamentary elections in the same year, FvD wins 3 seats.

 

At the end of August 2025, founder Baudet announced that he was giving up his party chairmanship of FvD. Lidewij de Vos became the party's new party leader in the parliamentary elections in 2025. The party managed to gain three seats under her leadership. There will be six FvD MPs in parliament, including Baudet. He will also remain chairman of the party.

 

In early 2026, research by the Volkskrant shows that the party has invited a number of extremist people to its JFvD Christmas gala as guests of honor. Such as a leader of White Lives Matter, Severin Köhler, former chairman of the youth branch of the far-right German AfD. The Irish John McLoughlin, politician of the far-right National Party. Also present is the Slovenian Zan Zalec, who is known as a neo-Nazi supporter. He sits next to FvD party leader Lidewij de Vos and is the founder of the identitarian movement. This right-wing extremist movement is active in several European countries and is considered by the German security services because of the

Population theory seen as a danger to democracy.

 

In short

• Thierry Baudet founded his own party in 2016: Forum for Democracy (FvD).
•  
• FvD wants more participation of the Dutch people in political decision-making and less influence from the European Union. The party has right-wing conservative views. In the years that followed, it took more and more extreme positions.
•  
• In 2020, a split in the party followed when Baudet hardly distanced himself from extremist texts from his youth party. In addition to losing seats, prominent senators, MPs and members of parliament are leaving the party.
•  
• FvD has been expressing itself more and more extreme in recent years. Baudet compares corona measures to the Holocaust and believes in conspiracy theories.
•  
• After the Provincial elections and the House of Representatives elections in 2023, Forum for Democracy will have two seats left in the Senate and three in the House of Representatives.
•  
• Thierry Baudet will hand over the party chairmanship to Lidewij de Vos in September 2025.
•  
• FvD will have 7 seats in the House of Representatives after the elections in 2025. Baudet will remain a member of parliament and chairman of the party.
•  
• Research by the Volkskrant in 2026 shows that leaders of European far-right parties are guests of honor at the Christmas gala of the youth wing of the FvD.