Geert Wilders: heir apparent to an anxious nation

The election of a populist has shocked The Netherlands. Wim Houtman unpacks the result and explores anxious attitudes among electors, particularly Christians.

Wim Houtman

Wim Houtman is a senior editor with Nederlands Dagblad, a Christian daily newspaper in the Netherlands.

A politician in a suit stands amid a scrum of reporters holding microphones

Geert Wilders is at the centre of media attention in The Netherlands.

Much has been made in recent years of the similarity in appearance - their hair dos especially - between Donald Trump, Boris Johnson and Geert Wilders. All three sport this striking blond head of hair, invariably cut in the same style - be it with loosely non-conformist locks or carefully eccentric waves.

It’s their trademark, it sets them apart - instantly recognizable. And it sends a message: Here is a leader who stands out, who doesn’t care what is ‘normal’ or ‘accepted’ or what others may think; he knows what he wants, he knows what you want and he will go for it.

Until a fortnight ago, Dutch politician Geert Wilders was the leader of a relatively minor party on the far right, with a strong anti-Islam, anti-immigration agenda. His populist Partij voor de Vrijheid (PVV, Party for Freedom) had been around since 2006, hovering between 6 and 16 per cent of the vote. But suddenly, on November 22nd, he scored a whopping 24 per cent, becoming the largest party with 37 seats in the Lower House of the Dutch parliament, way ahead of the runner-up, the left-wing alliance of social democrats and greens at 25 seats.

In the Dutch electoral system, this automatically gives Geert Wilders the lead in forming a new government. And here the problem starts.

Now he wants to cash in on his victory to finally and decisively put his stamp on the country’s policies. At 60 years old, it may well be his last chance.

So far, his party has been a wallflower in the political arena. Other parties have found his standpoints too extreme to bring on board. Today, however, looks very different. As the leader of the largest political party, Geert Wilders seems destined to become Prime Minister - at least he himself claims so. It would seem like going against the will of the people to stand in his way. But still, most other parties are reluctant to work with him.

In its leader comment the morning after, the Dutch Christian daily newspaper Nederlands Dagblad recalled what kind of party and what kind of leader the country had just elected to be its next PM:

‘Geert Wilders, who for years on end has branded democratically elected colleagues traitors to their country and a fake parliament. Who called the rule of law ‘corrupted’, after he had been persecuted and fined for collective insult. Who for years on end has hatefully offended entire sections of the population, because of their faith (Muslims) or their origin (Moroccan, Eastern European etc). Who wants to abolish religious freedom, leave the European Union, do away with the euro, end the military support to Ukraine, post soldiers along the nation’s borders, ban headscarves, disband climate policy and energy transition. Who wants to revert the apologies the King made last July for the nation’s slavery record. And so on, and so on.’

In the run-up to these latest elections, Mr Wilders ran a brilliant campaign in which he presented himself in a more moderate way, and pledged if he won, to be ‘the Prime Minister of all Dutch people’ - leaving aside the question what a person needs to qualify for being ‘Dutch’. Now he wants to cash in on his victory to finally and decisively put his stamp on the country’s policies. At 60 years old, it may well be his last chance.

But if he is to lead the next government, and be successful at it, he will need to go through no less than a ‘deradicalisation programme’, the Nederlands Dagblad commentator wrote: ‘That’s the kind of test you can pass, but also fail.’

From Dutch Christians, you might say, the response to the first election victory of a populist party came in stages.

At first, many of them were shocked, dismayed, and anxious. Their faith prompted them to strive for a government that will reach out to the poor, respect minority rights, care for the environment and welcome refugees. They had always known that Mr Wilders and his party had totally opposite ideas. But they had never expected him to gain any real political influence. Now, it felt as if they had woken up in a different country.

But once some of the dust had settled down, there came room for other considerations, too. Surely not all 2.4 million PVV voters could be classified as extremists. The size of its electorate puts it rather in the range of a mainstream conservative party. Many people had voted for Mr Wilders out of disillusionment with the established parties who had governed the country for decades - and rightly so.

It is one thing to say we must welcome asylum seekers, but it is another when you can’t find a place to live, because there is a shortage of affordable housing and refugees seem to get priority. It is one thing to say the government is there to support people who need help, but it is another when you experience you’re immediately suspected of fraud when you apply for a benefit.

So Christian voters, like the general public, seem divided: some are shocked by the election result, others feel that their concerns have finally been heard.

Up until 1967 Christian political parties had a majority in the Dutch parliament. Their support has shrunk steadily, but at this election it fell from 15 per cent in 2021 to no more than 7 per cent. And yes, some of their voters defected to the populist PVV.

‘We have loved the stranger more than ourselves’, explained one of them in the Nederlands Dagblad newspaper. ‘It is better to begin at yourself; from there you can help the world. That’s what Mr Wilders stands for’.

‘What decided it for me was the insight that this country needs real change’, commented another. ‘Not just some minor adjustments, but a firm pull to the right: a stronger policy on law and order, critical on the growing influence from Europe, battling poverty in our own country.’ Several Christians mentioned they had voted PVV because Mr Wilders is a keen supporter of Israel; they were worried about the anti-semitic tones in some quite noisy pro-Palestinian demonstrations because of the war in Gaza.

So Christian voters, like the general public, seem divided: some are shocked by the election result, others feel that their concerns have finally been heard.

The surprising election result seems to leave the country - and Christians in particular - with a couple of nagging questions.

How to avoid stigmatizing PVV voters, and recognize that their problems are real and deserve solutions that are real?

How to convince them that a party that has some anti-democratic tendencies and lives in denial of the big international and environmental crises cannot be the solution? And that care for the environment, refugees and the poor are authentic components of the Christian story, and not just after all of our own personal needs have been met?

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War & peace

1 November 2024

5 min read

Put poppy politics in the past and give Remembrance a hopeful future

Memory without hope will lead us to a dead-end.

Mark Gilbert

Mark is a research mathematician who writes on ethics, human identity and the nature of intelligence.

A woman walls along a war memorial wall covered in red poppies.

War memorial in Canberra.

Raelle Gann-Owens on Unsplash.

Remembrance Day is complicated. A nation shows its gratitude for the service and sacrifice of its armed forces and tries to connect to its history. Never far away, are poppy politics, along with anxiety about identity and forgetting, and fears about nationalism and militarism. Is this the way to remember?

Last November, protests in solidarity with Gaza dominated the headlines. On Armistice Day, hundreds of thousands of people marched through central London to demand a ceasefire. In the preceding weeks, there was vigorous debate about whether the march should be cancelled. There were several motivations for this: there were genuine fears of violence and extremism, and of disruption at the Cenotaph, but also questions of whether marching on Armistice Day was inappropriate or disrespectful.

The march itself was organised to minimise the risk of disrupting public commemorations of Remembrance. It started several hours after the two-minute silence and followed a route several miles from the cenotaph. It was mostly peaceful, although there were arrests for anti-Semitism, open support for terrorism and violent attacks on police officers. Armistice Day did see violence around the cenotaph, but this was from the self-described ‘Cenotaph Defenders’ who had organised a counter-demonstration against the Gaza march. The group of football hooligans and far-right EDL members gathered with poppy emblazoned banners declaring ‘Have some respect for British Heroes’. Within a few hours, the calls for respect had degenerated into violent attacks on serving uniformed officers, in this case the police.

The far-right’s adoption of remembrance symbolism can be seen as an extreme form of a wider entanglement of poppies and politics. The red paper poppy is a symbol of remembrance, but it has other connotations. For some it invokes patriotism and feelings of pride in their country, for others it represents conformity and militarism. Whether television news presenters are wearing them attracts disproportionate attention. In 2019, one Australian TV network had a very tasteless segment denouncing a rival station whose newscasters failed to wear poppies. The non-poppy wearing hosts were accused of failing in their duty to respect their country and to help preserve its culture and traditions. Regardless of the presenters’ actual reasons, this feels like a lot of baggage to load onto the delicate poppy, a symbol of quiet remembrance and gratitude.

Unsurprisingly, this has led many to question whether Remembrance Day has become detached from its original purposes. Twelve years after the death of the last British First World War veteran, there is little living connection to either of the two world wars. With this passage of time, there is a growing danger of mistaking the symbols of ceremonial Remembrance for the thing itself.

The focus of remembrance can shift away from the sheer horrors of war, from awe at the sacrifice of our forebears, and from the resolved ‘never again’ to fixing our gaze on the processed goods: the ceremonial silence, the poppies themselves and even the quality of our own emotional response.

Some commentators have suggested that organised Remembrance has served its purpose and is best forgotten, and that too much remembering is a bad thing, fuelling grudges and sectarian conflicts. Personally, I’m not convinced, but I do think our current Remembrance is missing something.

With a strong grounding in a shared past and a common hope, we would talk frankly about the times our country has fallen short without a sense of betraying our history or identity.

Reflecting on the importance and difficulty of memory, the writer and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel emphasised the importance of hope. Despite the horrific experiences of the twentieth century, for Wiesel it is hope that “summons the future”. Memory without hope would lead us to a dead-end, where we grip onto the past while feeling it slip like sand through our fingers. Many of the anxieties around Remembrance point to a hope deficit.

How can we remember with hope?

We need to broaden our perspective and engage better with our shared national story. We need to be grounded in our history, stories and myths but we also need to be drawn forward by the good things we have and will have. If this story is big enough then it will be a large tapestry of interwoven strands, and we will be able to generously incorporate new strands, other cultures with their own relationship to the past into it. We will also be better prepared for our remembering to deal with difficult questions about our nation’s history. With a strong grounding in a shared past and a common hope, we would talk frankly about the times our country has fallen short without a sense of betraying our history or identity. Hope would connect us better to our neighbours overseas and to the men and women who risk their lives to serve their country.

Last Remembrance Sunday, I helped our church’s under-7s make big paper poppies out of red paint and paper plates. The older children made origami peace cranes, and both the big red poppies and the peace cranes were placed by the altar. Here the focus is on remembering, but not just on our own memory. For me and countless other Christians, God’s memory is the real focus. God remembers us in our broken and war-torn world, and as Jesus, chose to join us in it, experiencing the worst of suffering while dying a painful death. All our personal and collective stories of pain, loss and sadness are met in this sacrifice. More than this, in the promises of restoration Jesus gave when He rose from the dead, they find a concrete hope.

What does Remembrance look like when it’s really grounded in hope? I think there would be a few noticeable signs. It would be less precious about itself. It would be more open to different emphases of remembrance such as the Peace Pledge Union and the white poppy, and excited about new creative expressions of remembrance like the ‘poppy walks’ organised by the Royal British Legion. More patient to the concerns of those who find the religious elements of Remembrance difficult. More integrated into our attitudes to current and ongoing conflict around the world. Most of all I hope it would make us really hungry for both peace and for righteousness.