Netherlands: Geert Wilders ‘politician of the year’

Anti-Islamic outsider is top Dutch politician

By Michael Steen in Amsterdam

Geert Wilders, who compares the Koran to Mein Kampf, has been named the Netherlands’ politician of the year in a poll run by public broadcaster NOS.
Mr Wilders’ pithy and shocking soundbites – he warned of a “tsunami of Islamisation” – have dominated headlines, while his parliamentary outbursts have brought an adversarial style of politics to the muted consensus to which the Dutch are attuned.

His latest project, a short film about the Koran that will be released next month, has stirred anger even before much is known about it. Mr Wilders, who has had round-the-clock protection for three years due to the death threats against him, says the film will illustrate how the Koran inspires people “to do the worst things”.

* Creeps: why don’t you want to know?

He has called for the Koran to be banned. “With this film I’m trying to show not only in words but also images exactly what I mean,” he says.

Mindful of the backlash provoked by the publication in Danish newspapers in 2005 of cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad, government ministers have expressed concern but said there is not much they can do. Some public figures outside parliament have called for a movement against Mr Wilders.

* Transalation: cowardly leftist scum who ride on the Muhammedan ticket want Wilders silenced, therefore they are shitting themselves over a guy who has balls…

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The murders in 2002 of Pim Fortuyn, a pioneer of Dutch anti-immigration and anti-Islam politics, and in 2005 of Theo van Gogh, the director of a film critical of Islam, have pushed immigration and the failure to integrate large Muslim communities to the top of the Dutch political agenda.

Mr Wilders’ proposed solutions are deeply radical: stop all Muslim immigration, ban the building of mosques and ask the 1m Muslims among the Dutch population of 16m to “go to their own countries” or give up their religion.
* Since when is self-preservation ‘radical?’

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He remains a highly controversial outsider and – many Dutch Muslims and non-Muslims alike would rather not discuss him. But his Party for Freedom, the PVV, won nine of 150 seats in parliament in the last election and it regularly polls above that level.

Mr Wilders has spent a career in public service and sat as an MP for the mainstream Liberal party, the VVD, for five years before breaking away in 2004. He has always demonstrated a feel for the popular mood. He was among those who campaigned for the surprise Dutch No vote against the European constitution in 2005. “Wilders knows his way around the parliament and he’s good at the work,” says Luuk van Middelaar, the Dutch political philosopher who worked alongside him as a political adviser to the Liberal party.

That is perhaps one advantage Mr Wilders has over politicians such as Christoph Blocher, who was ejected from Switzerland’s government this month, or parties such as the far-right Vlaams Belang in Belgium, subject to a long-standing “cordon sanitaire” by the other parties.

The NOS poll naming him politician of the year combined votes from the public and those of the parliamentary press corps. Mr Wilders, who denies being racist, usually says the press is biased against him.

* Once again: repeat after me: Islam is not a race, Islam is a political ideology, Islam is a totalitarian doctrine that wants you conquered, dead or forcibly converted…
The film project prompted Doekle Terpstra, a former trades unionist, to call for the movement against Mr Wilders. “It is time to send a powerful signal to all the Muslims in our country,” Mr Terpstra wrote. “The sound of Wilders is not the sound of the Netherlands.”

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* We shall see, Mr Terpstra. We shall see. Perhaps the sound of squeaking traitors like you running the gauntlet is more pleasing to your ears?
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