WILL no one stand up for the Dutch cosmopolitan elite? For many observers of this week’s election in the Netherlands there was only one story: the fate of Geert Wilders, the bottle-blond nativist who wants to ban the Koran and exit the European Union. Rare was the bar in Limburg, Mr Wilders’s home province, left unmolested by journalists expecting Dutch voters to deliver a populist hat-trick, following the triumphs of Brexit and Donald Trump. The young, educated urbanites of Amsterdam’s Canal District or Haarlem barely got a look-in. And yet in an election with many subplots, theirs was among the more arresting.
Though Mr Wilders disappointed on election day, he remains more than an irritant. With 20 seats in the new 150-seat parliament, he may well lead the opposition to whatever government emerges from the electoral mélange produced on March 15th. His vicious brand of anti-Islam populism is no less shocking for its familiarity (Mr Wilders founded his Freedom Party in 2006, and he is not the first peddler of xenophobia to Dutch voters). And opposition presents no impediment to his influence. Before the election Mr Wilders told an interviewer that...Continue reading
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