Election results lend themselves to different stories, certainly in the Netherlands, where so many old and new parties compete for votes. Yet the 2023 election will be remembered for one reason: a far-right party topped the polls for the first time, and by a large margin. Geert Wilders’ Party for Freedom (PVV) is set to win 37 of the 150 seats in Dutch parliament, more than doubling its 2021 tally.
Far-right parties in Europe primarily attract voters on their core issues of immigration and multiculturalism. Most also express a populist message, criticising political elites and calling for popular sovereignty. Wilders’ PVV is no different.
In the Dutch election campaign, economic precarity also featured prominently. As before, Wilders linked economic and cultural issues, claiming that welfare should be preserved for the “native” population by halting immigration and limiting benefits for “undeserving” ethnic minorities.
This “welfare chauvinist” position is typical of far-right parties, and appeals to culturally conservative voters who desire economic protection from the state – effectively also competing on the ideological home turf of the left. Notably, while the Green-Labour alliance led by Frans Timmermans finished second, leftwing parties saw their collective vote share decline.
Most voters, however, tend to swing between ideologically like-minded parties. To explain why Wilders gained so many votes, we need to consider the competition between him and his nearest rivals. Two factors stand out.
First, at the start of the campaign the centre-right VVD leader, Dilan Yeşilgöz-Zegerius, signalled a potential coalition with Wilders’s party. This signified a break with the past. Her predecessor, Mark Rutte, had ruled out collaborating with the PVV since 2012, when Wilders withdrew his support from, and blew up, the Rutte-led minority government.
Second, the VVD legitimised Wilders’s agenda by making immigration a key issue in its campaign. Rutte’s motivation for instigating the collapse of his last cabinet related to party-political divisions over asylum, whereby his party advocated a stricter stance. The VVD’s 2023 manifesto urged the need to “regain control” over migration. Research shows that when mainstream parties try to compete with far-right ones by moving closer to their positions, it is the far right that tends to benefit.
Wilders also ran a clever campaign. Notably, he struck a less-confrontational tone and signalled a willingness to drop some more radical demands in coalition talks. This time around, Wilders appeared more salonfähig, ready to govern.
But his manifesto showed little genuine change. The PVV did, for instance, drop its call for unconditional withdrawal from the EU, and instead proposed a binding “Nexit” referendum. But many of the more radical ideas were preserved, and new ones added.
Central to the party’s programme is a radical anti-immigration policy. The PVV declares that ‘our beautiful Netherlands is severely deteriorated due to the ongoing asylum tsunami and mass immigration’. It claims children are “being indoctrinated with climate activism, gender insanity and a sense of shame about our country’s history” and wants to ban Islamic schools, the Qur’an, and mosques, to halt “Islamisation” of the country.
None of this has stopped Wilders becoming part of the political furniture. As the longest-serving member of the Dutch parliament, he could present himself as a “reasonable” alternative to the Putin-supporting and blatantly conspiracist Forum for Democracy led by Thierry Baudet (which lost five of its eight seats in parliament).
Prior to the election, a children’s TV news programme about party leaders called a piece about the PVV leader: Cuddling cats with Geert Wilders.
All this signifies the normalisation of far-right politics. In 2000, when the Austrian Freedom party entered a coalition, other countries widely condemned the move and the EU imposed diplomatic sanctions. In 2023 it is common for European countries to be governed by far-right parties often in collaboration with centre-right parties. Next June’s European Parliament elections will surely see many voting for far right parties again.
Mainstream politicians have a moral obligation to uphold liberal democratic norms. While citizens’ concerns about cultural change and immigration can be legitimate, there is something fundamentally problematic about the far right’s idea of a “leading culture”.
Society is inherently diverse, comprising individuals and groups with differing values and preferences. “The voter”, a term repeatedly used by Dutch politicians to suggest that citizens are united in their beliefs, does not exist. Mainstream parties should recognise this and steer well clear of the far right’s anti-liberal frame that there is a “general will”.
Stijn van Kessel is an associate professor in European Politics at Queen Mary University, London
