birth_date: 1963-09-06 00:00:00
avg_rating: 4.27
name: Geert Wilders
about: Geert Wilders is a Dutch politician who became an influential force on his country’s political right through the promotion of anti-Islamic and anti-immigration views. He served as a member of the Dutch House of Representatives from 1998 and as leader of the Party for Freedom from 2006.Wilders was born to a middle-class family and raised in the southeastern Netherlands, near the German border. He attended secondary school in Venlo and took a series of law classes through Open University in the Netherlands. From 1981 to 1983 he lived in Israel and traveled throughout the Middle East. During his visits to Muslim countries in the region, Wilders began formulating the anti-Islamic views that would characterize his political career. Upon his retu Geert Wilders is a Dutch politician who became an influential force on his country’s political right through the promotion of anti-Islamic and anti-immigration views. He served as a member of the Dutch House of Representatives from 1998 and as leader of the Party for Freedom from 2006.Wilders was born to a middle-class family and raised in the southeastern Netherlands, near the German border. He attended secondary school in Venlo and took a series of law classes through Open University in the Netherlands. From 1981 to 1983 he lived in Israel and traveled throughout the Middle East. During his visits to Muslim countries in the region, Wilders began formulating the anti-Islamic views that would characterize his political career. Upon his return to the Netherlands, he worked in the health insurance industry. In 1997 he was elected to the Utrecht city council as a member of the liberal People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy . The following year Wilders was elected to the parliament.As an MP, Wilders initially drew little notice. In the early 2000s, however, a wave of anti-Islamic feeling in the Netherlands gave him a platform for his views. In 2004 filmmaker Theo van Gogh was murdered after releasing the short film Submission, a collaboration with Somali-born Dutch activist Ayaan Hirsi Ali that critiqued the role of women in Muslim society. Amid the public outrage surrounding the killing, Wilders became a prominent voice on the political right, pronouncing Islam a “fascist ideology” and calling for restrictions on Muslim immigration to the Netherlands. Appealing to the supporters of populist politician Pim Fortuyn, who had been killed by an animal rights activist in 2002, Wilders quickly amassed a devoted following.He left the VVD in 2004 partly to protest that party’s support for Turkey’s accession to the European Union, and two years later he founded the PVV. The fledgling PVV won nine seats in the 2006 parliamentary election, and Wilders continued to make public pronouncements against Islam. In 2007 he proposed that the Qurʾān be banned in the Netherlands, and the next year he produced Fitna (“Strife”), a controversial short film that interlaces passages from the Qurʾān with graphic images of Islamist terrorist attacks. Unable to find a commercial distributor for Fitna, Wilders released the film on the Internet. He then embarked on a promotional tour and made headlines in February 2009 when he was refused entry to the United Kingdom because British officials said that his visit would threaten public order (the ban was ultimately overturned). One month earlier a Dutch court had charged him with inciting hatred toward Muslims. The subsequent trial, which stretched over more than two years, concluded with Wilders being acquitted on all charges in June 2011.In spite of those issues, Wilders and the PVV fared well at the polls. The party won four seats in the election for the European Parliament in 2009, having earned 16.9 percent of the total vote. More dramatically, the party gained 15 seats in the 2010 Dutch parliamentary elections. Although economic issues had dominated the campaign, the anti-immigration rhetoric of the PVV had struck a chord with voters, and the party’s success provided Wilders with an opportunity to play a major role in a minority government formed by the VVD and the Christian Democrats. Throughout 2011, Wilders became increasingly vocal in his criticism of the coalition as it rolled back government programs in an effort to reduce spending. In April 2012 Prime Minister Mark Rutte proposed an austerity budget designed to adhere to the EU’s recently adopted deficit ceiling, and Wilders withdrew the PVV’s support from the coalition. In the process, the coalition government collapsed but remained in power as a caretaker administration while early elections were planned. Those elections, which took place in September 2012, resulted in the PVV’s losing nine seats in parliament, as Dutch voters turn ...more