The fall of Geert Wilders

Geert Wilders became infamous the world over. He claimed common sense for what for most Dutch people sounded as indecent extremist racist language, needlessly insulting the Koran, Muslims, Moroccans and Turks.

What used to be not done in the Netherlands he made into just another opinion. No doubt unwittingly, he lowered the threshold for much spoken bigotry, including anti-Semitism and homophobia.

We must say that he was on to something, but he could have addressed that in a non-racist way, and he didn’t (read here why). The major political parties in the Low Countries have now adopted ideas that were too weak in Dutch culture, as: national pride. The only message left for Wilders is extreme racist xenophobe insults. His game is over.

And then it happened.

Geert Wilders just nailed the last nail into his political coffin. He went to Russia to show: that public opinion in The Netherlands vis-à-vis the land of Putin is mistaken, that Wilders has nothing against the dictatorship and that the power-hungry ex-Communist distant neighbor would also have nothing against the Dutch. What a bad reader of the public this agitator turns out to be.

Russia shot a passenger plane with many Dutch from the sky and refuses to admit guilt. 193 of the passengers were Dutch and the sharp pain of their loss is still raw. Putin is also the man who bombs civilians in Syria. He jails opposition leaders. He tries to disrupt elections the world over. Why in fact should the Dutch like him?

Wilders speaks about unjustified Dutch Russophobia. He’s wrong. And the Dutch public will never take him serious again. Goodbye Wilders.

He might have taken this trip to enlarge his European image, seeing that in the upcoming Dutch municipal elections he’s a nobody. After this debacle he’ll be a nobody in Dutch national politics too. Good riddance.