Geert Wilders: 'We have no problem to be tolerant of the tolerant’.

I’ve never been to Holland. Other than one transit through Schiphol airport. So I know little about it. But I do know it held a general election last Wednesday. On my birthday. The results [1] show the big mover was the PVV, the Party for Freedom [2]. Founded in 2005, in the 2006 election it won nine seats making it the fifth largest party. Last week its vote tripled, and its 24 seats make it the third largest party. The PVV’s founder and driving force is Geert Wilders (pictured) [3]. Farmdoc’s Blog readers may recall him from here [4]. In September 2004 he left the People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy [VVD] because he couldn’t accept the VVD condoning Turkey’s entry to the EU. The PVV’s policies combine economic liberalism with a conservative approach to immigration and culture. Regarding the latter, it believes the Judeo-Christian and humanist traditions should be Holland’s dominant culture, and immigrants should adapt accordingly. And it opposes a dominant presence of Islam in Holland. You can call Wilders a fascist or racist if you like, but the fact is that Holland’s a Western democracy, and last week her voters exercised their right to vote freely. This Jerusalem Post interview with Wilders [5] makes interesting reading visa-vis my previous posts about Islamisation [6, 7, 8] and Israel being the West’s metaphoric coalmine canary [9, 10]. So in the next four years I’ll be keeping a keen eye on Dutch politics. How could I not?