The Dutch election winner who backed Tommy Robinson
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More than a decade ago, Geert Wilders was blocked from leaving Heathrow airport after his far-Right, anti-Islamic views were deemed too dangerous for the British public by officials.
On Thursday, the Dutch public woke up to a political earthquake, the leader of the Freedom Party (PVV) having secured a convincing election victory in one of the country’s most close-fought campaigns for years.
A charismatic populist with slicked-back, lightning-white hair, Mr Wilders, 60, gained notoriety for his calls to ban mosques, the Koran and Islamic schools.
Campaigns over the years have been kickstarted by denouncing Moroccans as “scum” and calling for a “rag-head tax” on Islamic headwear.
To him, Islam is a violent religion and the Koran a fascist book.
Mr Wilders claims to have extensively studied the Koran, once telling a reporter that there were “no” parts of the text he agreed with.
The 60-year-old firebrand was placed under 24-hour guard by the police in 2004, following the murder of Theo Van Gogh, a filmmaker critical of Islam, who was killed by a Dutch-Moroccan Muslim.
Such is the fear over his safety, his now round-the-clock protection by bodyguards has been elevated to a military-style operation.
‘Horrible pest’
Born to a practising Catholic father and a mother from Indonesia, a former Dutch colony, he was described by his brother as a “horrible pest, egocentric and aggressive” during his teenage years.
In 1981, aged 18, Mr Wilders travelled to the Middle East, including Israel, where he lived on a kibbutz for a year.
His brother, Paul, claimed this is where he developed his radical and controversial stance towards Islam.
Returning to the Netherlands, Mr Wilders trained as a lawyer and worked in a welfare agency, further sculpting his attitude towards Muslim immigrants.
He entered politics as a member of the People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD), the party of caretaker prime minister Mark Rutte, before walking away because of its apparent liberal stance on Islam and Migration.
In 2004, Mr Wilders founded his PVV party, placing anti-Islam and immigration policies at the heart of its pitch to voters.
While being an ever-present figure in Dutch politics in recent decades, elected to parliament for the first time in 1998, his controversial views had until now failed to convert into genuine electoral successes.
His anti-Islamic rhetoric also saw him flirt with the law in the Netherlands.
In June 2011, Mr Wilders was acquitted of five charges of hate speech and discrimination over his short film Fitna – Arabic for “discord” – which juxtaposed the Koran with images of the 9/11 terror attacks and compared Islam to Nazism.
Two years earlier he had been refused entry to Britain, where he had been invited to attend a screening of his film at the House of Lords by Lord Pearson, the Ukip peer.
Mr Wilders claimed that the airing of Fitna was a victory for freedom of speech.
The decision by Jacqui Smith, the then-home secretary, to ban him from the country was eventually overturned in the High Court.
When he returned to the country in 2010, he claimed its capital would be turned into “Londonistan” within 20 years if Britain did not halt immigration from Islamic nations.
For years, the far-Right politician pushed for an anti-EU coalition with leading Brexiteer Nigel Farage, who distanced himself from the Dutchman.
During the campaign ahead of the 2014 European election, Mr Wilders called for Ukip to unite with his party and France’s far-Right National Front party, led by Marine Le Pen, in a single group.
But Mr Farage opted to take his band of eurosceptics into a more moderate parliamentary group, considering Mr Wilders and his MEPs too toxic.
Instead, Mr Wilders went on to celebrate Tommy Robinson as a “staunch freedom fighter” and compared the English Defence League founder to Winston Churchill.
Mr Wilders appeared at a rally in London calling for Robinson to be freed from prison after being found guilty of breaching reporting laws in 2018.
But as polls showed him within touching distance of a victory in the Dutch election, Mr Wilders sought to water down his extremist views, promising to be a prime minister for “all the Dutch” including the nearly one million Muslims in the Netherlands.
Manifesto calls to ban mosques were dropped, and other priorities such as immigration, the economy and healthcare were prioritised.
This helped earn his PVV party 37 seats in the Dutch parliament, handing it the first opportunity to build a future coalition.
