Geert Wilders loves Hungary and had coffee with Viktor Orbán

Will far-right populist “peroxide-blond crusader” Geert Wilders be the Netherlands’ new prime minister? And why does he spend so much time in Hungary?

On March 15th the Netherlands will elect its new Parliament, the Tweede Kamer or Lower House. According to opinion polls the far-right Freedom party might come out ahead and Wilders has a good chance to become the next prime minister. Some call the 53-year-old Wilders the Dutch Donald Trump; their politics and even their hair colors are similar.

“These elections are historic, because the Netherlands can choose on the 15th of March if we want to give our land away further or if we are going to recapture it,” Wilders said. The most likely scenario is, that the Freedom party will win the election by becoming the largest party in the Lower House, but still won’t be able to form a government. His opponents will try to patch together a multiparty coalition to prevent a far-right coup d’état.

“Dutch values are based on Christianity, on Judaism, on humanism. Islam and freedom are not compatible,” thunders Wilders. He is a Eurosceptic, hates Brussels bureaucrats and wants to close all mosques. He calls Islam an ideology that poses an existential threat to core European values and wants to ban the Quran, seal the nation’s borders and allow absolutely no immigrants from Islamic countries.

His views are a shared by Mr. Orbán, Hungary’s authoritarian Prime Minister, although Wilders’s rhetoric is more poisonous. He recently called young Dutch immigrants from Morocco, “scum.”

Wilders was born in 1961 and after completing high school he moved to Israel. He worked in a bakery in Jerusalem, and later at kibbutz Yad Mordechai close to the town of Ashkelon and at agricultural Moshav Tomer north of Jericho. He openly calls himself a Zionist and travels frequently to the Jewish State. In the past he was investigated by the Dutch General Intelligence and Security Service over his “ties to Israel and their possible influence on his loyalty.”

Geert Wilders and his Hungarian-born wife Krisztina Márfai.

Wilders also maintains close ties to Hungary. In 1992 he married a Hungarian woman, Krisztina Márfai, and together they spend summers at Lake Balaton and visit his wife’s village, Nyírparasznya, a small hamlet in Szabolcs-Szatmár county close to the Ukrainian border. Wilders feels safe there although his body guards are with him all the time. He does not take chances since Pim Fortuyn, another far right Dutch politician, was assassinated in 2002.

Geert Wilders visiting his wife’s village – Nyírparasznya

“I have one message to the Dutch people, and that is, if you want to regain your country, if you want to make the Netherlands for the people of the Netherlands, then you can only vote for one party.” This is almost verbatim the same message Hungarian voters hear from Viktor Orbán and I was not surprised when in a Facebook entry Wilders mentions his close relationship with Orbán; they even had coffee together.

György Lázár

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