He Party for Freedom (PVV) of the Islamophobic and eurosceptic Geert Wilders has obtained 35 seats out of a total of 150 in the elections held this Wednesday. The far-right has placed itself ahead of the left bloc headed by former vice president of the European Commission Frans Timmermans.

Despite his few public appearances due to the threats he receives, Dutch politician Geert Wilders has built a strong anti-Muslim, anti-immigration and anti-European political movement since 2006 and he has swept the last elections in the socially liberal Netherlands, although he says he is willing to give in to be prime minister.

Often described by his people as ingenious and with great political sense, this populist is considered “vulnerable, nervous and attached to his mobile phone”, according to the liberal Hans van Baalen. Going out little for security reasons, Wilders lives connected to social networks and is known for spreading fake news and having a rhetoric similar to Donald Trump.

The Dutch Donald Trump

Wilders, born in Venlo 60 years ago, came to politics in 1990 as a member of the People’s Party of Freedom and Democracy (VVD), a fusion of two liberal and progressive groups that have little to do with the extreme right. He spent eight years writing speeches for the party, before joining Parliament as a Liberal MP. However, in 2006 he founded the Party for Freedom (PVV), after breaking with the VVD over disagreements over Turkey’s membership bid for the European Union (EU), and began to build his anti-Muslim and anti-European movement.

After the successful result of the elections, the PVV leader promised to do everything possible to form a government and find solutions “within the legal and constitutional framework”, after having indicated that he wants to be “prime minister of everyone, regardless of their origin or religion.” . But the program with which he presented himself asks for a referendum to leave the EU (Nexit), the application of a strict anti-immigration policy and the asylum, the closure of mosques and the prohibition of the Koran, a position that led to numerous scuffles these years, including with former Queen Beatrix for having worn a veil in a mosque in Oman.

Wilders was once described as the prodigal son of donald trump due to both the physical similarities with the former American president, such as his very well-groomed blonde hair, and his same rhetoric against islamwhich has forced him to surround himself with bodyguards due to the threats he receives.

Anti-immigration son of immigrants

He is an openly anti-Muslim politician and in 2016, a Dutch court convicted him, in a symbolic sentence, for insulting a group of Moroccans. Wilders had asked, shouting in the street, if they wanted “more or less Moroccans in the Netherlands”, to which the public chanted: “Fewer, less.”

His rejection of immigration is paradoxical, because Wilders is a second generation immigrant who has his origins in the Dutch East Indies: he is the son of a young woman born in Sukabumi, present-day Indonesia and the country with the largest Muslim population in the world. His grandparents, practicing Catholics and of mixed ancestry, emigrated to the Netherlands after the collapse of the Dutch colony.

Loner, lover of Israel and the black sheep of his family

As for his personal life, his high school teachers remember him as a student “with few friends” who liked to talk about politics, and that chatty child still lives in the adult Wilders: he is still a loner who only talks about politics, according to those who know him. “He does not participate in any social events. We convinced him to go to a Christmas party, but it was impossible to talk about his private life,” said Hans Hoogervorst, another colleague of his.

At just twenty years old, Wilders said I do to his first girlfriend, only to divorce a few years later and remarry in 1992 to Krisztina Marfai, a Jewish Hungarian diplomat. It was exactly before he met her that Wilders, a young backpacker, began to frequent Israela country that he admires and defends even in his electoral program, which includes the transfer of the Dutch embassy in Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

His travel companion used to be his eldest brothernow his great detractor, with whom he no longer speaks for “political reasons.” Wilders is the black sheep of the political scene and of her family, in which the first-born son claimed to “love” Geert, but not share his ideas because They “exceed” the red line