Miles Windsor, Senior Manager for Strategy and Campaigns with RFI’s Middle East Action Team, authored a piece for Newsweek on “The Victory of the Netherlands’ Geert Wilders and the Crisis of Western Values.” Windsor writes:

Geert Wilders, the veteran polemical populist, achieved a striking victory in the recent Dutch general elections. The electoral success of Wilders’ Freedom Party (PVV) represents another confounding blow to the Western commentariat, which has struggled to understand and come to terms with the public mood in this and other seismic votes in the modern political era, including the election of Donald Trump in the United States, Brexit, and Boris Johnson‘s 2019 landslide.

Wilders’ victory will induce anxiety for any onlookers with a genuine interest in universal religious freedom. It will be deeply depressing for those who recognize religious freedom as a vital component of healthy, peaceful, and civilized societies. Some will contend that the thrust of Wilders’ campaign was euroscepticism, and that he has toned down his anti-Islamic rhetoric. He certainly suggested that the Netherlands faced more pressing issues than Islam, and that he wouldn’t seek to take “unconstitutional measures” in relation to religious freedom violations. He pledged that ideas around banning mosques and the Koran would be “put in the fridge.” Nevertheless, he didn’t go so far as to deliver these policies to the dustbin, which would be a far more suitable place for them.

Read the full article: “The Victory of the Netherlands’ Geert Wilders and the Crisis of Western Values.”