Four years ago we had Thierry Baudet, now we have Caroline van der Plas. She will be very successful in next week’s Provincial Council elections, as Baudet triumphed in the previous elections. The talk shows are running away with her, populism can be given a new look.
“You helped Baudet in the saddle,” snapped Sjuul Paradijs talk show host Jeroen Pauw recently. So says the former editor-in-chief of The Telegraph, a newspaper that has tried nothing but to help one populist after another, also indirectly through hate campaigns against decent politicians such as Femke Halsema and Sigrid Kaag. Pauw could easily disprove the accusation in this case because Paradijs turned out not to have the facts in order chronologically.
The fact is that talk shows in general are far too eager to open their doors to populist politicians. Recalcitrance is simply beneficial for the viewing figures. Especially Fortuyn and Baudet and now again Eerdmans and Van der Plas have made grateful use of this.
How much TV fame is being pursued, is shown this week in an interview in Fidelity with Henk Otten, the co-founder of Forum for Democracy who was eventually expelled as a member after a clash with Baudet. “You wanted to use Baudet?” asks the interviewer. Otten: “Yes, I thought: he comes across very well on camera, looks fresh, a modern figurehead.” He saw Baudet as “a good version of what went wrong after Fortuyn”.
What happend? What you could still call pride with Fortuyn, became delusional with Baudet. Baudet turned out to be crazy. After his triumph in the Provincial Council elections, he delivered a speech that was as laughable as it was incomprehensible about the owl of Minerva and boreal Europe. “I got tears in my eyes,” says Otten now. “It was a quasi-intellectual bullshit. He destroyed the party.”
Fortunately, you might think, but Otten – populists never unlearn it – thinks it is a missed opportunity. In essence, he is more disappointed in the person Baudet than in the politician Baudet. “And I did not realize enough how intensely mean Baudet is. […] Very underhanded. I went for the success and he went for himself.” He does mention that Baudet has dubious connections with Russia (“Putin is a great guy”), but more as a minor fact.
Will Caroline van der Plas be the new Baudet? In terms of electoral success, probably yes, but after that the comparison will soon no longer be valid. She seems to me much more down-to-earth and less vain than Baudet, she will not repel her supporters with lofty-sounding gossip. She therefore remains the darling of the talk shows as a proud farmer’s woman, who shrugs her shoulders at those silly politicians with their complicated talk. We can count on an endless repetition of her regular repertoire: nitrogen objections hoho, farmers yes. If it’s up to Van der Plas, I can soon get a ‘kangaroo house’, a garden house near my children, so that they can take care of me. What more do the oldies want?
Van der Plas will sooner become a new version of Fortuyn than of Baudet. In that sense, she can be a more difficult opponent for established politics than Baudet has ever been. Wilders also has a competitor.
A version of this article also appeared in the March 8, 2023 newspaper