Former members of Forum for Democracy talk in the documentary The dark side of Forum for Democracy (PowNed) about their experiences within the party. Joey (no surname) was a member of the party’s youth branch, the JFVD, for many years. He tells how in a cellar on the Amsterdam canals, people were selected to attend the summer camp. He wasn’t allowed to come. How former Member of Parliament Freek Jansen would have been a member of the extreme right-wing organization Erkenbrand and how Jansen would have openly denied the Holocaust on several occasions. Joey himself is of Jewish descent. According to Joey, the entire board of Forum for Democracy is “convinced of the superiority of the white race.” The one time he took his black girlfriend to a party drink, he was addressed as “a typical Jew who contributes to depopulation.” It is not clear who said that, but it is shocking.
Three other ex-party members appear recognisably in the picture. The other sources are unrecognizable and recorded with an AI voice. Party leader Lidewij de Vos is a “puppet”, the party is a means to obtain subsidies and redundancy pay, politics is a side issue, say the AI voices. A sect, a “cult with a YouTube channel,” says former member and co-founder of JFVD Yernaz Ramautarsing. According to the sources, the party sees everything as a far-fetched conspiracy theory. The content of the documentary does not go any further than ‘Forum for Democracy for dummies’ with an BOOS sauce. It is worth mentioning that so many former party members are now speaking out.
It ends with a quote from Ramautarsing: “They earn millions of euros in subsidies every year, that’s why they have to sit in Parliament, for the money. With that money they build the movement.” Forum for Democracy is not a political party, Forum for Democracy is a conspiracy that works on “the movement”. According to the ex-party members, the conspiracy theorists of FVD are themselves a big conspiracy. The pot is blaming the kettle. Something that is not further investigated by PowNed.
Expert ill-fitting suits
For people who read this newspaper and are interested in politics, there is little news in it The dark side of Forum for Democracy. The stories remain anecdotal. The international far-right network in which the party is deeply involved remains out of the picture. The ‘expert closed groups’ flown in by PowNed agrees that the party has sectarian characteristics. If you had flown in an ‘expert on ill-fitting suits for young adults’, he would also have found that those characteristics are present in the batch.
It buzzword ‘the manosphere’ also falls. Images of former party leader Thierry Baudet and Andrew Tate are presented as one without explanation smoking gun. It would have been more interesting if PowNed had asked Joey and Yernaz what the appeal of Baudet and his party was for them, as wandering young men. What it says is that so many young people feel invisible and seek refuge in extreme ideas.
For people who do not have a newspaper subscription and get all their information from TikTok (there are a lot of them), the documentary will contain new information. The documentary was more likely to be seen on YouTube than on TV. PowNed explicitly opts for a multimedia method of distribution. The public broadcaster as a starting point, social media, with a lively comment section, as a flywheel. This information will reach a different audience via snippets on Instagram and TikTok. Whether it contributes to normalizing the party or will cause a you-see-PowNed-is-also-left swing remains to be seen. The comments now mainly consist of people shouting “FVD!” even louder. banging on their keyboard. But they are also the most assertive. It is valuable that PowNed will reach a young audience with this accessible documentary. Extreme ideas are not an opinion, it is an ideology that will erode society. FVD is not that bad.