Wilders’ dilemma: should he distance himself from Baudet or work together?

With his hands in his pockets, he stands in one of the narrow entrances to the plenary hall. There, in the shadows, he watches what is happening in the House of Representatives. Yet the camera focuses on him: Geert Wilders, party leader of the PVV.

It happened last October. The Chamber voted on the suspension of Forum for Democracy leader Thierry Baudet, because he had not given up his additional positions. Before the vote, Baudet announced at the interruption microphone that his group would abstain from voting. Wilders then said that his group would do the same. With that, the PVV leader attracted some of the attention. Together with Baudet he walked out of the room. And he waited, hands in pockets, for the results of the vote in the wings – right where he came into the picture.

Wilders said that he would also have abstained from voting if it had involved a party other than FVD. “If we exclude each other from debate as elected representatives of the people, the end will be lost.” This moment revealed a dilemma that plays a role for Wilders: how should he deal with the constant attention in parliament and the press for FVD – a kindred spirit in many areas, but also an electoral competitor? Should he distance himself from the party that is becoming more and more radical? Or, on the contrary, act together, as happened here?

Struggle on the radical right

The radical right wing of the political spectrum has become a fully-fledged third pillar, alongside the centre-left and centre-right, the National Voter Survey concluded last year. There’s just one problem: it’s pressure on the right. The Party for Freedom, in the Chamber since 2006, has gained a lot of competition in a few years. Forum for Democracy, JA21 and Belang van Nederland focus on the same electorate group as the PVV.

That is a problem, with the Provincial Council elections approaching. In the polls, JA21 in particular appears to be an important competitor for the PVV. Both parties are winning. Yet Wilders hardly pays any attention to this JA21. “Why would he?” says Linda Bos, associate professor of political communication at the University of Amsterdam. “JA21, and also BVNL do not cause much commotion. If Wilders gives them attention, he will only give those parties the oxygen they don’t have right now.”

“The PVV does indeed try to give JA21 as little attention as possible with the idea: everything you give attention grows,” says Koen Vossen, assistant professor of political history at Radboud University Nijmegen. “What Wilders may still do towards the elections is to portray JA21 as softies.” JA21 tries to be a right-wing alternative to the VVD, less radical than the PVV.

FVD: continuous fuss

FVD is in less good shape than PVV and JA21, yet it is precisely this party that has recently received a lot of media attention. Extreme statements by party leader Thierry Baudet and Member of Parliament Gideon van Meijeren keep causing a stir.

Their conspiracy theories and anti-democratic ideas cause more commotion than the long diatribes against immigration and cabinet policy that Wilders delivers at debates, or his tweets. Although Wilders has never moderated his tone, the attention paid to him by other parties and the media has slackened.

His sound is drowned out by that of FVD. Speaker of the House of Representatives Vera Bergkamp (D66) has visible difficulty in tackling the party. Debates derail more and more often, such as when the cabinet walked out of the plenary hall during the General Political Reflections in September, after allegations made by Baudet against Minister Sigrid Kaag (Finance, D66). Media that, according to FVD, spread lies should also be punished – see the video in which Van Meijeren attacked a journalist with a camera crew and ‘unmasked’ as a ‘sewer rat’.

This strategy, causing a fuss and disrupting it, is exactly the same as that of the PVV from 2006. “I think Wilders now and then thinks: Baudet takes a lot of attention away from me,” says Vossen. “Then he wants to draw attention to himself again.”

Wilders responds to Baudet

Sometimes Wilders tweets something that seems to be an indirect reaction to FVD. For example, the PVV leader fell an hour after Van Meijeren had put his video ‘Sewer rats unmasked’ online, the editor-in-chief of Fidelity on Twitter, Cees van der Laan. He had written that Wilders would bring in “Putin’s Russia”, after which Wilders wrote that Van der Laan had manifested himself “definitely as the greatest enemy of our democracy, freedom and of the PVV”. And after Baudet’s statement about Kaag, Wilders spoke about Kaag’s “agenda of the destruction of the Netherlands” during the APB.

But: “Wilders chooses to let Baudet plow the field, do the rough work, and then go along less explicitly in his rhetoric,” says Léonie de Jonge, assistant professor of European politics and society at the University of Groningen.

Before FVD was in the Chamber, Wilders already spoke of a ‘fake parliament’

Henk te Velde professor of Dutch history at Leiden University

“Before FVD was in parliament, Wilders already spoke of a ‘fake parliament’,” says Henk te Velde, professor of Dutch history at Leiden University. Linda Bos also sees an agreement between the two parties. According to her, it is ‘populist-typical’ to state that ‘the elite’ have a hidden agenda and are not on the side of the people. “The PVV has always done that.” But FVD goes a big step further than the PVV by hinting at the overthrow of the established order.

If FVD caused a fuss in the past, Wilders usually ignored it. Very occasionally he lashed out at Baudet. For example, he called the FVD leader “crazy” on Twitter last year when he accused him of having himself vaccinated against the corona virus.

In 2018, Wilders attacked Baudet in a parliamentary debate about the discredited minister Halbe Zijlstra (Foreign Affairs, VVD). Baudet wondered why Prime Minister Mark Rutte (VVD) had not let him leave “with a silent drum”. Wilders asked why Baudet did not advocate a departure “with a loud drum”. “The Prime Minister should have reported it to the House!”, said Wilders.

Runaway voters

Now that FVD is falling in the polls, voters who run away from this party are an interesting target group for Wilders. Moreover: he will not want to be seen as a better version of Baudet, says Henk te Velde. Koen Vossen sees it that way too. Part of the PVV voters will walk away from the PVV if Wilders opposes the FVD in the slightest, he says. These are voters who are sensitive to conspiracy theories, as proclaimed by FVD.

Vossen: “But Wilders will lose another part of his voters if he fully embraces the ideas of FVD.” Léonie de Jonge thinks that it can even be an advantage for the PVV that FVD unfolds “bizarre conspiracy theories”. “In doing so, FVD repels a large group of voters, who may go for the PVV.” According to Vossen, Wilders’ strategy is not to commit to one side. “You see that, for example, when it comes to the Ukraine war. He does not fully support the Dutch government, but he also does not stand up for Putin, as Baudet does. Why would Wilders too? He might lose a lot of votes with it.”

Read also: The FVD method: violate the norms without consequences

Incidentally, Wilders has sometimes ‘played’ with, for example, the depopulation theory, says Vossen. “But, unlike Baudet, he will never give an extensive exposé about it. When Wilders is asked about it in an interview, he always says something along the lines of: ‘What matters to me is that our people are being disadvantaged.’ Very different from Baudet, who seems to have no brakes.”

Although Wilders seems to be seeking rapprochement with FVD at times, this is not reflected in the voting behavior of his party on bills. The voting ratio has remained about the same. In 2018, for example, FVD voted the same as PVV in 80.7 percent of the cases. This year it was 80.4 percent. This is evident from data from the Parliamentary Monitor, requested by NRC.

This concerns ‘ordinary’ bills, so not budgets and treaties, for example. What has changed: FVD voted against bills relatively more often than PVV this year (40.7 percent versus 25 percent). In 2018 it was the other way around (29.6 percent versus 37.8 percent). The FVD therefore seems to have become more oppositional than the PVV.

The provincial elections will show whether Wilders’ strategy works. National polls put the PVV at about twenty parliamentary seats, against about ten for JA21 and four for FVD. As always, Wilders is early with his campaigning: on Tuesday he was in Gemert-Bakel in Brabant to support residents in their resistance to the arrival of an asylum seekers’ center.

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