Wilders’ supporters’ nazi salutes

Wilders' supporters' nazi salutes

This photo, from a Dutch anti-racist blog, is from 21 September in The Hague, the Netherlands.

Dutch xenophobic party PVV had a meeting there then. Its leader, Geert Wilders, spoke. Some of the audience, as the photo shows, made nazi salutes.

Among Wilders’ audience were notorious nazis. People like Jeroen van den Berg, of the violent neo-nazi gang Blood and Honour. In 2011, police discovered illegal firearms at that group’s premises.

And like Paul Peters. Peters was convicted for vandalizing a Jewish cemetery, smashing part of the tombstones, and daubing nazi slogans like “Juden raus” [Jews out] and “Wir sind zurück” [We are back] on other graves.

Prince's flags at PVV meeting

As this photo shows, there were also so-called prince’s flags at Wilders’ meeting. In eighteenth century Dutch history, that was the flag of the political party which wanted to make the then Dutch republic more like a monarchy, under the dynasty of the princes of Orange. Their opponents, the “patriot” party, wanted a republic without any role for that dynasty; and red, white and blue flags, not orange, white and blue.

In the 1930s and 1940s, the prince’s flag was revived by the Dutch nazi party, the NSB. Today, various extreme right groups use it. In 2011, PVV members of parliament hung prince’s flags at their office windows. They removed the flags after media publicized them.

The prince’s flag was also the model for the South African flag during apartheid rule; from 1928 till 1994, when the current South African flag replaced it.

When Geert Wilders started his political career, he was a member of the VVD party (“center Right”; now the biggest party in the Dutch coalition government). Early in this century, Pim Fortuijn (writing his name as the more aristocratic sounding “Fortuyn”) represented political Islamophobia in the Netherlands. VVD MP Wilders and Fortuijn then had a debate on TV. In the debate, Wilders denied Fortuijn’s allegations about Islam being a problem.

After Fortuijn’s death, Wilders thought there were career opportunities as a leader in the Islamophobic political niche market. He founded his own PVV party. With himself as its only member, making it impossible for supporters to ever depose him as party leader.

When the PVV started, Wilders dissociated himself from extreme Right parties like Vlaams Belang in Belgium and National Front in France (as Pim Fortuijn had done before). His members of the European Parliament did not, at least not officially, join up with any parties from other countries. Recently, however, Wilders built fraternal links of his party with Vlaams Belang and with National Front leader Le Pen. So, he definitely is on a slippery slope, further and further towards the extreme Right.

USA: Filmmakers Release Trailer of Documentary About Neo-Nazi’s Plan for Racist Enclave in North Dakota: here.