Dutch right-winger calls Wilders nazi-like dictator

Wilders and Le Pen, cartoon

This cartoon by Rainer Hachfeld shows Dutch xenophobic politician Geert Wilders with Marine Le Pen of the French neo-fascist National Front party.

Translated from Dutch NOS TV:

VVD senator Schaap: ‘dictatorial’ PVV is more dangerous than the NSB

The VVD is a right-wing pro-big business Dutch political party. Officially ‘liberal’; however, ‘liberalism’ in Europe often means the same as ‘conservatism’ in the USA.

The PVV is Geert Wilders’ xenophobic party.

The NSB was the Dutch nazi party in the 1930s and 1940s.

Today, 11:51

VVD senator Schaap: ‘dictatorial’ PVV is more dangerous than the NSB

Today, 11:51

The PVV is a party without party members and party executive, and in that respect, more dangerous than the nazi party NSB. This says philosopher and senator Sybe Schaap in his new book “Rule of law in decline”.

“PVV leader Geert Wilders rules autocratically, and has basically silenced all who might contradict him,” said Schaap, who calls the structure of the party a “dictatorship”. The NSB was founded in the Netherlands in 1931 and collaborated in World War II with the German occupiers. The NSB had members and did have a General Board, an executive. The NSB members had little influence, Schaap admits. “But Wilders goes one step further, he does not even have members,” Schaap said in an interview in daily Trouw.

Nasty

Philosopher Schaap writes in his book: “Wilders rules like a Fuehrer with even more power than in National Socialism.” He said in the Trouw interview that he emphatically does not make a comparison with the German Nazi leader Hitler. “Of course I do not mean that Wilders is a mass murderer like Hitler, but that he has a dangerous structure within his party. If Wilders gets power, then things might get very nasty. A dictatorship? Could be.” …

Schaap says he has written his book as a philosopher, but says he realizes that he is also a VVD senator. …

In 2012 Schaap wrote in his book “The rancorous poison. The rise of discomfort” that the PVV created artificial enmities to explain how one’s own existence is threatened. PVV leader Geert Wilders called the comparison ‘sad’ and Prime Minister [and VVD party leader] Mark Rutte said he did not recognize the situation depicted by Schaap.

The PVV was at that time still a party making possible Rutte’s first coalition administration.

On 4 September 2016, Rutte said in a TV interview that he does not like the PVV. Still, he did not want to exclude a possible future VVD-PVV coalition government, though he said it was not probable.

PVV-twitter valt op door gebruik van zeer alternatieve mediabronnen. Hier verspreidt fractievoorzitter PVV Emmen @Tom_Kuilder materiaal van de neonazistische site Stormfront. pic.twitter.com/0vGkXq5GPa

— Peter Burger (@JPeterBurger) August 24, 2018