Geert Wilders: Yet Another Warning to the Center

“Many Europeans are waking up to the failures of multiculturalism and open-border policies and are demanding action. If the parties of the center left and center right continue to fail on this front, someone else will step in.”

Western and Central Europe’s right-wing populists are going from strength to strength. From Marine Le Pen’s National Rally (RN) in France to Germany’s Alternative for Germany (AfD), they have been able to win over a significant portion of the electorate. In recent polls, the AfD has even overtaken German Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s Social Democrats (SPD), and Giorgia Meloni of the Brothers of Italy (FdI) already serves as the country’s prime minister. Now Geert Wilders has won a major victory in the Netherlands with his nationalist Party for Freedom (PVV). What explains this trend, and what are the implications?

While the political discontent that has piled up during the Coronavirus (COVID-19) years and the economic crisis that Europe is facing at present are certainly part of the explanation, it cannot be ignored that this is also a consequence of the failure of multiculturalism and poor immigration management. Every country is different, of course, and has its own problems to deal with and challenges to meet, but the established centrist parties of Western and Central Europe have downplayed the negative consequences of mass immigration for too long. Now they are getting their comeuppance.

It is true that right-wing populists have a talent for dupery and incitement, but they are also good at detecting trends in public opinion. Ordinary people tend not to be multiculturalists, especially if they are directly affected by immigration, for instance in their jobs or where they live. If the demographic makeup and cultural character of their neighborhood or town changes so dramatically that they start to feel like foreigners in their own country, they are unlikely to support multiculturalism, in particular when the immigrants in question do not seem to return the favor.