Is Far Right Populism Winning in the Netherlands?

Is Far Right Populism Winning in the Netherlands?
AP Photo/Peter Dejong

It sounded like the archetypal story of the populist era. Oude (or “Old”) Pekela is a poor village of 8,000 people stuck away in the Dutch north-east, 20km from the German border. Now, the Volkskrant implied, the mostly white Pekelders (as the inhabitants are known) were telling the political elite in The Hague that they had had enough of the local asylum centre.

That's certainly how the Dutch anti-immigrant politician Geert Wilders sees it. His proposed policies include “zero new asylum-seekers”, Dutch exit from the European Union, the closing of all mosques and a ban on sales of the Koran. 

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