Do you know who this is? As a typical North American, I did not, until a couple of days ago. This is Geert Wilders. He just led his far-right Party For Freedom Party to victory in the Dutch election. His party won 37 of 150 seats. This means that his party will need to find coalitions with other center right parties to form 76 seat majority. The following is a quote from Wilders,

“We will make sure that the Netherlands will be for the Dutch people again. We will restrict the asylum tsunami and migration.”

Does that sound familiar. Wilders victory follows on the heels of far-right populist Javier Milei who just swept to victory, in Argentina. Wilders has promised the following. He wants a binding referendum on leaving the EU. NEXIT instead of BREXIT. How is that going for you Britain? He wants to pull out of climate obligations and he wants to drastically reduce immigrations. He wants to stop funding Ukraine. He wants to ban the Koran and he wants to shut down mosques. It is fair to say that his game plan was taken from the Donald Trump Boris Johnson playbook.

Given that Wilders needs 39 more seats to get a majority coalition he will have to moderate some of his promises. However, his win is definitely not in isolation.

Italy has far-right Georgia Meloni as its leader. Hungary has Victor Orban, a favourite of Tucker Carlson. Farright parties have made increasing strides in France, (Marine Le Pen winning 41% of the popular vote), Finland (True Finns party), Austria and Germany. Even last night, Dublin, Ireland was thrown into chaos by riots lead by far-right nationalists after the stabbing of three children and a teacher.

The main impetus in all these countries, as well as, the US seems to be immigration, along with a bundle of other grievances. The phrase ‘it can’t happen here’ is being replaced by ‘it is happening here’. This should be a wake-up call for all those who think that Trump has no prayer in winning the 2024 election.