Five Things You Didn’t Know About Geert Wilders, but Should

By now, we all know that the Trump of the Netherlands has seen long-time conservative, pro-Dutch politician Geert Wilders bring his Party for Freedom (DutchPartij voor de Vrijheid) from just another political party amongst nearly two dozen different parties, now they’re at the top of the heap.

Nonetheless, most Americans have no idea who exactly this guy is with all that platinum blonde hair.

Well, here’s Five Facts to help you know him a bit better.

  1. The overwhelming majority of American, British, Aussie and Canadia broadcasters already know how his name is spelled, but have don’t know how to correctly pronounce his name. “Geert Wilders” is phonetically pronounced correctly as “HeerT Veal-durrz“.
  2. Wilders was born in 1963 in Holland. His father was ethnically Dutch, but his mother was born in Colonial Dutch East Indies (Indonesia) and she was the child of a Dutch father and a half-Dutch/half- Indonesian mother. So even though Wilders is a citizen of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, as was both of his parents having citizenship while living on a Dutch Colony, the family’s citizenship has never been questioned.
  3. Long known for his shocking platinum blonde locks, Wilders started out life with dark brown hair. After years of receiving death threats from more than a few Islamist organizations and ISIS-friendly thugs, he chose to change his hair color. Mocking his would-be killers, to paraphrase Wilders; “If they try to kill me, I want to make sure they have a good target.”
  4. On the other side of the planet, Wilders was the only Western elected politician to come to the defense of Indian politician, Nupra Sharma, when she openly stated that one of Mohammed’s wives, Aisha, was actually wed when she was six, and the marriage was consummated at nine. Since then, Muslim leaders in India have been calling for the beheading of Sharma.
  5. The entire manifesto (Party statement) directly from the official PPV site is here. Below is the party position on immigration;
  • Asylum freeze and overall restrictive immigration policy
  •  Opt out of EU asylum and migration regulations, cancel the UN Refugee Convention
  •  Dutch border control is being restored, pushbacks from asylum seekers who want to enter the Netherlands from our safe neighboring countries
  •  Criminalizing illegality: detaining and deporting illegal immigrants
  •  Ban on bed, bath and bread arrangements for illegal immigrants
  •  Criminal asylum seekers are detained or deported, criminal status holders lose their residence permit
  •  No coercive law: never oblige municipalities to receive asylum seekers
  •  Preventing stacking procedure
  •  Temporary asylum permits of Syrians are withdrawn because of sharing of Syria are safe
  •  Status holders who go on holiday to their country of origin are affected immediately lose their residence permit
  •  The Netherlands is not an Islamic country: no Islamic schools, Qurans and mosques
  • We want less Islam in the Netherlands and we want to achieve that through: fewer non-Western immigration and the introduction of a general asylum freeze
  • Ban on dual nationality
  • Ban on wearing Islamic headscarves in government buildings, including the States General
  • Introduction of work permit for EU nationals
  • Significant reduction in the number of foreign students