Less than three months before a general election in the Netherlands, far-right leader Geert Wilders has sparked a new controversy by using a campaign image that has been described as “polarising, stigmatising and discriminatory”.
The image has prompted more than 2,500 complaints from members of the public to the anti-discrimination organisation Discriminatie.nl since it was posted on social media earlier this week. It could result in the Freedom Party leader facing legal action.
It shows a split image of a woman, the left side of whose face is light-skinned and pleasant with blonde hair and blue eyes, while the right side is darker skinned, scowling and wearing a hijab, the head covering favoured by Muslim women.
Below the blonde-haired woman are the letters PVV, the initials of Mr Wilders’s anti-Islam Freedom Party, while under the woman in the hijab are the letters PvdA, the initials of the Labour Party, led by former EU Commission executive vice-president, Frans Timmermans.
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Beneath the split image are the words “The choice is yours on 29/10”.
The general election takes place on October 29th. Polls show an alliance between Labour and GreenLeft as presenting the strongest challenge to the Freedom Party, the largest in the outgoing four-party Coalition.
A spokesman for Discriminatie.nl said the large and growing number of complaints was a “clear signal from society”, adding that the bureau was “preparing to take the next steps”.
The descriptions his organisation was seeing most commonly in complaints were “hateful”, “tasteless” and “racist”. However, whether the image “crosses a legal line” would be a matter for the courts.
He said the last time there was such a flood of anger was during the covid pandemic in 2020 when a satirical song generated about 4,000 complaints of racism after multiple instances of harassment of people of oriental appearance.
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The last time Mr Wilders was involved in such a controversy was in March 2014, again in an election setting, when he asked a rally in The Hague whether they wanted “more or fewer Moroccans” in the Netherlands.
The audience chanted “fewer, fewer, fewer”, to which Mr Wilders replied, “well, then we will arrange that”.
After a seven-year legal case that went all the way to the Dutch supreme court, Mr Wilders was convicted of “group defamation” for inciting hatred and violence towards Moroccans.
In its final ruling, the supreme court observed: “Even a politician must adhere to the basic principles of the rule of law and must not incite intolerance.”
Mr Wilders routinely dismisses such criticism as a “political witch hunt”, a claim courts have repeatedly rejected for lack of evidence.
