Dutch hotline flooded with complaints after Wilders post

THE HAGUE (AFP): A Dutch anti-discrimination hotline has received more than 2,500 complaints about a campaign post by far-right leader Geert Wilders, a spokesman said on Thursday, making it one of the organization’s most reported cases on record.

The post, shared by the Freedom Party (PVV) leader earlier this week, showed a young blonde woman labelled “PVV” next to an older, stern-looking woman in a headscarf marked “PvdA,” referring to the Dutch Labour Party.

“The choice is yours on 29/10,” Wilders wrote on X, referring to local elections in the Netherlands in October.

A Discriminatie.nl hotline spokesman told the Dutch news agency, ANP, that it was clear that the picture was “polarizing, stigmatising and discriminatory” and intended to “put Muslims in a bad light.”

The complaints and comments given to the hotline, he said, were “a clear signal from society.”

“The words we see are, for example, ‘tasteless’, ‘hateful’, ‘racist’,” the spokesman said.

The volume of complaints is among the highest the organization has ever seen for a single incident.

Only a 2020 controversy involving a song titled “Prevention is better than Chinese” during the Covid-19 pandemic drew more reports, with around 4,000 at the time, he said.

The hotline is considering its next steps, including a possible formal complaint, but said that no decision had yet been taken.

“By contrasting these two images of women, an us-versus-them story is told that is at odds with the inclusive society we strive for in the Netherlands,” the organization said in a statement.

“Such an image can reinforce prejudices and widen the gap between groups.”

Politics may be fierce, but should never “incite hatred, exclusion or discrimination,” it said.

Wilders, who has long campaigned on an anti-Islam platform, doubled down on Thursday.

In a post on X, he wrote: “Dutch people first. Islam does not belong in the Netherlands. Criminal foreigners out. Our daughters safe on the streets again.”

The right-winger stunned Dutch politics in June by toppling the country’s fragile four-party coalition in a dispute over immigration.

Fresh elections are scheduled for October 29, with the PVV leader hoping to repeat his surprise result from November 2023, when his bloc finished first.