1. Geert Wilders is the party's leader in the House of Representatives.
124 Facts About Geert Wilders
1. 2.
Geert Wilders's views have made him a controversial figure in the Netherlands and abroad.
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Geert Wilders worked as a speechwriter for the conservative-liberal People's Party for Freedom and Democracy ; he later served as parliamentary assistant to party leader Frits Bolkestein from 1990 to 1998.
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Geert Wilders was elected to the municipal council of Utrecht in 1997.
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Geert Wilders has campaigned to stop what he views as the "Islamisation of the Netherlands".
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Geert Wilders has compared the Quran to Mein Kampf and has campaigned to have the book banned in the Netherlands.
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Geert Wilders advocates ending immigration from Muslim countries, and banning the construction of new mosques.
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Geert Wilders has been described in the media as populist and as a far-right politician.
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Geert Wilders was described by the media as an Islamophobe.
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Geert Wilders rejects being labelled as far-right and views himself as a right-wing liberal, saying he does not want to be "linked with the wrong rightist fascist groups".
11.
Geert Wilders was born on 6 September 1963 in the city of Venlo, in the province of Limburg.
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Geert Wilders is the son of Johannes Henricus Andreas Wilders and Anne Maria Wilders.
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Geert Wilders is the youngest of four children, and was raised Catholic.
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Geert Wilders's father was Dutch; his mother Maria Anne Ourding was born at Sukabumi, the Dutch East Indies with a mixed Dutch and Indonesian background.
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Geert Wilders's father worked as a manager for the printing and copying manufacturing company Oce, and had hidden from the Germans during the Second World War, an experience so traumatizing that he refused to physically enter Germany even forty years later.
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Geert Wilders received his secondary education at the Mavo and Havo middle school and high school in Venlo.
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Geert Wilders started his formal political career as a parliamentary assistant to the party leader Frits Bolkestein, specialising in foreign policy.
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Geert Wilders set an example for Wilders not only in his ideas but in his confrontational speaking style.
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In 1997, Geert Wilders was elected for the People's Party for Freedom and Democracy to the municipal council of Utrecht, the fourth largest city of the Netherlands.
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Geert Wilders lived in Kanaleneiland, a suburb with cheap social housing and high apartment blocks, which has a relatively high number of immigrants.
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However, his appointment in 2002 as a public spokesman for the VVD led Geert Wilders to become more well known for his outspoken criticism of Islamic extremism.
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Tensions immediately developed within the party, as Geert Wilders found himself to be to the right of most members, and challenged the party line in his public statements.
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Geert Wilders was expelled from the VVD parliamentary party, and in September 2004, Wilders left the VVD, having been a member since 1989, to form his own political party, Groep Wilders, later renamed the Party for Freedom.
24.
On 8 March 2010, Geert Wilders announced that he would take a seat on the Hague city council, after it became clear he won 13,000 preference votes.
25.
On 21 April 2012, Geert Wilders withdrew his support from the Rutte cabinet because of new austerity measures that were about to be taken.
26.
Geert Wilders visited the Sweden Democrats party and spoke with the Austrian Freedom party's leader Heinz-Christian Strache to help bring about the alliance, even while rejecting Hungary's Jobbik and Germany's NPD because he wanted to exclude "right-wing extremist and racist" parties.
27.
Three days after the elections finished, Le Pen and Geert Wilders presented another press conference, this time with Matteo Salvini of Italy's Northern League, Harald Vilimsky of Austria's Freedom Party and Gerolf Annemans of Belgium's Flemish Interest party, to promise that the parliamentary group would be formed.
28.
Geert Wilders hinted that a "revolution" would occur if his party won the most seats and was still shut out of government.
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In January 2021, it was revealed by OpenSecrets that American Robert J Shillman paid nearly $214,000 in 2017 to help Wilders pay for his successful legal defence in an indictment for hate speech against Muslims in general and Moroccans in particular.
30.
Geert Wilders has included the points of views of this financier in his election manifesto.
31.
Geert Wilders positioned the PVV, previously perceived by a significant portion of the population as a right-wing radical party, as a centrist party with a clear stance on migration.
32.
Geert Wilders initially proposed Ronald Plasterk for the position, but he withdrew over integrity concerns.
33.
In December 2024, Geert Wilders visited Israel, where he toured an Israeli settlement in the West Bank and met with President Isaac Herzog and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
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The trip came weeks after the International Criminal Court had issued an arrest warrant against Netanyahu and defence minister Yoav Gallant, which Geert Wilders criticized, saying that "the world has gone mad".
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Geert Wilders generally considers himself to be a right-wing liberal, with a specific mix of positions independent of the European political spectrum and peculiar to iconoclastic Dutch society.
36.
On foreign relations, Geert Wilders has largely supported Israel and has criticized countries he perceives as enemies of Israel.
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Geert Wilders believes that there is a ruling elite of parliamentarians who only care about their own personal careers and disregard the will of the people.
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Geert Wilders blames the Dutch system of multiparty coalition governments for a lack of clear and effective policies.
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Geert Wilders has made some proposals in the Dutch Parliament inspired by Israeli policies: for example, he supports implementing Israeli-style administrative detention in the Netherlands, a practice heavily criticized by human rights groups but which Wilders calls "common sense".
40.
Geert Wilders has revived the old idea of reuniting Flanders with the Netherlands.
41.
Geert Wilders published the version of his political manifesto called Klare Wijn in March 2006.
42.
Geert Wilders is best known for his criticism of Islam, summing up his views by saying, "I don't hate Muslims, I hate Islam".
43.
Geert Wilders argues that Islam is not a religion, but rather a totalitarian political ideology such as communism and fascism.
44.
On 8 August 2007, Geert Wilders opined in an open letter to the Dutch newspaper De Volkskrant that the Koran, which he called a "fascist book", should be outlawed in the Netherlands, like Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf.
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Geert Wilders has stated that "The book incites hatred and killing and therefore has no place in our legal order".
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Geert Wilders believes that all Muslim immigration to the Netherlands should be halted and all settled immigrants should be paid to leave.
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Nonetheless, Geert Wilders has traveled widely in the Arab world and Der Spiegel has stated that Geert Wilders will "wax poetic" over those "magnificent countries".
48.
Fitna is a 2008 short film written and commissioned by Geert Wilders that explores Koranic-inspired motivations for terrorism, Islamic universalism, and Islam in the Netherlands.
49.
In 2013, he along with Marine Le Pen teamed up in the European Parliament campaigning against the EU and the single currency, with Geert Wilders calling the EU the "monster in Brussels".
50.
Geert Wilders lived in Israel for two years during his youth and has visited the country 40 times in 25 years, as of 2006.
51.
Geert Wilders told an audience during the report that "We [in the West] are all Israel".
52.
Geert Wilders has said "Israel is the West's first line of defence" against what he perceives to be a threat posed by Islam.
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The Jordanian government responded saying Geert Wilders' speech was reminiscent of the Israeli right wing.
54.
In December 2010, Geert Wilders urged Israel to build more Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank and subsequently annex the West Bank so that Israel could establish defensible borders.
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Geert Wilders blamed Arab countries for the suffering of Palestinian refugees and called on Jordan to open its borders to Palestinians.
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Geert Wilders reiterated his "Jordan is Palestine" comment.
57.
In 2016, Geert Wilders described Vladimir Putin as a "true patriot" and an ally in the war against Islamic terrorism.
58.
In November 2017, Geert Wilders said there was "hysterical Russophobia" in the Dutch government that he wanted to counter.
59.
On 28 February 2018, four years after Russia's annexation of Crimea, Geert Wilders traveled to Moscow and met with senior Russian officials in the Duma.
60.
Geert Wilders's trip sparked sharp criticism among relatives of Dutch victims of the MH17 disaster, who accused him of disregarding Moscow's involvement in the tragedy.
61.
Geert Wilders linked sanctions against Russia with rising inflation and the energy crisis.
62.
However, Geert Wilders has criticized the promotion of "woke indoctrination" among young children, describing it as a "woke dictatorship".
63.
Geert Wilders asserts that the freedoms that homosexual people should ideally enjoy, such as the freedom to express affection, marry, and have children, are held back by Islam which opposes it, and actively resists against it.
64.
Geert Wilders supported Indian politician Nupur Sharma's comments on Muhammad that caused controversy.
65.
Geert Wilders supported the decision of India's Hindu nationalist-led government to revoke the special status of Muslim-majority Jammu and Kashmir.
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Geert Wilders has become a controversial figure with polarized opinions on him from the world news media.
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Geert Wilders has been described as populist, labelled as both "extreme right" and far-right, and defended by others as a mainstream politician with legitimate concerns saying that such labels are shallow smear attempts.
68.
Geert Wilders himself rejects the labels and has called such descriptions "scandalous".
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Geert Wilders has been both accused of building his popularity on fear and resentment and vociferously defended for having the courage to talk openly about the problems unfettered immigration brings with it and the "incompatibility" of fundamentalist Islam with western values.
70.
Geert Wilders was respectively declared as "Man of the Year" in 22 December 2023 by Dutch magazine Panorama and "Politician of the Year" in 15 December 2007 by NOS-radio, a mainstream Dutch radio station.
71.
In December 2009, Geert Wilders came in second in two polls in the Netherlands for Politician of the Year.
72.
Geert Wilders has been compared to the assassinated fellow critic of Islam and filmmaker Theo van Gogh, but he does not see himself as taking on Van Gogh's mantle.
73.
Some Muslim critics of Geert Wilders accuse him of using Quranic verses out of context, and of manipulating verses to have a different meaning than the verses intended to.
74.
In February 2012, Geert Wilders was accused of anti-Polish sentiment after his party launched a "hotline" website for public complaints specifically about Poles and as well as Bulgarians, Romanians and other Eastern Europeans who are causing a "nuisance".
75.
Geert Wilders has since been married to Krisztina Wilders, a former diplomat from Hungary of Jewish origin, since July 1992.
76.
Geert Wilders is an agnostic, but he has stated that he thinks Christians "are my allies" and that they fundamentally should want the same thing.
77.
Geert Wilders is known as OnLiberty BV and is aimed at acquiring intellectual and property rights.
78.
Geert Wilders later explained he had acted this way for security reasons and that the company had no connection to the PVV.
79.
Geert Wilders has been bleaching and dyeing his hair to peroxide-platinum blond since at least the mid-1990s having previously got his hair cut at a barber shop near Utrecht Central Station until this was stopped due to security concerns.
80.
Geert Wilders has acquired nicknames such as "Mozart" and "Captain Peroxide" because of his flamboyant platinum blond hairstyle.
81.
Since this incident Geert Wilders has been under constant security protection because of frequent threats to his life.
82.
Geert Wilders was listed as the most threatened politician in the Netherlands in 2008.
83.
Geert Wilders is constantly accompanied by a permanent security detail of about six plainclothes police officers, and does not receive visitors unless they are cleared in advance, thoroughly searched, and escorted at all times.
84.
Geert Wilders is driven from his home to his offices in parliament in an armored police vehicle, and wears a bulletproof vest.
85.
Geert Wilders's office is located in the most isolated corner of the Dutch Parliament building, and was chosen because potential terrorists can get to it through only one corridor, making it easier for his bodyguards to repel an attack.
86.
Geert Wilders spent four months working undercover, posing as an intern, for the PVV party.
87.
Geert Wilders claimed that she had had unchecked access to Wilders.
88.
In July 2010, after Geert Wilders complained that his security was inadequate, the Special Security Assignments Brigade, a special unit of Dutch military police, made four attempts to smuggle a firearm into the heavily guarded offices of Geert Wilders' Freedom Party, two of which were successful.
89.
Geert Wilders had been enraged about a Muhammad cartoon contest announced by Wilders.
90.
Geert Wilders said he had received hundreds of death threats after he supported Indian politician Nupur Sharma's comments on Muhammad that caused controversy.
91.
On 15 August 2007, a representative of the Prosecutors' Office in Amsterdam declared that dozens of reports against Geert Wilders had been filed, and that they were all being considered.
92.
In late October 2010, the Dutch court approved a request from Geert Wilders to have new judges appointed forcing the court to retry the case.
93.
On 7 February 2011, Geert Wilders returned to the court room in order that his legal team could present evidence from Islamic experts which the court rejected in 2010, including Mohammed Bouyeri, who murdered film-maker Theo van Gogh, and Dutch academic Hans Jansen.
94.
On 23 June 2011, Geert Wilders was acquitted of all charges.
95.
On 18 March 2016, a second trial against Geert Wilders began, this time on the accusation of inciting "discrimination and hatred" against Moroccans living in the Netherlands.
96.
That verdict was overturned in 2020 when a higher court found that while Geert Wilders's remarks were insulting to an ethnic minority, they were found to be in the service of receiving political gains rather than inspiring discrimination.
97.
Geert Wilders is regarded as part of the international counter-jihad movement and as "the most successful counter-jihadist politician in the world".
98.
Geert Wilders appeared before the National Press Club and the Republican Jewish Coalition as well.
99.
In July 2010, Geert Wilders announced the International Freedom Alliance, a network of groups and individuals who "are fighting for freedom against Islam".
100.
Geert Wilders planned IFA branches in the United States, Canada, Britain, France and Germany by late 2010.
101.
One question posed is how Geert Wilders could be taking part in negotiations on forming a government coalition when he has been indicted for inciting hatred and discrimination, and for insulting a group of persons.
102.
Geert Wilders spoke on Thursday, 12 May 2011, at Cornerstone Church in Madison, Tennessee, at the Tennessee Freedom Coalition inaugural Signature Series event.
103.
In May 2015, Geert Wilders was invited to an art exhibit presented by Stop Islamization of America in Garland, Texas, that offered a $10,000 prize for the best drawing of Muhammad.
104.
Geert Wilders gave a speech at a party for gay Republicans.
105.
In 2012, Geert Wilders was invited by the Q Society of Australia to visit Australia.
106.
On 2 October 2012 Immigration Minister Chris Bowen, while stating that Geert Wilders' views were offensive, stated that he would not block the visa application.
107.
In March 2010, Geert Wilders was told he is "not welcome" in the western German tourist resort of Monschau in the Eifel area, after he spent a weekend there, along with armed bodyguards.
108.
Anyone who pollutes the integration debate in the Netherlands with poisonous right-wing populism as Geert Wilders has, and advocates prohibition of the Koran by a comparison with Hitler's Mein Kampf, is not welcome in Monschau.
109.
Ritter did not say whether Geert Wilders was enjoying a short vacation in her town or had been meeting with like-minded people.
110.
In October 2010, Geert Wilders supported the founding of Stadtkewitz's new German Freedom Party.
111.
Two days before the showing, Home Secretary Jacqui Smith banned Geert Wilders from entering the United Kingdom, labeling him an "undesirable person".
112.
Geert Wilders called Prime Minister Gordon Brown "the biggest coward in Europe" and remarked, "Of course I will come back".
113.
Geert Wilders had visited the United Kingdom in December 2008 without any problem.
114.
The Muslim Labour peer Lord Ahmed expressed support for Smith's ban on Geert Wilders entering the country; the Ramadhan Foundation and the Muslim Council of Britain did so, the council labeling Geert Wilders "an open and relentless preacher of hate".
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Geert Wilders subsequently praised the ruling as "a triumph for freedom of speech" and stated that he planned to visit the United Kingdom in the near future.
116.
The decision to refuse Geert Wilders admission was taken on the basis that his presence could have inflamed tensions between our communities and have led to inter-faith violence.
117.
On 16 October 2009, Geert Wilders arrived in the United Kingdom and was quickly forced to move his press conference due to protests by about forty members of the organization Islam4UK, an organization that was later shut down under the UK's Terrorism Act 2000 on 14 January 2010.
118.
Geert Wilders's visit to the UK met with protest, but Wilders called it "a victory" in a press conference.
119.
In January 2010, Geert Wilders was invited again to show his anti-Quran movie Fitna in the British House of Lords by UK Independence Party Lord Pearson, and cross-bencher Baroness Cox.
120.
Geert Wilders reportedly called Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan a "total freak".
121.
Geert Wilders incites discord among people in a distasteful manner.
122.
Geert Wilders called it outrageous that Wilders had presented himself in London as "the next Dutch prime minister" and then derided Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan.
123.
Historian Robin te Slaa of NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies disagreed and concluded in 2012 that Geert Wilders is no fascist in the historical sense.
124.
Geert Wilders cited Dutch prime minister Mark Rutte's characterisation of Wilders as a "political pyromaniac" because of the absence of practical solutions in Wilders' disputed Islamophobic proposals.