A quiet Dutch village holds clues as European politics veer to the right

Anti-immigrant over everything parties are gaining policy influence from civil rights to gender issues

- RAF CASERT

Geert Wilders, left, leader of Dutch Party for Freedom; Matteo Salvini, of Italy’s Northern League, Jörg Meuthen, leader of the Alternative For Germany party; and France’s Marine Le Pen, attend a rally in Milan for Europe’s nationalist parties, ahead of 2019’s parliamentary elections. Some observers expect the right to thrive in uncoming elections.

“Everyone is welcome,” reads the sign at the church door in this quiet Dutch village, where neighbours greet each other from tidy porches overlooking manicured lawns.

But that declaration of tolerance seems oddly out of place.

Triggered by economic and cultural anxieties that have whipped up fears about immigrants, people here and throughout the Netherlands have veered far to the right politically. It’s an extreme example of a trend being felt across the continent that could tilt the outcome of this year’s European Union parliamentary election.

In Sint Willebrord, which has few immigrants among its 9,300 residents, almost three out of four voters chose a virulently anti-migrant, anti-Muslim party in an election last year that shattered the Netherlands’ image as a welcoming, moderate country.

The Party for Freedom, led by a peroxide-haired firebrand named Geert Wilders, received nearly a quarter of all the votes — in a country where less than five per cent of the people are Muslim — with slogans such as “no Islamic schools, Qurans or mosques” and “no open borders and mass immigration we cannot afford.”

Voters across Europe are increasingly empowering leaders like Wilders who promise to restrict immigration and, in some cases, constrain democratic freedoms: of religion, of expression, of the right to protest.