Just months ago, Geert Wilders was an anathema to most Dutch political parties. A disruptive and divisive force on the far right for two decades, Mr. Wilders has said he wants to end immigration from Muslim countries, tax head scarves and ban the Quran. He has called Moroccan immigrants “scum.” His Party for Freedom has […]
Read MoreTag: Netherlands
With a New Holocaust Museum, the Netherlands Faces Its Past
Three faces stare blankly from sepia-toned passport photos, haphazardly pasted onto a card to an unknown recipient. They are probably two parents and their son, but we’ll never know for sure. Under their pictures are the handwritten words: “Don’t forget us!” It’s unclear when this card was sent. But its plea has helped shape the […]
Read MoreU.S. Leads Second Strike Against Houthis in Yemen
The United States carried out another strike against the Houthi militia in Yemen, the U.S. Central Command said on Friday night, bombing a radar facility as part of an effort to further degrade the Iran-backed group’s ability to attack ships transiting the Red Sea. It was the second straight day that the U.S. military fired […]
Read MoreHow a Book Publishing ‘Mistake’ Reignited the U.K.’s Royal Racism Furor
As book rollouts go, the one for Omid Scobie’s latest offering about the British royal family, “Endgame,” has been a hot mess — splashy, gaudy, tantalizing but ultimately a bit withholding — which is to say, par for the course for a putative tell-all account of the world’s most covered, least decoded family. The withholding […]
Read MoreThe Way Geert Wilders Won
A country where depopulating rural areas are losing physicians, bus stops and elementary schools while urban areas thrive is fertile ground for a demagogue — say, a politician who crusades against Islam, immigrants and the forces of globalization. It’s a familiar script and one that has just put Geert Wilders’s Party for Freedom on the […]
Read MoreDutch Election Results Deliver a Turn to the Far Right
The Netherlands, long regarded as one of Europe’s most socially liberal countries, woke up to a drastically changed political landscape on Thursday after a far-right party swept national elections in a result that has reverberated throughout Europe. Geert Wilders’ Party for Freedom, which advocates banning the Quran, closing Islamic schools and entirely halting the acceptance […]
Read MoreFar-Right Party Predicted to Win Dutch Elections in Landslide
The Netherlands on Wednesday took a startling turn in national elections with the potential to ripple through Europe, as Dutch voters threw most support behind the party of a far-right icon with an incendiary reputation who had campaigned on an anti-immigrant platform. Geert Wilders, a political provocateur long known for his anti-Islam and anti-Europe stances, […]
Read MoreDutch Election: Unpredictable Vote May Elevate a Centrist
After 13 years with Mark Rutte as their prime minister, the Dutch will cast their ballots on Wednesday in a national election that is expected to scatter votes across the spectrum. But there is one man who has emerged as the campaign’s chief protagonist. It is Pieter Omtzigt, a longtime parliamentarian and founder of a […]
Read MoreFlight of the Drones Lights Up Central Park
It began with a sudden, breathtaking emergence over the trees to the south — a thousand points of blue light that expanded and dispersed into the sky. They organized into a kind of butterfly formation and set off in a northerly direction — and then the flotilla vanished, as if at the flip of a […]
Read MoreDutch Royals Confront South Africa’s Colonial Legacy
On their first visit to an African country since ascending the throne a decade ago, the King and Queen of the Netherlands made a symbolic visit on Friday to the Slave Lodge in Cape Town, South Africa, where Dutch colonists once enslaved thousands of Africans and Asians. As they entered the two-story building with creaky […]
Read MoreRotterdam Shootings Leave Fatalities, Dutch Police Say
The police in the Netherlands said people were killed in two shootings at a house and a university medical center in the port city of Rotterdam on Thursday, but the exact death toll was not immediately clear. In a statement on X, formerly Twitter, the Rotterdam police said that they had arrested a 32-year-old suspect […]
Read MoreErwin Olaf, Photographer With an Eye for the Theatrical, Dies at 64
Erwin Olaf, a contemporary Dutch photographer known for the precision of his staged photographs of both countercultural figures and Dutch royalty, died on Wednesday in Groningen, the Netherlands. He was 64. Shirley den Hartog, his business partner, said the death, in a hospital, was caused by complications of a recent lung transplant. Mr. Olaf had […]
Read MoreWhy More Countries Are Adopting Feminist Foreign Policies
When Margot Wallstrom, then Sweden’s foreign minister, announced back in 2014 that her country would pursue a feminist foreign policy, the idea was greeted with skepticism. Ms. Wallstrom was criticized by the foreign policy establishment globally for both her openly activist approach and the perception that she was naïve to the realities of realpolitik. As […]
Read More