Geert Wilders is Putin’s mouthpiece and his party should no longer be allowed to keep this cabinet hostage, says culture historian Thomas von der Dunk.

While the existing world order is imploding, three ruthless political criminals are keeping Europe hostage in a way that has not been seen for decades.

One declared enemy is Vladimir Putin, who, after successfully finishing his raid on Ukraine will go for the Baltic states next, all the while trying to break the EU’s external resilience by spreading fake news to boost the member states’ fascist parties’ election chances.

Then there are Europe’s two supposed friends. One is Benjamin Netanyahu, who shamelessly uses the Shoah to shame Europe into inaction as he carries out his ethnic cleansing policy in the Palestinian territories under the guise of revenge for the Hamas pogrom.

Europe’s subsequent alienation from the Arab world will scupper any support against Russian aggression from non-Western countries who will rightly feel that those who leave Gaza to its fate should not expect any sympathy for the Crimean cause.

The other criminal “friend” is Donald Trump, who is not only rapidly turning the United States into a totalitarian techno dictatorship but, after swallowing his own lies, is now also embracing the lies coming out of Russia and by doing so he is betraying Ukraine.

Moreover, he is feeding the genocidal intentions of the Israeli with his own criminal replacement policy, openly displaying his own expansionism, and, like Putin,  intending to undermine European democracy by supporting far-right extremist parties, in his case to clear the way for the digital multi-billionaires his government is relying on.

Democracy in danger

Freedom and democracy are facing a risk unprecedented in the post war period. Only absolute unity among the EU member states can withstand the threats that, other than after 1945, are coming at us both from the East and the West – with the United States and its economic and military power possibly posing the greater threat.

Not only does Europe have to close ranks, but the same unity must be shown nationally. To achieve this, every member state needs a strong and determined government capable of steering a common pro-European course regarding security, without being paralysed by internal contradictions.

The Netherlands is far from having such a government. The rudderless political stumblings of the last six months show that the current coalition is only vaguely aware of the urgency of the situation.

We have been landed with the weakest government ever, with a prime minister who is politically inexperienced and lacks authority and who since coming into office has regularly prided himself on having no opinion of his own on essential issues but is happy to wait for preliminary policies the four coalition leaders will dictate to him the next day.

Elephant in the room

On the eve of World War II the British envoy in The Hague, casting a jaundiced eye on the then-cabinet De Geer II, said that a country that elects such dismal leaders, deserves no better than to be enslaved. Watching Dick Schoof and his four equally inept deputies, the comment could have been made today.

The big elephant in the room is the PVV, led by the most malicious government party leader ever. Geert Wilders is a covert and sometimes not so covert supporter of the above-mentioned political criminals and therefore as bad as they are.

By openly supporting the most murderous Israeli colonists and Trump’s Gaza project, Wilders is sabotaging the Netherlands’ official Middle East policy while his beard at the head of the Dutch government is doing his utmost not to have an opinion on the matter, reducing his own obligatory declaration of support for a two-state solution and the international rule of law to impotent mutterings.

Wilders also makes no secret of his support for the destruction wreaked by Trump and his underling Vance in their own country and against Europe, and attempts to copy that destructiveness by creating permanent chaos on a smaller scale, inflating non-existing problems (asylum crisis) and sabotaging solutions for problems that are real (lack of prison staff).

He is completely on board with their attack on the free media, science and the rule of law in Europe. It is high time MPs stop treating Wilders and his cronies as colleagues but as the arch enemies of the democratic legal order that they are.

Putin’s mouthpiece

Wilders has always been a much-feted friend of the Kremlin in the past and continues to act as Putin’s secret mouthpiece by trying to frustrate every serious support for Ukraine.

As the safety of Europe, including the Netherlands, is closely linked to the survival of Ukraine, his systematic attempts to undermine Europe’s unity against East and  West could almost be called treasonous. Faced with Putin’s aggression, the PVV participation in the cabinet is like having the NSB as a coalition partner in 1938.

Given the unprecedented threat posed by the international situation, this should have political consequences, and that can only mean the immediate termination of this cabinet for security reasons.

To continue in government with a dictatorially led one-man party whose ideology to a great extent resembles that of Europe’s biggest enemies – Putin and Trump – is not only irresponsible from a rule of law point of view.

It is up to the VVD and the NSC to step up and finally assume the “responsibility” they have avoided for so long. What is needed now is a strong cabinet made up of the political centre which can steer a unified European course, no longer a hostage to the PVV. As long as the Netherlands continues to be a democracy, any majority is a majority, making every alternative parliamentary majority as legitimate as the existing one.

This column appeared earlier in the NRC