How the Suave New Dutch Far Right Nearly Won an Election
Thierry Baudet is an impressive politician who could point the way forward for Europe’s nationalist parties.
What the new euroskeptic right looks like.
Photographer: Koen van Weel/AFP/Getty ImagesBefore the European Parliament election, which took place Thursday in the Netherlands, Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte chose to debate just one rival: Thierry Baudet, leader of a startup party called Forum for Democracy (FvD) that didn’t even exist before late 2016.
“Perhaps he just found me the most interesting person to talk to,” Baudet, 36, deadpanned in an interview Friday in Amsterdam. In reality, the FvD led in almost all the Dutch polls for the last few weeks of the campaign, and Rutte was understandably worried. The traditional far-right threat to his center-right People’s Party — anti-Islam zealot Geert Wilders’s Freedom Party — appeared to have collapsed in the polls. But Baudet was the new menace from the right, and an improved version at that.