The day after Wilders’ neo-Nazi speech, Dassen (Volt) calls on VVD and NSC: ‘Do. It. Not.’ – Joop

The day after a speech by Geert Wilders in Hungary that was full of neo-Nazi rhetoric, Volt leader Laurens Dassen calls on the NSC and VVD not to enter into a cabinet with Wilders’ PVV. By talking to the PVV about forming a cabinet, VVD and NSC are, according to Volt leader Laurens Dassen, “making normal what should never be normal in a democracy”.

Dassen made his call on Sunday at the Volt conference in Apeldoorn. “Don’t do it,” said the Volt leader. Omtzigt and Yeşilgöz should show leadership as far as Dassen is concerned. “Because every day is one on which you can turn around. Because if you are a leader, you dare to stand for democracy and the rule of law, then you dare to stand for what connects us all.”

According to the Volt leader, it should not matter that walking away from the formation table would lead to a loss of voters. These things are relative compared to “governing with a one-man party that has long discriminated, undermines faith in our independent judiciary and denigrates journalists.”

On Friday, Wilders opened the far-right CPAC meeting in Budapest, organized by Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, as guest of honor. A meeting of ultra-right political leaders, where the press was banned. During that speech, Wilders called media, academics and the ‘left-wing elite’ a ‘threat from within’ and lied that European residential areas have become ‘no-go zones’ due to the arrival of ‘particularly young, single men from Africa and Asia’. ‘our women and daughters are no longer safe’ and ‘the Judeo-Christian culture has completely disappeared’.

Wilders also cited the neo-Nazi ‘repopulation’ myth and said that European culture has been ‘diluted’ due to immigration. In contrast to FvD leader Thierry Baudet, who was rightly accused of racism and Nazi sympathies after his comments about ‘the homeopathic dilution of the Dutch population’, it remains remarkably silent around Geert Wilders’ speech. De Volkskrant writes about that silence in an analysis: ‘Wilders now apparently estimates that Dilan Yesilgöz (VVD) and Pieter Omtzigt (NSC) will no longer leave the table so quickly after months of negotiations.’