Voor de stigmatiseurs en degenen die de speech van Baudet niet begrepen en de neurotische behoefte hadden om het zelf maar uit te proberen te leggen, hier een eigen woord van jullie toekomstige minister president!
“There's a proper reawakening across Europe going on”
Europe is closely eyeing conservative shooting star Thierry Baudet who rose to victory in Dutch regional elections, last week. The hyper-photogenic millennial leader has been labelled by the media as the “dandy of the Right”. While Eurocrats in Brussels are anxiously abuzz, the suave 36-year-old is sanguine about the future.
In an exclusive interview with DIE WELTWOCHE, Baudet meets me over dinner in Amsterdam. A devoted classicist, Baudet explains why he is opposed to the EU, rejects the green belief as a “heresy,” seeks strict limits to immigration Australian style, and disdains pop music (with the exception of the Beatles.)
“We represent a political philosophy that is fundamentally opposed to the principles of the French Revolution,” says the upstart who boldly declares himself “the leading intellectual in the Netherlands.” As he plots his party’s next moves for the upcoming European elections in May, he says, “I think there's a movement going on across European countries, across individual party-lines. It's the belief in a European renaissance.”
Thierry Baudet, you and your “Forum for Democracy” scored a great victory in the Dutch regional elections. Many media and politicians across Europe were taken by suprise. Did you expect that?
Yes, absolutely! (laughs) I've always known that we were going to win!
Were you expecting to win that big?
Yes. I've always had faith in the Dutch people. I'm not surprised!
What were the indications you would end up as the strongest political force?
Well, we have of course maintained a leading position in the polls for a year and a half. We were basically already projected to win significantly. With a multiparty system, obviously, the success is always dependent on what the other parties do. You can either have one big competitor or several smaller ones. But to me, fundamentally, it doesn't really matter because I consider all the established parties as representatives of the same ideology.
I don't see a fundamental difference between the classical Liberal Party (or whatever they call themselves), the Christian Democratic Party, the Labor Party, the Socialist Party and the Green Left Party. To me, all are basically the same. They are all representatives of the "liberal" or "liberalist" philosophy where emancipation of the individual is the ultimate aim. Maximum equality, maximum individual liberty. So, in one sense, we won. We're now the largest party. But if you add all the numbers of votes that all the other parties received, we're not largest, yet.
Your party joined regional elections for the first time, and you won 13 seats.
Yes. We've got 15%, now. But that's not the majority.
Premier Mark Rutte needs to form a new coalition. Does he try everything to exclude you from the government?
We don't know that, yet. I think they might try to encapsulate us, to control us by offering us some favors, some positions. And I think what they hope to do is gradually soften our viewpoints, our fundamentally different approach. That is at least what we're probably going to see in the coming weeks and months.