The Death of the Old Europe—and the Rise of the Right – Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Evelyn Markus in The Free Press

Europe is in shock. Geert Wilders—variously called “far-right,” an “anti-Islamist populist,” and the Dutch Donald Trump—won last Wednesday’s election in the Netherlands. His party is now the biggest in the Dutch parliament. For years, Wilders has been an outcast, considered too toxic by mainstream politics and too extreme by the overwhelmingly liberal media. And yet he has won—and not by a small margin.

Europe is in shock. We are not.

That is because we are both Dutch—and because we both left the Netherlands because of the phenomena that have now brought Wilders to power.

What we have witnessed will tell you not just about how Wilders could win a landslide victory in one of the most liberal countries in Europe, but about what could soon be coming to countries like France, Germany, and other liberal democracies who fail to grapple with the dual challenge of mass migration and assimilation and ignore the very real concerns of their citizens.

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