Tonight We'll Get A Good Idea Of How Successful Putin Has Been In Doing To The EU What He Did To The U.S.

Señor Trumpanzee with Italian would-be Mussolini, Matteo Salvini

In Europe, voting for the EU Parliament ends today. But Holland and the U.K. went first-- on Thursday-- and unofficial Dutch results show a gargantuan loss for Geert Wilders, the far right hate-monger who was leading in the polls. This is how it looks right now for the the Dutch delegation (26 seats):

• Labour- 18%
• VVD (mainstream conservatives)- 14%
• Forum for Democracy (neo-fascists)- 11%
• Freedom Party (Wilders' far right Trumpist/Islamaphobic party)- 4%

Turnout was up in Holland to around 37% but North Ireland, where there are 3 seats, shows over 45% voting. Votes there won't be counted until Monday, although the rest of the U.K. should have election results tonight. Here's how the U.K.'s seats are apportioned:

• Southeast England- 10
• London- 8
• Northwest England- 8
• West Midlands- 7
• East England- 7
• Southwest England- 6
• Scotland- 6
• Yorkshire & Humber- 6
• East Midlands- 5
• Wales- 4
• Northeast England- 3
• Northern Ireland- 3

This is how the British parties participating in the election stand on Brexit:

Brexit Party- leave
UKIP- leave
Conservative Party- leave but almost as confused as Labour
Lib Dems- favors remain but wants a new Brexit vote
Labour- complete confusion though most members want a new referendum
Green Party- remain with new referendum
Change UK- new referendum

Der Spiegel published an exhaustive look at the elections: The Right-Wing Populist Plan to Destroy Europe. The German magazine's point is that dramatic exposure of the far right's catastrophic Russian bribery scandal in Austria hasn't stopped the pan-European neo-fascists from battling on towards their goal of destroying the European Union from within its own institutions. Despite Geert Wilder's setback on Thursday, the elections ending today are likely to help them move along towards their goal.

Last Saturday European fascist leaders met in Milan, summoned by the would-be Mussolini, Italian interior minister Matteo Salvini. 11 neo-Nazi parties were represented, including Marine Le Pen from France, Geert Wilders, Jörg Meuthen from the Alternative for Germany party, as well as fascists from Bulgaria, Slovakia, Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland and Estonia.

Together, they performed what is by now well-known work, one with some surreal features: Full of bluster, the self-proclaimed "true Europeans" campaigned for entry into a parliament they despise. And they asked the people to give them the power to hollow out a European Union that has been painstakingly built over decades. All of it to the tune of Nessun dorma, along with Puccini's Turandot, its aria ending in fierce chanting: "Vanish, oh night! Set, stars! Set, stars! At dawn I will win! I'll win! I will win!" Vincerò!





On the stage in Milan, not a word was said about the drama unfolding in Vienna, as Heinz-Christian Strache, the head of the right-wing populist Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ), stepped down from his position as vice chancellor following the leak of a video demonstrating the depth of his corruptibility-- a scandal that also threatened to take down the entire Austrian government. And yet, in Milan they all pretended that nothing had happened. Even as they all knew: Quite a lot had happened.

This time around, it's not about some low-level party official sending Hitler pictures via WhatsApp on the Führer's birthday in provincial Austria. This time it goes right to the top level of the Austrian government, casting light on the worrying state of the Austrian political scene. The videos raise fundamental questions about whether the populists are fit for power. And whether they can be entrusted with government business. And whether Strache and his protégé Johann Gudenus should be regarded as isolated cases or as symbolic figures of a fast and loose relationship between right-wing populists and donations from foreign donors, rule of law and the truth.





Most Austrians, with the exception, perhaps, of FPÖ supporters, were likely to have been deeply shocked by the disregard to the country's constitution shown in the recordings, and many Europeans were astonished by the crooked behavior displayed by the second in command of a government of an EU member state. If the scenes in the Ibiza videos had been part of a TV crime show, people probably would have dismissed them as having been exaggerated and overdone.

..."IbizaGate" feeds into the well-founded suspicions that those thumping their chests as über-patriots in their countries have little problem with conniving with foreign powers, obtaining financing from dubious donors or even being pulled like puppets on a string when it comes to policy. The Strache scandal is undoubtedly detrimental to the original narrative offered by the right-wing populists-- namely that the parties are the lone forces defending the good people against "old parties" and other corrupt elites. But as Strache has now shown, it's the right-wing populists themselves who are in fact the corrupt elite.

Strache's German counterparts from the Alternative for Germany (AfD) have recognized the dangers of such discussions, but they don't want to admit it. Meuthen, one of the party's leaders, has been in damage control mode since last Saturday, describing the Strache Video as a "singular matter" reflecting abominable behavior, but also as a domestic issue relevant only to Austria.

...The Strache circus is of course also a problem for right-wing populists outside of Austria, because the issues raised by the video are a problem for them all across Europe. For months the AfD itself has been tangled up in several party donation scandals involving Alice Weidel, the party's floor leader in German parliament, as well as its leading candidates heading into this weekend's European elections, Meuthen and Guido Reil. Weidel is under scrutiny over a dubious election campaign donation of around 130,000 euros. In Meuthen's case, he is being scrutinized over 90,000 euros from dubious sources used to finance his campaign in a state election in Baden-Württemberg. And there are questions surrounding the nearly 45,000 euros used in a state election campaign in North Rhine-Westphalia for Reil, a member of the AfD's national board.

[Note: UK neo-Nazi, Nigel Farage is in the midst of a scandal showing that he's financed by Putin and devoted to Trump.]

No less troubling is the fact that the Ibiza video once again sheds light on the close contacts many right-wing populists in Europe have with Russia, a problem for which the AfD has also been in the headlines. In April, Der Spiegel, ZDF, La Repubblica and the BBC reported on the activities and connections of Markus Frohnmaier, a member of German parliament with the AfD. A document circulated inside the Russian presidential administration at the time of the Bundestag election campaign describing the politician as potentially becoming "a deputy under absolute control" of Russia.

The BND, Germany's foreign intelligence agency, and the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, the country's domestic intelligence apparatus, are currently detecting a change in the Kremlin's strategy. Rather than relying solely on its own media and channels for campaigning and aiming to steer the agenda, it is now focusing much more on individuals, a small group of parliamentarians were recently told in a classified meeting. They were informed that the people selected by Moscow included somewhere between a half-dozen and a dozen members of the Bundestag. One is Markus Frohnmaier. When contacted for comment, he responded: "I do not allow myself to be used by the Russian government for its purposes and would always refuse to accept attempts of this kind. The reporting about me is nothing more than a campaign."

Senior AfD politician Alexander Gauland is also a frequent guest in Russia, but he rejects any criticism because he claims to be following the foreign policy footsteps of Bismarck, who believed in strong German-Russian relations. Marcus Pretzell, at the time a member of the AfD and current member of the European Parliament, visited the Russian-occupied Crimea as "Guest of Honor" in 2016 and thought it petty when he was later questioned about who paid for the trip.

Similar episodes can be found all across Europe. When Marine Le Pen's Front National, now known as Rassemblement National, convened a party conference in Lyon in November 2014, the guest list was similar to that of Salvini's rally in Milan and delegates from Vladimir Putin's United Russia Party also attended. That same year, Le Pen's party had received two loans from Russian banks amounting to 11 million euros to help finance its election campaigns.

Two years later, the French right-wing populists asked Moscow for another 3 million euro loan, but it is unclear whether it was ever granted. There are, though, indications that Marine Le Pen may have promised not to criticize Russia's annexation of the Crimea and to promote Moscow's interests in exchange for the money. The suspicion, which Le Pen denies, is supported by mobile text messages from a well-known and high-ranking Kremlin official, who wrote among other things: "Marine Le Pen has not disappointed our expectations." And: "We will have to thank the French in one way or another."

In Great Britain, the National Crime Agency is investigating suspicions that Brexit leader Nigel Farage received money from Russia through indirect channels. Many consider it probable that the Kremlin sought to manipulate the Brexit vote to destabilize the European Union.

There is a greater amount of urgency surrounding these questions in the aftermath of the Strache-Ibiza video. Are economic interests at stake when Matteo Salvini's Lega party repeatedly advocates an end to the EU's "useless, or even harmful" sanctions against Russia? Do the Greek far-right parties get money for their frequently expressed conviction that there is a "natural alliance" between Greeks and Russians? How does Russia's president exploit the image he enjoys as being one of the last guardians of true values among European groups of both extremes? A leader who seeks to prevent what he describes as a weakened, immoral, decadent EU from prevailing?

"There is conspiracy of all the radical right-wing nationalists everywhere, apparently with the help of the Kremlin, or of oligarchs round the Kremlin, to disrupt this union," Guy Verhofstadt, a prominent Belgian member of European Parliament, told the Times of London on Wednesday. The German newspaper Die Welt this week quoted former French President François Hollande as saying that whoever votes for populists in Europe is "giving their vote to Trump and Putin."

That may sound preposterous, but it has long since become apparent in the European Council, where European heads of state and government still establish the broad parameters of EU policy. Coalition governments that include populist parties are often more open to influence from abroad than others. Once example is Middle East policy. Countries like Hungary have begun diverging from the European stance to serve American interests. Because Hungary stood in the way, the EU was not able to condemn the Trump administration's decision to move the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem as a diplomatic mistake in December 2017. Budapest essentially became Donald Trump's advocate in Brussels.

The unanimity requirement for important decisions in the European Council thus gives populists veto power. And their partners abroad are quick to praise them for services rendered. Twelve days ago, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán was showered with praise by the U.S. president himself during a visit to the White House. Orbán, Trump said, does a "tremendous job" and is "highly respected all over Europe."

That, of course, is far from the truth. In many countries, respect for Orbán is a thing of the past, and when it comes to domestic policy and the judiciary, his government is seen as having betrayed European values. Externally, Hungary has become a gateway for all those wishing to divide the EU. And the number of these open gateways is growing: Russia and the U.S. are not alone in their desire to weaken the EU block. China has also incorporated the EU, the world's largest internal market, into its geopolitical considerations and is searching for access.

The EU isn't equipped to stand up to such adversaries. It does have a couple of instruments it can use to punish intractable member states, but it hardly ever uses them. EU countries worried about being punished in the future regularly block their deployment. The dream of outgoing European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker that the EU might one day become a global political player seem illusory.

By chance, Juncker was in Vienna this week for a visit that had long been planned. He had apparently decided that he would remain silent about the Strache scandal-- but couldn't ultimately resist. "The idea that one country is put on a silver platter so that others can help themselves," he said, "does not reflect my idea of patriotism."

Jean Asselborn, Juncker's compatriot who is the foreign minister of Luxembourg, expressed deep discomfort. "The European right wing is unified by its desire to bring the free press and the judiciary under its control wherever they have power," he says. "That is true of Hungary and Poland, and that is shown by Strache's comments in the video."

The dangers presented by populists to European unity is significant, says Asselborn. "If European citizens continue placing their trust in these people, there is a risk that we could end up landing where we were back in the 1930s," he says.

The Austrian scandal was also of interest to Angela Merkel. On the Saturday Salvini's party in Milan and the political earthquake in Vienna were taking place, the German chancellor was standing in a basketball arena in Zagreb fulminating against the populists. "Nationalism is the enemy of the European project," she said from the stage. In the press conference that had preceded her speech, she said, "We are faced with populist currents that want to destroy a values-based Europe." Apparently referring to Strache, Merkel added: "That includes putting politicians up for sale. We must decisively stand up to all of that."

But the populists are currently finding success with their assault on the political establishment. They have representatives in parliaments across the continent, and established parties in almost every country in Europe are worried about their advance. In Sweden, the xenophobic Sweden Democrats received 17.5 percent of the vote in last year's elections, a result recently matched by the True Finns, whose overt nationalism fueled their success. The Conservative People's Party of Estonia, which has dedicated itself to the defense of the Estonian ethnicity, jumped from 8.1 percent support to 17.8 percent in March elections.

The numbers show that the populists are generally still far from securing a majority on a national or European level-- Poland and Hungary notwithstanding. But in places like Italy and Austria, they are becoming more than just convenient partners for parties in need of parliamentary majorities and in France, they could become the largest party in the country. In many European nations, it has become increasingly difficult to put together stabile governments made up of moderate political parties.

The communication strategies adopted by the right-wing populists are simply far better than the rather old-fashioned methods of the established parties. It is impossible to ignore the parallels to the 1930s, when the Nazis discovered the power of film and the possibilities presented by television-- as exemplified by the broadcast of the 1936 Olympic Games. The populists and extremists of today were much quicker to understand the opportunities inherent in the digital world than their political rivals, many of whom remain stuck in analog antiquity. Populists still use traditional media outlets, but are increasingly circumventing them.

The Germans may still be playing catch-up, but in Italy, France and Austria, the populists have learned to take full advantage of what the new media world has to offer. They may like to complain that they are being treated unfairly by the "leftist media" and libeled by the "fake news," but in truth, other channels have long since become more important for them.

Matteo Salvini reaches 3.7 million people directly via Facebook, the kind of follower numbers otherwise only seen with pop stars. It helps explain why he always seems to be the center of attention. The traditional political reports seen on Italian public broadcasters or in critical newspapers merely serve to round out his brand. As strange as it might sound, Salvini is one of the largest mass-media outlets in Italy, which works to his tremendous advantage. It means that he can present himself and his worldview free from pesky critical questions.

Austria's fallen Vice Chancellor Strache has 779,000 Facebook followers in a country with a population of not even 9 million. Like Salvini, he and his team are adept at using emotion, both positive and negative. Mother's Day and children's birthdays are celebrated with pretty pictures, hearts and kisses - the idyllic world the FPÖ professes to protect. Then he posts stories about ungrateful asylum seekers, sex criminals and unwanted migrants, often with his own indignant commentary. Strache's posts aren't just read and liked, they are also shared and commented on thousands of times, increasing their value.

Marine Le Pen similarly has 1.5 million followers on Facebook. Victor Orbán has 657,000. Some might argue that these numbers are something of a counterfeit currency and that their appearance in an article such as this represent the downfall of political analysis, but it is almost impossible to overrate their value. In this day and age, for politicians and others in positions of power, large follower counts mean message control, the ability to disseminate one's own messages without the inconvenience of a filter.

The more people follow a politician on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube or Instagram, the less dependent that politician is on the reporting of independent media and the fewer critical questions from journalists he or she needs to answer. Of course, it's not all hearts and kisses on their social media accounts-- they are badgered and taunted, and not all of their followers are fans. But anger and controversy serve to jack up the click numbers-- and in the new currency of digital attention, clicks are good, no matter where they come from.

It has become something of a parallel reality. Manfred Weber, the lead candidate in the European elections for the center-right European People's Party, doesn't even have 60,000 followers on Facebook. Weber presumably prefers devoting himself to projects he believes are more important than improving his internet presence. But it is doubtful that today's politicians can afford the luxury of such an approach. What has been true for the media for the last several years is now true for politicians as well: If you're not present in the digital world, you soon won't be present at all. Low name recognition translates to diminished election prospects, not to mention a weakened ability to attract younger voters or those voters who tend to stay away from politics.

Clever politicians like Salvini or Strache are perfectly suited to an era in which voters prefer watching videos than reading essays. But the current wave of populism aimed at the European Union and its Brussels headquarters is more than just a game being played by self-obsessed demagogues online media. The current form of populism, whose actors pose as the uncorrupted in a sea of corruption, has many roots: real problems and unrealistic expectations; broad fears of eroding financial security; feelings of being left behind. That is where populism derives its strength. And the anger that comes with it is perhaps best studied in the Eastern European countries that joined the EU a decade and a half ago.

These European elections are falling on a European anniversary that is being largely ignored. Fifteen years ago, the EU incorporated an entire group of Eastern European countries, enabling the peaceful unification of the continent-- an historical godsend that led to a Nobel Peace Prize for Brussels. Today, however, this same EU has a terrible-- catastrophic even-- image within the right-wing governments in these countries.

Bannon with a bunch of European neo-Nazis in Budapest

In many parts of Eastern Europe, the EU is seen as a conspiracy of overpaid, traitorous bureaucrats. Like the communists before them, it is said, the EU technocrats are intent on reeducating the Eastern Europeans. They see the EU as trying to tame nation, tradition and religion. The women are to have fewer children, gays and lesbians are to be allowed to get married and adopt, and Muslims from Africa and the Middle East are to be permitted to settle wherever they want. And the blame, in this view, lies entirely with Brussels.

That is the message delivered by Jaroslaw Kaczynski, leader of the nationalist-conservative Law and Justice party in Poland, and by Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and his Fidesz Party. The governments in Estonia, Bulgaria, Romania, the Czech Republic and Slovakia also include similar figures. EU-skeptics have become established everywhere in the region.

And yet, contradictions abound. No halfway influential party in Eastern Europe wants to leave the EU. Despite the success of the Kaczynskis and the Orbáns, the EU enjoys tremendous support from the Baltics to the Balkans, including 90 percent support in Poland. The governments clearly have no mandate to escort their countries out of the EU. Indeed, surveys indicate that people there have more trust in the EU than in their own elites.

There is an economic explanation. Between 2004 and 2020, 356 billion euros will have flowed into the 10 accession countries from the European Structural and Investment Funds alone. Struggling state economies have transformed into regions of significant growth. The EU brought in investors, financed road construction, built universities and developed data networks. City halls and hospitals were renovated with EU money. And Brussels also helped reform the public administration and the judiciary - and strengthen civil society.

The EU triggered a wave of modernization in Eastern Europe that took three decades longer to unfold in the west. Prosperity, of course, is not equally divided. Statistically, however, the standard of living has risen significantly in all the accession countries. Eastern European societies have also become freer and more mobile in the last 20 years. There is no "objective" reason to be opposed to the EU in Warsaw, Budapest or Ljubljana.

There are, however, subjective, less concrete reasons. Karel Schwarzenberg, who spent several years serving as Czech foreign minister and is a passionate supporter of the EU, argues that people know what the EU has done for them, but don't feel at home in it. He says that all too often, Eastern Europeans have been delivered the message that they are second-class members of the bloc-- poorer and still backwards, and that they should become real Europeans, real democrats before they speak up. A comparison can be drawn to the feeling former East Germans often have in reunified Germany.

It is a feeling not just experienced by politicians from Eastern Europe sent to Brussels, but by millions of Poles, Hungarians, Czechs and Slovaks in their day-to-day lives. Around 20 million people have at least temporarily left their Eastern European homelands to work in the West. Instead of getting to know the continent as student travelers or vacationers as many in the West were privileged enough to do, an entire generation of Eastern Europeans have experienced Western Europe as cleaning ladies, itinerant farmworkers and manual laborers. As domestic help for the wealthy of the West.

The resulting feelings of inferiority have fueled right-wing populists. The decades in which Eastern Europeans wanted nothing more than to emulate the West are over and a phenomenon has developed that the Bulgarian political scientist Ivan Krastev describes by saying: "Imitation engenders resentment." That resentment, he says, is directed at the erstwhile role models. It is stoked by the populists, who transform feelings of inferiority into aggression directed against the Brussels elite and the "servants" of the EU in their own capitals.

In places like Warsaw and Budapest, people have begun to feel like they have already experienced the best of what the EU has to offer. Now everything coming from Brussels is a threat to their own culture and lifestyle: environmental requirements, gay rights, migrant quotas, all kinds of duties and obligations, the arduous negotiations that are the hallmark of democracy.

The 2015 refugee crisis plunged half of Europe into temporary chaos, but more than anything, it gouged out a chasm between West and East. The demand primarily from Western European countries - or, to be more precise, from Germany - that all countries must help when it comes to distributing the refugees triggered the release of dissatisfactions that had been developing for quite some time. People in the east felt like they had survived the collapse of communism, lost jobs and got jobs, changed themselves, changed everything, and still hadn't caught up to the West. And now they were supposed to look after people even weaker than them?

In Brussels, such a point of view is seen as petulance and leads to a loss of influence. Exaggerated nationalism and unilateralism aren't welcome in the EU. They are a dead end. Poland and Hungary, in particular, sideline themselves in negotiations, frequently avoid complicated issues and tend to pound testily on the table rather than patiently pursuing their own interests and trying to listen to and understand the interests of others.

This leads to a dangerous cycle: countries driven by nationalism achieve less and less in Brussels, which leads to increasing alienation from the EU back home. Blame for a lack of success is pinned on anonymous powers in Brussels, the technocrats, the immovable and corrupt elites, thus paving the way for the empty yet pithy slogans of the populists.

The disruptive potential of the right-wing fringe in European Parliament has long been limited to mere spluttering expostulations from the plenary floor-- and their occasional misuse of EU money for their own benefit. Instead of using parliament for serious policy work, they saw it as a stage from which they could send messages back home-- a stage adeptly used by Farage, Salvini, Le Pen and others of their ilk. For some time, they were content to mock Europe's legislative body, but that is now changing. Le Pen has undergone perhaps the most profound metamorphosis, and for her opponents, that should be rather unsettling.

For a long time, her focus was on "Frexit," on leading France out of the common currency. She saw anything European as evil and abhorrent. These days, though, she ends her campaign speeches with the battle cry: "Long live the real Europe! Long live France!"

The chant "vive l'Europe" is, despite the qualification represented by the word "real," a 180-degree reversal. Until this year, Le Pen had consistently campaigned on the promise of freeing her country from the yoke of the common currency. It is a promise that, most recently, failed to generate its desired result in 2017, when she performed so badly in a now legendary televised debate on EU issues with the ultimate election winner Emmanuel Macron that it seemed like her political career may have come to an end.

In the parliamentary elections that followed, her Front National party didn't even win enough votes to form its own parliamentary group, a failure that Le Pen interpreted as the result of widespread fear in France of leaving the eurozone. As a result, since fall 2017, she has been an ardent supporter of the "real Europe," a message that proved divisive in her party. But she was determined. She no longer wanted to frighten people away with "Frexit"-- and now she appears to really believe that an alliance with her new friends in Italy, Poland, Austria, Germany and elsewhere represents a plausible path to power for the right-wing movement.

That's not particularly realistic. Thus far, every attempt at a broad, right-wing alliance in Europe has failed miserably, with the Front National itself having been part of many of those failures. The new concept for a European Alliance for People and Nations is also unlikely to go anywhere and conflict seems unavoidable.

The AfD in Germany and Lega in Italy are roughly as far away from each other on economic and finance policy as the liberals from the FDP and the far-left Left Party are in Germany. There are also deep, seemingly unbridgeable ideological rifts between Le Pen's party and the PiS in Poland and Fidesz in Hungary when it comes to society, family and women. As such, the planned right-wing "super fraction" is nothing more than a typical populist mélange of braggadocio and canniness. Likely the most important motivation for cooperation is the prospect of forming a large fraction that would automatically become more visible in European Parliament. It would also be handed more responsibilities, receive more speaking time and, most importantly, get more money.

What Will A Post-Trump GOP Look Like?

You probably never heard of him but, as the European version of Politico reported this week Joram van Klaveren converted to Islam. Why is that notable? He is a former member of Holland's parliament, elected on Geert Wilders' neo-fascist anti-immigrant, Islamophobic party, the PVV. How to think about this? Imagine Dana Rohrabacher, Rod Blum or Dave Brat announcing he had just converted.

Van Klaveren said he made the switch from critic to convert while writing a book about Islam. He told a Dutch radio interviewer that "During that writing I came across more and more things that made my view on Islam falter." He had been another garden variety PVV Islamophobe calling Islam a fake religion and spouting junk like "The Quran is poison. Now he says he was wrong and that it was PVV policy that "everything that was wrong had to be linked to Islam in one way or another."

Van Klaveren is the second PVV official to convert. The first was Arnoud van Doorn, who tweeted up a storm, including how: he "never thought that the PVV would become a breeding ground for converts."

Will we see Republicans revolting against Trumpism this way one day? Steve King wearing a serape and sombrero, riding a burro while munching pulled pork tacos? Kevin McCarthy using the millions of dollars in corporate bribes he takes to build mosques in Bakersfield, Tehachapi and at the gateway to Sequoia National Park? Who knows... Geert Wilders is almost as horrible as Trump. But... The Atlantic published a post by Ron Brownstein yesterday, Trump Is Walling Off the GOP that implies the GOP could wither away first. "The most misleading line," he wrote, "in Donald Trump’s State of the Union address this week might have also been the most revealing about how he is reconfiguring the Republican Party and reshaping America’s electoral alignment. 'Legal immigrants enrich our nation and strengthen our society in countless ways,' he declared at one point. “I want people to come into our country, in the largest numbers ever, but they have to come in legally.' Trump ad-libbed the part about 'the largest numbers ever,' but even the base claim-- that he supports legal immigration-- radically rewrites his record. Trump just last year supported legislation from Republican Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa that would have cut legal immigration by more than 40 percent-- the largest reduction since the 1920s... Trump has used almost every administrative tool at his disposal to create more hurdles for legal immigrants. 'The idea that the administration is trying to increase legal immigration, or allow more of it, is just totally contrary to every proposal that they have put out here,' [David] Bier said in an interview. Trump was so determined to restrict legal immigration, he rejected a deal accepted by virtually every Senate Democrat that would have provided him with $25 billion for his border wall in return for a pathway to citizenship for the so-called Dreamers, the young people brought illegally to the U.S. by their parents."

Trump’s hostility to legal immigration, which he so aggressively sought to hide in his speech, is key to understanding the real implications of his immigration agenda. Once again on Tuesday, Trump signaled that he prioritizes no cause more than building a wall across the southern border, portraying his determination as a sign of his commitment to ensuring Americans’ security and upholding the rule of law. His praise for legal immigration, though distorting his record, provided a critical buttress for that case: It allowed him to suggest that his motivation for the wall isn’t resisting immigration per se, only illegal and dangerous behavior. The truth, though, is that the wall is itself only one brick in a much larger structure aimed at restricting most kinds of immigration.

“This administration and this president are opposed to all forms of immigration regardless of status, really regardless of the type of category that they enter under,” Bier said. “They have attacked them all; they have tried to prevent them from being able to come in. It’s not specific to any region of the world, even. It’s everyone coming into this country from abroad is a threat or a problem and needs to be stopped.”

Each pillar of this agenda faces opposition from a majority of Americans in polls. Surveys show that Trump has never persuaded more than 45 percent of the country to support the border wall, and that number stood at just 40 percent, with 60 percent opposing, in a Gallup poll released this week. National surveys, such as this week’s CNN poll, consistently find that two-thirds of Americans, an even more preponderant majority, oppose Trump declaring a national emergency to build the wall, as he’s threatened to do. Gallup this week found that four-fifths of Americans support a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants already in the U.S., an idea that Trump derides as amnesty.

Gallup has also found that support for legal immigration has steadily increased under Trump: In this week’s survey, the share of Americans who supported increasing legal immigration (30 percent) reached the highest level Gallup has recorded since it first asked the question in 1965, while the share of Americans who want to decrease legal immigration (31 percent) essentially matched the lowest level ever recorded, in June. The combined percentage of Americans who want to maintain legal immigration at its current level (37 percent) or increase it also matched the all-time high.

“In spite of Trump’s policies and rhetoric, more and more Americans support immigrants and immigration-- from citizenship for the undocumented to better pathways for legal immigration,” notes Ali Noorani, executive director of the pro-immigration group National Immigration Forum.

What’s more, the polling evidence clearly shows that Trump has built very little constituency for his wall beyond the hard-core base of Americans most resistant to immigration in all its forms. Seven in 10 Americans who believe that legal immigration should be reduced also support building the wall, according to detailed figures provided to me by Gallup.

But the wall is opposed by nearly four in five of those surveyed who want to increase legal immigration and by more than two in three who would maintain it at its current level. Similarly, Gallup found that three-fourths of Americans who back mass deportation of all undocumented immigrants also support building the wall. But among the clear majority who oppose mass deportation (roughly three-fifths of all Americans), 80 percent oppose its construction.

All this underscores how Trump, across a broad range of immigration issues, is steering the GOP toward the preferences of a distinct minority of Americans. And yet the evidence is also clear that Trump is systematically eradicating opposition to his agenda inside the GOP. More than four-fifths of Republicans in the House and nearly three-fourths of Republicans in the Senate voted for the massive cuts to legal immigration that Trump supported last year, though the bills ultimately failed. (Taken together, that was a much higher percentage than the share of Republicans who backed cuts to legal immigration the last time the party seriously proposed them, during the 1990s.) While many Republicans were initially skeptical of the border wall when Trump first endorsed it in the 2016 campaign, those voices have been almost completely silenced: Until the very end, hardly any congressional Republicans complained about his strategy of shutting down the federal government for five weeks to pursue funding for the barrier.

Republican senators have grumbled more loudly about the prospect of Trump declaring a national emergency to unilaterally fund the wall. But pressure on them to consolidate behind an emergency declaration is rapidly increasing, too: Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina this week warned that there will be a “war” within the GOP if Trump issues a declaration and Republicans don’t support him.

The party’s willingness to link arms behind Trump over the wall is especially striking, because the idea faces such preponderant opposition from all the groups that powered the big Democratic gains in November’s midterm elections: young adults, minorities, independents, and college-educated white voters, especially women. The party’s embrace of the wall is symbolic of its larger choice to follow Trump’s strategy of trying to squeeze bigger electoral margins out of groups that are shrinking in society: the blue-collar, evangelical, and rural whites who consistently express the most unease in polls about not only immigration, but also other types of social change, from increasing diversity to evolving gender roles.

“My own sense of it is people like Lindsey Graham are being exceedingly shortsighted,” says Pete Wehner, a senior fellow at the conservative Ethics and Public Policy Center and a frequent Trump critic. “All they are looking at is the next day and the next week and the next month. If the Republican Party breaks with Trump in a fundamental way, there will be costs to it because it will be a divided party. What they are missing is the medium- and long-term damage in attaching themselves to Trump. He is leaving a crimson stain on the party. And instead of finding ways to remove that crimson stain, they are making it more indelible.”

The damage from that “stain” was evident in last fall’s House races, when Republicans were annihilated in metro-area districts that contain large numbers of immigrants, minorities, and college-educated voters. After the 2018 result, Democrats now control more than 80 percent of the House seats in which minorities exceed their national share of the population, and nearly 90 percent of the seats with more immigrants than average, according to Census Bureau figures. Fewer than one in 10 House Republicans now represents districts with more foreign-born residents than average, compared with about six times as many Democrats. Most of those diverse places moved sharply against Republicans in Senate and governor races, too.

...[T]he magnitude of the GOP’s defeat in House elections last fall suggests the size of the coalition that Trump is potentially solidifying against his party, particularly as the unprecedentedly diverse Millennial and post-Millennial generations grow as a share of the electorate. As Wehner noted, “the real problem” Trump is creating for the GOP is that “the very thing that alienates the Republican Party from most of the public is the very thing that energizes most of the base, which is cultural identity and ethnic nationalism.”

Despite his bravado during the State of the Union, Trump already has conceded that he will, at best, win funding for a wall in designated areas, not the massive concrete barrier he once proposed across the entire Mexican border. But the biggest takeaway from this week’s speech is that Trump may be systematically walling off the GOP from the places in America that are most powerfully forging the country’s future.

Who will pay the price? Of course the one everyone wants to see pay the price is McConnell, who's up for reelection and will have a tough opponent in uber-popular sports-talk radio host Matt Jones. And there's the #2 sack'o'shit, John Cornyn (who Texas Dems want to see Beto to take on. But the more likely GOP victims of Trumpism will be Martha McSally (AZ), Cory Gardner (CO), Sudan Collins (ME), Joni Ernst (IA), Thom Tillis (NC) and possibly David Perdue (GA-- especially if Stacey Abrams takes him on).

In the House... did you notice yesterday that Rob Woodall (R-GA) announced he's retiring next year? Expect lots and lots like that. (Walter Jones of North Carolina has also announced he's retiring, as did Utah's Ron Bishop.) Other walled-in Republicans who will make great targets next year include 4 each in California-- LaMalfa, McClintock, Nunes and Hunter-- and New York-- Zeldin, King, Katko and Collins; Mike Bost and Rodney Davis in Illinois; obviously Steve King in Iowa; Fred Upton and Tim Walberg in Michigan; Don Bacon in Nebraska; Brian Fitzpatrick, Scott Perry and Mike Kelly in Pennsylvania; and an astonishing TEN seats in Texas! For starters.

This morning Gabriel Sherman asserted at Vanity Fair that Trump is hated by "everyone inside the White House." He wrote that "Morale inside the White House, never high to begin with, has turned particularly bleak, according to interviews with 10 former West Wing officials and Republicans close to the president. The issue is that many see Trump himself as the problem. 'Trump is hated by everyone inside the White House,' a former West Wing official told me. His shambolic management style, paranoia, and pattern of blaming staff for problems of his own making have left senior White House officials burned out and resentful, sources said. 'It’s total misery. People feel trapped,' a former official said. 'Trump always needs someone to blame,' a second former official said. Sources said the leak of Trump’s private schedules to Axios-- which revealed how little work Trump actually does-- was a signal of how disaffected his staff has become."

White House Communications Director Bill Shine has told friends he’s angry that Trump has singled him out for the bad press during the government shutdown. “Bill is like, ‘you’re the guy who steps on the message more than anyone,’” said a Republican who’s spoken with Shine recently. Economic adviser Larry Kudlow has told people he’s probably got six months left. “Larry’s really tired of it all,” a source close to Kudlow said.

What’s driving a lot of the frustration is that Trump, now more than ever, runs the West Wing as a family business. Four sources said the only White House advisers he truly consults are daughter Ivanka and son-in-law Jared Kushner. “This is a family affair, and if you’re not in the family, you’ve got problems,” a former official said. The special privileges and access afforded to Kushner and Ivanka have been alienating Trump’s acting chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney. “Mick is not entirely thrilled with the family,” a Republican close to Mulvaney told me. Multiple sources said Mulvaney is looking for a way out of the West Wing. He’s said to be interested in a Cabinet position, either at the Commerce Department or Treasury, and he’s reportedly been pursuing the University of South Carolina presidency. A senior White House official recently lobbied a friend of Mulvaney’s to convince Mulvaney to stay.

In the meantime, Mulvaney is working to stave off another political crisis before Trump either shuts the government down again or declares a state of emergency to fund his southern border wall. One source briefed on the internal debate said that Mulvaney is advising Trump to accept less than his demand of $5 billion and make up the difference by shuffling money around the existing budget. “Mick wants to re-program existing funds,” the source said. Trump has insisted he won’t compromise, but he faces no good options, with a G.O.P. revolt likely if he goes the national-emergency route. “Trump is going to declare whatever happens a victory,” a former West Wing official said.

Perhaps Trump can bring back the A-Team?

Today Dutch Voters Told Geert Wilders, Vladimir Putin And Vladimir Trump To Go To Hell

Holland voted in parliamentary elections today, electing all 150 members of the House of Representatives. I lived there for nearly 4 years and never could get a firm grasp on their particular brand of multi-party coalition politics. There were 28 parties competing for seats in Parliament today. By this evening, the European headlines were blaring that the Freedom Party (PVV) of neo-fascist politician Geert Wilders-- a Trump ally-- had done unexpectedly badly and that center-right Prime Minister Mark Rutte would be back as head of government. We can be happy Wilders got slapped down, but Rutte is no bargain.

The Dutch had no intention of giving Putin an easy win by allowing him to hack-- for real hack, not the bullshit about propaganda-- the electronic voting machines the way he did in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Florida and Michigan. The Dutch switched to paper ballots. They had near record-breaking turnout (81%) and turned Wilders' and Putin's names to schijten (see, I told you I lived there for 4 years). The U.S. will never admit Putin hacked the machines in fear that no one will vote. Instead, they should switch to paper ballots like the Dutch did.

Yesterday the last Ipsos poll predicted the top 7 parties would come out of today's election with this many seats in Parliament:

• center-right VVD- 29 from 40
• religious right of center CDA- 23 from 13
• fascist PVV- 20 from 12
• centrist Labor Party PvdA- 9 from 35
• progressivish D66- 18 from 12
• left of center Socialist Party SP- 15 from 15
• left of center Green Party GL- 15 from 4

Earlier in the week, several polls had shown Wilders' PVV beating the VVD and winning the most seats. The projected score-- number of seats-- as of this evening is:

• VVD- 33
• CDA- 19
• PVV- 20
• D66- 19
• GL- 14
• SP- 14
• PvdA- 9

So the hackish centrist Mark Rutte will be Prime Minister again-- of another unpopular, ineffective, dysfunctional conservative government wedded to the kind of failed Austerity Paul Ryan is eager to import into America. Wilders had been endorsed yesterday by the French fascist candidate Marine Le Pen, although that doesn't seem to have helped him at all. He polled something between 17 and 18% nationally.

Although the fascists won in Rotterdam, the Green Party finished first in Amsterdam with 19.3%, followed by D66 with 18.2%. Rutte's VVD came in 3rd with 15.2% and Wilders' fascists came in 6th with just 7%. Nationally, the Green-Left Party, headed by 30 year old Jesse "Jessiah" Klaver, quadrupled their 4 seats and are suddenly a real power in Parliament. Klaver is often compared to Justin Trudeau-- there's a slight physical resemblance-- but he is definitely the anti-Wilders guy-- son of a Moroccan father and an Indonesian-descended mother-- he sounded more like Bernie Sanders than like Trudeau. "What I would say to all my leftwing friends in Europe: don’t try to fake the populace. Stand for your principles. Be straight. Be pro-refugee. Be pro-European. We’re gaining momentum in the polls. And I think that’s the message we have to send to Europe. You can stop populism." In a much-talked about TV debate he told Wilders that it was rightwing populism, not Muslim immigration, that was undermining Dutch culture and traditions. "The values the Netherlands stands for-- for many, many decades, centuries actually-- its freedom, its tolerance, its empathy… they are destroying it. It’s terrible when people are born in the Netherlands have the feeling they are not part of this society and it is not something to be proud of, but something to be ashamed of. And I want to change that."

As Colonel Morris Davis tweeted this morning, "Too bad for Wilders there's no Electoral College where finishing in 2nd place can still be a win."

Rutte begins negotiating with his coalition partners-- presumably the CDA and D66-- tomorrow and, since he won, he gets to pick this evening's goodnight song-- his favorite:

Steve King (R-IA)-- Classic Anti-American Fascist-- Crawled Out From Under His Rock Again

It's hardly news that Steve King is a hardcore racist and proud bigot. He's spent years building a political brand in rural western Iowa and inside-the-Beltway based on exactly that. Other racist garbage dumps have been automatically drawn to him. When King told Chris Cuomo Monday morning that he'd "like to see an America that's so homogenous that we look a lot the same," this blizzard of conformity is exactly what he was picturing:

But the Iowa dog-whistler said he wasn't talking about race, just culture. "I did defend western civilization. If we have an element of Americans here-- and that’s a big element-- that reject western civilization, then what have we? This is an effort on the left I think to break down the American civilization and the American culture and turn it into something entirely different. This western civilization is a superior civilization and we want to share it with everybody." He sounds like Cecil Rhodes!

NY Times White House correspondent Glenn Thrush quickly followed up by tweeting out an irony about Herr King that rarely gets discussed: "Fun fact: Given the chance to defend American 'civilization' in Vietnam, Rep. King, ummm, took a deferment."

The chairman of the Iowa Republican Party took an even dimmer view, and denounced King for once. Jeff Kaufmann: "I do not agree with Congressman King's statement. We are a nation of immigrants, and diversity is the strength of any nation and any community." But why should King care? A far more agreeable David Duke, former Grand Wizard of the KKK applauded him: "Just in case you were thinking about moving -> sanity reigns supreme in Iowa's 4th congressional district. #MakeAmericaGreatAgain," Duke wrote, quoting King’s tweet. Kaufmann's no fan of his either: "Regarding David Duke, his words and sentiments are absolute garbage. He is not welcome in our wonderful state."

This was the original tweet-- about Dutch fascist Geert Wilders (whose election day is mañana)-- that stirred up the storm:

King made the remark on Twitter when he shared a story by the Voice of Europe website about the far-right Dutch politician Geert Wilders, who wants to end Muslim immigration and ban the Quran and who has called Moroccan immigrants “scum.”

Critics said that Mr. King echoed the principles of white nationalism, the belief that national identity is linked to the white race and its superiority to other races. Self-proclaimed white nationalists emerged as a small but vocal group during the candidacy of Donald J. Trump, celebrating his promises to crack down on illegal immigration and ban Muslims from entering the United States, as well as heralding his presidential victory as a chance to preserve white culture.

...Miriam Amer, the executive director of the Iowa chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, called on Republican Party leaders in the state and nationwide to repudiate the message.

“This racist tweet crosses the line from dog-whistle politics to straight-up white supremacist advocacy,” she said in a statement.

A representative for Mr. King did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Mr. King, who was elected to Congress in 2002, questioned what nonwhites have contributed to civilization at a panel discussion in July about the racial makeup of the Republican Party.

“I’d ask you to go back through history and figure out where are these contributions that have been made by these other categories of people that you are talking about,” he said. “Where did any other subgroup of people contribute more to civilization?”

The month before, he tried to block an effort to put Harriet Tubman on the $20 bill. In 2013, Mr. King said that for every successful child of undocumented immigrants, there were 100 others who were drug mules with “calves the size of cantaloupes” from hauling marijuana.

Late yesterday the Des Moines Register weighed in with a scathing attack on King's overt racism. It was harsh and blistering:

If Steve King was your average, garden-variety bigot and was standing on a street corner while spouting his nonsense to passersby, he’d be easy to ignore. Everyone could dismiss his rants as undeserving of their attention and get on with their day.

Unfortunately, King has a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives. He’s a federal lawmaker. He’s on the public payroll. When he speaks, he represents-- literally and figuratively-- the people of Iowa.

So when he says things that are untrue, offensive or wildly irresponsible, attention must be paid. Responsible people have to step up and attempt to set the record straight or demonstrate that not everyone in Iowa, or in Congress, shares King’s distorted view of the world.

Unfortunately, King thrives on that sort of attention. He makes outlandish statements that seem intended to generate controversy, knowing they will provide him with a larger platform from which he can spew even more of his incendiary observations.

...King’s words are predictable, but they carry weight only because he is a congressman. And he’s a congressman because, after Republican Party leaders repeatedly denounce his words in an attempt to claim the moral high ground, they then wallow in the mud by supporting King’s bids for re-election.

Reynolds, our governor-in-waiting, endorsed King in the 2016 primary, calling him an “effective advocate for his district and for Iowans.” King also was endorsed by Sen. Joni Ernst, who said King “stands strong for life and liberty." Sen. Charles Grassley and Iowa Agriculture Secretary Bill Northey also endorsed King in 2016.

If King’s world view truly doesn’t match that of the Republican Party, then party leaders at both the state and national level need to stand together in supporting an opposing candidate in the 2018 Republican primary. Given King’s longstanding record as one of the least effective members of Congress, the GOP should have no difficulty finding a more thoughtful and qualified individual to represent the people of Iowa’s 4th District.

The only question is whether these party leaders have the courage of their alleged convictions.

The DCCC tends to leave King alone, although grassroots Iowa Democrats keep trying to defeat him. He was first elected in 2002 but the only time the DCCC actually opposed him was when Christie Vilsack ran against him in 2012. He beat her 53-45% and they each spent over $3 million. The DCCC chipped in a nominal $94,773, although Pelosi's House Majority PAC kicked in a more reasonable $827,016. In 2014 Jim Mowrer ran against King and the DCCC had already written off the district, spending zero (same as Pelosi's PAC) and it was the same last year, when Kim Weaver-- who's running again in 2018-- gave it a shot. Trump won the district 60.9% to 33.5%. (Romney hadn't done nearly as well, only beating Obama there 53.4-45.3% in 2012.) Last year King did about the same as Trump, beating Weaver by around 80,000 votes-- 61.4% to 38.6%. She should do better against King next year without the highly unpopular Clinton dragging her down. Today the DCCC was fundraising off King's racist statements-- Help Defeat Steve King!-- but are once again refusing to give Kim the time of day. How are they going to use your money to defeat Steve King? What liars; no wonder people hate the Democratic establishment! Please contribute directly to Kim Weaver's campaign here.

The Dutch Trump-- Worse Than The Dutch Oven

Look, I like a good harira and a sumptuous tagine as much as anyone. But I haven't been to Morocco more than a dozen times because of either. I first visited Morocco early in 1969; it was my first trip to a "non-Western" country. I loved everything about it, but it was the generosity and welcoming nature of the Moroccan people that blew my mind. That's not just why I keep returning but it was in part why I immediately embarked on a 2 year journey that took me through Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan, all Muslim-majority countries (as well as India which has over 170 million Muslims-- considerably more people, of all faiths, that live in Russia or Mexico).

1969 was also the first time I visited Holland, though more briefly than my stay in Morocco. Eventually though, I settled down in Amsterdam, got a job and lived there for almost 4 years. I wasn't happy a couple weeks ago when Dutch Trumpist politician Geert Wilders referred to Moroccan immigrants as "scum" while campaigning among Dutch versions of the Trump voters. What always shocks me about racists like the average Trump supporter and like Wilders is that they feel perfectly comfortable chastising an entire race or ethnic group based on their experience with generally desperate impoverished immigrants.

Campaigning, in his own weird way, is what Wilders is doing now. Even as Putin installs neo-Nazi Marine Le Pen (first round April 23, runoff May 7) as president of France, he has a March 15 general election in Holland to win-- for Wilders. Wilders' party, the far right PVV is on track to electing the most members of the House, doubling its number since the 2012 general election. Is he even worse than Trump? The NY Times described him as wanting "to end immigration from Muslim countries, tax head scarves and ban the Quran... omnipresent on social media but lives as a political phantom under police protection, rarely campaigning in person and reportedly sleeping in a different location every night. He has structured his party so that he is the only official, giving him the liberty to remain, above all things, in complete control, and a provocateur and an uncompromising verbal bomb thrower." It's not likely he'll be able to put a coalition together that makes him prime minister next month but he could exercise effective control over the whatever dysfunctional Dutch government is formed. Like Señor Trumpanzee, he's "unafraid to say things in the most direct, divisive, dismissive, and often disparaging and insulting of ways [and] many of his supporters feel buoyed and relieved that he is giving voice to what they cannot say, or feel they are not supposed to say." Sound familiar?

Geert Wilders, far-right icon, is one of Europe’s unusual politicians, not least because he comes from the Netherlands, one of Europe’s most socially liberal countries, with a centuries-long tradition of promoting religious tolerance and welcoming immigrants.

How he and his party fare in the March 15 elections could well signal how the far right will do in pivotal elections in France, Germany and possibly Italy later this year, and ultimately determine the future of the European Union. Mr. Wilders (pronounced VIL-ders) has promised to demand a “Nexit” referendum on whether the Netherlands should follow Britain’s example and leave the union.

“The Netherlands is kind of a bellwether, a lot of trends manifest themselves here first,” said Hans Anker, a Dutch political strategist who has worked both in the Netherlands and the United States.

“I wouldn’t rule out that Wilders could be prime minister,” he added. “This one is fundamentally unpredictable.”

Remarkably, Mr. Wilders, 53, has managed to build a movement despite his infrequent public appearances. Living under threat since the police discovered plots against him in 2004 has turned him into a politician ahead of his time, using the internet and later social media to talk to voters without the filter of journalists.

It has proved a particularly effective means of reaching disillusioned citizens. Other politicians have followed his lead but almost none have done it as effectively, Dutch experts said.

“He’s the most strategic, smartest politician out there,” said Sarah de Lange, a political science professor at the University of Amsterdam. “He’s very skilled. He’s a very good debater. He has media savvy. Internationally, he’s compared to Trump. But with Wilders every tweet is thought through, calculated. With Trump it’s emotional.”

Right now Mr. Wilders’s party looks set to win more seats than any other or to come in second. However, he has historically polled better before elections than he has performed in them. Still, after pollsters underestimated the likelihood of both Brexit and the victory of Donald Trump last year, no one is relying on predictions.

But whether Mr. Wilders’s party wins the most votes, or enters a government, hardly matters. He has already succeeded in one of his main ambitions-- to push politics in the Netherlands to the right and make possible a conversation about shutting out immigrants and dismantling the European Union that was unthinkable not long ago.

...Wilders describes himself as an outsider. Yet he is the third-longest-sitting member of the Dutch Parliament and has spent his life in politics since he was about 28... He maintains the image of being present through carefully dispensing Twitter posts, videos and television interviews. His rare public appearances guarantee that every time he ventures out he attracts a media circus.

Last week, he suspended his campaign appearances altogether after reports that a member of his police security detail was suspected of leaking his movements to a Dutch-Moroccan criminal gang.

Still, he manages to travel to give speeches outside the Netherlands, including at the Republican convention in Cleveland, where he spoke at the “Milo Yiannopoulos Wake Up Party,” a gathering of [severely mentally ill] lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transgender people for Mr. Trump... He is described by political compatriots as friendly with Benjamin Netanyahu, the right-wing Israeli prime minister... [He] seems to try to outdo himself more for shock value and to grab attention than for practical effect, particularly on immigration.

“In 2012 his position was no new mosques in the Netherlands; now it is ‘close all the mosques,’ ” said Michiel Servaes, a Labor Party member in Parliament who has served with him. “In 2012 it was limit asylum seekers to 1,000 a year; now it’s ‘no new asylum seekers.’”

Yet Mr. Wilders’s stands have brought the mainstream right to advocate strict limits on aid for immigrants and helped spawn new small right-wing parties, all with strong positions against immigration and in support of stricter rules to push immigrants to accept Dutch culture, Mr. Servaes said.