[28][29] His father worked as a manager for the printing and copying manufacturing company Océ,[30] and had hidden from the Germans during the Second World War, an experience so traumatizing that he refused to physically enter Germany even forty years later.

Reflecting passions that came to the fore later in his career, Wilders took a course in health insurance at the Stichting Opleiding Sociale Verzekeringen in Amsterdam and earned several law certificates at the Dutch Open University.

[37] The Party for Freedom called for a €16 billion tax reduction, a far stricter policy toward recreational drug use, investing more in roads and other infrastructure, building nuclear power plants and including animal rights in the Dutch constitution.

[41][42] This has been partially attributed to timely prosecution attempts against him for hate speech and the travel ban imposed on him by the United Kingdom,[43] as well as dissatisfaction with the Dutch government's response to the global financial crisis of 2008–2009.

[65] Responding to reporters who asked what his reaction was to the election results, Wilders attributed the loss of three seats to a recent lack of important events involving Islam and immigration.

[66] In January 2021, it was revealed by OpenSecrets that American Robert J. Shillman paid nearly $214,000 in 2017 to help Wilders pay for his successful legal defence in an indictment for hate speech against Muslims in general and Moroccans in particular.

[71] During subsequent cabinet formation talks, Wilders announced that he was withdrawing his bid to become prime minister, citing a lack of support from potential coalition partners.

[77] The coalition parties called their migration policy the most stringent and extensive in history, and the agreement included plans to declare an asylum crisis, bypassing initial parliamentary approval.

[80][clarification needed] In December 2024, Wilders visited Israel, where he toured an Israeli settlement in the West Bank and met with President Isaac Herzog and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

The trip came weeks after the International Criminal Court (ICC) had issued an arrest warrant against Netanyahu and defence minister Yoav Gallant, which Wilders criticized, saying that "the world has gone mad".

[81] Wilders generally considers himself to be a right-wing liberal, with a specific mix of positions independent of the European political spectrum and peculiar to iconoclastic Dutch society.

[87] He has made some proposals in the Dutch Parliament inspired by Israeli policies: for example, he supports implementing Israeli-style administrative detention in the Netherlands, a practice heavily criticized by human rights groups but which Wilders calls "common sense".

[88] In a 2023 tweet and jibe against D66, Wilders wrote about the present Netherlands: A country full of asylum profiteers, woke crazies, climate fools, Arabs, non-binaries, farmer haters and quinoa chewers.

[95] On 8 August 2007, Wilders opined in an open letter[96] to the Dutch newspaper De Volkskrant that the Koran, which he called a "fascist book", should be outlawed in the Netherlands, like Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf.

And I can report that they have had enough of burkas, headscarves, the ritual slaughter of animals, so‑called honour revenge, blaring minarets, female circumcision, hymen restoration operations, abuse of homosexuals, Turkish and Arabic on the buses and trains as well as on town hall leaflets, halal meat at grocery shops and department stores, Sharia exams, the Finance Minister's Sharia mortgages, and the enormous overrepresentation of Muslims in the area of crime, including Moroccan street terrorists.

[114] Wilders stated about Israel: "I have visited many interesting countries in the Middle East – from Syria to Egypt, from Tunisia to Turkey, from Cyprus to Iran – but nowhere did I have the special feeling of solidarity that I always get when I land at Ben Gurion International Airport.

[155] Wilders has been both accused of building his popularity on fear and resentment[156][157] and vociferously defended for having the courage to talk openly about the problems unfettered immigration brings with it and the "incompatibility" of fundamentalist Islam with western values.

A panel of Dutch television viewers praised him as "the second best" politician this year (after his outspoken critic Alexander Pechtold), while his colleagues in parliament named him "the second worst" (after Rita Verdonk).

[162] In February 2010, the trailer of a newly published online satirical video on the website of the Dutch radio station FunX, which targets a young urban audience, spoofed a murder attempt on Wilders.

[163] On 2 October 2011 Radio Netherlands Worldwide reported that a retired Dutch politician of the People's Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD) Frits Bolkestein, who is sometime called the 'mentor' of Geert Wilders, "does not share his views".

[152][170] In February 2012, Wilders was accused of anti-Polish sentiment after his party launched a "hotline" website for public complaints specifically about Poles and as well as Bulgarians, Romanians and other Eastern Europeans who are causing a "nuisance".

[174] In March 2014 and during a party meeting in The Hague on the evening of local elections, he sparked widespread controversy when he asked his attending supporters "Do you want, in this city, and in the Netherlands, more or fewer Moroccans?

[180] On 28 July 2015, Vienna's prosecutors' office launched a probe and lodged calls for criminal proceedings against Geert Wilders for allegedly comparing the Quran to Mein Kampf, after Tarafa Baghajati had accused him of hate speech and denigrating religious teachings.

[29][187] In June 2011, disclosure of Wilders's personal finances indicated that he founded a self-administered company one year earlier without reporting this via the public records of the House of Representatives, which he, as a parliamentarian, should have done.

[198][199] His office is located in the most isolated corner of the Dutch Parliament building, and was chosen because potential terrorists can get to it through only one corridor, making it easier for his bodyguards to repel an attack.

[209]In July 2010[210][211] Anwar al-Awlaki published a "death list" in his Inspire magazine, including Wilders, Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Salman Rushdie along with cartoonists Lars Vilks and three Jyllands-Posten staff members: Kurt Westergaard, Carsten Juste, and Flemming Rose.

[212][213][214] Shortly before this publication, it was revealed in The Hague that Dutch law enforcement officers succeeded twice in smuggling a firearm into the parliament buildings and into the guarded headquarters of Wilders' party.

One question posed is how Wilders could be taking part in negotiations on forming a government coalition when he has been indicted for inciting hatred and discrimination, and for insulting a group of persons.

Bowen stated: I have decided not to intervene to deny him a visa because I believe that our democracy is strong enough, our multiculturalism robust enough and our commitment to freedom of speech entrenched enough that our society can withstand the visit of a fringe commentator from the other side of the world.

Anyone who pollutes the integration debate in the Netherlands with poisonous right-wing populism as Wilders has, and advocates prohibition of the Koran by a comparison with Hitler's Mein Kampf, is not welcome in Monschau.