Geert Wilders’ New Book

Geert Wilders announced today that he plans to publish a new book early in 2011. Our Flemish correspondent VH has translated an article for the occasion from De Telegraaf:

Wilders will publish book on Islam

[December 31, 2010] PVV leader Geert Wilders wants to publish a book about his views on Islam during the first half of next year. So he says in an interview published today, Friday, in the printed special edition of the Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf.

“The book is especially for the U.S. market [English language market], and is about how we would be better able to fight Islamization worldwide. We can do a lot in the Netherlands, but we also want to give an international message to the Arab world, that Islamization is being firmly counterattacked by a party that has a lot to say here,” Wilders says in the newspaper.

In 2005, the PVV leader also published a book. This was a short autobiography, titled “Kies voor vrijheid” [Choose Freedom].

VH notes that on April 19, 2005 the first edition of Wilders’ book Choose Freedom was made available in bookstores. Here is a quote from Martin Bosma’s book The Pseudo-Elite of the Counterfeiters concerning the event (pp. 33-34), also translated by VH:

A small publisher approaches us for a book. An fine opportunity. We spend whole weekends scraping material together for it. The publisher wants to get the book on the market, but on the condition that he will remain anonymous. He is afraid of the consequences. Thus, the Group Wilders becomes the official publisher. Many bookstores do not want us for a book-signing session. The security argument is not mentioned often then. What it comes down to is that they find Wilders too vulgar. Hylco Wijnants, director of bookstore Scheltema in Amsterdam: “Look, if he had written a book about which all of us here in the store would have said: […] we find that opinion very important […] we would certainly have cared less about security.”

Book-signing sessions are hell, because they require an overdose of security measures. With the bookshop Paagman in The Hague, we are very much welcome. The DKDB [Royal Dutch Private Security Service] turns the bookstore into a fortress. When walking to it, I notice how much appeal our voice has already had. People are queuing far around the corner; some have been there for hours.

Publicity remains an uphill battle. It is clear: in the media no one is waiting for us. Immigration is no longer an issue, as the people who matter have decided. Here and there still are some minor issues, but they are being resolved. We are actually sort of a vestige of something that is no longer is an issue. So they find.

We’d better go for it a little harder. My computer becomes a “stalinorgel” [nickname for a multiple rocket launcher — translator] with which I launch a barrage of press messages into the world. A day without parliamentary questions is a day wasted. With the question: “Will you then maybe want that as an exclusive?” I try to increase their value to journalists. By about now I have a list with hundreds of mailing addresses to hundreds of journalists, media, columnists, and anyone who might be interested. They are being kept informed of everything we do. Columnist Rob Hoogland one day writes in the newspaper De Telegraaf that we rage as Jehovahs. I view it as a compliment.

Returning to De Telegraaf:

Wilders in the interview speaks about “a lot of” international ambitions. “In any case we want to get the International Freedom Alliance — the anti-Islam organization, that is — really off the ground and into action. This will become really big.”

But first, on March 2 next year, there will be the provincial elections in the Netherlands, which will lead to a new Senate. Wilders is hoping for ten to fifteen seats in the 100 seat 75-seat Senate. He does not yet know who will become PVV fraction leader there.

Wilders is convinced that the PVV is not a temporary movement, as CDA [Christian Democrat] Defense Minister Hans Hillen said in a recent interview. Wilders: “The Party for Freedom is much more than Geert Wilders alone. If tomorrow something would happen to me, I do not think the party would collapse. More and more people will hear the voice of the PVV. We are going to put an even bigger stamp on the Netherlands.

Wilders himself is ready for a next step, with future elections. “It just might be that at some future time the PVV will become the largest party, and I will become prime minister. I know at least one thing for sure: we will conquer the Netherlands even more than we have done up until now.”