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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
World
Ashifa Kassam European Community affairs correspondent

‘Open hostility has become normalised’: Dutch Muslims fear rise of far right as general election looms

Wilders with finger up raised
Geert Wilders of the far-right Freedom party (PVV) makes a point during a televised debate for the leading candidates in the run-up to the election. Photograph: Sem van der Wal/EPA

The drawing depicted two women; a young blonde with a friendly expression and a scowling older woman wearing a headscarf. On top of the image was a nod to this month’s general election in the Netherlands, along with the phrase “The choice is yours.”

The social media post, made by the far-right, anti-Muslim politician Geert Wilders, prompted a record 14,000 complaints to the country’s anti-discrimination hotline. “Many of those who called to report the image compared it to Nazi propaganda from the second world war,” the hotline said in a statement, adding that the 19 anti-discrimination agencies associated with the hotline had flagged the post to police, amid concerns that it could be an incitement to hatred.

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