Much of the Freedom Party’s publicity is generated by its controversial leader Geert Wilders, who brought the party to an unexpected electoral victory last summer, snagging 23 seats in the Dutch Parliament and becoming the country’s third largest party.
The party’s winning platform included planks such as banning the Quran and mosque-building and implementing a “head-rag tax.” After the election, Mr. Wilders said on national television, "The Netherlands chose more security, less crime, less immigration, and less Islam.’
Wilders was acquitted earlier this summer of charges of inciting hatred against Muslims. The acquittal is “a sign that his once radical views have become mainstream in a country that for decades was viewed as one of the most liberal and tolerant in the world. ‘The judgment doesn't turn the tide,’ says [Egbert] Dommering, [a lawyer and professor at the University of Amsterdam], ‘but it's symbolic of what's going on in the Netherlands’,” Time reports.