“What nerve Yesilgöz has,” he remarked.
Wilders’ far-right PVV stormed to victory in elections last November, doubling its seats and becoming the Netherlands’ largest party. The PVV was joined by the liberal VVD, the newly founded centrist NSC and populist BBB to form a coalition in July after more than seven months of talks.
While the four governing parties broadly agree on tough immigration and integration policies, there are “notable differences” among them on specifics that have only sharpened after last week, said Matthijs Rooduijn, a political scientist at the University of Amsterdam.
“NSC is significantly less confrontational and radical compared to the other coalition partners,” he said, adding that the “renewed debate on integration” in the aftermath of the Amsterdam violence “has again brought to light fundamental tensions, particularly between NSC and PVV.”
Those tensions emerged during an occasionally heated debate on Wednesday in the Dutch parliament, when Wilders called for the perpetrators of the violence to be stripped of their Dutch citizenship, a plan backed by the VVD and BBB and opposed by the opposition. NSC chief van Vroonhoven was more circumspect, saying the possibility should be “investigated.”
“While NSC is less outspoken, it does at least not block the government looking into this,” said Tom Louwerse, associate professor of political science at Leiden University.
“But that may be the crucial thing: It is one thing to explore the possibility of taking away Dutch citizenship for those convicted of anti-Semitism, but it’s another thing to implement such a measure.”
