Of the Dutch adult population, 15 per cent believes in a far-right conspiracy theory which claims that a leftist “elite” is attempting to gradually engineer the replacement of the white population with non-western immigrants, according to a new survey.
The findings, published on Friday by the news agency ANP and pollsters Kieskompas, show believers in the theory are most likely to support three right-wing political parties: the Forum for Democracy, Geert Wilders’s Freedom Party, and the farmers’ lobby, BBB.
The survey was carried out in June and July and completed by 14,710 adults who were asked to respond to the following proposition: “I think that part of the political elite is deliberately trying to replace the original Dutch population with non-western immigrants.”
It showed that 75 per cent of those who voted for the Forum for Democracy, led by Thierry Baudet, in the November general election, believed in the “replacement theory” – which maintains that the result of the notional replacement will be a “white genocide”.
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In the Freedom Party, the percentage of believers was 42 per cent, and in the conservative farmer-citizen party, BBB, led by Carolien van der Plas, 25 per cent.
There were also followers in the centre-right VVD, previously led by Mark Rutte who was succeeded by Dilan Yesilgoz, and in Pieter Omtzigt’s New Social Contract, each of which registered 9 per cent.
At the start of the summer, two Freedom Party ministers-designate, Marjolein Faber and Reinette Klever, were forced to renounce their use of the term “replacement theory” in social media posts and speeches in order to have their appointments ratified by parliament.
Given the new coalition’s majority and the backing of Mr Wilders, both had their appointments pushed through. Ms Faber is now minister for asylum and migration, while Ms Klever is minister for foreign trade, including development aid.
In 2018 Mr Wilders appeared to support the replacement notion, claiming the Netherlands was “being replaced with mass immigration from non-western Islamic countries” and referring to Rotterdam as “the port of Eurabia”.
In line with his more moderate tone during the election, however, he insisted it was “not racist” to express concerns about how the Netherlands was changing due to a more ethnically diverse population.
As far back as 2022, the national counterterrorism co-ordinator warned that the “normalisation” of belief in the replacement theory in politics and wider society was “a worrying development”.
The security service, AIVD, has also labelled population replacement a “right-wing extremist conspiracy theory”. Recently appointed premier, Dick Schoof, is a former boss of the service.
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