#10 The Radical Right and the Problem of Political Personnel

Radical right parties often struggle to find reliable political figures to staff government posts, and are often the subject of internal chaos and corruption scandals

After each election, the tradition in the Netherlands is to appoint a reasonably neutral and respected political figure who will initiate discussions with different parties to explore the possibilities of forming a new government coalition. The party that secured the most votes is the one that nominates this figure, known in Dutch as the Verkenner (scout). This year marked the first instance where Geert Wilders’s Party for Freedom, which obtained the largest vote share in the election, appointed the scout. Last Friday, the PVV selected one of its own senators, named Gom van Strien, to commence talks with the various parties.

On Monday, Gom van Strien had resigned as scout before his task had even started. Over the weekend, it came to light that Van Strien had been involved in a case of fraud and bribery at his former employer, a company tasked with generating income from patents from research conducted at Utrecht University. An investigation by Deloitte revealed that Van Strien may have set up a company with his wife and a neighbour (!) as shareholders to funnel about 2 million EUR from the Utrecht University spinoff company, while concealing their own interests. Wilders said he was unaware of this affair.

It is not the first time that a member of Wilders’s political party is embroiled in a case of fraud. In 2017, the former spokesperson of the party and chairman of the Limburg party group was sentenced to 14 months in prison for stealing 177’000 EUR from the party coffers. At least some of it was used to buy large quantities of cocaine that he got delivered directly to the parking lot of the lower house of parliament. The former spokesperson partly justified his cocaine use by the psychological strain of working for Wilders:

'His questions were commands. If he wanted something, he'd send an email. I had to confirm with 'ok.' If I didn't, within half a minute I'd get a message: 'see email.' If I still didn't do anything, I'd get a text: 'why aren't you responding?' If it took too long again, I'd be called by the secretary. He himself almost never called. In case the secretary called saying that Geert wanted to see me, I had to drop everything and go to his room. There, he immediately stated what he wanted. Sometimes he wanted to know how he could appear on TV on the same day. Within fifteen minutes, I had to come up with an idea"

There are other examples of either gross incompetence, corruption, fraud, chaos, dysfunction or simply strange things within the party. One of the re-elected PVV MPs in this parliament has been investigated for unduly claiming transport costs for commuting from his mom’s house at the other end of the country, while he lived close to the Hague. More significantly, NRC published a long piece two years ago - the details are quite sordid - documenting how he may have coerced his former partner to have sex with his personal bodyguards.

The security guards did not send an invoice when they accompanied Graus on trips around the country. However, they did have sex with his wife, encouraged by the MP, according to NRC, according to audio clips submitted. It happened in hotels and saunas rented by Graus and also in a PVV office in the Lower House.

He allegedly felt threatened for his life, but parliament wouldn’t consider the threat important enough to provide a security detail. His feeling of insecurity was partly why he secretly recorded all his conversations, including with Wilders. Wilders didn’t step in, and kept him aboard.

In another strange turn of events, one of Wilders’s former lieutenants and most virulent critics of Islam in the lower house became a Muslim, a process which according to him started with trying to write a book against Islam (!).

This pattern of chaos is not unique to the Dutch party for Freedom but seems commonplace among radical right parties. There is the strange video that emerged of HC Strache, the leader of the Austrian FPOe, accepting a potential bribe from a dubious Russian oligarch, leading to his downfall. Marine Le Pen used money from the European parliament to pay for things unrelated to her activity as MEP, and accepted to pay back about 330’000 EUR. Why do these things happen? Why do radical right parties seem especially corrupt and chaotic?

I see a number of possible reasons, namely a) that the the ideology of these parties favours the self-selection and recruitment of a particular type of individual, and b) the internal structure of these parties lets this corruption go unchecked.

First, because the ideology of these parties is based on the idea that politicians are corrupt and in league against “the common people”, there may be a tendency to simply start believing this idea and conform: if everyone is on the take, why shouldn’t we? At least this may be the way the type of people who self-selected in these parties may rationalise their behaviour. If you have little trust in other people - and we know that radical right voters have lower trust in people - you have a greater incentive to screw them over before they do it to you. Recent research has even shown that radical right voters are more likely to select corrupt candidates.

The second issue pertains to the internal structure of these parties, which is more prone to allowing such types of behavior to go unchecked. Wilders's PVV serves as a case in point. Formally, there exists only one party member, and that is Geert Wilders. There is a lack of internal democracy, party structure, mechanisms of accountability, checks and balances, and a reluctance to establish a competent party elite. Similar to autocratic systems, ideological loyalty is more rewarded than competence, and as we're aware, autocracies are often marred by corruption. The party's hierarchical structure, centered around a dominant leader, also stifles internal discussion. When disagreements arise, there's no mechanism in place for resolution, leading to internal chaos and fragmentation. This has occurred several times in the past, resulting in the expulsion of members who subsequently formed splinter groups. This is likely to create significant problems for coalition formation, and even more for staffing government posts in a context where most party officials have no experience of government.