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“There's a proper reawakening across Europe going on”

Europe is closely eyeing conservative shooting star Thierry Baudet who rose to victory in Dutch regional elections, last week. The hyper-photogenic millennial leader has been labelled by the media as the “dandy of the Right”. While Eurocrats in Brussels are anxiously abuzz, the suave 36-year-old is sanguine about the future. ...

Most of the media portrays you as the shooting star of populism, as a poster boy of right-wing extremism. What can you say about the program that you are promoting?

We further what one can call an ‘Australian’ immigration model. By that we mean a fundamentally different approach to immigration. No longer are we going to look at how needy possible immigrants are of our support; we are going to ask ourselves if they are likely to contribute in a positive way to our country. We are very willing in terms of aid programs to support refugee shelters wherever in the world. We're very happy to help them there. But when it comes to immigration, to handing out passports to people, that is something that we're no longer going to make dependent on whether or not the person in question comes from a terrible situation at home, but from the answer to the question what he or she is going to bring to us. We have a fundamentally different approach to immigration from what was dominant in the West for the past several decades. We value the nation, our national identity, as a very important and very positive value that we need to protect.

How do you want to implement this new immigration policy while you're a member of the EU?

Well, that's why we want to leave the EU.

After the elections, you said you won a battle. What does it mean for you to win the war?

There's much more to it. I believe that aesthetically, for example, we've chosen the entirely wrong direction in the West. We've left tonal music behind. We've left realist or mimetic painting behind. We've left traditional architecture behind. I'm deeply opposed to the fundamental philosophical principles of modern architecture. I think it's fundamentally wrong.

You want to turn the clock back?

Absolutely. ...

Socialism, liberalism... Where do you see conservatism in play?

It’s the philosophy that starts from the understanding that we are paradoxical beings. We want to be free and, at the same time, we want to be embedded. We want to be individuals, but we also want to be members of a group. In a proper society, there's an equilibrium there, a delicate balance that has culminated in what we might call “the individual properly understood.” This reached its apex, I believe, in the eighteenth century, and was venerated in that great “swan song of aristocracy”, the nineteenth century. But now the individual has, of course, been “liberated” to an extent that we feel deeply atomized and unhappy. We don't know how to get back to the community anymore. ...

The interview was conducted Monday March 25th in Amsterdam.

Thierry Baudet (1983) is the founder and current political leader of the “Forum for Democracy” (FVD, Forum voor Democratie). In the general elections of 2017 his newly founded party won two seats in the House of Representatives, Baudet being one of the elected. In the provincial elections on March, held on March 20th, 2019, FVD became the strongest party in the Netherlands. He holds a Ph.D. degree in Law and has authored ten books, among them “The Significance of Borders” (2012), two novels, an introduction into Classical Music and several collections of essays.