Thierry Baudet


Thierry Henri Philippe Baudet is a Dutch author and politician. He has been Leader of Forum for Democracy since he founded it in 2016. A member of the House of Representatives since 2017, he has also served as the party's parliamentary leader since then.

Biography

Baudet was born in Heemstede to a family of partial Walloon and Indonesian ancestry.
Baudet is a eurosceptic and opposed to multiculturalism. Baudet is an advocate for a return to nation states. In 2014, he gave a speech at the Flemish nationalist event IJzerwake. He also spoke at several Vlaams Belang conferences. Baudet has stated that his conservative political convictions have been largely influenced by two events in his first year as a history undergraduate in Amsterdam: the September 11 attacks and the assassination of Pim Fortuyn.
In 2016, following the parliamentary win of FvD, Baudet gave a controversial speech, expressing his belief that "Europe lives in a cultural and spiritual vacuum", forgetting that the western civilization once "confidently spread to every corner of the world".
Baudet used to have a newspaper column in NRC Handelsblad, and was published in Le Monde, PressEurope and European Ideas. Baudet has called himself "the most important intellectual of the Netherlands".

Member of the House of Representatives

In the general election of 2017 his newly founded party won two seats in the House of Representatives, Baudet being elected alongside Theo Hiddema.

Political positions and opinions

Baudet is a national conservative and eurosceptic, advocating for both Netherlands' exit from the European Union and its eventual dissolution. He is against unskilled immigration into the Netherlands. In a speech he spoke about immigration causing a homeopathic dilution and in an interview he said he wants to preserve the native cultures and ethnicities of Europe as they are. He is opposed to Ukraine joining the European Union. Forum for Democracy set up the 2016 Dutch Ukraine–European Union Association Agreement referendum with the GeenStijl website and the Burgercomité EU association, in which Baudet voted no.
In November 2016 Baudet co-signed a letter initiated by the German journalist Billy Six which requested Donald Trump to press for a new investigation regarding Flight MH17. In 2020 his WhatsApp chats were leaked to media, revealing close contacts with Vladimir Kornilov demonstrating significant influence Kornilov had on Baudet's actions on Ukraine, the referendum and future anti-NATO campaigns. In the chats with his FvD colleagues Baudet also alluded to financial support from Kornilov.
Baudet has a strong opinion on arts, the topic of his book Oikofobie, and considers non-Western art and Western post-1900 modernism in visual arts inferior to Western Realism, encourages education and programmation of tonal music opposed to atonal music and dislikes modern post-1950 architecture. In reaction to this, Musicologist Yuri Landman warned Baudet for approaching the concept of degenerate art with his conservative criticism.
Baudet frequently speaks about the perceived existence of a "party cartel", in which the main ruling parties of the country divide power among themselves and conspire towards the same goals, despite claiming to be competitors. Baudet is not religious, but he is sympathetic to Christian values. In an interview, he called himself an "agnostic cultural Christian."
Baudet is critical of Islam and has expressed concern about both high levels and lack of assimilation of migrants from Islamic societies. He has stated his disagreement with the proposals made by fellow Dutch politician Geert Wilders to ban copies of the Koran whilst also praising Wilders as someone who "has put on the agenda the significant problem that we have with radical Islam in our time and Muslim immigration." Baudet has also called for Islamic schools in the Netherlands to sign up with Western values and has criticised both Dutch and wider European handling of immigration and assimilation, stating "On the one hand you let in untold numbers of people from a completely different culture than your own. And on the other you’re not doing anything to impose your own culture on them. It’s the worst of both worlds." During the 2017 Dutch general election Baudet was one of the few Dutch politicians who said he would form a coalition with Wilders' Party for Freedom.
In February 2018, Baudet was confronted with the question whether there is a relation between IQ and race in a debate with Femke Halsema. Hiddema and the number two on Baudet's party list for the 2018 Dutch municipal elections in Amsterdam, Yernaz Ramautarsing, stated they believed it to be true while Baudet refused to answer the question. Deputy Prime Minister Kajsa Ollongren stated that Forum for Democracy is a bigger threat than the Party for Freedom and that members have an unhealthy fascination for race differences; Baudet made a complaint for defamation at an Amsterdam police station. Hiddema supported him as his advocate. In a debate a few days later, he no longer refused to answer the question and said he thinks that these sorts of questions are better left to the scientist, and that he is not one and can therefore not answer the question confidently.
Baudet has been in close contact with Theodore Dalrymple, wrote his PhD-thesis with Roger Scruton and Paul Cliteur and frequently visited Douglas Murray, Jeremy Rabkin and Alain Finkielkraut. He has also had contact with Jared Taylor, Milo Yiannopoulos, Jean-Marie Le Pen and Filip Dewinter, sparking accusations of "far right" or "racist" sympathies. In response, Baudet states that he and the Forum for Democracy "stand for an open, tolerant and democratic Netherlands where people are judged by their individual qualities; not by their social class, color of skin, race, or sexual preference." Baudet says that it is his duty as a politician to speak with people on all sides of the political spectrum, "from left to right, from mainstream to less mainstream."
Baudet is an adherent of the 'Cultural Marxism' conspiracy theory that suggests a calculated effort to destroy western culture by academic and intellectual means. Baudet accuses the European Union of being 'a Cultural Marxist project, with the aim of destroying European Civilization'.

Personal life

Outside of politics, Baudet enjoys playing the piano and had one installed in his parliamentary office in the Hague. In 2018, he was said to be in a relationship with an Iranian born national.

Education