Thierry Baudet

Baudet was born in Heemstede into a family of partial Walloon ancestry. His forefather Pierre Joseph Baudet immigrated to the Batavian Republic in 1795 when his home in Hainaut was annexed by the French Republic, fleeing from conscription into the French Army. Baudet's great-great-grandmother Ernestine van Heemskerck was born in the Dutch East Indies and was of partly Indonesian parentage.[2]

Baudet attended the Haarlem gymnasium, i.e. a high school with compulsory Latin and Ancient Greek.[3] His first degree, from the University of Amsterdam, was in history, and from 2007 to 2012 he was a lecturer at Leiden University, where in 2012 he graduated as a Doctor of Philosophy with a thesis on national identity, European identity, and multiculturalism.[4] This was co-directed by the philosopher Roger Scruton and was published in Dutch as The Assault on the Nation-State. An English translation was also published, called The Significance of Borders.[3]

Thierry Baudet in 2018

Baudet was a post-doctoral fellow at Tilburg University in 2013.[4] He also wrote a newspaper column in NRC Handelsblad from 2011 to 2012.[4]

In late 2016, he founded the Forum for Democracy (FvD, Dutch: Forum voor Democratie), which became a political party, and he was elected along with Theo Hiddema to the House of Representatives in the 2017 general election.

Baudet had his personal piano installed in his parliamentary office in the Hague. In 2018, he said that his current girlfriend was an Iranian refugee.[3]

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[5] and in an interview he said he wants to preserve the native cultures and ethnicities of Europe as they are.[6] 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.[7]

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 Malaysia Airlines Flight 17.[8] 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 disagreed with the conclusions drawn from these texts and said that the text messages were quoted out of context.[9]

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.[10]

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.[11] Baudet is not religious, but he is sympathetic to Christian values. In an interview, he called himself an "agnostic cultural Christian."[12]

Baudet believes that the MH17 flight was shot down by Ukrainians and not by Russians.[13]

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. Meanwhile he also praised 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 called for Islamic schools in the Netherlands to sign up with Western values. He has criticised both Dutch, and wider European handling of immigration and assimilation. 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.[14] Baudet has also expressed admiration for Dutch politician Pim Fortuyn and both ideological and personality comparisons between the two men have been made by both Dutch and foreign media.[15][16]

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.[17]

Baudet is an adherent of the Cultural Marxism conspiracy theory[18][19][20] that suggests a calculated effort to destroy Western culture by academic and intellectual means.[21][22][23][24] Baudet accuses the European Union of being 'a Cultural Marxist project, with the aim of destroying European Civilization'.[25]

Baudet has allegedly also stated that COVID-19 was introduced by George Soros to "steal freedom", a claim he denies. He has also allegedly made anti-Semetic comments. Following these claims in November 2020 published by a Dutch senator, Baudet temporarily resigned as leader of the party and the party alledgedly split.[13][26] Soon he came back as a party leader, but many party members left Forum for Democracy, including the majority of the senators and all of the members of the European Parliament.

• 2010: Conservatieve Vooruitgang. De grootste denkers van de 20ste eeuw. (Conservative progress. The greatest thinkers of the 20th century) Ed. with Michiel Visser (Prometheus/Bert Bakker).
• 2011: Revolutionair Verval en de conservatieve vooruitgang in de 18de en 19de eeuw (Revolutionary decline and conservative progress in the 18th and 19th centuries). Ed. with Michiel Visser (Prometheus/Bert Bakker).
• 2012: Pro Europa dus tegen de EU (Pro Europe therefore against the EU) (Elsevier)
• 2012: The Significance of Borders. Why representative government and the rule of law require nation-states (Brill Academic Publishers). PhD Dissertation
• 2012: De aanval op de natiestaat (The attack on the nation state) (Prometheus/Bert Bakker).
• 2013: Oikofobie. De angst voor het eigene (Oikophobia. The fear of home) (Prometheus/Bert Bakker).
• 2014: Thuis in de Tijd (At home in time) Ed. with Geert Mak (Prometheus/Bert Bakker).ISBN 9789035141988
• 2014: Van Bach tot Bernstein. Klassieke muziek voor iedereen (From Bach to Bernstein. Classical music for everyone). With Arie Boomsma. ISBN 9789044627084
• 2014: Voorwaardelijke liefde (Conditional love. Novel.) Amsterdam: Prometheus/Bert Bakker, ISBN 9789044626810
• 2017: Breek het partijkartel! De noodzaak van referenda (Break the Partycartel. The necessity of referendums.) Amsterdam: Prometheus/Bert Bakker, ISBN 9789044633689
• 2018: Van elk waarheen bevrijd (Delivered from all whereto. Novel.) Amsterdam: Prometheus/Bert Bakker, ISBN 9789044637359

Media related to Thierry Baudet at Wikimedia Commons

Wikiquote has quotations related to: Thierry Baudet

• Thierry Baudet at the House of Representatives website
• Thierry Baudet (in Dutch) at the Forum for Democracy website