Geert Wilders, who is presently in negotiations in his native Netherlands to become the next Prime Minister after a populist-right surge in recent elections has been exchanging thoughts on migration and birthrates with Elon Musk.
The “collapse of our own culture and Western values” due to open borders and mass migration is the “biggest problem we face today”, veteran populist and possibly next Prime Minister of the Netherlands Geert Wilders and Tesla billionaire Elon Musk agreed. The pair swapped messages on Musk owned-X (née Twitter) in response to a post about “population collapse”, noting how in nations around the world the fertility rate is falling to record lows.
One nation cited was the Netherlands, which as previously reported is continuing to experience a serious downward birth trend as more couples decide to have no children at all. Elon Musk wrote in response that: “The biggest problem that humanity faces is population collapse”.
Developing the point, Dutch populist Geert Wilders — who has lived under constant police protection for years after a fatwa was issued against him by a Pakistani Islamic cleric for his remarks about Islam, including that the Quran is a “fascist book” — said the birthrate crisis was being exacerbated by the migration crisis. He said: “The biggest problem we face today… is a collapse of our own culture and Western values due to open borders, mass immigration, an uncontrollable amount of non-western asylum seekers and last but not least too many weak politicians advocating cultural relativism.”
Musk replied that he agreed, but that birthrates were a problem even in countries with very low migration “like Korea and Japan”. Pointing to the latest statistics out of Wilders’ native Netherlands, Elon — who has 11 children of his own and who has previously told Europeans to have more children — continued that: “If the birth rate stays as low as it is, the Dutch nation will die out by its own hand.”
The Total Fertility Rate (TFR) for the Netherlands has fallen to 1.49 children per woman, the lowest figure recorded in a bulletin from the nation’s government’s statistical body, the Central Bureau for Statistics (CBS). The number of children couples who procreate have has not changed, the Bureau said, but more couples are choosing childlessness instead.
… The body reported: “The decline was solely due to increasing childlessness; the average number of children per mother did not decrease. The average number of children per woman did, because there were fewer and fewer mothers.
The discussion summarises a rarely-heard side of the debate on demographic decline, whereby many wealthier nations are experiencing serious natural wastage of population as year on year for decades deaths have outstripped births. While governments could take a lead on allowing a society to flourish where families are economically viable and not actively punished by the state, the overwhelmingly favoured remedy for establishment politicians almost everywhere is mass migration.
A group of nations including the United Kingdom and Germany are being predominantly grown by mass migration, and the United States is in a similar situation.
Hungary in Europe is an outlier in terms of attempting to tackle demographic decline, as it reshapes the government in a bid to give nationals the space to have the families they want. As reported in 2020, pro-family policies had seen Huingary’s birthrate increase five per cent in a year, thanks to initiatives like cash loans to newlyweds which are forgiven once the third child is born to the couple.
Geert Wilders led the Party for Freedom to victory in the November Dutch elections. Already performing well in the polls, public outrage at the Hamas terror attack on Israel and the public celebrations of the slayings on the streets of European cities saw his anti-mass migration and anti-Islamification platform propelled to a strong first place.
As is the case in many European political systems it is commonplace for no one party to be large enough to form a government alone, and Wilders must now bring other parties onboard to build a governing coalition, a process that can take hundreds of days. Wilders and three other right-wing parties including the legacy centrist globalists, a pro-reform and anti-mass migration group, and the now famous farmer protest party have entered an advanced stage of talks which will run until February at least.
While the outcome of the negotiations is by no means certain, veteran populist and former Breitbart News correspondent Geert Wilders is the first in line to be the next Prime Minister of the Netherlands.
While Wilders is known for his trenchant positions on Islam, he has been talking about demographic decline for years. He wrote for Breitbart London in 2017:
The bell is tolling for Europe. All the warning signs are turned on red. A demographic catastrophe is in the making. If Europe fails to make a stand, its Judeo-Christian civilization is about to be blown away… This is not what we want. We have to stop the suicidal madness of the EU elites. We must stop the millions wanting to come to the ‘house of Europe’, because this house is our house.
If we leave the door open, we will soon be driven out of it. We will lose our identity and our freedom. Our existence is at stake. We must safeguard it. This can only be done if we have to courage to adopt a new strategy. As Winston Churchill said: “Courage is the greatest virtue because it guarantees all the rest.”
… Instead of being soft, Europe must be tough. If we fail, our national identity will be in danger, our freedom will be in jeopardy, the Europe we know will cease to exist. And, as the Pew figures show, it will cease to exist soon.