Geert Wilders’ Party for Freedom (PVV) could gain a plurality of seats in the general elections in the Netherlands Wednesday, an achievement which many might have believed unthinkable only a few years ago.

The Netherlands, however, like so many other countries across the West, has witnessed growing disillusionment with the globalist world order, the failures of multiculturalism, and the dangers of mass migration — disillusionment that has propelled a former fringe figure to the heart of national politics.

Wilders and his party appear to have risen precisely because the Dutch people cherish their tradition of tolerance.

Britain has UKIP and Brexit, the United States has Donald Trump, and France has Marine Le Pen and the Front National. The Netherlands has Geert Wilders and the PVV.

Wilders formed the PVV in 2006 following his expulsion from the center-right People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD) for his hard-line views on Islam and frequent willingness to criticize the party line — not exactly a desirable quality in a party spokesman.

In the 2010 elections, following on the heels of the financial crisis and amid rising anti-E.U. sentiment, the PVV gained an impressive 15 seats, coming in third place overall. In 2012, however, it lost nine seats, becoming only the fifth-largest party in Parliament. Tomorrow, the party is poised to do better than its 2010 showing, and may even receive enough votes to take part in a governing coalition.

That Wilders and the PVV’s growing success are part of a larger, Western-wide revolt against globalism, mass migration, and multiculturalism is plainly evident. Wilders has long worked closely with Le Pen and is a vocal supporter of Donald Trump.

“America regained its national sovereignty, its identity, it reclaimed its own democracy,” Wilders said the day following Trump’s victory. “The lesson for Europeans is that look at America, what America can do we can do as well,” he said.

What is perhaps surprising is that Wilders — who among all the right-wing rebels of the West is perhaps the most outspokenly controversial — has succeeded in a country otherwise famed for its liberal tolerance.

Wilders has been brought up on charges of inciting hatred at least twice for his rhetoric on Islam. He has called the Quran the “Muslim ‘Mein Kampf'” and referred to Moroccan immigrants as “scum.”

In September 2016, he wrote an op-ed for Breitbart News decrying Islam as a “totalitarian ideology aimed at establishing tyrannical power over non-Muslims.”

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“They carry our passports, but they do not belong to us,” Wilders wrote at the time. “They spit on our identity and behave like conquerors.”

While Le Pen speaks of protecting French values and Trump talks of making America great again, Wilders espouses a more Islam-centric agenda. Although he has on occasion and half-jokingly employed the phrase, “Make the Netherlands Great Again,” his main slogan — as seen clearly on his Twitter page — is unmistakably simple. “Stop Islam.”

Although it might seem counterintuitive that Wilders could do so well in a country that so strongly values its traditions of tolerance, the appeal becomes more clear upon a closer inspection of the Netherlands’ recent history.

Anti-Islamist activist Ayaan Hirsi Ali is a Dutch citizen and former Dutch politician. In 2002, independent candidate Pim Fortuyn, a gay rights activist and outspoken critic of Islam, was brutally assassinated by a radical leftist for “scapegoating” Muslims.

In 2004, Dutch filmmaker and noted liberal Theo van Gogh, who had produced a documentary with Ali called “Submission” detailing the brutal treatment of women in the Islamic world, was murdered by Dutch-Moroccan Mohammed Bouyeri for insulting Islam.

Meanwhile, the Dutch have watched as the nations around them suffer from growing instances of Islamic terror and other problems imported along with masses of unassimilated Muslim migrants.

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To the south lies Belgium, and beyond it France, which have both suffered multiple Islamic terrorist attacks in the last five years. To the east is Germany, which has seen numerous low-scale incidents of Islamic violence and a growing number of sexual assaults committed by migrants.

Wilders and his party appear to have risen precisely because the Dutch people cherish their tradition of tolerance, and desire to defend it fiercely from the perceived intolerant culture being imported through mass migration.