Europe is in shock. Geert Wilders—variously called “far-right,” an “anti-Islamist populist,” and the Dutch Donald Trump—won last Wednesday’s election in the Netherlands. His party is now the biggest in the Dutch parliament. For years, Wilders has been an outcast, considered too toxic by mainstream politics and too extreme by the overwhelmingly liberal media. And yet he has won—and not by a small margin.

Europe is in shock. We are not.

That is because we are both Dutch—and because we both left the Netherlands because of the phenomena that have now brought Wilders to power.

What we have witnessed will tell you not just about how Wilders could win a landslide victory in one of the most liberal countries in Europe, but about what could soon be coming to countries like France, Germany, and other liberal democracies who fail to grapple with the dual challenge of mass migration and assimilation and ignore the very real concerns of their citizens.

[Brexit was the wake-up call, and that was created in large part by the consequences of the utterly stupid US-EU decision to decapitate the Moammar Qaddafi regime and touch off a massive refugee crisis. The crises of both mass migration and cultural dislocation hit at the same time, and the people of the UK were the first to balk at the EU’s flabby multiculturalism ideology. Brexit has its flaws, but its incentives are easily grasped and understood. Eastern Europe has continually balked at Brussels’ policies, but now the backlash has begun in formerly progressive-elite nations like the Netherlands. And it won’t stop there. — Ed]