FEARMONGERING

U.S. Groups Funded Geert Wilders

Politician for far-right Dutch party.

Dutch politician Geert Wilders received financial backing from American groups that feared the spread of Islam, according to a new Reuters report. Wilders’s Freedom Party, which campaigns against immigration from non-Western countries and seeks to ban the building of mosques in the Netherlands, operates under Dutch funding regulations that do not require it to disclose its donors. Wilders received funding from the Philadelphia-based Middle East Forum when he faced charges of inciting racial hatred in 2010 and 2011. Wilders has received either financial or moral support from conservative activists in the United States including David Horowitz and Pamela Geller, according to the report.