Forum for Democracy (FvD) party leader and member of the Dutch parliament Thierry Baudet was attacked for a second time in as many months after a man wielding a beer bottle assaulted him in a bar during an election campaign gathering, his party said.
The Netherlands holds its general election on Wednesday, November 22nd. Polls suggest Baudet’s right-wing populist party, known as anti-mass migration and eurosceptic, could win four or five seats in the 150-member Dutch parliament.
Baudet was speaking to people in the bar in the northern city of Groningen on Monday evening when he was blindsided by an assailant.
Images posted on X, formerly Twitter, showed the populist politician greeting patrons when a man suddenly and violently hit him at least three times on the side of the head with what appeared to be a green beer bottle. According to the FvD, Baudet was hit on the back of the head with a beer bottle and was also hit on the edge of his temple just next to his eye.
Baudet was immediately escorted out of the bar, while bystanders subdued the assailant, who was later arrested by police.
Baudet was taken to a hospital where he was treated by a trauma surgeon and his FvD party cancelled a campaign event in Zwolle “due to his health and safety.”
Last month, Baudet suffered a concussion after he was attacked at the Ghent University campus in Belgium.
Both assaults sparked furious reactions by Dutch politicians from across the political spectrum and calls for increased security for politicians.
Pieter Omtzigt, MP from the Nieuw Sociaal Contract (NSC) party, condemned the attack on X, saying “We don’t seem to have learned anything from 2002 and Pim Fortuyn.”
According to Nieuwrechts, a group of far-left Antifa activists gathered outside the police station cheering for the perpetrator’s release, one of whom was wearing a t-shirt that read “Pim Fortuyn is dead.”
Pim Fortuyn was a populist anti-immigration politician who was assassinated in 2002 after giving a radio interview while on the campaign trail.
His attacker, Volkert van der Graaf, an animal and environmental rights activist, was arrested at the scene and later sentenced to 18 years in jail.
Van der Graaf was released on parole in 2014.
