That's because he and the PVV differ from most of Europe's other nationalist, anti-immigrant parties.

CENTERFORSECURITYPOLICY: Daniel Pipes on the Geert Wilders Trial

At elections in 2010, the PVV, which had been founded only five years earlier, used an anti-Islam platform to become the third-largest Dutch party.

ECONOMIST: Europe��s far right: Culture matters more | The

Fiercely anti-immigrant, the Freedom Party (PVV), claims to trace its ideological roots back to the ideas of the Enlightenment and to defend them against culturally different newcomers.

ECONOMIST: Europe��s far right

The PVV is politically mainstream, with its roots lying not in neo-Fascism, nativism, conspiricism, antisemitism, or other forms of extremism, but in libertarianism and mainstream conservatism. (Wilders publicly emulates Ronald Reagan.) In addition, Wilders is a charismatic, savvy, principled, and outspoken leader who has rapidly become the most dynamic political force in the Netherlands.

CENTERFORSECURITYPOLICY: Daniel Pipes on the Geert Wilders Trial