Wilders regularly shares post by racist X account, extending its reach

PVV leader Geert Wilders shared posts by the racist X account ‘Radio Genoa’ at least 30 times. The account posts racist and hateful tweets every day, getting almost 3 billion views in the past year. Of all parliamentarians, Wilders is by far the largest distributor of these posts, according to an analysis by research platform Pointer in collaboration with VRT and IRPI.

Radio Genoa’s posts mainly target asylum seekers, Muslims, and people of color, depicting them as aggressive and “a danger to our culture” and society, according to Pointer. The account has 650,000 followers but reaches many more people through others like Wilders sharing its posts.

Pointer analyzed the almost 3,000 posts by Radio Genoa on X between 1 April 2023 and 1 April 2024. It found that the account's most common posts contain terms like “culture enrichers” or “culture enrichment” coupled with a video of people of color committing violence, usually against a white person. There is typically no context to the video. Pointer found over 500 such posts. One such post consists of a video showing two men of color attacking another man and the text: “Cultural enrichment with axe, knives, and glass bottles in Forli.”

Wilders shared posts by Radio Genoa at least 30 times on his own X account in the year analyzed - the most of any parliamentarian, Pointer reported. He shared a post by the racist account in early December, a week after Wilders won the elections in the Netherlands.

“These types of accounts try to turn fear into hate,” Bharath Ganesh, a researcher at the University of Amsterdam, explained to Pointer. “Researchers call this ‘trading up the chain.’ You start with a no-context video. This is accompanied by suggestive text, something about cultural enrichment, ‘this is what Muslims are like,’ or ‘this is what immigrants do and Europe is going under.’ Maybe someone low in a political party sees the tweet, or an opinion maker, And then it ends up with a politician who shares the post on his own page. Such a politician lends legitimacy to the original tweet: suddenly, a random video is considered proof that fear is well-founded.”

Pointer’s episode on Radio Genoa will air on KRO-NCRV on NPO 2 on Thursday evening.