The Dutch elections on Wednesday sent a shock wave across Europe. Geert Wilders’s far-right Party for Freedom (PVV) became the biggest party in the Netherlands, according to exit polls, winning 37 of the 150 seats in parliament. Never in Dutch postwar history has a far-right party achieved such a massive victory. Among commentators, disbelief and outrage prevail. And yet this rings hollow, because Wilders’s advance was in fact long in the making.

Without doubt, this result is symptomatic of the further radicalization of the Right. Although the themes of the “cost of living” crisis and the democratic accountability of government figured prominently in this election, the politicization of migration was decisive. It has risen in fits and starts over the last decades but became central again when the last government collapsed over the issue. Wilders, the politician who made his peroxide blonde haircut a questionable fashion statement before Donald Trump, drew on the latter to inspire his election slogan: “Dutch people first.”

The liberal-conservative People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD), which pursued ruinous neoliberal policies for thirteen years under outgoing prime minister Mark Rutte, has played a dangerous game with its focus on messaging around migration. The party, led by Dilan Yeşilgöz, incurred heavy losses, dropping from 34 to 24 seats. The newcomer, Pieter Omtzigt’s Christian-democratic New Social Contract (NSC), took 20 seats. Although the center-left alliance under Frans Timmermans (PvdA-Green Left) emerged as the second-largest force, with 25 seats, that is insufficient to counterbalance the overall right-wing shift.