The anti Freedom Party videos on the web site Tegenstemwijzer.nl Dissenting Voters' Compass have caused quite a stir. In particular the video called 'Vrijheid' Freedom, in which children quote xenophobic and Islamophobic statements made by Freedom Party leader Geert Wilders has prompted fierce reactions.

On the website of populist newspaper De Telegraaf, many people have condemned the video as 'ridiculous', 'scandalous' and 'disgusting', although a number of people also expressed agreement. Most of the netizens who posted their reaction on the site of conservative magazine Elsevier also condemned the video. About 90,000 people have watched the 'Vrijheid' video since it was first posted on YouTube.

Screw loose

Tegenstemwijzer.nl has been up since Wednesday and - according to the people behind it - has already attracted more than 50,000 visitors. Geert Wilders said he 'could not find words' to express how he felt about the fact that young children were used to make anti-Freedom Party videos: "The people who made this video and the parents who gave permission for their children appear in it really have a screw loose. It's simply too disgusting. I really believed we'd seen just about everything in the pogrom against the Freedom Party and our voters, but this filth really takes the biscuit."

Common decency

A spokesperson for the website said the children in the video are literally quoting Geert Wilders. Director Dana Nechustan wonders why "it would be considered shocking when children quote statements made by a prominent politician." The producers said they felt they had not transgressed the boundaries of common decency.

Tegenstemwijzer.nl is intended for people who would normally vote for either the Christian Democratic CDA or the conservative VVD, but are upset about their collaboration with the Freedom Party, which provides parliamentary support to the CDA-VVD minority cabinet. The site wants to help them choose a different party in the upcoming provincial elections. Tegenstemwijzer.nl was created by a group of people including advertising executives, filmmakers, web designers, internet entrepreneurs, composers and lawyers.

Propositions

The website uses a series of propositions to show per province which election programmes come closest to the ideas held by the person using the voters' compass. To this end, the site uses the same information used by regular voters' compasses, such as stemwijzer.nl and kieskompas.nl.