Thierry Henri Philippe Baudet (Dutch: [ˈtɕɛri boːˈdɛ(t), - bʌuˈdɛ(t)]; born 28 January 1983) is a Dutch politician, author, and self-declared conspiracy theorist. He is the founder and leader of Forum for Democracy (FvD), for which he was a member of the House of Representatives between 2017 and 2026, with the exception of his paternity leave.
Early life Baudet was born in Heemstede into a family of partial Huguenot ancestry. His forefather, Pierre Joseph Baudet, immigrated to the Batavian Republic in 1795 when his home in Hainaut was annexed by the French Republic, fleeing from conscription into the French Army. Baudet's great-great-grandmother, Ernestine van Heemskerck, was born in the Dutch East Indies and was of partly Indonesian parentage. Baudet attended the Latin School of Haarlem, a college preparatory school with compulsory Latin and Ancient Greek. His first degree, from the University of Amsterdam, was in history, and from 2007 to 2012 he was a PhD student at Leiden University, where in 2012 he graduated as a Doctor of Philosophy with a thesis on national identity, European identity, and multiculturalism. The dissertation was supervised by professor Paul Cliteur and the British philosopher Roger Scruton, and was published in Dutch as De aanval op de natiestaat (The Attack on the Nation-State).
Career
Baudet was a post-doctoral fellow at Tilburg University in 2013. He also wrote a newspaper column in NRC Handelsblad from 2011 to 2012. In 2016, he founded the Forum for Democracy (FvD, Dutch: Forum voor Democratie), which became a political party, and he was elected along with Theo Hiddema to the House of Representatives in the 2017 general election. In 2018, he was awarded the Prize for Liberty by the Flemish classical-liberal think tank Libera!. On 26 October 2023, Baudet was assaulted with an umbrella upon his arrival at Ghent University. On 20 November 2023, he was hospitalised after being attacked with a bottle at a cafe in Groningen. Baudet stepped down from the House of Representatives on 12 January 2025 for his paternity leave. He was replaced by Lidewij de Vos. He returned on 3 March 2025. He again stepped down from the House on 11 January 2026 to focus on the campaign for the March 2026 municipal elections and on the subsequent formation of local coalition governments. He intended to return in the summer.
Political views At the start of his political and writing career, Baudet was a national conservative and Eurosceptic, advocating for both the Netherlands' exit from the European Union (EU) and the eventual dissolution of the EU, as well as campaigning against unskilled immigration into the Netherlands. In a speech he described immigration as causing a "homeopathic dilution" of the Dutch culture, and in an interview said he wants to preserve the native cultures and ethnicities of Europe as they are. In 2017, Baudet expressed admiration for murdered Dutch politician Pim Fortuyn, and both ideological and personality comparisons between the two men were made by both Dutch and overseas media. Since 2020, journalists, political analysts, former FvD politicians and political acquaintances of Baudet have described his views as having changed and shifted from conservatism and Dutch nationalism towards conspiracy theories, radical right, nativist and in some cases neo-fascist and antisemitic opinions. In 2024, Dutch political historian Robin te Slaa argued that Baudet "at the very least flirts with fascist ideology" while University of Amsterdam scholar Jan Willem Duyvendak has argued Baudet employs racial nativism and ethno-nationalism in his speeches. In 2024, Baudet advocated for mass remigration in order to maintain a "white Europe".
Foreign policy
Russia and Ukraine Baudet is opposed to the European Union–Ukraine Association Agreement. Together with GeenStijl and the Burgercomité EU association, Forum for Democracy was behind the campaign to collect the signatures required for the 2016 Dutch Ukraine–European Union Association Agreement referendum. Baudet and Forum for Democracy campaigned for the "No"-vote in this referendum. During the campaign, Baudet at multiple occasions spread fake news, including false reports of purported crimes by the Ukrainian military, and associated himself with pro-Russian activist Vladimir Kornilov. In November 2016, Baudet co-signed a letter, initiated by the journalists Billy Six and Joost Niemöller, which questioned the independence of the MH17 investigations and requested Donald Trump to press for a new investigation. This led to criticism from surviving relatives. In May 2018, he supported the Dutch cabinet in holding Russia accountable for the MH17 shootdown incident. Baudet's WhatsApp chats were leaked to the media in 2020; these revealed his close contacts with Vladimir Kornilov, who Baudet described as "a Russian paid by Putin", and demonstrated a significant influence of Kornilov on Baudet's actions on Ukraine, the referendum and future anti-NATO campaigns. In the chats with his FvD colleagues, Baudet also alluded to financial support from Kornilov. Baudet disagreed with the conclusions drawn from these texts, and said that the text messages were quoted out of context. In February 2022, after Russia officially recognized separatist regions in Ukraine as independent nations and deployed military troops to the Donbas, Baudet voiced his approval of Vladimir Putin's actions. On 24 February 2022, during the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Baudet stated that Russia was "unnecessarily being vilified". During a debate in parliament on 28 February, he explicitly refused to condemn the invasion. In August 2022, Baudet described Putin as "a huge hero" fighting a "heroic" fight against "globalists".
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