The image featuring Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad and his wife posted by Far-right Dutch politician Thierry Baudet. Photo: Screenshot

The leader of a far-right, pro-Russian political party that currently holds five seats in the Dutch parliament was in open conflict with the main Jewish advocacy organization in the Netherlands on Monday, after he posted a tweet with a mocking reference to the Rothschilds, the Jewish banking dynasty that has long provided the raw material for antisemitic conspiracy theories.

Thierry Baudet — leader of the Forum for Democracy (PvD) and the head of its parliamentary group — tweeted a photo of the Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad and his wife Asma with speech bubbles for each. Asma al-Assad asks her husband, “Why does the West want to invade Syria?”, to which he responds, “To rob our oil, put in a puppet government and install a Rothschild bank.”

“Once again, Thierry Baudet releases an antisemitic dog whistle,” the Dutch-Jewish advocacy organization CIDI tweeted in response, adding: “Note the implicit support for the murderous Assad regime. This must not become normalized!”

Baudet then came back with a expletive-laden reply. “F***ers,” he posted, “your authority no longer applies over me.” In another tweet, Baudet urged CIDI to delete its Twitter account.

Praise for Baudet came from several of his supporters, among them one FvD City Councillor who retweeted his reply to CIDI with icons denoting applause. Another supporter, tweeting in Dutch, told Baudet: “Great, I hope you mean it. Save your heart and soul from these Talmudic devils.”

Baudet has crossed swords with Dutch Jews in the past. Last December, a Dutch court ordered Baudet to remove posts on social media in which he compared the Dutch government’s measures to counter the COVID-19 pandemic with the mass slaughter of Jews during the Nazi Holocaust. The tweets openly compared those who freely refuse the COVID-19 vaccine with Jews suffering under the Nazi German regime’s racial laws. “The current situation can be compared to the 1930s and 1940s,” Baudet declared. “The unvaccinated are the new Jews, the ignorant who exclude them are the new Nazis and NSB [wartime Dutch Nazi organization] members.”

During the course of this year, Baudet has shifted focus to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, offering support to Vladimir Putin’s regime and spreading conspiracy theories regarding western backing for the Ukraine’s democratically-elected government. “Is their real goal to use Ukraine, like Covid, as a pretext for imposing their green ideology, causing impoverishment and even depopulation – in short to destroy Europe?” he asked in one recent tweet.