Eva Lotte Louise Joan Vlaardingerbroek (born 3 September 1996) is a Dutch far-right activist,[1] known for propagating conspiracy theories[2][3][4] and expressing antifeminist sentiments in the past. She has studied philosophy of law,[5][6] and has been particularly vocal about issues surrounding farmers in the Dutch farmers' protests. She is noted for her criticism of the Dutch government under prime minister Mark Rutte.
Eva Vlaardingerbroek | |
|---|---|
.jpg) Vlaardingerbroek at CPAC Hungary, 2023 | |
| Born | Eva Lotte Louise Vlaardingerbroek 3 September 1996 Amsterdam, Netherlands |
| Alma mater | Utrecht University (LL.B.) Leiden University (LL.M.) |
| Occupation(s) | Pundit, activist |
| Political party | FvD (2016–2020) |
She has made numerous appearances with American conservative pundit Tucker Carlson on his current affairs program Tucker Carlson Tonight on Fox News and with Mark Steyn on his eponymous British talk show on the GB News. During Carlson's show, she claimed that the Dutch farming crisis is not a result of the nitrogen crisis,[7] instead promoting the Great Replacement Theory, a recurrent theme in her speeches and discussions.
Early life
Vlaardingerbroek was born in Amsterdam on 3 September 1996 to a Catholic mother and a Protestant father who both work in the classical music industry. Her father, Kees Vlaardingerbroek, is a musicologist and former concert director.[citation needed]
Education and political career
Vlaardingerbroek grew up in Hilversum and studied law at Utrecht University, where she participated in the Utrecht Law College honours program. After studying for some time in Germany at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich and completing her bachelor's degree, she began the master's degree in Encyclopedia and Philosophy of Law at Leiden University. She wrote her thesis on The Contractualization of Sex in the #MeToo Era and completed her master's with honours.[8]
During her studies, Vlaardingerbroek joined the far-right political party Forum for Democracy (FvD) in 2016. In 2019, she gave a speech against modern feminism at that year's party congress.[9] In 2019, she took up an internship with the FvD faction in the European Parliament in Brussels. After that, Vlaardingerbroek left Brussels behind to work in Leiden as a lecturer-researcher, during which she published several opinion pieces in Elsevier Weekblad.[9] In October 2020, she put her position at the university and her dissertation on hold to focus fully on a political career, followed by FvD leader Thierry Baudet's announcement on 31 October that Vlaardingerbroek would fill the fifth spot on the party's candidate list for the House of Representatives.[citation needed]
After a dispute over Baudet's leadership and discriminatory remarks made by members of the youth wing publicly escalated in November 2020,[10][11] Vlaardingerbroek announced on WNL's morning show Goedemorgen Nederland on 26 November that she had chosen sides against Baudet.[12] Later that same day, Vlaardingerbroek and Joost Eerdmans, Annabel Nanninga, and Nicki Pouw-Verweij released a joint statement announcing their departure from the party.[13] For the time being, this meant the end of Vlaardingerbroek's political career. In April 2023, Algemeen Dagblad published an exposé that revealed how in 2021, months after the conflict and split, FvD had threatened her and other former members with hefty fines for allegedly breaching party confidentiality. Vlaardingerbroek was never officially served nor found guilty of breaching party confidentiality and described it as an attempt to scare her into silence.[14]
In November 2023, Vlaardingerbroek stated that she would vote for the Party for Freedom (PVV) in the 2023 Dutch general election.[15]
Opinion work and activism
In December 2019, Het Parool stated that Vlaardingerbroek "shocked the feminist Netherlands with a speech against modern feminism",[16] in which she called it "a form of hardcore cognitive dissonance". She stated that "neo-feminists have no reflection on what is retrograde or problematic about multiculturalism, especially on the subject that interests them: sexism. So, this feminism is indeed one of the biggest shams of our time."[17] She received scathing criticism by a number of Dutch commentators for her remarks, after Dutch newspaper De Volkskrant and some of their journalists branded Vlaardingerbroek the "shield maiden of the far right" and an "Aryan princess" who constituted a danger to the rights of women and minorities.[5][18] In an interview with Bert Dijkstra of De Telegraaf, Vlaardingerbroek fought back, calling the article a politically motivated "character assassination".[5] Vlaardingerbroek has also spoken against abortion, stating: "Life begins at conception. No matter how small it is, it is sacred. To say otherwise is both morally and intellectually hypocritical. Therefore, it is not up to you to take that life away. It's not up to you to end it. It's not your body, so it's not your choice, simple."[19]
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Vlaardingerbroek spoke out as a firm critic of lockdowns, mRNA vaccines, and other COVID-19 restrictions, stating that the Western world was "losing its freedom".[20] In January 2021, Vlaardingerbroek made a live appearance on Tucker Carlson Tonight stating that Europe was "heading towards a new system, a tyrannical regime, of mass surveillance and control".[21] Also in 2021, Vlaardingerbroek worked for some time in Sweden as presenter of her own pan-European talk show "Let's Talk About It" on the YouTube channel of Swedish media outlet Riks,[22] which is affiliated with the far-right party Sverigedemokraterna.[23] On 1 January 2022, she began working as a legal advisor at a law firm, where she focused on human rights and civil litigation.[24] After more than four months, this employment was terminated.[25]
In April 2022, Vlaardingerbroek spoke at the Brussels National Conservatism Conference in Brussels in which she called on people to "reject Globalism and embrace God".[26] In early July 2022, Vlaardingerbroek spoke out about the Dutch nitrogen crisis on the American television channel Fox News in conversation with Tucker Carlson.[27] In reference to the Great Replacement and Great Reset conspiracy theories, she claimed that the crisis was being used to steal land from farmers in order to build homes on it for immigrants.[28][29] Vlaardingerbroek has also stated in her appearances with Carlson that the surge in violent crime in Sweden could be linked to what she described as extreme immigration policies.[30]
Vlaardingerbroek regularly appears as a commentator on Mark Steyn's eponymous talk show on the British television channel GB News,[31] as well as on the right-wing populist YouTube channel Achtung, Reichelt! by Julian Reichelt, the former editor-in-chief of the German tabloid Bild.[citation needed] On 11 March 2023, Vlaardingerbroek participated in the pro-farmer Zuiderpark protest against the government in The Hague.[32] At the protests, Vlaardingerbroek stated that "our farmers are fighting against the worst kind of injustice".[33]
Personal life
Until late 2020, Vlaardingerbroek was in a relationship with French author Julien Rochedy, who between 2012 and 2014 had been president of Génération Nation, the youth wing of the French right-wing populist party Front National.[34][35] During the conflict within the FvD in November 2020, which had seen Vlaardingerbroek publicly turn against party leader Thierry Baudet, Baudet revealed that Vlaardingerbroek and he had had a love affair in 2017,[36] to which Vlaardingerbroek responded that it had been nothing more than a brief fling.[37]
On 29 March 2022, Will Witt, former commentator for the American conservative advocacy group PragerU, announced that he and Vlaardingerbroek had become engaged.[38] The couple had been introduced by PragerU co-founder Dennis Prager about a year prior.[39]
In April 2023, Vlaardingerbroek was received into the Catholic faith alongside her father as a member of the Personal Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham at the Church of Our Lady of the Assumption and St Gregory on Warwick Street in Westminster, England. She took Joan as her Confirmation name.[6]