A number of people with links to extremist organisations are running on behalf of far right party Forum for Democracy in the local elections on March 18, according to investigations by NRC and the antifascist research group Kafka.

The organisations include the Nederlandse Volks-Unie (NVU), Voorpost, the Geuzenbond, Erkenbrand and Pegida, all of which are considered to be far right and extremist.

The NRC highlights the case of Reginald Eeckhout, number seven on the Amsterdam list. According to Kafka, he was a co-founder of Erkenbrand, a group described by the AIVD in 2018 as racist and a threat to the democratic order because of its anti-democratic ideology. It also calls for a white ethnostate.

In The Hague, former Forum youth coordinator Timon Busscher is third on the list. In messages from the youth wing’s app group seen by NRC, Busscher referred to extremist mass killers Anders Breivik and Brenton Tarrant as “the divine duo”.

Other candidates highlighted include Kay Burgemeester, the party’s lead candidate in Schagen, who wrote in the same app group that the Netherlands would not have a “multicultural society” without Jews, echoing an antisemitic conspiracy theory common in extremist circles.

In Scherpenzeel, NVU activist Bertus Renes is number eleven on the list. The AIVD has repeatedly described the NVU as antisemitic and anti-democratic in its annual reports.

Forum for Democracy has not responded to the NRC’s requests for comment.