‘Softening’ the Great Replacement –female far-right leadership and mediatized normalization in the Netherlands

In the wake of growing far-right electoral success, scholars have pointed to the crucial role of women, as political leaders, ideologues, and digital communicators, in broadening the appeal of racist, sexist, and queerphobic politics (Leidig, 2023; Snipes & Mudde, 2020; Scrinzi, 2023). In the European context, research has addressed the ‘softening’ appeal of a female far-right politicians such as Marine le Pen and Giorgia Meloni, who played an important role in the dédiabolisation and normalisation of Rassemblement National and Fratelli d’Italia. Moreover, scholars have pointed to the crucial importance of the mainstream media in disseminating an image of female far-right politicians as gentler and more relatable when compared to their male counterparts (Snipes & Mudde, 2020). Building on this body of scholarship, this paper focuses on the Netherlands, where far-right politics were, until recently, dominated almost entirely by male politicians. It explores the case of Forum for Democracy (FvD), a political party who have rapidly radicalized since their establishment in 2016 and are increasingly recognized by scholars as extreme right due to their deeply conspiratorial and anti-democratic agenda. Since its inception, the party was led and controlled by Thierry Baudet. Yet, a few weeks ahead of the 2025 snap elections, FvD announced that Baudet would make way for Lidewij de Vos, a female MP in her late twenties. As FvD increased its share of seats from 3 to 7, the Dutch mainstream media described the party’s sudden success as the ‘Lidewij effect’. Building on previous scholarship on the communicative role of female far-right leadership, the normalization of far-right party politics in the mainstream media (de Jonge & Gaufman, 2021; Ekström, Patrona & Thornborrow, 2020; Thompson & Sengul, 2025), and the digital and subcultural appeal of women on the far right (Leidig, 2023), this paper analyses the mediatized representation of de Vos across FvD’s online election campaign and the Dutch editorial press. In doing, it asks how platform affordances and media logics may have contributed to the ‘Lidewij effect’, and critically examines the role of both digital and legacy media in normalizing the extreme right in the Netherlands.