"The proposition of recovering a supposedly perfect past is fiction; its merchants are cheats," Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein said Monday. "Clever cheats."

Speaking at the Peace, Justice and Security Foundation gala in The Hague, Zeid -- a Jordanian prince married to an American from Texas, global maternal health activist Sarah Butler -- singled out Dutch politician Geert Wilders and "the populists, demagogues and political fantasists" like him.

The commissioner acknowledged he "must be a sort of nightmare" to these populists as he defends the rights of asylum seekers, gays, women and the disabled while being a Muslim "who is, confusingly to racists, also white-skinned; whose mother is European and father, Arab."