Read this, please. This was written by Adam Curry in a fit of anger at foreign representations of Fortuyn and the murder of him. Curry’s article makes two points:
Portraying Fortuyn as another Le Pen or another Haider is wrong. He wasn’t ultraright or anti-Muslim, he was just the first to speak his mind about problems everybody here knows about but is afraid to talk about.
This misconception can be traced back first to Wim Kok, the Dutch minister president calling him “hard right” and secondly to the Volkskrant interview Pim Fortuyn [1] gave in early februari this year. This was the interview that cost him the leadership of Leefbaar Nederland, the party for which he originally would be the lijsttrekker [2] for the oncoming elections.
Adam Curry’s main point is that this interview, amongst others misrepresented Fortuyn. I disagree with him. He was hung by his own words in that article. Curry stated that Fortuyn was not anti-immigration, while he actually said he wanted to stop all immigration of Muslims and even stop allowing asylum seekers to enter the Netherlands.
I can agree with Currey’s point that Fortuyn was not a second Le Pen, he was more complicated than that. I think he was genuine in his view of Islam as a danger to the liberal Dutch climate, but he took it too far. He talked about scrapping article 1 of our constitution, which forbids discrimination, talked about wanting to refuse all Muslims entry to the Netherlands, systematically confused migrants with asylum seekers, portraying them as threatening to swamp our country. He used exactly the samesort of language that the extreme right had used but managed to dress it up in slightly more respectable form. He may not have been a racist like Le Pen, but he was surely a bigot.
[1] Dutch only, unfortunately
[2] The lijsttrekker of a political party is the first person on the candidate list, usually the political leader if not always the party leader.
No Comments