Was he so labelled? The Economist spoke of him in the context of Euro right rise, but most Euro writing seemed to distinguish him from the truly repellent folks, e.g. Haider and Le Pen.
He seemed to be characterized as right on the basis of immigration and an aggressive anti-bureacracy position, per FT and Economist.
Well, Sam, as I believe something like 90% of muslim immigrants in Nederlands are of North African origin (Morocco and Tunisia if I recall correctly) and Turkish origin, neither of which are particularly known for ‘honor’ killing (I assume this is in re the bedou honor killing) or gender apartheid per se, this might be a smear. Certianly in North Africa you almost never see veiling and the sort of gender separation one finds in the mashreq, like the Gulf is simply unknown. If Fortuyn was using the most extreme points of Islam to attack the community, then perhaps there was a problem. I suppose I can’t stress often enough that not all the Muslim world is Saudi Arabia.
I can’t say, however, I know what is happening with the community there in Nederlands. I wonder if there is objective data. Anectdotally I’ve always found Nederlander North Africans to be a pretty liberal bunch by regional standards, but clearly more conservative than the Euro-Dutch.
Perhaps there is more going on insofar as I obviously would be meeting a biased sample. Indeed I would guess there might be severe issues in re dislocatioin in the community since most immigrants come from conservative rural backgrounds and probably have to undergo quite a long mental march to get to Dutch mentality.
But then I would hazard a good % of Americans would too.
He wasn’t nearly as bad as Le Pen, but I’d say he was race-baiting (though in this case religion and background rather than race
His comments on Islam crossed the line to xenophobia.
While I had no love for Fortuyn’s policies, I think the label he was given as being a right-wing extremist is a bit exaggerated. Sure, he had some fairly unconventional ideas about our immigration policy, but not more than a few other parties. He only voiced it a bit more.
I think that’s the whole controversy about Fortuyn existance. It is not so much that he had some un-Dutch ideas, but the way he voiced them. Normally politicians in Holland are rather modest and not too exuberant, Fortuyn on the other hand clearly voiced his ambitions and stated plainly that he knew better than anyone else, making him, to Dutch standards, quite arrogant.
I do think he was being treated a bit unfairly by all the other parties. He had retired from his position of being the front man of a new, but very successful party after two ill-chosen remarks from a national news paper and decided to start a new party on his own. After it turned out that he would be very successful on his own, the other parties in Holland threw some alligations at him and so forth. I think you Americans would say a smear campaign, which tipifies politics and elections, but in Holland is quite unheard of.
No matter what, a politician being shot down hasnever happend before in our history and will probably change our country significantly. I can only be grateful that the killer was not Muslim, otherwise Fortuyn’s ideas would hold a much firmer ground which would drastically change our society. I have no idea what would happen now, but I do think that the damage can be held to a minimum now.
Also, what does ‘zero Muslim immigration’ mean? If you denounce Islam and convert, are you then allowed in? How do you measure a convert’s sincerity? Not entirely tangentally, one of the legacies of the Inquisition in Portugal is a number of ‘Monte Judeus’ (Jew Hills) where ‘converts’ to Christianity fled to start their own flourishing communities (eventually) more or less openly.
Aghris I would have accepted Fortuyn’s “politics” if he had come up with solutions.
His whole “campaign” was no more than nagging complaints. Anyone could do that. ScoobyTXThe fact that Fortuyn is gay is no issue in the Netherlands.
There are gay xenophobes as well.
If you’d like some longer words and posts of several thousands lines, instead of “horrible man”, I suggest you google for some.
He was a vain man who adored the media attention. His thoughts about “colored” people were indeed discriminatory.
HairyPotter thank you for your kind words. Believe me, we need it. Even if some **[Doghouse Reilly] ** don’t seem to understand that.
käse, I agree with you that Fortuyn compained a lot and came up with only few solutions, but then again, there is a lot to complain about. And it’s not as if the opposite from the parties isn’t true. However, we could discuss Dutch politics all we want for quite some time, I don’t think this forum is the best place for that. I just jumped into this thread to give some facts, not to start a political debate.
Yes, kase, funny you should mention that particular sentence because it was the one out of the entire article that struck me most- and is really where his slip is showing, in my opinion.
People should remember that when they argue that he was only fighting for the preservation of the typically Dutch, liberal, progressive society.
The people labeling the late Mr. Fortuyn as being extreme right-wing are the ones indirectly responsible for his death. From the beginning of his political career he has been misinterpreted and misquoted.
The thing about the lifting of the anti-discrimination laws had a background. His idea about it was that people will always discriminate and different people will find different things discriminating. This makes this law impossible to uphold and also conflicting with the freedom of speech legislation.
He was a flamboyant, arrogant man, but to label him as the new Adolf Hitler, as the news-media have done in the Netherlands was absurd.
His main problem with the muslim religion is that certain parts of the Netherlands (especially the big cities as Amsterdam, The Hague and Rotterdam) are becoming safehavens for large groups of immigrants who create their own subculture, where they do not adapt to Dutch customs and/or law. The last few years we have had a lot of honour-killings in the Netherlands. Muslim women have been killed for having affairs and the judges give them leniant sentences because it “is their culture”.
If we want to preserve Dutch culture and the Dutch freedom we have to find a solution for this. I agree that Fortuyn didn’t have any answers in this respect, but at least he drew attention to things which have been ignored for much too long.
I think it is fairly safe to conclude that the forenamed, now departed was simply a populist of the first water. In as much as that he was a professed nationalist and racist he has erroneously been labeled extreme right wing. As a matter of fact I think the term nationalist, libertarian, progressive, reactionary would best apply - however absurd that sounds. Unlike some presently banned posters around here he knew how to swing around blanket statements so that they almost sounded founded. The man was incredible canny at catching the essence of the immediately popular stand even if it was contradictory to what he just said in the previous sentence, without getting entangled by his dichotomy. Käse gives us a good sample through his view on misogyny in Islam adjacent to his own view of women in the family and work space.
Fascist, extreme right, ex-Marxist, libertarian or whatever he was, he was none the less part of a troubling trend of separatism and isolationism that is sweeping over Europe at the moment. And still it is a pity that someone shot him. He would have done a much better job at ruining his legacy had they left him around so that he could be called on his agenda.
Sparc
The waters of our Union are a wee, wee bit troubled I say. Be there a storm a coming, ‘r is ’t but a spell of bad whether…eh?
Please explain your logic of guilt herevinryk, I can’t see how this would hold true at any closer scrutiny.
Has he? If so; how so in a any worse way than most other politicians?
Would you care to develop that statement?
Could you provide a cite for this statement? I’d be very interested to see the statistics or any number of clear court cases that indicate a trend like that.
So in principle his problem description (too much immigration, not enough naturalization, too much European hogwash, too much Muslim culture etc etc) you are in agreement with, it’s just his specific solutions that stuck in your eye?
I see the signs of a posthumous mythology building here, maybe I’m just paranoid, but that’s me.
Since I believe that the debate was switched to whether or not his demise has made him a martyr, I’ll go from here with that. As a populist he was obviously addressing emotionally loaded issues that popular opinion for better or worse held dear to. It is often enough said that this is the best part with these guys, they attract protest votes, which show the ‘dumb politicians’ what the ‘real’ problem is. I violently disagree with this. The problems which are repeatedly attacked by the likes of Fortuyn are neither the problems per se, nor the source of any problem. They jump symptoms and or phenomena that are just popular to dislike and then fabricate an equation to the actual problem, which could be rising crime or inflation or whatever you like. Politics in the modern world is an increasingly complicated game. The crisis in European politics is not that immigration is getting too little focus, but that the sensible politicians in all political camps seem to have lost the ear of a significant part of the electorate. I don’t have a solution for this problem, but I hope that the cohorts of populist scum that cash in on fear and intolerance don’t become the answer to a question that requires far more elaborate and well founded answers. I also hope that Fortuyn’s legacy of populism is not immortalized through his death.
That may be a “progressive” approach, but it sure as hell isn’t liberal. Quite frankly, I find the idea rather frightening, and Fortuyn was right to oppose it.
Thank you for your enlightening commentary :rolleyes: . Thanks for helping to fight ignorance.
It seems to me that he was not judged to be a “right-winger” on the whole of his politics, but only on his anti-(Muslim-)immigrant views. In the US, with the same views, he would probably be labeled a extreme-left populist.
As for the label of extreme right-wing and those using it being indirectly responsible for Fortuyn’s death, I thnk that is true, to a degree. It seems to be a real life extension of one of those corrolaries to Godwin’s Law. Once the “Nazi” (or facist, or right-wing extremist, etc.) labels are applied, any possibility of rational debate ends. If you paint a person as Evil Personified, it justifies (in the minds of many wackos & nutjobs) any means to remove them from the scene (including assasination). It’s just as wrong as red-baiting, but seems to be a lot more acceptable.
Sparc I want to make something clear : I did not resent Fortuyn’s solutions, I am just saying he didn’t have any solutions. But he was the only Dutch politician bold enough to try and start the discussion about it.
I do not have any cites for you on the Muslim story, but I can tell you from personal knowledge (I have and am working with Muslims at this time) that a lot of their traditions are still being used. I know these are not specific Muslim traditions but I am talking about promising 10 year old girls for marriage or killing a girl that has been promised to you because she dated a non-believer.
The thing is : a vote for Fortuyn would have indeed been a protest-vote. You can call this stupid and everything, but at this time it is the only possibility in a democracy to make yourself heard. Now by killing him, democracy has been killed, because people have been denied their voice !!!
Being a populist doesn’t make you a bad person. Hell, if that were true, every American politician ought to be shot during election times !! Sometimes somebody needs to draw attention to the problems a large part of our people notice (it wasn’t just stupid people who wanted to vote for him), but the government just blisfully ignores.
Then again : this is all my opinion. I just think it is a shame that a lot of these things are taboo to talk about, because of the stupid PC BS.
What about other immigants who do not conform to the common precepion of “Dutch culture”? Should Holland (or any other country) crack down on people of French, English, Greman origin, because they are different and do not fit with the Dutch way of life?
How about China town or Little Italy because they “are becoming safehavens for large groups of immigrants who create their own subculture, where they do not adapt to Dutch customs and/or law.”.
**
It is strange that discrimination of Muslims can be interpted to preserving Dutch freedom. I think he disliked immgrants out of xenophobia, but his haterd and focus towards Muslims in picticular is probiliy from his dislike of a couple Middle-Eastern customs or what he precevied as “muslim culture”.
vinryk; That wasn’t my question. It was clear that you didn’t agree with solutions of his existent or not. I ask again: Do you agree with his definition of the problems at hand in Dutch society?
Argumentative. I can’t question incidents like that. Atrocities and violations of basic human rights happen in all cultures and each one has it’s specific flavors. However, my experiences disagree with your experiences as well as does my knowledge of the broader Islamic population in the West. Please cite or concede that this is biased information.
I disagree with the first part and I agree with the last part. As for my disagreement it is of course an opinion. There is some historical evidence that protest voting only infects the situation and further alienates mainstream politicians from the adopted issues of the populists, hence being counterproductive. We can go there if you like. Just say the word and I’ll give you cites and quotes for that line of argument, but that is another thread altogether.
Being a populist doesn’t make you a bad person, but it tends to make you a lousy politician. As re America I take it you mean the US And I would very much like to see cites regarding your claims on this issue. As far as I recall populists fare rather ill in US elections. Why you bring in the death penalty in this statement is to me an enigma, I never claimed that it was righteous to shoot anyone including Fortuyn.
Indeed it is your opinion and you are entitled to it. I would however request for the sake of our debate that you furnish some basis and factual ground for that opinion. Which incidentally has been my point throughout; i.e. that blanket statements and facile opinions is not what we need in the political debate. That is why I attack populism, because it is ill founded, argumentative and does not get us to focus on the real issue.
Sparc
As a gay man, maybe a couple of Middle Eastern customs–such as state-sanctioned floggings and executions of homosexuals–wasn’t quite his cup of tea. Silly, isn’t it?
Doghouse Reilly what is even more silly is to use the actions of some Middle-Eastern governments (humanely, one of the worst in the world too) and current events to fuel xenophobia and haterd agianst followers of a Religion.
But that is okay, they are all “backwards” anyway right? :rolleyes: