Dutch politician Pim Fortuyn was assassinated by an eco-terrorist, ending what was a truly interesting period of business-not-as-usual in the Netherlands.
Fortuyn was a fascinating man, easy to misunderstand. Both David Carr and I had initially mistaken him as just a Dutch version of French fascist Jean-Marie le Pen, but in fact nothing could have been further from the truth. To have even labelled him as ‘right wing’ was profoundly uninformative and in many ways down right misleading, revealing more about the commentator doing so that anything about Fortuyn.
One year on and sadly the people who reaped the ‘benefit’ of Pim Fortuyn death have proved to be the same grey men and women of the orthodox Dutch left and right who have enervated that once dynamic nation, hanging on to an electoral party list system that amounts to the political equivalent of Henry Ford’s ‘choose any colour, as long as it is black’.
The weed has been pulled out by the roots and nothing disturbs the monoculture of blood red poppies adorning that graveyard which is the political status quo.
No Samizdata thoughts on this interesting subject? OK. I’ll bite. Why has no one commented on this glamourous, driven and intelligent man’s murder only one year after he was assassinated by a Dutch moonbat? My guess, they’re so busy appeasing ethnics in Holland that they’ve forgotten that Holland was once among the freest-thinking nations in the world. Pym Fortuyn woke them up to how unthinkingly they were striding, welcoming arms out, into a politically correct straightjacket. Worse than politically correct, even, which is voluntary for morons, but fear of the invaders. The issue of the threat of fundamentalist Moslem rule of Holland has been swept under tidy Dutch carpets. For now. Yet the masses of people at Mr Fortuyn’s funeral testify that he spoke to a huge percentage of the Dutch populace, who wish to be tolerant but not suicidal. How sad that no one in Holland had the nerve to pick up his gauntlet. I wonder why they haven’t …
“..that once dynamic nation…”
I remember having pounded into my head during American History classes that The Netherlands was the first nation to grant diplomatic recognition to the fledgling US of A.
That was very courageous in the 18th century when the British Empire ruled the waves, and everything else.
The Dutch really need to regain their place in the world. Because, liberty needs them.
It also is interesting that few people are commenting on this post.
Thanks for reminding me. I remember seeing it on TV at lunch time and being very sad. It drove me crazy how the BBC and American media and others kept referring to him as “far right” when the truth is, he was further left on many issues than any American politician out there (I’m in NYC).
The sentence on his killer was a crime itself.
Catherine, that the BBC kept referring to Fortuyn as “hard right” – and, by implication, a slavvering lunatic made me uneasy, as well. And there was the subliminal message in their news report that his “hard right” position had somehow merited his murder. That he was gay and very promiscuous didn’t fit in with the “far right” definition and therefore wasn’t mentioned. That he had personally chosen as his deputy a black person was never mentioned. They simply bent the facts by innuendo and omission. It was enough that Fortuyn was brave enough to defy the leftist wisdom that forced multiculture is a good thing. His message, that he valued Holland’s liberal laws and knew that further immigration would give the immigrants the advantage of the tipping point and allow them to start dictating what behaviour was deemed “acceptable”, was too complicated. That he feared for the effect of mass Islamic immigration on Holland’s traditionally tolerant attitudes was beyond the ability of BBC thought facists to fold into the mixture.
What I find disturbing, because it is Orwellian and thought fascist, is, the BBC and the Blair government have managed to shift the definition of ‘centre’ so far left that anything short of a devotion to Marcuse is deemed insanely right wing. And like a chameleon placed on a plaid, they simply cannot deal with people like the late Pym Fortuyn. And again, I agree with you: the sentence given the assassin of this rather brave, insightful and interesting man was a crime in itself.
It is the editors and producers of the news media who make the final decision what facts get beyond the “cutting-room” floor.
The talking heads merely voice the approved facts.
Has anyone looked at the performance quality of BBC editors and producers?
For example. In the US, Dan Rather of CBS news is not only a talking head, but also editor and producer. If you question his bias, look at all his roles at CBS.