Posted on 03/07/2002 4:23:42 PM PST by Map Kernow
A FLAMBOYANT, homosexual academic with a shaven head and taste for luxury emerged as Europe’s newest anti-establishment, anti-immigrant scourge yesterday after his fledgeling organisation routed the main parties in Rotterdam’s municipal elections.
The startling success of Pim Fortuyn in The Netherlands’ second largest city, and that of like-minded candidates in other local elections across the country, confirmed his arrival as a potent force in Dutch politics ahead of May’s general election. It also marked a further advance by Europe’s xenophobic Right, this time in a country that prides itself on its tolerance, political correctness and multiculturalism.
Mr Fortuyn’s Leefbaar Rotterdam (“liveable Rotterdam”) came from nowhere to win 17 of the 45 council seats, making it the single largest party. It was unclear whether any of the city’s other parties would help him to form a coalition, or whether they would unite to exclude him from power in the same way that Belgian parties have ring-fenced the Vlaams Blok in Antwerp.
Across The Netherlands local Leefbaar-style parties quadrupled their council seats to 333 out of about 8,000, at the expense of the three parties who have formed the country’s left-right coalition Government for the past eight years. That gives them valuable momentum before the general election, and opinion polls were already showing that they would win more than 20 of Parliament’s 150 seats.
Mr Fortuyn, 54, is an author, television personality and former sociology professor who employs a butler, dresses foppishly and travels in a black, chauffeur-driven Daimler with his two small dogs. The grassroots Leefbaar Nederlands movement, launched in the late 1990s, elected him its leader last year, but then sacked him last month for demanding an end to Islamic immigration and the removal of the Dutch Constitution’s anti-discrimination provision.
Undaunted, Mr Fortuyn simply formed his own party, Lijst Fortuyn, which instantly leapfrogged past his old party in the opinion polls. An exit poll during Wednesday’s municipal elections showed that by three to one voters backing the local Leefbaar parties on Wednesday would back Mr Fortuyn rather than the national Leefbaar party in May.
Mr Fortuyn exploits much the same issues that have recently propelled hard-right populist parties such as Italy’s Northern League, Jörg Haider’s Austrian Freedom Party and the Danish People’s Party into coalition governments.
He rails against rising crime, deteriorating health and education services, and the country’s cosy and tired political establishment at a time when the economy is faltering. But he also plays the race card in a small, crowded country where 4.6 per cent of the people are Islamic immigrants. “I think 16 million Dutchmen are enough. This is a full country,” he says. He does not advocate repatriation but he does call for a crackdown on asylum-seekers and an end to further immigration. He blames immigrants for crime. He has described Islam as a “backward culture”.
Mr Fortuyn had to be escorted to the polling station by police because of demonstrations outside his home. Wim Kok, the departing Dutch Prime Minister, has accused him of “appealing to hate” and fomenting intolerance against foreigners. But his racial views clearly appealed in Rotterdam, where nearly half the 600,000 population is foreign.
The established parties are toughening their rhetoric on crime and immigration even as they denounce Mr Fortuyn’s views. Their biggest dilemma will come after the May 15 election if they fail to reverse his meteoric rise.
Sound familiar?
You've heard the saying, "Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean people aren't out to get you."?
How about, "Just because you're a xenophobic national socialist doesn't mean that alien third-world scum aren't out to steal your wealth, destroy your culture, take over your country and eventually exterminate your offspring."?
Mr Fortuyn, 54, is an author, television personality and former sociology professor who employs a butler, dresses foppishly and travels in a black, chauffeur-driven Daimler with his two small dogs.
Too funny! You'll get a lot of flames for this from some posters.
You're right---a cautionary note is in order. However, the historical circumstances are different--the rise of Maurras, Hitler, Mussolini, and other pre-war extreme nationalists was not due to anti-immigrant sentiment as such, or concerns about the extinction of national sovereignty.
But if these guys get violent, or start spewing anti-Semitism, I won't look upon them as beneficial to European politics any longer, I assure you.
:^) Sorry. Had to take the hit.
The United States had virtually ZERO immigration after the 1924 restriction. The motivation for that was both ethnic and labor in nature. No one ever calls Samuel Gompers a Nazi, but he was one of the principal architects of the 1924 halt.
Funny how no one ever mentions that it was Democratic Party dogma for 60 years to have low immigration. Nope. It's just all us mean ol' right wingers. Gag.
Hail to the rightist surge! I look forward to the day when this starts happening in earnest in the USA. Reagan was nearly able to set it in motion, however, 12 years of lethargic third way leftward ratcheting put us way off track. Still, there are signs of hope. Bush seems to occasionally remember the true Conservatives who helped elect him. Simon has won the GOP nomination here in California. Indeed, there IS hope!!
God Bless America!
What if the great wave had never happened?
A family member of mine pointed out to me that if not for the Civil War, there probably would have been no perceived need for the great wave group. But 560,000 dead men was an enormous part of a generation - especially in an age when families routinely had 10-15 children.
What would be the political and ethnic character of the United States?
There's nothing conservative about what is happening now. No "nation" has ever had the kind of massive influx we are having, from so many disconnected and even hostile groups. Prudence alone should have stopped it early on. But caution isn't part of the Kennedy family lexicon, and this little invasion has their paw prints all over it.
I do not think a nazi/facist is pro-Israel (and also gay, remembering what the nazis did to gays). I know, I deal whit anti-Israel/Jews much. The real facists/neo-nazis are going to vote for 'Green Right', a new party that emerged from the now forbidden 'CP '86'.
I will vote for Pim Fortuyn too, and believe me, I would never vote for a guy that is anti-Jewish! It is true he is anti-islam (he wrote a book about the dangers of islam to the Dutch society), but he is not against Jewish people.
And, if 'national sovereignty' means borders enclosing national populations, there were the Sudetens, the Baltic Germans and Danzig.
Your point is a good one, but I wrote "extinction of national sovereignty," by for example, supra-national organizations like the UN and the EC---Eurocrats coming in and telling individual nations that they must accept more immigrants from Sri Lanka, etc. Europe before WW II didn't face that particular menace.
On the other hand, I don't see the Dutch demanding the return of Greater Frieseland.
Maybe not, but dig this: there's something called the "Vlaams [for "Flemish"] Blok" in Belgium which wants separation from the decadent, French-speaking Walloons in southern Belgium. If they succeed, it would be logical for them to form a union with the Netherlands.
Thanks for mentioning this. Why don't the media, you ask? I suppose to nurture the assumption that anyone calling for controls on immigration would be of "Hitler's lineage" and "naturally" hostile to Jews and Israel.
What kind of people are those? Lefties? Righties? Dazed professional protesters?
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