Pim Fortuyn: Five Years Later

Five years ago today, the populist politician Pim Fortuyn was murdered on the verge of being elected leader of the Netherlands. His killer was an animal-rights fanatic claiming to be acting on behalf of immigrants supposedly threatened by Fortuyn. Fortuyn was a left-libertarian (by American standards) candidate who was maliciously caricatured by the Dutch media and establishment as a far-right menace. Fortuyn was in fact openly gay and indeed a libertine -- but he was called "far right" because he spoke out loudly and effectively against Holland's suicidal tolerance policy, which was bringing more and more fanatical Muslims into the country. Fortuyn feared that the democratic liberties he loved as a gay man and a secularist were under threat by the rise of Islamofascism in his country.

How spectacularly dishonest was the left-wing Dutch establishment's smear of Fortuyn? Here's a piece I did for NRO explaining his party platform. Does that sound like "far-right" to you? To any honest person?

Since his death, we've seen Theo van Gogh murdered on the streets of Amsterdam by a fanatical Islamist, and we've seen Ayaan Hirsi Ali leave Holland for exile in the United States. Geert Wilders, to my knowledge the only major Dutch politician who continues to speak out for Fortuyn's cause, lives under constant police protection because of Islamist death threats against him.

Here is a cover story I wrote for National Review after Fortuyn's death. It should be said that from a conservative point of view, Fortuyn was no savior. To oversimplify, he wanted to save Holland for hedonism -- which, as conservatives I talked to in Holland at the time pointed out, is a big part of the problem. But at least Fortuyn was brave enough to see that Holland's traditions of liberty were at stake, and he risked his life to defy the complacent Dutch establishment, and to attack the Islamist mafia within his country. Though he was not killed by an Islamist, as Theo van Gogh was, he died for the cause of liberty besieged by fanatical Islam. Say a prayer for him, and for the wonderful country he served -- which, as Bruce Bawer sadly notes, seems to have slipped back into complacency.