Pim Fortuyn: Five Years Later

How ironic ... on the 5th anniversary of Fortuyn's martyrdom, the French elect a president who sang from Pim Fortuyn's playbook.

The rightness or wrongness of Islamic immigration aside, the question remains: How do we retain the idea of freedom of thought, religion and expression in our Western Democracy and legitimately exclude people whose thoughts, religion and expression aren't friendly to that Western democracy? Certainly, if someone has a criminal background, they can be legitimately excluded, but what litmus test would y'all feel is appropriate for which past religious and political expression are acceptable and which are unacceptable?

There is a huge difference between being a haven for people looking to escape militant Islam, or for Muslims looking for a home to practice their religion in peace, and admitting militant Muslims who openly advocate our destruction. It requires patience and a willingness to investigate those who are petitioning for entry, and the national will to secure the borders to prevent the negative influences from gaining entry illegally. Unfortunately, the leadership and will to do this doesn't exist now. Phil

I'm not sure it's the recent immigrants who are the biggest problem. At least in some countries, isn't it the children (well, especially sons) of those reasonable Muslims seeking a haven from the fanatics of 40 years ago, who are now trying to reclaim their heritage? Yes, you should screen for fanatacism but what about the kids of naturalized citizens who are turning toward radical Islam. What about them? Not sure if that's the case in the Netherlands. Any Dutch on these internets?

Speaking as a political moderate, I think Sarkozy is going to be good for France. The Socialist Party has dominated French politics for way too long. There was a time in the Post WWII-era when the French Socialist Party under Leon Blum (a concentration camp survivor) played a very important role in creating a "third force" of labor unions and liberal institutions that helped prevent a communist takeover of Western Europe. I know I'm "book review girl" but have to again recommend Paul Berman's book, "Terror and Liberalism" which deals with the story of Blum and the French Socialists before and after WWII.
Perhaps leftists in Holland need to take a page from Blum rather than from the pro-peace "Paul Fauristes" socialists of 1930's France who ended up joining up with the Vichy regime and becoming facists. Radical Islam is just as undemocratic, and just as great a danger, as was communism.

It's possible that Fortuyn and van Gogh are two of the most misundestood people in the panetheon of Conservative martyrs. It wasn't Muslims they feared, it was overly religious people who wanted to change the Netherlands. They would have felt the same was about Mormons or Evangelicals or Mooonies who showed up in Amsterdam trying to foist their faith and belief on the Dutch. The irony is that they would have viewed Rod as being just as hostile to the Netherland as someone named Muhammad from Morocco. If lots of Rods had shown up in Rotterdam spouting God talk and criticizing gays and "the culture," , Fortuyn and van Gogh would have been trying to round up the police to have the Rods deported. Fortuyn and van Gogh must be rolling in their graves if they know religious conservatives in the U.S. view them as martyrs to the cause of Islamopanic. Purging religious radicals is a great idea until their name is Rod, not Muhammad.

Susan S., Wake me when Rod announces he is immigrating.

There goes Susan with the Islam-Christian equivalence again, only putting it in the mouths of dead people this time. It wasn't Muslims they feared, it was overly religious people who wanted to change the Netherlands. Of course Van Gogh and Fortuyn were secularists who would not have been fans of Pat van Robertseijn, but it is nothing but your prejudiced supposition that they objected to all religions tout court equally. They were both smart enough men to know that the secular West is in Christendom and not in Dar al-Islam. Here's the deal, Susan: Christianity and Western culture go hand-in-hand. Christians can live and breathe in Westernized culture without rioting over cartoons, and secularists can live in breathe in Christianized cultures without fearing being stoned to death for adultery. Islam, not. Christians do not want, and Christianity does not require, a theocracy. Until you come to grips with that historical fact AND what it might mean about the religions per se, your words on this subject are base Christian hatred. Nothing more.
Fortuyn and van Gogh must be rolling in their graves if they know religious conservatives in the U.S. view them as martyrs to the cause of Islamopanic. And they would REALLY be rolling over in the graves iof the knew they were being favorably cited by someone who uses the term "Islamopanic." If it were mere "panic," Fortuyn and Van Gogh would be dead, Miss Christopanicker.

They were concerned about clerics that preached about women's roles, condemned homosexuality, and were trying to roll-back Dutch tolerance. In that sense, Rod Dreher's faith was as threatening to Fortuyn as Mohammad Akbar's. If you think that, then you have NO idea ... none, zip, zero, nada, zilch ... about Rod Dreher's faith or that of any other actual Christian this side of RJ Rushdoony. You are speaking from 200-proof ignorance, stirred with straw men. Further in what sense isn't "rioting over cartoons" "rolling back Dutch tolerance." And if you think Rod back clitorectomies, arranged marriages, burkhas, stoning or hanging gays ... then you are simply deluded.
Fortuyn and van Gogh were not all that interested in the Islamopanic ... They were concerned about religious extremists who were trying to undermine Dutch tolerant culture. Where did Pim Fortuyn ever complain about intolerant Christians or Christianity tout court? Did he not notice that Holland was full of Christians and know that it always had been? And I want a CITATION. His own words. Not your gloss on what "would have been consistent with his thinking" as you understand[sic] it. It's put up or shut up time. And your Christophobic knowledge[sic] of history hasn't gotten any better since my last post, since you have nothing to say about how Dutch secularism and tolerance did and could emerge out of Christendom, but nothing like it out of Islam. Aren't you supposed to be a Christian anyway?

Ah ... no citations. As I thought. Your prejudices alone.

Victor, I suggest you do some reading about Fortuyn and van Gogh before accusing me of not understanding the cultural context of their rhetoric. Your Islamopanic is coloring your perception of everything and demonstrates you don't really understand what the heck you are talking about.

Show me your citations. I'm not interested in your gloss on Fortuyn.

"Show me your citations. I'm not interested in your gloss on Fortuyn." Given how intellectually lazy your analysis is, I can't do all the work for you. He wrote 12 books. Pick one up.

The idea that religious people would oppose a bill protecting gays from violence would be completely anethema to the values Fortuyn believed in. He would have been outraged, because it was these types of actions in the Netherlands that had him so alarmed. Remember, Fortuyn was focusing on Muslims IN the Netherlands. Muslims were promoting their views of women and gays inside the country. Those views were not talk of murder, but merely suggestions that they didn't deserve equality and were immoral based on Muslim teaching.
Again, you need to take off your Islamopanic blinders and understand what Muslims in the Netherlands were proposing during that time. It wasn't violence, it was merely questioning the morality of Dutch society.

The idea that religious people would oppose a bill protecting gays from violence would be completely anethema [sic ... spelling] to the values Fortuyn believed in. And the ideas that (a) religious people would oppose a bill on that grounds; (b) that such a description accurately characterizes a bill; or (c) that Christians and Muslims can be lumped together as "religious people" and spoken of in the undifferentiated collective ... would be completely anathema [no sic] to the mind a human being has. Still no cites, I see.

We were talking about Fortuyn. Clearly van Gogh was the victim of violence and Ali alleges the same. But Fortuyn wasn't killed by for his criticism of Islam. In fact, Fortuyn based most of his criticism of Islam on the kind of violence that some Christians in the U.S. oppose protecting: violence against gays. He also expressed deep concern about inequality for women in Islam.

And one other thing, this sentence from Rod here ... It should be said that from a conservative point of view, Fortuyn was no savior. And this one from his NRO article: For example, Fortuyn, who was openly gay and a self-confessed libertine, came out in favor of repealing Article 1 of the Dutch constitution, which forbids the government and individuals from discriminating on "religion, belief, political opinion, race or sex, or on any other grounds whatsoever." That makes him a racist, sexist, anti-religious bigot, right? And this one from his NR cover piece: Fortuyn understood this, and wanted to save the Netherlands but what exactly did he want to save it for? An open homosexual who bragged about his promiscuity, Fortuyn championed Holland's anything-goes society as a morally desirable end.
Which rather pricks the gaseous balloon of Susan's posturing sense of intellectual superiority. We religious conservatives are quite well aware of the complexity of Fortuyn and would be so even if we read nothing but National Review.
Those things, BTW Susan ... are called "cites." I know how intellectually lazy your analysis is, but I can still do all the work for you.

Fortuyn based most of his criticism of Islam on the kind of violence that some Christians in the U.S. oppose protecting: violence against gays. You are completely full of it, so marinated in your own self-righteousness that you can't even see the real parameters of political debate and the actual content of political disagreement. Hands up all Christians who support "violence against gays." Anyone? ... anyone ... Bueller? As long as homosexuals aren't outlaws, i.e., excluded from the laws against homicide, robbery, etc., then opposing hate-crimes laws doesn't mean "supports violence against gays." Or does Andrew Sullivan support violence against gays too?

You haven't demonstrated that until this very second. Congratulations. And you're still demonstrating the contrary. And the fact my citations were THE VERY START of this discussion indicates your illiteracy in bringing up the "conservatives don't understand Fortuyn" charge in the first place. The contrary proof was already there.
Now you understand that it wasn't Islamopanic, but religious attacks on Dutch society that caused his outrage. Can you read? Where in those excerpts does Rod say THAT? Rod says Fortuyn wasn't a Christian and valued secular Western liberalism, to the point of libertinism. But that doesn't make YOUR point that all religions threaten Dutch tolerance equally, either in historic fact or as theological principle. And your continuing use of "Islamopanic" as if Ali and Van Gogh were killed/driven-out-of some other country or at some different time makes you unworthy to lick their shoes.
Christians opposing hate crime bills would have been as appalling as anything Muslims were doing at the time. Only in the imagination of Christian-hating Westerners.

The good thing is that the conservatives have found admiration of these liberal figures to the point of laud, extolling and defending their characters and what they stood for!
Will this trend continue when other liberals are dead and gone? Kinda doubt it. So what is required for that -- death by Islam?

Remarkable. I, as a religious conservative, oppose most of what Pim Fortuyn stood for, but I admired him for having the courage to stand up against shariah. I would rather live in Pim's Holland a thousand times than a Muslim country -- though if I were a Dutch citizen, I would work within the system to make it a more conservative place. I really don't understand the pathology that some on the left share of fearing and loathing Christians more than they do Islamists.

Susan doesn't do our research for us. We're too intellectually lazy. Pim Fortuyn wrote 12 books. Pick up one.

Absurd. Fortuyn was well known for a particular stunt he did on live television. He was debating an imam, and said something that made the imam lose his cool, and start saying violent and hateful things about gays. Fortuyn looked straight into the camera and said, See? This is what I'm talking about.

"I really don't understand the pathology that some on the left share of fearing and loathing Christians more than they do Islamists." This tired argument. First, I'm not saying Fortuyn would have been justified in fearing a conservative Christian influence in the Netherlands. In fact, I'd argue he went overboard in his fear of Muslims. In the United States, the left has legitimate reasons to be concerned about the influence of religious conservatives. On a day to day level, Christian conservatives are doing more to wage a culture war than Muslims. Thus, if you believe the culture war is important, Christians are much more of a barrier. On an macro-level, there's no doubt that Islamic terrorist--but not Muslims or Islam--is a threat to the U.S. There is no equivilent Christian threat since there are few Christian terrorists. It's the clumping together of Islamic terrorists and Muslims/Islam generally that's so perplexing and leads to Islamopanic.
The Muslim cab driver I had this weekend and the woman in a headscarf who was the cashier at my local Target are no more of a threat to me than the fundamentalist Christian next door who complains about the gay couple down the street. On a day to day level, I'd much rather spend time with the cab driver than my homophobic neighbor.

Let me put it another way, if Fortuyn had lived in the U.S., he wouldn't have been focusing on Muslim immigrants. He'd be complaining about Hispanic immigrants and ranting about their backwards religions (Catholicism and Pentecostals) and criticizing the anti-equality efforts of religous conservatives.

Susan S. said: Fortuyn based most of his criticism of Islam on the kind of violence that some Christians in the U.S. oppose protecting: violence against gays. (emphasis mine) Then Victor said:
Hands up all Christians who support "violence against gays." (again emphasis mine) That was a dirty trick. You turned what Susan said, which was a factual statement that reasonable people could acknowledge, into a caricature that no one could agree with in order to advance your argument. Shame on you. Dirty tricks and your general tone of rudeness win no points, Mr. Morton. You don't care about being right - just about beating the liberal woman at the debating game. How ugly.

what Susan said ... was a factual statement that reasonable people could acknowledge No, it wasn't. And I didn't distort it. There was a grammatical garble on her part, but she was plainly saying "Christians oppose protecting gays from violence." Which is "a caricature that no one could agree with in order to advance [her] argument." One you either agree with or can't see, apparently. Keep in mind ... you can think murdering gays should be a crime and oppose hate-crime laws. You can think the former on the grounds that gays are persons, and murdering persons should be a crime.

We're not talking hypothetical books written in your imaginary counterfactual. This fact was pointed out in rebuttal to your historic claim about Pim Fortuyn. Which was: Fortuyn's rhetoric never had the anti-Islamic flavor that van Gogh and Ali's did. ... there isn't much evidence that Fortuyn was cut out of the same anti-Muslim cloth as van Gogh and Ali. And have you actually seen the clip with the imam, or is it just your surmise that he had to have been saying the things Neuhaus and Falwell say. Citations only, please. No surmises.

both Falwell and Neuhaus have said some fairly unhinged things Such as ... on this topic specifically? Keep in mind "unhinged" =/= "disagrees with Susan or condemned by the Human Rights Campaign."

Wait, since he wrote one book with a title that evidences concern about Islamicization, he's anti-Muslim? Who's playing grammatical garble?

Then where do you get off comparing Falwell and Neuhaus to this imam since you have no idea what the imam said? Yes- the same way you lump Fortuyn in with van Gogh and Ali, she lumped Falwell and Neuhaus in with the imam. Just as you say those guys aren't from the same cloth, Susan is asserting that Fortuyn isn't cut from the same cloth as van Gogh and Ali. It's useful for you to lump them in together because it supports your "ph34r teh Muslimz!!11eleven" paradigm. That it is divorced from reality isn't relevant when it wins you debate points, right?

tv, while there may be some truth to your point, and victor may have un-chivalrouly hammered the stuffing out of susan, I think you're rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic
My opinion, and this coming from a woman, I think Susan S.'s hammering was way overdue. Her arguments are so steeped in ignorance combined with insufferability that I generally scroll past her posts.I'm grateful to Victor Morton for the patience and the fortitude to read, digest, and rebut her nonsense.