Date: Mon, 13 May 2002 22:13:02 +0200
Subject: Re: the bloodthirsty dutch



On zaterdag, mei 11, 2002, at 05:00 , roger wrote:

> hey sprout -  any poop on the pol who got popped?

It has been one hell of a weird week here in Holland. Actually, 
it's been a weird half year culminating in last week. Actually, 
who knows what this week is going to bring, so "culminating" may 
have to be revised later.

Pim Fortuyn was a strange figure. He's been a public figure on 
and off for the last 20 years or so, and since about half a year 
he suddenly decided he wanted to become prime minister. He 
more-or-less usurped the protest party Leefbaar Nederland (which 
was, before that time, a collection of anti-politicians with 
more of a leftwing than a rightwing bent, if anything), turned 
it into a publicity machine for himself, and started spouting a 
mix of radical right wing and anti-establishment rhetoric: 
Holland is full, the islam is a backward and dangerous religion, 
our previous minister of health has killed more people than 
Osama bin Laden and heaps more in that vein.

On the strangeness bit: he's the most unlikely right wing leader 
I've ever heard of. He's a homosexual and always been completely 
open about it, to the point where he'll happily relate about his 
adventures in darkrooms on national TV, and tops all this off 
with a very upper class appearance (always in pinstripe, drives 
around in his Bentley with chauffeur, keeps referring to his 
butler, etc) Apparently this isn't an issue anymore for the 
majority of the rightwing people in Holland.

He then got kicked out of Leefbaar Nederland because he went too 
far by questioning article 1 of the dutch constitution (the 
equality article, everyone is equal irrespective of race, 
religion, sexual orientation, etc etc), started his own list and 
quickly got levels of support even higher than before. Before 
his death polls gave him between 10 and 25 percent of the votes.

The scary thing is that the one thing on which his support seems 
to be based is his standpoint on immigrants, the most common 
reason people give for supporting him is that "he finally says 
what we haven't been allowed to say". So, where I had always 
believed that racism in Holland was restricted to 1% hardliners 
who would vote for outright racist parties plus a bit of a 
fringe around that it is now suddenly clear that a large part of 
the population is at the very least scared of immigrants, and 
possibly worse. The moderately good news is that he has very 
little support in Amsterdam and to a lesser extent in the other 
big cities, which have the most immigrants; with the notable 
exception of Rotterdam (I haven't even the beginning of an idea 
why this is the case).

And where the extreme right in France or Flanders gets extra 
"free votes" because they're seen as nationalist, and 
nationalism has a meaning there, there is no such thing as dutch 
nationalism, at least not outside of the afore-mentioned 1% 
complete loonies.

After insulting a million dutch islamic people and scaring a 
million invalids by promising to stop their pensions he was 
finally done in by something rather unlikely: on friday he 
announced he wanted to put an end to restrictions on the fur 
breeding industry and the meat industry. On monday morning one 
of the polling agencies announced they considered it not out of 
the question he would become the biggest party. On monday 
evening he was shot by a radical animal rights activist.

The last week has seen all three of Fortuyn's political heirs, 
most of the old politicians and the press making complete 
arseholes of themselves. The vote of wednesday is expect to go 
approximately 4-way (Fortuyn, conservative liberals, christian 
democrats, social democrats), with the conservatives and 
socialists (who formed our government for the last 8 years) 
being essentially leaderless. A "broad coalition" is also out of 
the question, because it probably smells too much of the 
conservative-socialist government whose stagnation triggered 
Fortuijns rise.

So here we are in Holland with a big sore suddenly burst open: 
20% of the population wants to get rid of another 10%. And there 
doesn't appear to be anybody (whether party-political or not) 
who can start the process of getting out of this mess.

As the chinese say, I'm afraid we live in interesting times,
--
- Jack Jansen        <Jack.Jansen-AT-oratrix.com>        
http://www.cwi.nl/~jack -
- If I can't dance I don't want to be part of your revolution -- 
Emma Goldman -