Bill's Comment Page

Dutch 'right-wing' politician Pim Fortuyn killed

Mr Fortuyn was killed today whilst leaving a radio station at the Hilversum media centre near Amsterdam, after completing an interview.

Mr Fortuyn recently did well in local government elections in Rotterdam on a platform advocating amongst other things that immigration into Holland cease, particularly in the case of Moslems. He was expected to gain a significant proportion of the votes in the upcoming Dutch general elections.

He differed from some other right-wing politicians in that whilst he called for new immigration to cease, he wanted those already in Holland to stay and become fully integrated into Dutch society. He regarded Islam as a 'backward' religion, perhaps one reason being that homosexuality is regarded as sinful by that religion. However, the Roman Catholic religion likewise regards homosexuality (or, at the very least, its practise) as sinful. Mr Fortuyn was himself gay, and cared not who knew it. More importantly, he was formerly a Professor of Psychology and whilst new to the Dutch political scene had quickly established himself as a force to be reckoned with - much to the consternation of the Dutch political establishment which had earlier tried to dismiss him as an unimportant maverick.

Predictably, Andrew Sullivan (link at right), focusses on Fortuyn's views on Islam to indulge in yet one more rant about that religion. May I remind Mr Sullivan that Yasser Arafat, whether or not he is a supporter (or instigator) of terrorism, and he may well be (if the evidence Ariel Sharon is apparently presenting to the US government is found to be conclusive), is in fact a Christian and not a Moslem, as is a significant section of the Palestinian population.

As a gay man I deplore the attitude toward homosexuality of Islam, but having lived in a large number of Moslem countries in the Middle East, I found it no more a barrier there, in practise, than in any other country in which I have lived, whether notionally capitalist or communist (and I have lived in a number of such countries, too). Catholicism, and indeed many Protestant sects, likewise deplore homosexuality.

As for the degree to which Mr Fortuyn's policies were 'right wing', the fact that he happened to have been gay is no help - gays can hold views just as extreme or liberal as any other section of the population. Mr Fortuyn was obviously a highly-sophisticated individual and it may well have been an over-simplification to consider him right wing in the same way as Jean-Marie Le Pen or Jorg Haider, for example, but his gayness is no indication by itself that he was/was not every bit as extreme as some believed him to have been. I have read quite a lot about him in the last month or so and still could not make my mind up on the matter.

Mr Fortuyn's murder is certainly deplorable, specially in a traditionally peacable nation such as Holland (even if its policies in its erstwhile colony Indonesia, a largely Moslem nation, were equally deplorable) and it is at least possible that there will be further repercussions for Dutch democracy. I share Dutch Prime Minister Wim Kok's shock at such an outrage.