Originally appeared March 27, 2002, in the Chicago Free Press.
Editor's note: Pim Fortuyn, 54, was assassinated May 6, 2002, outside a radio studio in Hilversum, The Netherlands.
Dutch politics has recently been roiled by the emergence of an openly gay candidate who denounces Islam as backward, wants to limit foreign immigration, curtail street crime, improve public services, cut back a welfare state often labeled "bloated," and shake up the bland "old boy network" of Dutch politics.
Pim Fortuyn is generally described as an author, television personality, and former professor of sociology with a Marxist perspective. He has attracted much media attention for employing a butler and traveling in a chauffeur driven Mercedes.
But his ideas are what have aroused most interest. Journalists have difficulty finding an accurate label for him. "Populist" seems the safest, non-polemical term. But his detractors, mostly on the political left, frequently denounce him as racist, fascist and other terms of abuse.
But judging from a New York Times article, those claims seem counter-intuitive, slanderous, even crazed. And it may be Fortuyn's opponents who better deserve the labels they use.
Fortuyn points out, for instance, that many Muslim immigrants do not learn Dutch and refuse to adopt the Dutch national culture of tolerance and equality. The immigrants' version of Islam is backwards, he says, because, among much else, there is no equality between men and women and because Muslim clerical leaders attack homosexuals.
It does seem clear that many Muslim immigrants come from historically sexist and homophobic regions such as Morocco, Turkey and Indonesia, bringing their cultural views with them. And Muslim Imams in Rotterdam have repeatedly denounced gays as immoral. Rotterdam Imam El Moumni said on Dutch television that homosexuality is "a disease that threatens society."
There is a fascinating phenomenon here. A man who urges immigrants to embrace their adopted nation's liberal values of political tolerance, women's equality and respect for gays is the one denounced as a racist and fascist.
Yet insofar as immigrants suppress women, denounce the very existence of gays, and, we may reasonably suppose, are hostile to Jews, the immigrants seem far closer to those who originally bore the labels now being applied to Fortuyn.
At this point we can begin to suspect that terms like "racist" and "fascist" are just empty rhetoric, swear words, with no cognitive content. They are designed merely to delegitimize someone without taking the trouble to provide evidence or argue against their ideas.
One of the deepest political problems for any open, free society is what measures it must take in order to preserve its fundamental values of openness and tolerance against counter-pressures from people who reject those very values. But the problem is scarcely solved by denying the problem exists or by denouncing people who try to preserve a free society as racists or fascists.
The Dutch, with their historical experience of real fascism, can surely recognize and reject any politicians who threaten any sort of authoritarianism. Gays in particular, as targets of fascist oppression, would presumably welcome a politician, gay or not, who wanted to preserve a society where they are accepted.
And sure enough, when a Times reporter visited a gay bar to ask for opinions about Fortuyn, the bar-owner said, "Oh course most of my clients voted for the prof. His ideas about what's wrong are crystal clear."
Most of Fortuyn's other policy ideas don't seem fascist or racist either. Rather the opposite.
He wants local mayors to be popularly elected rather than appointed. Generally, people on the left view democracy and fascism as opposites. But in this case the man who wants to expand democracy is the one labeled racist and fascist. Does this fit a pattern of dissimulation and obfuscation by Fortuyn's critics?
Fortuyn also addresses popular concern about rising crime rates and street violence. According to the Times, police attribute both to "gangs of immigrants from Morocco, Turkey, and the Caribbean." If true, it hardly seems racist to say so. And Fortuyn apparently has support from many earlier immigrants who fear street crime as much as anyone else.
The crime problem may be exacerbated by an inability or unwillingness of more recent young immigrants to acclimate to Dutch culture, even to act out their rejection in anti-social ways. If so, the problem is to foster cultural integration in some way. But vigorous police vigilance can help in the meantime.
Fortuyn also says he would like to revive military conscription. Since The Netherlands is not surrounded by foreign enemies, we can speculate that Fortuyn hopes to draw young immigrants into Dutch culture by requiring common service in the national military.
We can oppose conscription as hostile to personal liberty and believe there are better ways to integrate immigrants, but urging it is hardly fascist. Conscription was supported by U.S. Presidents Franklin Roosevelt, Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson. Even now proposals for mandatory national service come more from the left than the right.
It is worth recalling which U.S. president ended conscription: Richard Nixon. And what presidential candidate first urged an end to conscription: Senator Barry Goldwater in 1964. Both men were viewed as on the political right.
History is often embarrassing to facile polemics that way.