For many of the Dutch, the death of the 54 year old Pim
Fortuyn, the flamboyant sociology professor turned right-wing
politician in 2002 had something of the dreadful impact which
September 11 (2001) had on Americans. Dark disorientation fell
upon the nation known for its tolerance of almost everything
secular, eccentric, and postmodern. Fortuyn was murdered just days
before Dutch national elections (where Fortuyn was expected to win
and lead one of the largest parties in parliament) by a white 33
year old leftist and animal rights activist, Volkert van der Graaf,
who saw in Fortuyn's cry for an end to (especially Islamic)
immigration an ominous turn in the direction of right wing
oppression, possibly even fascism one day.
Van der Graaf also reportedly didn't like the florid
exhibitionism of this politician, a gay man who liked to wear
animal furs and do pretty much anything else he liked, and as he
liked, with a great deal of prejudice against those who held to
other views.
So principle, become fanaticism, turned to blood.
Van der Graaf had downloaded Fortuyn's schedule for May 6 from
the internet and shadowed him, finally and mercilessly shooting
him five times in the head and chest as the politician left a
radio studio where he had just completed an interview.
"Many animal protectors act from the assumption that 'nature is
good'," the killer, who received 18 years for the crime, said,
"but every dark side of humans can also be found in nature".
"Protecting animals is civilizing people," he is reported to have
said.
Immigrants, Muslims
Pim Fortuyn, who with his signature bald head, predilection for
decadence, and eloquence looked---probably quite consciously---
something like the French postmodernist philosopher, gay theorist,
and social critic Michel Foucault (1), had made his jagged and
unlikely climb in Dutch politics by playing on Dutch angst
regarding immigration. He rocked the modern-day regenten
establishment, which, though radically changed, stemmed from
Holland's Calvinist "orderly" days, when he called for the repeal
of the first article of the constitution which forbids
discrimination. In no uncertain terms he declared: "This is a full
country. I think 16 million Dutchmen are about enough".
It was such a turn in political climate, which Fortyun helped
erupt in Holland, which made others in Europe compare him to the
"racist" views of far-right politicians like Jean-Marie Le Pen of
France, Jörg Haider of Austria, and Filip Dewinter of Vlaams Blok
(now Vlaams Belang). Fortuyn rejected such comparisons and
preferred to consider his politics more like Silvio Berlusconi's
of Italy, and former Dutch Prime Minister Joop den Uyl, a
socialist. He considered himself a man of the Enlightenment and
simply reasonable, "civilized". For him this necessarily meant
that immigration in the Netherlands was plainly out of control and
that Holland was in danger of losing its national(ist) character.
Denied Racism
But lest anyone take his political views too seriously, it
should be noted that Fortyun, despite his call for repeal of the
first article of the Dutch constitution, not only denied being
racist; to justify his positions he was known to boast that he
would and did have sex in back rooms and bath houses with Moroccan
and Turkish youth without regard for race or religion (though he
denied they were under age, which some dispute).
Appalled the Left
It was such showman-like audacity which infuriated the Left which
considered itself the guardians of multiculturalism, after 72 % of
all Dutch Jews were deported to Nazi death camps during the Second
World War, even if it endeared him to others, making him something
of a populist by the time he was killed.
In any case Pim Fortyun was also adamant that Turkey with its
68 million Muslims not be admitted to the European Union. Europe
was already becoming Islamic enough for his tastes. The fact that
Holland's population in 1999 consisted of 45% peoples of foreign
origin (a large part of it the legacy of Dutch colonialism) gave
more and more of the Dutch anxious pause. It was projected that if
trends continued this would rise to 52% by 2015 (2).
Foreigners in Amsterdam
In Holland, very many Muslim small shop owners and workers
(largely Moroccans and Turks) lived in a densely populated
low-income part of Amsterdam known as "Dish City" because its
residents were in constant touch with the rest of the Islamic
world through Dish satellite television. Fortyun resented what he
perceived to be this seeming determination of the Islamic
immigrants to retain in no small part their distinctive, separate,
Islamic identity and refuse assimilation into what he called the
"cabaret" of Post-60's European civilization. The site of mosques
and women in distinctive Islamic garb was sufficient for him to
overlook the fact that not a few Muslims did seem to mix in, some
even all the way to unsavory lengths, as witness his allegations
about his sexual encounters with those who adopted "screamer"
gay---and very dangerous--- lifestyles.
The Morphing into Far-Right Politics
It might be considered odd that a flamboyant, even theatrical,
politically liberated gay professor who bizarrely compared sex
with strangers in dimly lit backrooms to the churches of his youth
"with all those candles," should embrace right-wing politics at
all. What is little known, however, perhaps outside of Holland, is
that according to Fortyun what turned him in this anti-immigration
direction was one transforming incident especially. According to
Ian Buruma:
[it]...began only after he moved
to Rotterdam in the early 1990's to become a sociology professor.
Local immigrant youths smashed the windows of Boundless (a local
gay den) and threatened its clientele. Fortuyn suddenly felt
vulnerable in a country where he thought he was safe. This had a
profound effect on his political thinking. In February 2002, a
reporter asked him why he felt so strongly about Islam. "I have no
desire," he replied, "to have to go through the emancipation of
women and homosexuals all over again. There are many gay high
school teachers who are afraid of revealing their identity because
of Turkish and Moroccan boys in their classes. I find that
scandalous."(3)
So there it was. The drama of the clash of values after all. It
was, from the Muslim side, not mere irrational hatred, as some
Western politicians would have it, but a reaction to what they
believed is pure decadence and decay and a threat to even minimal
morals.
No Excuse
There is no excuse for what happened to Pim Fortyun. Violence is
never an acceptable way to express difference. And, according to
Church teaching, a proper police defense against it is to be
expected. But there is also no excuse for outrageous provocations
against any peoples, especially the denunciation of their sense of
religious identity. Pim Fortyun was a master at provocation, at
inflammatory oratory. It is ironic, then, that he was murdered not
by any Muslim, for many were rightly offended and provoked by his
insults and yet they showed proper restraint, even while fearing
what his coming to power could mean for them.
Catholic
Fortyun was a Catholic whose open decadence offended all but
apostate Catholics (and they are legion today since the 1960's) as
well as Muslims. And he paid for it unjustly at the hands of a
twisted, sentimental white Left-wing fanatic. Theo van Gogh, the
Dutch filmmaker and distant relative of the famed artist, Vincent
van Gogh, was not so lucky. He was murdered in 2004, also in plain
daylight, by an angry Islamic young man who was apparently
offended by van Gogh's endless public vitriol and provocations
against immigrants, as well as by a serious work, a film, against
the treatment of women in some Islamic countries. Doubtless it was
van Gogh's habit of inflammatory rhetoric and deeds which colored
the reception of that documentary as much as the documentary
itself, at least for this young Muslim. Van Gogh's provocations
were scarcely likely to open the way for a receptive consideration
for genuine dialogue with many Muslims.
Practicality. Time for Moral Inventory
The West, I believe and have written, should get serious about
shoring up its borders in Europe in order to (for the most part)
keep apart peoples whose world views are so fundamentally
different that they are not likely to live peacefully together,
hospitality towards the persecuted being a measured exception.
Tolerance must be reciprocal or it will not be at all.
The aggression on Iraq in 2003 has made matters immeasurably
worse. But it is hardly the fault of the Muslims entirely. Though
I am committed to non-violence except in the most exceptional and
unambiguously defensive situations---and even then using only such
force sufficient to repel the aggression and protect the attacked,
per the Catechism of the Catholic Church----even I can sometimes
feel the stirrings of visceral wrath when I see open decadence and
blasphemy aimed against religion, against our own faith,
especially by the decadent media, and by some in the arts. Such
stirrings of wrath, however, must be transformed in Christ. Our
Lord too knew insult and provocation, and yet said from the Cross,
"Father, forgive them".
His way must ever be our way.
Still, Muslims must ask themselves whether certain facts(4) do not
make it increasingly difficult---whatever the geopolitics
involved--- for those in the West to feel comfortable living with
many of their religion.
Moral Inventory
It is time for moral inventory in the West before God punishes us
for our apostasy by giving us over to others who know degeneracy
when they see it.
Muslims should know it is only apostates from Christ's religion
who behave in such decadent ways, and they should not believe the
media's distorted lenses, the manipulated magnification which
makes it appear the entire West---the people--- subscribe to this
swill of decadence. The media serves the Powers which try to
manufacture the consent of the people.
We Christians must return Europe to the Faith, to the roots of
our sanity---beginning with the European constitution--- lest we
suffer the consequences of our own apostasy. For life is a serious
matter, not a cabaret.
_________________
End Notes:
(1) Foucalt said in an interview: "I think I have in fact been
situated in most of the squares on the political checkerboard, one
after another and sometimes simultaneously: as anarchist, leftist,
ostentatious or disguised Marxist, nihilist, explicit or secret
anti-Marxist, technocrat in the service of Gaullism, new liberal
and so on. An American professor complained that a crypto-Marxist
like me was invited in the USA, and I was denounced by the press
in Eastern European countries for being an accomplice of the
dissidents. None of these descriptions is important by itself;
taken together, on the other hand, they mean something. And I must
admit that I rather like what they mean." ---“Essential Works of
Foucault”---interview with Paul Rabinow in May 1984, The New
Press, 1997.
(2) Murder in Amsterdam: The Death of Theo van Gogh, Ian Buruma,
Penguin Press, NY, 2006 P. 23
(3) ibid. PP 56, 57
(4) Theo van Gogh wrote: "A recent survey revealed that 22% of
the Moroccans living in Holland believe that the attack on America
was permissible. Every side is reassuring us that these statistics
should be seen as quite positive, since that means that three
quarters think differently about this.
"I don't want to always be the spoilsport but, still I have a
nagging doubt. Even with this politically correct research which
was done with blinders, reveals that there are thousands of
Moroccan countrymen, who without blinking an eye, are prepared to
sacrifice yours and my children for the sake of Allah. ---(Allah
Knows Best, by Theo van Gogh; written shortly after 9/11)
NB: Clearly, sober immigration controls for the future in
Europe, along with Europeans taking seriously once again their own
heritage as well as their obligation to reproduce themselves
(breaking with a naive and decadent contraceptive mentality) to
preserve that heritage, should not ever mean persecution or
harassment of those from other lands who may be living within the
borders of the host country. The Golden Rule must be the law of
the land in this respect in social matters.
While it must, I believe, mean following common sense and
ceasing the flood of uncontrolled immigration where peoples in
large part do not think alike and share the same national values,
and who are not likely to live together in lasting peace,
regardless of the naive and sometimes elitist norms of radical
multiculturalism; and while it will mean host countries may have
to deport clear troublemakers (those who arouse hatred against
their host countries and its traditions, for example) it must
never mean wholesale "ethnic cleansing" and other similar
unthinkables (those who are truly and notoriously persecuted in
their own countries and / or by their own religions should be
given at least temporary, measured, asylum in the West as a matter
of Christian hospitality).
Nor will it mean that the West can afford to resist a serious
and deep critical appraisal of its own decadence or any injustices
which historically it may have exacted against others (consider
the mixed, complicated legacy of colonialism, etc) in their own
name. Jingoism / exaggerated nationalism can never be the answer
toward a better, more understanding and humane future; only
learning from the past and wisdom. The West must lead, if at all,
by example only.---SH