|
|
Politics The Meaning of Pim Fortuyn by
Stephen Cox The media told us that Pim Fortuyn,
the politician assassinated just prior to the Dutch election, was a
"right-winger." None mentioned that he was an openly gay man who supported social
tolerance and equal rights. Just what is going on in the Netherlands,
anyway?
Tell me, what do the following people have in common:
Maggie Thatcher, Clarence Thomas, Ayn Rand, Pim Fortuyn.
| | Stephen
Cox is a professor of literature at the University of California in San Diego
and the author of "The Titanic Story." |
|
The answer is not (see below) that all these people are
"right-wingers." The answer is, these people all give the lie to the
ruling (and often the only) political idea of the modern-liberal intelligentsia,
the idea that they themselves are moral idealists tirelessly concerned with the
welfare of such oppressed groups as poor people, women, "people of color," and
gays. If that's what really mattered most to them, then Clarence Thomas'
rise from poverty to the nation's highest judicial bench would be a cause of
pride and rejoicing, Margaret Thatcher's role as the most powerful woman of the
twentieth century would evoke deep and respectful interest, and Ayn Rand's
achievement as the most popular woman author of the century would merit devoted
academic and critical study. Well, what a laugh, eh? To put it mildly, none of
that ever happened. Thomas was smeared as a sexual harasser and porno hound,
Thatcher was ridiculed as "Attila the Hen," Rand was ignored when possible and
derided when necessary. Why? You know why. Their politics weren't right.
So there is something that's much, much, much more important than race, class,
and gender to the race-class-gender merchants of the academic world and to the
kind of media meisters who decree that every issue of their newspapers has to run
at least one "positive" story about blacks, gays, and women. Did you know that
newspapers have policies like that? Did you know how common those policies are?
But only leftwingers need apply. Now we have the case of Pim Fortuyn, the
leader of Holland's second-largest and currently most influential political
grouping. Fortuyn was assassinated on May 6. Fortuyn was openly gay. He was also
a "far right-winger," according to the liberal media that bothered to report his
death. It wasn't until two weeks afterward that I heard my first mention of it on
national TV, and then it came from Fox News, "the right-wing outfit."
|
| How did Pim Fortuyn get
to be called "right-wing"? He did it by questioning one article of the
modern-liberal political creed. He suggested that immigration of Muslims to
Holland be diminished, because the Muslim political culture is an intolerant one.
|
|
But Fortuyn wasn't right-wing. He just wasn't consistently left-wing. (If you
want the scoop on this, go to www.indegayforum.org, and check out Paul
Varnell's terrific reporting on the subject.) And that is enough to doom him to
oblivion in the minds (and TV stations) of all those people who believe that the
shooting of Harvey Milk, a left-wing gay who was a second-string San Francisco
politician, is worthy of three pages. No, I'm not running down Harvey
Milk. And I'm certainly not running down gays. Quite the opposite. It's clear
that the professional political friends of gays don't give a shit about them as
gays, that is, as people defined by a sexual identity, but only about them as
they can be redefined by an imposed political identity. And that identity had
better be the correct one. It's worth asking, how did Pim Fortuyn get to
be called "right-wing"? He did it by questioning one article of the
modern-liberal political creed. He suggested that immigration of Muslims to
Holland be diminished, because (imagine anyone saying this!) the Muslim political
culture is an intolerant one. This is not the place to determine to what
degree, if any, a person's political culture ought to be held against him when he
wants to migrate to another country. I can't resist saying, however, that
libertarians who are pious on this point might ask themselves what they would
recommend if a hostile foreign state decided to take advantage of America's
tolerance for immigration by giving the patients in its mental institutions a
one-way ticket to Miami. (By the way, this has actually happened.) Or do you
think it would be worse to admit a million schizophrenics than to admit a million
communists or theocrats? Of course, people have a right to be communists or
theocrats, or even both. People also have a right to be schizophrenic. But what's
your immigration policy? Hmmmm? It may not be the best policy simply to hope that
if you admit enough immigrants who want to nationalize private property, put
women in their place, stone adulterers, and castrate homosexuals, they will
finally become so acculturated to a liberal society that they will give up on all
their grossly illiberal ideas. Maybe they will, and maybe they won't. I'll put it
bluntly: will you risk your balls on it? Before you write your letter of
protest, please note the following. I am not promulgating a doctrine. I'm not
even expressing an opinion. I am asking a question.
| Clarence Thomas was
smeared as a sexual harasser and porno hound, Maggie Thatcher was ridiculed as
"Attila the Hen," Ayn Rand was ignored when possible and derided when necessary.
|
|
Obviously, the pressure-point in arguments about Fortuyn's views on
immigration is the point at which people simultaneously realize, if they are
capable of realizing anything, that Muslim political culture is, by and large,
outrageously intolerant, and that many individual Muslims are much more tolerant
than either you or I. All right, more tolerant than I. Have it your own way. But
that's where the intellectual and moral issue lies. To address that issue in the
way that Fortuyn addressed it should not be sufficient to get you shot, or to
subject you to an automatic and near-unanimous smear campaign in the American
press, starting within minutes of your death and ending only when the papers
decide to let the whole thing drop as unimportant. After all, it's not just
Muslim theocrats who are outrageously intolerant. A note on Fortuyn's
alleged assassin. Many people assume that you can have open immigration, so long
as you're not maintaining a welfare state that, in effect, pays immigrants
not to become acculturated. They may be right. I believe that that's what
the welfare state has been doing in Holland, and I would be interested to know if
Fortuyn ever considered dewelfarizing the nation, instead of forbidding
immigration, as a way of dealing with the some of the uglier phenomena of
cultural isolation. But not all the bad cultural artifacts of the welfare state
can be associated with religious or national issues. Far from it! The man
accused of killing Fortuyn is usually described as an "animal-rights activist."
That's true; he is. He is also a man who, according to one well-researched
report, "lived on welfare" so he could work "full-time as an activist." The group
he founded, a group appropriately entitled "Environment Offensive," was
subsidized by the state to the tune of $250,000 between 1992 and 1998. The
availability of political food stamps left the assassin with enough time on his
hands to file "more than 2,000 lawsuits against farmers." Is there a
better illustration of how the modern-liberal state can go from bad to worse?
|
| | |
|
