Pim Fortuyn
Wilhelmus Simon Petrus Fortuijn, known as Pim Fortuyn, was a Dutch politician, author, civil servant, businessman, sociologist and academic who founded the party Pim Fortuyn List in 2002.
Fortuyn worked as a extraodinary professor at the Erasmus University of Rotterdam until 1995 after which he went for a business career and was an advisor to the Dutch government on social infrastructure. He then became prominent in the Netherlands as a press columnist, writer and media commentator.
Initially a Marxist who was sympathetic to the Communist Party of the Netherlands, and later a member of the Dutch Labour Party in the 1970s, Fortuyn's beliefs began to shift to the right in the 1990s, especially related to the immigration policies of the Netherlands. Fortuyn criticised multiculturalism, immigration and Islam in the Netherlands. He called Islam "a backward culture", and was quoted as saying that if it were legally possible, he would close the borders for Muslim immigrants. Fortuyn also supported tougher measures against crime and opposed state bureaucracy, wanting to reduce the Dutch financial contribution to the European Union. He was labelled a far-right populist by his opponents and in the media, but he fiercely rejected this label. Fortuyn was openly gay and a supporter of gay rights.
Fortuyn explicitly distanced himself from "far-right" politicians such as the Belgian Filip Dewinter, Austrian Jörg Haider, or Frenchman Jean-Marie Le Pen whenever compared to them. While he compared his own politics to centre-right politicians such as Silvio Berlusconi of Italy and Edmund Stoiber of Germany, he also admired former Dutch Prime Minister Joop den Uyl, a social democrat, and Democratic U.S. president John F. Kennedy. Fortuyn also criticised the polder model and the policies of the outgoing government of Wim Kok and repeatedly described himself and LPF's ideology as pragmatic and not populistic. He also became known for his unconventional and flamboyant way of debating which was considered unique in Dutch politics at the time. In March 2002, his newly created LPF became the largest party in Fortuyn's hometown Rotterdam during the Dutch municipal elections held that year.
Fortuyn was assassinated during the 2002 Dutch national election campaign by Volkert van der Graaf, a left-wing environmentalist and animal rights activist. In court at his trial, Van der Graaf said he murdered Fortuyn to stop him from exploiting Muslims as "scapegoats" and targeting "the weak members of society" in seeking political power. The LPF went on to poll in second place during the election but went into decline soon after before it was ultimately disbanded at a national level in 2008. Despite this, Fortuyn's ideas and legacy continued to have an impact upon Dutch politics. Observers have described his ideological influence as Fortuynism or the ''Fortuyn revolt.''
Biography
Early life and education
Wilhelmus Simon Petrus Fortuijn was born on 19 February 1948 in Driehuis within the Dutch municipality of Velsen, as the third child to a middle class Catholic family. His father was a sales representative for a envelopes and paper company and was involved in local Catholic associations while his mother was a housewife. Fortuyn was raised primarily by his mother as his father was often away for his work. He first attended a Catholic primary school, where Fortuyn later described his time as "terrible," before graduating from the Mendelcollege secondary school in Haarlem where he was described as an academically gifted pupil.As a youth, Fortuyn initially wanted to train as a priest, but in 1967 he began to study sociology at the University of Amsterdam and also attended lectures in history, economics and law. He then transferred after a few months to the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam where he continued his degree in sociology and took joint honours classes in public administration. In 1971 he ended his study with the Academic degree Doctorandus. In 1981 he received a doctorate in sociology at the University of Groningen as a Doctor of Philosophy.
Career
Professional career
Fortuyn worked as a lecturer at the Nyenrode Business Universiteit and as an associate professor at the University of Groningen, where he taught Marxist sociology. He was also an employee of the Groningen University Newspaper for which he wrote columns. He was a Marxist at the time and sympathized with the Communist Party of the Netherlands, although he never became a full member. Later, he joined the Labour Party. In 1989 Fortuyn became director of a government organisation administering student transport cards and worked as a research assistant and advisor to the Social and Economic Council. In 1990 he moved to Rotterdam. From 1991 to 1995, he was an extraordinary professor at the Erasmus University Rotterdam, appointed to the Albeda-chair in "employment conditions in public service" and ran an education consultancy business.When his teaching contract in Rotterdam ended, Fortuyn made a career of public speaking, writing books and press columns, and worked as a weekly columnist for Elsevier. He gradually involved himself in politics through regularly appearing on televised debate shows and became a familiar public figure for his charismatic and flamboyant speaking style. In 1994 he began hosting his own radio program on RTV Rijnmond and often appeared on the political debate show Buitenhof and later as a commentator on the business current affairs program Business Class on RTL Nederland. Fortuyn was openly gay, and said in a 2002 interview that he was Catholic.
Political career
Fortuyn began his political career on the left and was initially a Marxist due to an aversion to the Dutch political establishment which he described as dominated by pillarization and a "regent mentality." He was sympathetic to the Dutch Communist Party but chose not to become a member due to personal disagreements with the party leadership and self-identified as a Marxist without becoming active in any communist organisations. In the 1970s he joined the Labour Party and became a social democrat. In 1986, his views shifted towards neoliberalism in the hope that the free market would lead to further individual emancipation, ending a perceived oppression by state bureaucracy. In 1991, he proposed firing half of all civil servants and promoted privatisation and decentralisation. In 1992, Fortuyn wrote Aan het volk van Nederland, in which he declared himself to be the spiritual successor of the charismatic but controversial 18th-century Dutch patriot politician Joan Derk van der Capellen tot den Pol. The book urges the already culturally emancipated citizen to use the free market to also liberate himself economically, from the welfare state. In 1989, Fortuyn left the Labour Party and during the 1990s became a member of the centre-right VVD and was briefly a political consultant to the Christian Democratic Appeal in the early 2000s.Though on economic matters Fortuyn would largely remain a neoliberal, culturally he soon became strongly influenced by the neoconservative political philosopher and chief editor of the weekly Elsevier Hendrik Jan Schoo who made him a columnist in 1993. Schoo deplored that a progressive new class would have promoted multiculturalism, founding an anti-racist civil religion on article 1 of the Dutch constitution, forbidding discrimination. Whereas in the early 1990s Fortuyn had held liberal views on immigration, this changed under the influence of Schoo.
Dutch neocons understood that in the evermore secularising Netherlands a change on the lines of the Reagan Revolution had become highly improbable. Women's rights, gay rights, abortion and euthanasia had been generally accepted. In his 1995 book De verweesde samenleving, Fortuyn claimed that the progressive movement of the 1960s had eroded traditional norms and values. Both the roles of the "symbolic father" and the "caring mother" had been lost, leaving an orphaned population without guidance, to live out a meaningless decadent existence. However, Fortuyn did not propose a return to old socially conservative or Dutch Calvinist and iconoclastic values and argued that the media, schools and artists should provide a moral leadership, explicitly promoting and defending the new values of modern Western society, constantly recreating the Dutch identity. Fortuyn consistently retained a liberal stance on matters such as LGBT rights throughout his political career.
Adopting the philosophical analysis by Carl Schmitt, it was assumed that such an identity could only be defined in antithesis to some actually existing concrete enemy. Inspired by Samuel Huntington's The Clash of Civilizations, Dutch ethnicity was to be re-invented by identifying that enemy as Islam. In his 1997 book Tegen de islamisering van onze cultuur, Fortuyn proposed that after the fall of communism a new adversary would be found in Muslim culture. Fortuyn explained the global fundamentalist wave of the 1990s as a backlash against the insecurities caused by globalisation. The Dutch should counter Islamic fundamentalism by promoting and defending their own fundament, Dutch culture, especially modernism and the Enlightenment values. These should not yet be imposed on the Dutch population as a whole, with the exception of immigrants. Whereas American neoconservatives promoted hard power policies in relation to the Muslim world, Dutch neocons favoured a soft power approach. Shortly before the September 11 attacks, Fortuyn called for a Cold War against Islam, meaning a non-military defensive enmity. The attacks and the war on terror made Islam a main issue in Dutch politics for the first time.
Fortuyn announced his intention to run for parliament in a television interview with EenVandaag in 2001, although he did not specify which party he would seek to stand as a candidate with. Although he was already in contact with the newly formed Livable Netherlands party, he also considered running for the Christian Democratic Appeal which he had worked as a consultant for, or even creating his own list. Livable Netherlands founder Jan Nagel subsequently invited him to run as party leader and Fortuyn was elected "lijsttrekker" by a large majority of party members at the LN conference on 26 November 2001, prior to the Dutch general election of 2002. In his leadership bid and general election campaign, Fortuyn attacked the mainstream parties on multiculturalism, immigration and law & order. He also called for less government interference and for a reform of the Dutch public health and education systems. Fortuyn concluded his speech by stating "at your service" in English which he later adopted as his campaign slogan during the general election. Support for LN rose dramatically during Fortuyn's brief leadership, climbing from 2% in opinion polls to about 17%.
On 9 February 2002, Fortuyn gave an interview to Volkskrant, a Dutch newspaper regarding his beliefs on immigration and Islam. His statements were considered so controversial that the LN summoned him to an emergency meeting and then dismissed him as lijsttrekker the next day after Fortuyn refused to retract his statements. Against the advice of his campaign team, Fortuyn said in the interview that he favoured closing borders to Muslim immigrants and if possible he would abolish the "peculiar article" of the Dutch constitution forbidding discrimination.