Plenty of his fellow Dutch seemed to agree. At next week’s elections he was expected to win between 15 and 20 percent of the vote, giving his party a vital role in the formation of the next government. Instead, Fortuyn is dead, shot by a 33-year-old Dutch citizen in a parking lot in the town of Hilversum. Two weeks before his death, he spoke to NEWSWEEK’s William Underhill in Rotterdam:
NEWSWEEK: You dislike the term ‘right-wing’ to describe your program. Why?
Pim Fortuyn: There is no longer a distinction between progressives and conservatives. People are thinking in a non-ideological way. They are more open. Ideas are either modern or old-fashioned; either they work or they don’t. In my program there are elements of left or right. I’m amazed by the dogmatic attitude of the media that think along the old left-right lines.
Whether the idea is left or right-wing, doesn’t most of your support stem from your call for a halt to immigration?
This is one of the world’s most overcrowded countries and we have a lot of foreigners within our borders. People from a Muslim background only integrate into a modern society with great difficulty. There are two million Muslims in this country, of whom 1.6 million are in the underclass. Yet the parties [of the left] and the press refuse to discuss the problems of a multicultural society. What I have done in this election is to formulate those problems for a broad audience. They were already being discussed in the pubs or clubs-but never in the parliament or in the public arena.
Why not?
It’s not just a Dutch problem. Politicians are afraid that [raising the issue] will be seen as racist; that it’s just not civilized to mention what is a real problem. That amounts to moral terror. It is quite legitimate to ask whether you [should] bring more people from another culture into your country. Academics can talk about this, but apparently politicians can’t. The trouble is that I’m an academic who went into politics.
Where does your political support come from?
Everywhere. Upper class, middle class, lower class. People want change and they are not getting it from the political establishment. They love their country and they don’t want to lose it. But they are not narrow-minded. They are also citizens of Europe and of the wider world. Nor are they concentrated in Rotterdam [Fortuyn’s hometown]. I got a lot more support in Amsterdam after the recent demonstrations [when immigrants burned Israeli flags in the city’s main square].
You say you are not a racist, but isn’t there a danger that your views will be used as intellectual cover by those who are racists?
So what? What are you afraid of? Open discussion? Either you are a democrat or you aren’t.
What should happen to the large immigrant population that’s already living in the Netherlands?
We have no other choice [except integration]. I have never seen the successful integration of Muslim and Judeo-Christian cultures. It’s a very, very difficult task. All I’m saying is enough is enough. Let’s not make our problems any worse than they are already.
So your opposition is directed at Muslims in particular rather than immigrants in general?
The problem is that in Islam there is no distinction between church and state. There has been no Enlightenment, no tradition of humanism. From our point of view, they are living in another phase of civilization. I hope that they will modernize-go through their own Enlightenment and humanism-and then maybe it will be possible to integrate. Until then it is better to see the problem rather than neglect it.
The strength of your support has surprised foreign observers who see tolerance as a key political virtue of the Dutch.
Nothing has changed. Lots of very tolerant people are voting for me. They are still tolerant but [in the Netherlands] you have to keep to the middle of the road. And that’s where we went wrong. People are fed up with the fact that their own problems are ignored: immigrants are given houses rather than Dutch people themselves.
After eight years of rising prosperity under the present government it seems odd to find such a level of discontent.
Economic success is not down to governments. Economic success is down to entrepreneurs. Have you ever seen a politician who knows how to create jobs or make a profit? They are too stupid for that. But you can expect them to deliver good health care, education and security for the people. It’s a bloody shame that after such a period of economic growth they haven’t delivered good public services.
