Land der Blinden

The Netherlands are a small and peaceful country, so it’s not hard to imagine that the murder of right wing politician Pim Fortuyn in 2002 shook the nation up quite a bit. Of course the future of Dutch politics was changed by the death of a man who was due for a landslide victory (and who got 17% of the votes, even though he was dead). The past of Dutch politics also changed considerably, although Pim Fortuyn had very few political friends when he was alive. Just as most of the Dutch joined the resistance against the nazi’s when the second World War was over, Pim Fortuyn suddenly had a lot more friends when he was dead. Safely tucked away in his coffin, he was described as a well educated man with interesting ideas. And it didn’t take very long before those ideas were as common as lies and arselicking among politicians of all parties. Many clever salesmen on the political market then claimed that they had been friends of Pim all along. For this, a lot of history had to be rewritten, because 30 years ago, even right wing politicians were extreme left by today’s standards. Pim Fortuyn himself started his quest for recognition as a maoist and was an influential member of the social-democrat party for many years.
But even those new ‘friends’ who had been proper conservatives all their life, felt they had to explain their not so glorious past. After all, why didn’t they support Pim when he was alive or make some effort to start a political movement of their own? The answer was that there was this big left wing conspiracy that made it a taboo to discuss issues like immigration. By taboo they meant that if they were critical of immigration, other people would be critical of them. This criticism would not always be a nice discussion among old chaps. On 12 november 1991 the house of immigration deputy minister Aad Kosto was blown up by the anti-racist group RARA. This attack was quite exceptional though and widely criticized by almost all anti-racists. Even many radical activists who wouldn’t object to political violence in itself, didn’t support this attack, because they felt that RARA were mainly doing it to prove themselves. Apart from this Kosto attack, people criticizing immigration had to face nothing more severe than unfriendly words, street theatre, a rotten tomato here and there or dutch flags with the text ‘fuck the bolk’ (referring to the leader of the conservative liberal party Bolkestein). On top of this kind of nasty protest, the social democrat party wasn’t too friendly to immigration criticists in their own ranks, but other influential parties were. In any case, the social democrat party is a snake pit, where political careers are crushed all the time for personal reasons. I can imagine that some politicians had to cry a bit when they were confronted with the hardship of political life. Also, I understand that it can’t have been easy to be a conservative in the seventies. But after 1977, we have been ruled by conservatives or colourless free market fundamentalists, so I think the left has paid back the debt for their arrogance in the seventies. Anyway, if unfriendliness or opposition was a good excuse for a lack of political results, we would still have apartheid and women would not be allowed to vote.