Lethargic IITian
Musings of a 20-something lethargic IITian on India and Catholicism.


Tuesday, May 07, 2002  

Michael Gove's analysis of the aftermath of the Fortuyn assassination.


Fortuyn and his allies developed a critique of the establishment notably different from those pioneered by the politicians with whom he has been compared, Jörg Haider and Jean-Marie Le Pen. Fortuyn was uncompromisingly neo-liberal. An advocate of laxer rules on euthanasia, greater drugs liberalisation, more use of the private sector in healthcare and tax cuts, he was very far from Le Pen’s hearthland politics of Vichyiste nostalgia. He may have been a “cultural protectionist” like Le Pen. But the culture he wished to protect was the Dutch libertarianism so familiar to many Britons from their weekends in Amsterdam, so congenial to him as a gay man, and so threatened, he claimed, by the incursions of Islam.

Several commentators have tried to show up the differences between Fortuyn and other European rightists like Le Pen and Haider. But the fact remains that, in attacking Islam itself, Fortuyn gave implicit approval to far right-wingers and neo-fascists who wanted to make the Muslims scapegoat to all their problems (not too different from the Jews a century back).

posted by Kensy | 1:34 AM
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