"Pim Fortuyn was reacting strongly against a highly organized communal politics," says Erik Jones, a Netherlands expert at the University of Nottingham. "What he was arguing for was more of a sense of individualism, but within the context of a strong monoculturalism. He argued that the Dutch needed to do away with all this consensus, and just voice their opinions — but to do so within the general framework of Dutch culture."
To do that, Fortuyn challenged one of the fundamental principles of liberal Dutch culture: Thou shalt not be seen as intolerant. Immigration and immigration-related crime are not new problems in the Netherlands, but the ability to speak openly about it is. For years, the ruling elite, which includes the media, has made discussion of the growing immigration problem taboo, on pain of being branded a crypto-Nazi.
As recently as last week, Fortuyn denounced this paralyzing political correctness, telling an interviewer that "everywhere in Europe, socialists and the extreme left have forbidden the discussion of the problems of multicultural society."
"Professor Pim," a 54-year-old, openly gay, ex-Marxist professor turned newspaper columnist, emerged as an unlikely spokesman for anti-immigration sentiment in the Netherlands, where immigrants, many of them Muslims from Turkey and North Africa, make up 10 percent of the densely populated nation of 16 million.
Unlike France's Jean-Marie Le Pen, to whom he was often unfairly likened, Fortuyn was a free-marketeer who preached lower taxes and deregulation. He promised to get tough on crime, return the police to local control, and impose stricter standards on the educational system. Fortuyn, who frequented gay bars in his hometown of Rotterdam, was an unapologetic libertine who stood firmly behind Dutch beliefs in a liberal, tolerant society, but he maintained that Muslims and other immigrants who refused to accommodate themselves to Dutch values were a threat to liberty.
Kicked out of his original party for anti-Islamic statements — he once called Islam a "backward religion" for its treatment of women and gays, and authored a best-seller, "Against the Islamicization of our Culture — Fortuyn founded his own political party, List Pim Fortuyn, and shocked political observers by taking a third of the seats in Rotterdam municipal elections — this in a city where 45 percent of the electorate are not ethnically Dutch.
"If you look at his electoral list [of candidates], it was a case study in ethnic diversity," Jones says. "He sounded right-wing, but at the end of the day he was more about individual responsibility versus collective responsibility, as opposed to 'we hate foreigners.'"
Indeed, Fortuyn polled surprisingly well among ethnic voters, particularly small businessmen worried about crime brought by newer immigrants. Twenty percent of the votes at one Rotterdam mosque that served as a polling place went for Fortuyn. Said Kort, "We had black people on TV saying they will vote for him because he's doing something for black people who work for a living. He was against freeloaders."