Pim Fortuyn was an openly gay Dutch businessman turned politician who founded a political party that swept to power in the local elections in Rotterdam before falling to the assasins bullet just before the general election in 2002. He believed that the Netherlands was a tolerant nation, but that it was in danger of 'tolerating the intolerable' when it came to Islamic fundamentalism. He believed that the Islamic community was insular anti women and homophobic, values that countered those of the Netherlands as a whole. He believed that immigration and asylum was having an adverse effect on Dutch society and should be halted and reversed. In fact more Muslim children were being born in the country than Dutch children. The political left tried to label him a bigot, or a fascist, but it didn't work as he himself was openly gay and his deputy leader was black. He was assassinated outside a radio studio by an animal rights activist and Muslim sympathiser. His party LPF or Lijst Pim Fortuyn were kingmakers during the 2002 elections but faded shortly afterwards. His successor in many ways is Geert Wilders, a man who recently came out of his safe house after the murder of Theo Van Gogh (Wilders name, amongst others was written on the piece of paper next to his dead body) Geert Wilders new party currently leads in the polls and Pim Fortuyn was last year named Greatest Dutchman in a nationwide poll.
I admired Fortuyn when he was alive and I continue to do so after his death. He was a breath of fresh air who in my view knocked the political left for six. The usual rhetoric couldn't apply to him. He was a liberal minded man who had enough by the fundamentalist brand of Islam that is prolific in Europe, the Low Countries in particular. I can also empathise as I am also openly gay and have been the target of Muslims on my university campus, most of whom were not even born here. I believe Islam is the biggest threat to western values of individual liberalism and democracy.
Until his murder by Jihadists, Pim Fortuyn was usually reported to by a gay psuedo-fascists here in the states, prmarily because of his views of the Islamic 'threat' in Europe. The left leaning US press rarely delves into the factual reasons for the views of such people as Pim, but falls back on the template that anyone who expresses strong opinions must be an extremist. Sadly, far too few journalists are even curious enough to perform even the most perfunctory research of the motivations behind a candiates views.
