"The Prof" shakes up Dutch politics

(BNews, March 2002)

Pim Fortuyn, a 54-year-old Professor of Politics and gay political activist, 
left the Dutch Labour Party in 1998 and founded a new political party, called 
Liveable Netherlands. The new party had only one policy plank - no more 
Moslem migrants in the Netherlands.

Fortuyn, a tall handsome man with a shaved head and a taste for loud ties 
and matching handkerchiefs, denies he is a racist. "They are trying to make a 
demon out of me - I'm no fascist or racist," he said. "Obviously, as a 
homosexual I know about prejudice." 

His opposition, he says, is not to Arabs or Turks or Indonesians as such, but 
to Moslem culture, which he says is anti-democratic, misogynist and 
homophobic. Last November, Fortuyn launched a book called Islamisation 
of our Culture, calling for a total halt to Moslem "asylum-seekers" entering 
the Netherlands. 

"Islam is backward," he says. "There is no equality for men and women, and 
the Imams here preach in offensive terms about gays." Immigrants, he says, 
"must learn the language, get to work and integrate. In Rotterdam we have 
third-generation Moroccans who still don't speak Dutch. They oppress 
women and won't live by our values."

As if on cue, Khaled el Moumni, the Imam of Rotterdam, offered his views 
on homosexuality: "Homosexuality does not only affect the people who 
have this disease, but it can also spread," said the Imam. "Dutch society is 
multicultural, so if the disease spreads, everyone can become infected. This 
is something we are afraid of." 

I told you so, said Pim Fortuyn, and last week his party polled 36% of the 
vote in the Rotterdam City Council elections, making it the largest single 
party in the Netherlands' largest city.

The Netherlands face national elections in May, and Fortuyn will be running 
for Prime Minister, heading another new party, the Pim Fortuyn List 
(www.lijst-pimfortuyn.nl/). 

He is unlikely to be Prime Minister just yet, but under the Netherlands' strict 
proportional system, he could well win a large number of seats. This week 
polls show him with 20% of the vote. 

Like other bastions of European liberalism, such as Norway and Denmark, 
the Netherlands is experiencing an anti-Moslem immigrant backlash, 
heightened since September 11 but building for several years. In Norway's 
election last year, despite much media indignation about Australia's 
rejection of the Norwegian freighter Tampa, anti-immigrant parties made 
major gains.

Anti-Moslem sentiment in Europe focuses on the treatment of women in 
immigrant families. Wide and hostile publicity was given to recent case in 
Sweden where a Moslem man murdered his daughter when she refused to 
agree to an arranged marriage.

Interestingly, Fortuyn has Fieroes Zeroual, a Moroccan-born woman who 
has campaigned against oppression of Moslem women, high on his list of 
candidates.

In Rotterdam, a declining port city dominated for decades by a complacent 
Labour Party machine, Fortuyn also campaigned on law and order issues - 
the city has a major problem with gang violence, mainly by Moroccan and 
Turkish immigrant youth.

A recent profile of Fortuyn in the New York Times showed the diversity of 
his support base. "Two Turkish women said they had voted for 'the 
Professor' because their neighborhood had become dangerous because of 
newcomers.

"At a gay bar where Fortuyn used to be a regular, the owner, Ben 
Houterman, laughed. 'Of course most of my clients voted for the Prof. His 
ideas about what's wrong are crystal clear'."

Fortuyn, who smokes big cigars and drives a black Daimler in a country 
where all right-minded people cycle to work, has become an instant star in 
the rather dull world of Dutch media and politics.

Politically, he is helped by the fact that the country has been run for 30 years 
by a cozy coalition of Labour and centre parties, since the proportional 
electoral system prevents any one party winning a majority. Fortuyn is able 
to pose as a man "outside the system," running against what he calls "the 3% 
who run everything in this country."