I'd imagine there are a lot of people glad to see Fortuyn dead... he was shaping to be a very dangerous man. Very intelligent, independently wealthy, charismatic, and pushing a cunningly populist near-xenophobia with some logical basis.
I don't know how he's described in the US, but Holland is *very* densely populated, very liberal (or maybe left-libertarian) and does have a lot of immigrants... his stance, that only those willing to conform and sign up to the Dutch social model should stay and/or enter, is appealing.
Plus it's hard to paint someone who's openly and flamboyantly gay of hating or victimising minorities, especially when his expressed stance is that it's the freedoms and liberties of Dutch society under threat.
I'm not sure you'd regard him as regulation RW in the US, BTW. Here's a couple of profiles:
Pim Fortuyn was openly gay and socially liberal and in his eyes, Islam, for example, was backward.
news.bbc.co.uk
He fears that the influx of Muslim immigration into the Netherlands is undermining the ultra-liberal, permissive values which made his the first country in the world to fully legalise same-sex marriages....
He's an ex-sociology professor, a former Marxist who then became an opinionated right-wing columnist and a political consultant to Dutch Christian Democrats before setting up his own political party less than three months ago.
AS far as I can tell, he's classed as RW for his stances on crime and immigration... hardly for his views on (e.g.) the market, or social spending - still less religion. |
