samizdata.blogspot.com
When is a nationalist not a fascist?
Well, when he is not a fascist... Daniel Antal, a Hungarian economist currently visiting
London, takes the view that David Carr was wrong to tar Dutchman Pim Fortuyn with the
same brush as the neo-fascist Frenchman Jean-Marie Le Pen
I have to disagree with some of David Carr's analysis in What say ye, Fukuyama?
regarding the extreme nationalist 'right-wing' successes in Europe recently. I do not
think Jean-Marie Le Pen is comparable with Pim Fortuyn in the Netherlands or the
Schiller Partei in the German local elections in the Bundeslander. I think these
parties have challenged a profoundly decadent strain of European cultural relativism.
I have not completely read through through Schiller's or Fortuyn's manifestos yet,
but my first impression is that Dutchman Pim Fortuyn is the first populist leader who
started a strong movement to defend the current level of liberties and democratic
institutions rather than being behind some atavistic fascist movement.
Fortuyn is not racist: he discriminates on the issue of Dutch language skills as a
measure of cultural integration. The Muslim immigrants refuse to learn Dutch and
are thus seen as being 'unavailable for democratic dialogue'. Fortuyn says that he
wishes a new anti-discrimination paragraph in the Dutch constitution because he
wants to criticize the Islamic immigrants who refuse to accept western norms of
human rights. He says that inciting violence against these groups should be banned,
but not merely criticizing them. He is a sociology professor and proud to be gay, and
he says he is quite thankful for the Dutch Liberal democracy for the fact that he
need not hide away all his life because of his sexual orientation. He accuses the
non-Dutch speaking immigrants of hatred towards homosexuals, extreme
oppression of women, sexism and such things, thus he should not be lumped in with
the 'far right' like Le Pen.
The shocked left-wing, whose 'multi-cultural' agenda is facing its strongest challenge
in the last three decades, accuses Fortuyn of discrimination when he says things
like: "Islam is a backward religion, whose followers see us Westerners as an inferior
race." And he questions the first article of the Dutch constitution, which bans
discrimination. "If it means that people are no longer allowed to make
discriminatory remarks, I'd say this is not good. Let people say what they want.
However, there is another important line to be drawn: one should never incite
violence." In short, Fortuyn is advocating an approach not unlike the US First
Amendment.
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