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To: thames_sider who wrote (12296)	5/7/2002 7:52:43 AM
From: Tom Clarke	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 21057

Extremes now meet in our common EU home Michael Gove May 07, 2002 Fortuyn's death marked the collision of dark forces which are set to grow Modern Scotland, said the poet Hugh MacDiarmid, was “whaur extremes meet”. That dubious distinction now belongs to modern Holland. Yesterday two varieties of contemporary extremism met in an horrific collision. Pim Fortuyn, the most silkily charismatic and plausible of Europe’s new breed of populist politicians, was killed in an act of political violence as typical of the new terrorism as it was alien to the old Holland. Fortuyn’s assassination marks more than the death of a maverick soul poised to unravel the comfortable consensus of Dutch politics. It is a bleak snapshot of dark dramas to come. No democrat can feel anything but horror at the use of the gun to influence politics. Tony Blair expressed his own “sense of shock” at Fortuyn’s killing. But political conversations will not be restricted to disgust at the manner of his demise. The consequences of Fortuyn’s death for his party, and its impact on the wider growth of populist and far-right politics, will be anxiously weighed by Europe’s political establishments between now and the Dutch elections next week. Fortuyn’s party, and its allies, have lost a wickedly glamorous leader with a gift for brutally arresting soundbites. But they have gained a martyr. The fears about rising crime which they exploited have been given an horrific new immediacy. Fortuyn’s allies will be able to argue that the democratic process itself came under attack with his assassination and the best way to defend democracy is to support their candidates and show that violence cannot close down arguments. Fortuyn may have been the most striking face of Dutch populism but the movement from which he sprang has resources beyond his name. Leefbar (Liveable) Nederland is a populist alliance which has come from the fringes of politics, in the space of months, to threaten the country’s establishment. Even within Leefbar Nederland (LN) Fortuyn was a maverick, ploughing his own furrow in the ethnically charged port city of Rotterdam to secure 17 out of 45 seats in March’s local elections. But other branches of the movement which did not have him as a local champion also scored significant victories in Amsterdam, Delft and Maastricht. Overall the votes cast for LN and its allied populists overtook those of the Christian Democrats, traditionally the biggest party in Dutch local government. Fortuyn and his allies developed a critique of the establishment notably different from those pioneered by the politicians with whom he has been compared, Jörg Haider and Jean-Marie Le Pen. Fortuyn was uncompromisingly neo-liberal. An advocate of laxer rules on euthanasia, greater drugs liberalisation, more use of the private sector in healthcare and tax cuts, he was very far from Le Pen’s hearthland politics of Vichyiste nostalgia. He may have been a “cultural protectionist” like Le Pen. But the culture he wished to protect was the Dutch libertarianism so familiar to many Britons from their weekends in Amsterdam, so congenial to him as a gay man, and so threatened, he claimed, by the incursions of Islam. Fortuyn’s focus on the difficulties he alleged Muslims had integrating into Western life was deliberate. He wanted to emphasise that he had no problem with multiracialism per se, boasting of his sexual adventurism with lovers of all races, and promoting a non-white woman from the Cape Verde isles as his deputy. His quarrel was not with different races, but a belief system he considered incompatible with Western freedoms. The circumstances which provided Fortuyn with his platform, and drew protest voters to him, will not diminish after his death. The scale of Muslim immigration into Europe is set to rise. The resentment felt towards these new immigrants by continental voters has been limited by relatively benign economic circumstances. But in The Netherlands, as elsewhere in the EU, the economic outlook is growing bleaker. The capacity of elites to change course is constrained by membership of the euro and their failure to pursue full free-market reform. We can anticipate rising anger at the inability of establishment politicians to pursue economic policies in the national interest. There will be increased opposition towards interest rates being set by “outsiders”. And greater numbers of immigrants will provide populists and neo-Fascists with new scapegoats. Fortuyn may no longer be alive to exploit these discontents. But the opportunities for politicians even less scrupulous than him are set to grow. As are the risks of political violence. The success of far-right or populist movements which use race as a political weapon almost inevitably leads to an upsurge in hate crimes. Even in Britain, as I have had unhappy cause to report, the recent growth in expressions of anti-Semitic sentiment has led to a quadrupling of attacks on Jews. Assaults on Britain’s, and Europe’s, Jewish communities also regrettably force us to contemplate the other dark side of the Fortuyn legacy. For intemperate and simplistic as his rhetoric was, its success reflected a widespread concern. Why is it the most horrific acts of politically motivated violence committed against the West have come from Muslims, in the grip of a twisted fundamentalist version of their faith, who have enjoyed the freedoms, welfare benefits, educational opportunities and wealth Europe has to offer? And why do Western establishments temporise in the face of fundamentalist violence, from the EU’s funding of the infrastructure of terror in the Palestinian Authority to the lack of prosecutions against those who preach hate and recruit for jihads? A failure by European elites to tackle these questions allows both extremes, the far Right and Islamic terror, to flourish. Where do extremes now meet? In the house that Jacques built. timesonline.co.uk

To: thames_sider who wrote (12296)	5/7/2002 11:55:54 AM
From: E	Respond to of 21057

One can only speculate. Once the infraction (there are plenty of people reading this right now who have had two accounts; i'm not one of them, but i sure know some) was called to his attention, he had to do something. Or had the right to, anyway. The 15 days, given the no-victim nature of the infraction and the fact that it happened a year ago, was a matter of discretion. Okay, so he decided 15 days. I would think that too much but still no big deal except for the context, in which the person he's being so harsh with has been subjected to extreme behavior by someone else with NO sanctions against her harasser. It's the contrast between Jeff's reaction when Poet is a minor offender and when she is the victim of a major offense that surprises me. Of course Poet isn't a lawyer, and won't sue SI, presumably.