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The Pim Fortuyn killing has caught commentators on the hop and is forcing them to examine their perceptions and think afresh. By stimulating a sharper focus, this will naturally bring differing views into relief and generate the illusion of polarisation.
Thus Dave Winer adopts Adam Curry's penetrating observations on the complexity of Fortuyn's impact on the Dutch (and the European) political scene, and the incompetent and distorted reporting thereof by the big-time media. Lance Knobel, on the other hand, takes a contrary, more conventional view.
Let's examine Lance's concerns:
Step away from the horror of the killing and look at Fortuyn's declared policies: halt immigration, integrate existing immigrants, re-erect Dutch border controls, sack 25% of civil servants, reduce Dutch payments to the EU, end the system of consensus politics. This is idiosyncratic, reactionary politics. And however he dressed up his immigration policy, it appealed in part to some of the worst sentiments in the populace.
Halt immigration. The European and American approaches to immigration have been fundamentally different. America said "Let us create a great country with as many diverse peoples as we can, and integrate them into our ideal." The European approach is perhaps more generous, more idealistic: "Let us open our frontiers to the disaffected, the displaced, and let them share our heritage and grow alongside us, but let them retain their identity and culture, for thereby they will be happy". For geopolitical reasons the European floodgates have been wide open and time for local cultural adjustment has been short. "Hang on a minute, the people cry. "Lets just think about this, shall we?"
Integrate existing immigrants. Multiculturism is a dfficult thing to pull off. History tells us that peaceful coexistence of diverse cultures is damned near impossible to achieve. We have to ask, whose ideal is this anyway, what are the benefits, and what are the risks? Tolerance is all very well, but how does a tolerant society tolerate the intolerant?
Re-erect Dutch border controls. Parts of the European Community dismantled border controls some years ago. Unfortunately this was not uniform: Britain, for example, has retained a degree of stringency -- regularly challenged, as it happens, by daring escapades through the Channel Tunnel. Holland is a small, overpopulated country with an unusually liberal, tolerant culture. It finds this tolerance sorely challenged by some of its newcomers and understandably needs space to adjust.
Sack 25% of civil servants. Did he actually say this? Or did he propose reduction in bureaucracy? I don't know. The language of the former is derogatory to individuals. Would anyone seriously challenge the latter?
Reduce Dutch payments to the EU. The EU is a large, bloated and unaccountable bureacracy that seriously needs to have its budget cut. Three cheers for that! (Now, of course, the muddled thinkers will wrongly write me off as anti-European for that illiberal comment.)
End the system of consensus politics. So: if I agree with you, we have a consensus...?
This is idiosyncratic, reactionary politics. No. This is democracy.
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