On Pim Fortuyn

I sent someone the following reply after he'd sent me an article in which (yet again) a journalist thinks the Netherlands have gone 'right-wing' because of Pim Fortuyn. I heartily disagree:

Fortuyn didn't do anything. He just made apparent what was already there: civil discontent on a massive scale. The populist sentiment is that Moroccan youngsters get government support to fund a place to get together and harass the neighbourhood from, but any other citizen will be fined 50 euros if he takes out his trash an hour early. That's a good way to sow discontent with the natives. It is not the fault of immigrants, but of our politicians, and Fortuyn dared to say so, because he wasn't one of them. Likewise, the current problems with 'about a 100 or so' kids (mainly Moroccans) who terrorize neighbourhoods in Amsterdam are not the sole fault, imho, of those Moroccans. In the USA these guys would have been locked up. Here, the police dare not intervene in case the situation 'escalates'. Guess what: it already has. But the Dutch fear of bringing problems out into the open (we have a compromise culture in which we like to solve problems by debating them ad nauseam) - because we would need several massive standoffs with these thugs before they'd be subdued - has created passivity by which the thugs feel empowered, and the average Dutchman feels abandoned (and the average Moroccan immigrant as well, for he gets rejected time and time again at job interviews because of the racism that has sprung up after years of the police not having dealt with his, er, less ambitious fellow immigrants). That's why Fortuyn was succesful. Not because he was smart, although he was. Not because he gave bigots someone to vote for - just check the statistics on the huge number of immigrants that voted for him! And not because he was a good politician, because he wasn't. But because he dared to spell out the problems, which are of our own making.

This would also be my response to the current unrest in the city. If mayor Job Cohen is finally meaning business, I'll applaud his actions. But unlike Pieter I am sceptical it's anything other than yet more talk.

12:40

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I'm all for shooting terrorists...

...but you might want save your bullets just for them, rather than your allies:

US commanders were so worried that their men were shooting at the British because they failed to recognise the Union Jack or other distinguishing military markings that, in an unprecedented move, they asked the British Army to supply vehicles, men and flags to teach their soldiers what their allies looked like.

A British officer in Basra said: “The Americans can be pretty pumped-up. Sometimes they fire in broad daylight when we are travelling at two miles per hour, shouting that we are British out of the window and waving the Union Jack. If they shoot, our drill is to slam on the brakes and race in the opposite direction.”

Hey, here's lesson 1: the Union Jack.

12:36

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