In Holland overall, only 17% of the population is a first- or second-generation immigrant. But in Rotterdam and Amsterdam, it's around 40%. People feel that they saw their cities change around them in a decade or two, without it ever coming up much in political debate - without their sense of loss being even acknowledged by the mainstream politicians. The only extreme-right party that had any success, still never got over 2% of the vote in national elections. Of the main parties, only VVD-leader Bolkestein had his party capitalise on the issue in 1994. Otherwise the emphasis was consensually on anti-racism rather than integration. Many feel that this de facto stifled the debate about problems related to the new immigrant communities, as allegations that there were any were too often rejected too quickly as "crypto-racist".
Pim Fortuyn
Enter Pim Fortuyn, and he blew the whole consensual system apart. He came out of nowhere and had hardly any political experience since his student-days leftist activism (having been snubbed by several of the main parties when he offered his services). He was different in appearance, behavior, mode of speech and points of view than any of the established politicians. He continuously said things that made you go - "he can't SAY that! Did he really just say that!?". He infuriated and instilled passion, yet he was very typical of the postmodern Dutch society, in a way that made it hard to peg him as just another leader of the extreme-right. He was openly gay - flaunting it in fact (responding to the interview question whether he was as bald "below" as he was on top with a cheerful, "I invite all the boys of Holland to come see for themselves!") - and an extremely flamboyant personality, dressed like an outrageous dandy (to the standards of Dutch politicians). He was a libertarian to the bone - and willing to change his opinion at an impulse, ensuring his opponents were left perennially confused about how to tackle him. He took the banner of nationalism - the need for national pride, instilling and imposing national values, the whole lot - but in the same breath suggested abolishing the navy.
Typical Fortuyn was how he responded, live on TV, to the accusation of xenophobia with the retort, "me - dislike Moroccans? I slept with many of them!". Typical Fortuyn was to dismay the traditional right-wing parties by, after months of demanding that the borders should be closed immediately for all immigrants and asylum-seekers "until we have sorted out things here first", finishing his election campaign with an appeal to, in exchange, grant every illegal already here an immediate residence permit. In fact, in many ways his brand of populism was more the Zhirinovsky kind that you'll find in Russia or Eastern Europe - anti-establishment yet always ready to compromise, radical but impulsive, to the point of appearing Dada-esque - than the ideologised, petty-minded kind rooted in history and tradition that is personified by Le Pen.
His program fitted - or reflected - everything that the new definition of "typical Dutch" would encompass. He symbolised a hedonist libertarianism when it came to drugs, sex and - say, partying (his party would demand the right to drive faster), but combined this with a sentimental, but inconsequential rhetorical appeal to the safe old days when mum would be home with tea. He put forward a far-reaching program of free-market reforms, which would tear apart bureaucracy - and the very notion that the rich have a responsibility for the poor, itself. But he compensated for this with an evocation of the solidarity of the nation, in which he stood firm for the interests of the working-class Dutchmen cornered by "backward" Islam in the inner cities. His demeanour always suggested a big heart, to which all those who lived in the Netherlands already, no matter what colour, would be "one of us" - while never missing a chance to score the point that it was this very tolerance and free spirit that made Dutch culture superior. All of which contradictions were packaged in the visible and vain pleasure in debate and provocation, which had 'Pim' quite literally stealing the show. He danced around the "old" politicians, taunting them as they tried in vain to ignore him, urging one to "smile a bit more, mister Melkert".
To see how any of this would have provoked someone to commit political murder, you have to understand that in a country where only ten years previously, a 5% loss in an election was a major upset, here was someone who seemed to be gliding into prime-ministerial power itself out of nowhere. Someone who did so through the very act, seemingly, of offending all political taboos as well as various vulnerable minorities. Some thought he was a new Mussolini, or would turn out to be one, after getting into power - what, with the celebration of youth and vigour, the disdain for 'old politics', the vanity, the celebration of a collective egocentrism. I don't think he was, myself - or even anywhere close. In a way, in fact, the comparison actually amounts to an overestimation of Fortuyn, as he really was much more harmless, his political philosophy a miracle of copy&paste. But there it was, his political antics proved too much for the dour sensitivities of an earnest activist who decided to 'save the country' - Volkert van der Graaf. Volkert was an environmentalist activist, notoriously anal in his day-to-day job of enforcing adherence of farmers to environmental regulations, who must not have taken Fortuyn's assertion that the power of his like should be done away with swiftly, lightly. Result: the first political assassination in Dutch politics in centuries.
What Volkert wrecked was an 'end to innocence' in Dutch politics, incomparable to any harm any of the politicians, Fortuyn included, could ever have done - as well as a resounding election victory for the very forces he opposed.
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I owe y'all the remaining part of the story.
The evening after Fortuyn was murdered, a near-riot shook Parliament Square, and all parties immediately suspended their election campaign activities - though the elections themselves took place, at the specific request of the List Fortuyn. Opinion polls were suspended, too, so the results were to be a total surprise.
In the few remaining days before the elections, "silent marches" in the main cities paid tribute to Pim. His funeral itself became an immense event as the funeral procession, broadcast live on TV, took his coffin past hundreds of thousands of mourners in his hometown Rotterdam, in what essentially was a silent mega-protest. Against "purple", against "old politics", against the left - all of whom had "let" [or even made] this happen to their very own new-found hero, who had spoken their mind, forcefully, without ever ceasing to be their endearing "Pimmetje" (literally "little Pim").
As it turned out many subsequently did vote List Fortuyn in anger - but many more opted for the "safe haven" of Jan-Peter Balkenende of the Christian Democrats. Balkenende had carefully avoided attacking Fortuyn throughout the campaign, while keeping a centrist course himself. You can see the 'up' in the green line just before "TK02" on
http://home.wanadoo.nl/anepiphany/opinie02.html. The List Fortuyn won 26 seats in the 150-member parliament; the Christian Democrats gained 14 to get a total of 43 seats.
Balkenende, in effect, got the votes of everyone who was afraid of chaos - both the people who shied away from a Fortuynist vote at the last moment and those who sought an unblemished counterweight of stability against the expected Fortuynist landslide. The parties that had attacked Fortuyn most fiercely, on the other hand, were gutted. Labour fell from 45 to 23 seats. On the far left, the leader of the Greens had stood out in debate with Fortuyn by being the one participant to confront him and challenge him, instead of just trying to ignore him like the others did - and had done well in the polls by doing so. But Fortuyn's death turned that advantage into a disadvantage, and the Greens got only 10 seats, a loss of one, instead of the 15 seats the polls had promised them. The Socialist Party, on the other hand, which had kept more aloof, did unexpectedly well, gaining 4 seats to get 9.
A coalition government was swiftly formed, with Christian-Democratic leader Balkenende as PM, the List Fortuyn, and the VVD. The VVD quickly succeeded to transform itself (back) from the enlightened, liberal free-market party it had become during its years in the 'purple government', to the aggressively populist, conservative free-market party it had been before. Despite its election losses - the party had fallen from 38 to 24 seats - its leader Gerrit Zalm managed to "win" the coalition negotiations. The government program was, to Dutch standards, one of an extremely radical conservative/free market brand - compare the effect of the Republicans "Contract with America" in 1994.
But the political amateurs of the List Fortuyn quickly brought the government in trouble, practically from the first moment, when for an embarassingly long period it couldn't find enough qualified people who wanted to be a government minister for their party. Successive endless squabbling, political gaffes, reckless rhetorics, repeated changes of party leadership and split-offs from its parliamenty group kept on embarassing the LPF's coalition partners. When in the end the two LPF deputy prime ministers (literally) refused to talk to each other anymore, yet also both refused to resign, despite their own party's demand they do so - the Christian-Democrats and the VVD "pulled the plug" and the government fell, after a term shorter than any government's in Dutch political history.
