Word: fortuyn
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...easy task to tease out how much of Fortuyn's appeal stemmed from his larger-than-life personality and how much from his right-wing program. "He made the other politicians look like robots," concedes Tip Ho Ong, who works for the Rotterdam Antidiscrimination Action Council. Fortuyn seemed to make his own rules: an earlier Dutch extreme-right politician, Hans Janmaat, known for his "Full is full" slogan, was fined in 1994 for using anti-immigration language. Fortuyn said the same thing with impunity...
That in itself is an indication, perhaps, of how the Netherlands has changed. The multicultural approach has given way to the idea of integrating minorities, but it hasn't happened fast enough to counter the lure of a figure like Fortuyn. First- and second-generation foreign-born amount to about 17% of the Dutch population, roughly the same as in other West European countries and the U.S., says Erasmus migration expert Han Entzinger. In Rotterdam itself, the figure rises to 45%, and in some neighborhoods - and many schools - it is much higher. To promote integration, the Netherlands in 1998 began...
There's no question that unease was a major factor in Fortuyn's rise. "My grandmother was in the Dutch resistance during the war, and she compares Fortuyn with Hitler," says Michel van Dyke, 24. "I say you can't compare the Dutch with the Germans. Fortuyn just said what a lot of people thought: that foreigners are causing a lot of problems in the Netherlands...
...same time, Fortuyn's movement profits from an electorate fed up with the sense of stasis in the outgoing left-right coalition. Prime Minister Kok, who is not running for re-election, was taunted by bystanders at Fortuyn's funeral on Friday and chose to leave the cathedral by a back door. "The politicians are always compromising, never solving anything," says Peter Ver A, 42, who owns a Rotterdam "coffee shop" where customers can smoke hashish and marijuana. "The usual politicians just didn't see the problem of crime. People want everybody to follow the rules." Dutch rules, that...
Without its founder, Fortuyn's List could quickly turn out to manifest many of the foibles of other political parties. Fortuyn still heads it, but beneath his now hallowed name a struggle for power is likely. No. 2 on the list, Joao Varela, whose parents immigrated from Cape Verde, is considered too young at 27 to lead the party in parliament. Winny de Jong, 43, a consumer advocate for a Dutch supermarket trade association, has the support of many party leaders, but others seem ready to back Mat Herben, 49, a journalist who, as he says, "wrote Pim's speeches...