Word: fortuyn
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...toughest places in Europe for the far right to get a toehold. Prosperous and with low unemployment, tolerant and proudly multicultural, the country has long been a place where the politicians fine-tune consensus in long, well-behaved coalition talks. But into that idyll last week crashed Pim Fortuyn, 54, who rode an unapologetically anti-immigration platform to a substantial victory in local elections in Rotterdam, the country's second city, where many of the country's 800,000 Muslims live. His local party, Livable Rotterdam, won 17 out of the 45 seats in the municipal council, besting all three...
...sounds worried, no wonder. Less than two months before May 15 national parliamentary elections, Melkert and the Dutch political establishment now have to face up not only to their own electoral mishap, but also to a potentially powerful demagogic force. Some polls suggest that his newly formed national party, Fortuyn List, could land as many as 18 of the 150 seats in the lower house of parliament, enough to play a key role in the formation of a new government coalition...
...Fortuyn clearly holds no truck with consensus. Less than a month ago he was tossed out of Livable Netherlands, the national party he joined late last year, for insulting Muslims. His opinions should have come as a surprise to no one. A former academic sociologist, the openly gay Fortuyn gained notoriety in the late 1990s through his spicy column in the weekly Elsevier. In 1997 he published a book calling Islam "a backward culture," saying: "For Muslims, as a homosexual, I am less than a pig. I am proud that in the Netherlands I can come out for my homosexuality...
Opinions like that, along with his shaved head and in-your-face attitude, have assured Fortuyn no shortage of media attention. Indeed, some blamed the media for Fortuyn's success. After his own party's disaster became clear last Wednesday, local City Party leader Manuel Kneepkens left Rotterdam city hall sneering at journalists: "You've got this on your conscience. You've created a monster...