How should traditionalists treat Pim Fortuyn?

A reader writes:

I am a twenty-eight year old Canadian of Indian (Asian) descent. I am a long-time paleolibertarian who regularly visits your website. I very much appreciate and respect your traditionalist perspective even though I may not always agree with your opinion and analysis—especially as it relates to your criticism of libertarian philosophy.

Recently, I noticed a post on your website discussing the five-year anniversary of the murder of Dutch immigration restrictionist, Pim Fortuyn, as well as, other Islamic fundamentalist killings in Holland and elsewhere in Western Europe. A few weeks ago, the same topic was covered on the VDare.com blog by one of VDare’s writers, Brenda Walker. In response to her comment, I sent the email below to VDare; however, it was never published (perhaps due to length). I have forwarded it to you since I consider it germane to the paradox currently facing conservatives worried about the spread of Islamic fundamentalism throughout the Western world: whether or not, in the struggle against radical Islam, it is necessary to embrace individuals (like Pim Fortuyn and Theo Van Gogh) who throughout their lives advocated pro-death/pro-hedonistic policies that have accelerated the downfall of Western culture and thought?

I look forward to hearing back from you soon, and perhaps, even seeing my letter posted on your website; thus, eliciting further comments from your readers.

Sincerely,
Deepinder Gill

Here is Mr. Gill’s letter to Vdare:

Dear Sir:

I am a long-time reader of VDare.com and have long admired the courage of its editors and writers in tackling politically incorrect issues ignored by the so-called mainstream media. However, whereas the website once published lions of the paleoconservative movement—like Paul Craig Roberts and the late Samuel Francis—it now seems to feature left-liberal, anti-traditionalist columnists (like Brenda Walker and Randall Burns); much to the dismay of conservatives like myself who feel that immigration reform and preserving Western civilization is about more than just “keeping out the Mexicans and the Muslims.”

In today’s VDare.com blog, Ms. Walker, in effect, lionizes the late Dutch politician, Pim Fortuyn, as a supposed champion of European values against Muslim immigration. She links to another favourable article about Mr. Fortuyn in the neoconservative New York Sun and states that “Pim Fortuyn was a [sic] unapologetic gay man…and hardly a jack-booted fascist. He condemned Muslim immigration because those newcomers to Holland refused to assimilate to the socially liberal Netherlands society, in which gay sexuality is as acceptable as straight.” Now of course Ms. Walker is entitled to her own opinion, and I agree that each country has the right to define its own values without being forced to change by newcomers and outsiders; however, it is a stretch to go from there to championing Mr. Fortuyn as a “brilliant champion of liberty.” In fact, Mr. Fortuyn was more of a libertine than libertarian and whose personal morals and views about society underlined all that has gone wrong in the Western world in the last quarter century—a mindless, rootless hedonistic liberalism that has actually allowed the type of mass non-traditional immigration that now so threatens the West.

In addition to supporting pro-death policies like liberalized hard-drug laws, unlimited access to abortion and euthanasia—all of which accentuate the breakdown of the traditional family and lowered birth rates in the Western world—and more than just an “unapologetic gay man,” Mr. Fortuyn strongly approved of paedophilia. According to a May 12, 2002 article in The Scotsman: “In an [article for the Dutch current affairs magazine, Elsevier, in 1999], Fortuyn wrote that ‘paedophilia is just like hetero and homosexuality. It is something that is in the genes…It is not any more curable than hetero and homosexuality…After the invention of the Pill came sexual liberation. Gay sex became accepted, and why then should paedo sex not be allowed under the strict condition that the child is willing and that there is no coercion? This enlightened point of view has meanwhile been abandoned’…In 1998, Fortuyn published an autobiographical work called Babyboomers…He reveals that he had early sexual experiences with adult males, which he claims to have found pleasurable and exciting. His logic is that because he enjoyed sexual experiences with adult men as a child, it should be legal.” [Fortuyn favoured depraved: Pim Fortuyn, the charismatic right-wing Dutch politician murdered last week was a powerful advocate for paedophilia, The Scotsman 05/12/02]

In the West’s struggle against Islamic fundamentalism, and the fight to prevent Europe from turning into “Eurabia,” are we going to repeat what the United States did during the Cold War, which is embrace every moral degenerate, kleptocrat and lunatic as long as they were sufficiently anti-Communist? In fact, many of the Islamic fundamentalists who are ostensibly now our enemies were once our best friends in the anti-Communist “big tent.” In the current struggle against illegal immigration, mass non-traditional legal immigration and multiculturalism, is it really necessary to promote people like Mr. Fortuyn (as well as the late vulgarian Theo Van Gogh) as heroes in this struggle? Does assimilating into Western culture also include embracing murdering the unborn, eradicating traditional gender roles, non-mainstream sexual values and even allowing child rape? If so, than the West is already dead.

Deepinder Gill
Ontario, Canada

LA replies:

I am in basic agreement with you. Dealing with Fortuyn is difficult. One cannot deny his importance and success as a spokesman against Islamization in the Netherlands and against the EU tyranny. At the same time, his flamboyant homosexuality and promotion of same rendered him utterly inappropriate as a spokesman for the West. This was a point that was made at VFR at the time of his death.

So the question is, how do we discuss him? Are you saying that we should refuse to acknowledge his important role as an anti-Islamist, because of his homosexuality?

The VFR approach would be, to agree with such a person and support him where he is saying good things, but simultaneously to add that we disapprove of him in other areas, and always to make that disapproval clear. The problem is lessened in Fortuyn’s case by the fact that he is no longer alive, so that we don’t have to deal with the conundrum of a talented leader against Islamic immigration who is also a promoter of child sex. This enables us somewhat to abstract Fortuyn’s brave anti-immigration stand from the totality of what he stood for. If he were still alive, VFR would narrowly support his immigration positions and opposition to the EU tyranny, while condemning him in totality.

It is very difficult for Americans to keep such distinctions. They feel that either you support someone, or you don’t. Thus we saw the disgusting spectacle of the Republicans in the U.S. Congress cheering madly for Tony Blair’s speech to the Congress putting forth his left-liberal ideas, because Blair was our ally in Iraq. The same with America’s uncritical embrace of Stalin during World War II.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at May 18, 2007 11:13 AM | Send