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According to press reports the chief suspect in Pim
Fortuyn’s murder is an animal rights and environmental activist named Volkert
van der Graaf.
Although no trial has yet taken place, and by all accounts he
was acting alone, he was caught pretty much red handed. Whatever is going on? The mainstream press and politicians have all tried to
paint Fortuyn as an extreme right wing racist like Jean-Marie Le Pen from
France. He was of course nothing of
the sort. Fortuyn was a liberal in the best sense.
Not the socialist liberalism of the UK Liberal Democrats or the
authoritarian liberalism of the many European parties which have appropriated
the label. No.
He was a real liberal. You
might call him a mild libertarian. A flamboyantly gay ex-sociology professor who argued for
government to not only leave people’s private lives alone but also to let them
get on with their economic ones without undue interference.
For him small government did not just mean letting people smoke a bit of
dope, and have consensual sex with whomever the liked.
It also meant letting them choose how to spend their money.
Economically he was a Thatcherite.
That was a big deal in Holland where the average worker pays over half
his income in tax. Although Fortuyn’s international reputation had largely
been defined by his attacks on Islam, he hated being likened to Le Pen.
Sure he opposed Islam, but not because he was racist.
He opposed it because much of Islam is intolerant.
Fortuyn saw it as the main threat to the social tolerance that he valued.
Islam does not treat women fairly.
Many Islamic clerics were virulently anti-gay.
Pim was tolerant of everything except intolerance. Why therefore would an animal-rights activist want to kill
him? Perhaps van der Graaf objected
to Fortuyn’s apparently off the cuff remark that he planned to repeal a ban on
mink farming. Maybe something else
had upset him. Fortuyn had been
outspoken against some environmentalists. "The
whole environmental policy in the Netherlands has no substance any more. And I'm
sick to death of your environmental movement," he told the Dutch green
organisation Milieu Defensie (Environmental Defence) last year.
Pim may have been an iGreen without knowing it, but that is hardly a
justification for murder. Not surprisingly environmentalist groups like Greenpeace
and Animal Freedom, a moderate group,
which interviewed Mr. van der Graaf a couple of years ago,
have been quick to distance themselves from his action.
They have a point. Perhaps
he was just a lone nutcase. Nevertheless
liberals like Fortuyn do upset some environmentalists, because many
environmentalists are intolerant. They
have decided that certain human activities are wrong and they want to impose
their views on others. Some want to
do it via the ballot box, and some via violent action but the difference is only
a matter of degree. The state
enforces its prohibitions ultimately by threat of imprisonment. Almost all mainstream environmentalists and animal
activists want to prohibit some activities of which they disapprove.
Many also want to make people pay extra taxes so that government can
regulate even permitted activities. Greenpeace
and its friends want to ban whaling and many other types of hunting.
They will certainly go after shooting and fishing next.
The RSPCA has animal experimentation in their sights, and PETA is aiming
at meat eating. We don’t blame any of these organisations for Fortuyn’s
murder. We would not have blamed
all Muslims if one of them had committed the murder, although we would have been
reminded of the illiberalism of Islam. Now
that an animal rights activist has killed the leading libertarian politician of
Europe, we are reminded of the intolerance of mainstream environmentalist and
animal activist groups. Environmentalists must return to liberal principles.
By all means stop hunting yourself and ride a bike to work, but recognise
that others may have different priorities.
Say what you like to persuade them and by all means refuse to subsidise
their meat eating or car driving, but you have no right to go further.
When environmentalists follow policies like that they will get a
following like Pim Fortuyn. Jim Thornton. Nottingham 11 May 2002 Read more about Pim Fortuyn here |
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