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Sound
familiar? It should. For this was the rallying
cry of the politically correct Left and its "conservative"
equivalent against Jean Marie Le Pen: such things shouldn't
be happening in a civilized country. Who knows what phrases,
picked up out of the media ether, a madman will recognize
as a license to kill? But when he finds an echo of his own
inner anger on the front pages of all the newspapers, calling
out to him to do his duty – how can he refuse?
THE
LE PEN-FORTUYN CONNECTION
Fortuyn
hotly denied any affinity for Le Pen or the French National
Front, and Dreher writes that Fortuyn was "often unfairly
compared to Le Pen," but the programmatic
similarities are there for all
to see.
There
are some differences, but they are only of degree: while Fortuyn
feared the bureaucratic excesses of the EU, unlike
Le Pen he never called for pulling out altogether. Fortuyn
is often called a "libertarian," but this seems
to apply to his very public private life as much if not more
than his politics. Although Andrew Sullivan identifies as
a "libertarian" on the basis of his professed admiration
for Maggie Thatcher – and, it seems, the slain Dutch politician's
homosexuality – Le Pen's early affiliation with the radical libertarian
Poujadist tendency in French politics is more of a credential.
The Poujadists, after all, did not limit their free market
activism to the writing of policy papers, but took direct action against the State. In addition, Le Pen called for the
abolition of the income tax and the death tax: Fortuyn merely
called for the abolition of the sales tax.
Both
Fortuyn and Le Pen railed against Islam as an "alien"
presence, called for an immigration moratorium, and extolled
the unique virtues of their own little corner of Europe. Both
provoked hysteria in the Euro-left and its conservative enablers,
and were vilified as
Hitler clones.
I can't resist adding that Pat Buchanan received the same
treatment at the hands of the same sorts of people in the
United States, and for many of the same reasons. Buchanan,
too, called for an immigration moratorium, and, like Fortuyn,
wrote an entire book about the dangers of Third World immigration.
Of course, Fortuyn is openly gay, and so gets the Andrew Sullivan
Neocon Seal of Approval, whereas Buchanan and Le Pen are consigned
to the outer darkness.
THE
LEFT CRIES 'WOLF'
However,
all three are examples of a new global phenomenon, an admittedly
very broad category of parties and ideologies that
I call "market nationalist." The response to
this growing phenomenon – in Japan, Austria, and Italy as
well as France and the Netherlands – on the part of the ruling
elites in government and the media has been uniformly virulent
and unrelenting. The rise of Junichero Koizumi, in Japan,
was heralded by a wave
of articles in the Western media describing the alleged
revival of Japanese right-wing militarism. To hear the round-eyes
tell it, the samurai were on the march and would soon be reclaiming
their lost "Greater
East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere" in the name of the
Divine Emperor. It was all bullsh*t, of course.
The
triumph of Berlusconi's "House of Freedom" coalition
in Italy, with its "post-fascist" element, provoked
a similar outcry from Euro-crats and the socialist Left:
the combined Socialist-"ex"-Communist governing
coalition and their international echo chamber conjured visions
of a new Mussolini about to march on Rome.
THE
PRODI DOCTRINE
Romano
Prodi, whose zeal in denouncing the Italian rightists was
unmatched in all Europe (except for Belgium, of course), had this to say about the French
electoral results:
"Today,
the French people have once again demonstrated that their
nation belongs to the heart of Europe.The extremist, isolationist
policies of Jean-Marie Le Pen have been rejected and crushed."
He
might have been Leonid Brezhnev, extolling the crushing
of the Prague Spring. There is indeed an ominously Soviet
quality to the hate campaign being scared up against the European
"far right," an Orwellian "Hate
Week" climaxed by the shooting death of Fortuyn.
Le Pen put it well, as the [UK] Guardian reports:
"A
far from despondent Mr Le Pen told campaigners at his headquarters
in the Paris suburb of St-Cloud that Mr Chirac's victory was 'an equivocal one, acquired by Soviet methods and
with the combined help of all the social, political,
economic and media forces.'"
The
Washington Times added:
"He
went on to accuse his opponents of lying, cheating and carrying
out 'a hysterical campaign, orchestrated by the entire power
in place.' Le Pen berated Chirac for refusing to debate him
prior to the second round, and of 'drafting school children'
to demonstrate against him."
As
they burned Le Pen's effigy in the Place de la Bastille, the
denizens of the French left danced in the streets, and the
world media echoed their triumph, crowing that "fascism"
had been vanquished and the rise of another Hitler averted.
Fortuyn's assassination, coming as the wave of Euro-lefty
self-righteousness reached a crescendo, was the culmination
and logical consequence of a hate campaign against the twin
evils of "right-wing extremism" and "xenophobia."
HAMMERED
INTO SUBMISSION
Mickey
Kaus correctly identifies
the Fortuyn phenomenon as a coherent "libertarian/nationalist
ideology, "but then makes the mistake of falling for
the Sullivan-Michael
Gove line that it is "unique" and "sharply
distinguishable from Le Pen's." No matter. His analysis
of the meaning of the Fortuyn
assassination is succinct and dead-on accurate:
"The
nail that stuck out was hammered down."
That's
what happens to dissenters in a totalitarian society, where
incorrect thoughts are criminal offenses and "democracy"
consists of a ritual ratification of the staus quo: they get
hammered down. Fortuyn and some of his Western fans may turn
up their noses at Le Pen, Joerg Haider, and the Italian Lega
Norda, but the Left treats them all the same. In the United
Socialist States of Europe, which is now taking shape before
our eyes, there is to be no place for the "far right"
– which will be, in effect, semi-legal. With laws preventing
"hate speech" and the German precedent of illegalizing
any party to the right of the Christian Democracy, the stage
is set for a new Soviet power to rise on the ruins of the
old.
FRENCH
'DEMOCRACY'
Just
getting on the ballot, this time, for Le Pen was a task that
many thought he would never surmount, and partly for this
reason he was largely written off prior to the start of the
campaign. Under French law, all nominees for the presidency
must get the signatures of 500 office-holders. The task is
usually a formality, but this time the word was put out –
by the conservative opposition – that no one was to cooperate.
Le Pen, characteristically, made
this is an issue in the campaign and managed to garner
support from the very people who spent the second round denouncing
him as a danger to democracy.
There
has been open talk of outlawing the National Front, and Le
Pen was barred from taking his seat in the European Parliament
on the grounds that he engaged in "violence" – he
was prosecuted for defending
himself and his supporters from a disruptive
"demonstration" at a National Front function. Official
harassment of the Front and its activities has been systematic.
As the Washington Post reported
in 1997, on the occasion of the National Front's three-day
conclave held in Strasbourg:
"Catherine
Trautmann, the Socialist mayor of this eastern French city
on the border with Germany, embodies the dilemma of French
leaders. She granted permission to the National Front to meet
in a municipal facility here rather than stand accused of
prohibiting a legal party's right to assemble – as she was
five years ago when she did just that. At the same time it
is Trautmann who organized and will lead Saturday's main anti-
National Front march in front of the facility."
The
Times of London [March 29, 1997] reported that Trautmann,
"Unable
to prevent the National Front congress, has called in additional
national police in anticipation of violent clashes between
the lepenistes and their opponents. National Front
officials said they expected trouble from 'establishment thugs.'"
The
"establishment thugs" have struck again, this time,
to deadly effect, in the Netherlands.
SENDING
A MESSAGE
We
know who killed Fortuyn, but why did he do it? Regardless
of what the assassin might say in the future, the real message of this
assassination should be clear to all and sundry: Don't
go there! Immigration? National sovereignty? The growing
role of the European super-state? Don't raise these issues,
don't question, and, for God's sake, shut up!
Don't make us prosecute you, ban you, or – yes – even kill
you, if it comes to that. Because, you see, we will….
Volkert
van der Graaf is no doubt a nobody, another "lone nut"
with an axe to grind and ready access to firearms (in a country,
mind you, with strict gun control laws). But the mind of the
assassin reflects the mindset of the new Europe – the spirit
of a new totalitarianism.
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