Read Online Murder in Amsterdam by Ian Buruma - Free Book Online Page A

outsider.
    Fortuyn may have meant everything he said, but he was also a political jester, a trickster. Like all tricksters, he was driven by resentment, which was perhaps the most genuine thing about him. His own sexuality played a role, as he often admitted, but his resentments found a wider resonance, for they spoke to the grievances of the déclassé. The first people to rally around him and promote him were men who had made fortunes in ways that bought them houses and yachts, but no social cachet: the former disk jockey who became an entertainment mogul, the real estate developers, advertising men, right-wing publicists, and organizers of “events.” A whiff of criminality hung over some of these men. All knew that no matter how much money they made, they would never be Our Kind of People.
    Feeling socially excluded, the newly rich felt their lack of political influence. Fortuyn was their ticket to real power, or so they hoped. Raw self-interest was no doubt a part of their agenda: lower taxes, less bureaucracy, more freedom to make deals. But this was not all. Some, at least, appear to have been inspired by bigger visions, of government by businesslike strongmen who would clean up the mess of parliamentarypolitics once and for all. A fresh wind would invigorate a society that had been weakened for too long by wishy-washy do-gooders.
    A hint of what these shadowy men are like came to me from an unusual figure in the Dutch political landscape, a genuinely conservative intellectual who had founded a think tank named after the great Irish conservative, Edmund Burke. Bart-Jan Spruyt, an intense, tweedy man in his forties, good-looking in a Nordic way, with blond hair cropped short over a bony face, wrote a book entitled In Praise of Conservatism. 5 His heroes include Alexis de Tocqueville and C. S. Lewis. He is a devout member of the Calvinist Church.
    After the murder of Pim Fortuyn, some of his former backers approached Spruyt as a man who could be useful. They treated him to meals in expensive restaurants, feeling him out on this and that, seeing whether they might do business. In the end, they decided that a think tank was not what they were looking for. But not before they had taken Spruyt out to one more fancy restaurant. At the end of the meal, when cigars were lit and liqueurs ordered, one of the businessmen pulled out his checkbook and wrote out a check for 150,000 euros. Slipping it across the table to Spruyt, the man said: “And now get rid of those fucking Moroccans.” *
    I was puzzled by this story. Why the Moroccans? Lower taxes, less social welfare, these I could understand, but why would a rich businessman, who was unlikely ever to see the inside of a dish city, be so concerned about Moroccan immigrants?
    So I asked Frits Bolkestein. Since he had been the first mainstream politician to voice his concern over immigration, I thought he might have the answer. He looked at me intently and said: “One must never underestimate the degree of hatred that Dutch people feel for Moroccan and Turkish immigrants. My political success is based on the fact that I was prepared to listen to such people.” It was a remarkable statement, but I was still puzzled, for it didn’t really answer my question. Why would a rich man feel such hatred for people who might never cross his path? This mystery goes to the heart of Fortuyn’s success. He struck a nerve that went beyond personal interests.
    6.
    F unerals of public figures often provoke mass hysteria. It is on such occasions that you see what lurks in the hearts of millions. The outpouring of grief, though perhaps genuinely felt, can look phony. To some extent it is. The emotionsare misplaced, for they are almost never based on personal acquaintance. But the dead person serves as a focus of real anxieties and disappointments. During his short career, Fortuyn knew how to manipulate popular sentiment. If his killer was fanatically principled,