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Re: the war. Don't mention the war, Haus. No, really, don't bother here; I think it's kind of irrelevant and distracting to point at WWII and say: "Look, the Dutch were bastards then. Once a bastard, always a bastard!" or anything like that.
I also think it's a touch dangerous to look at The Netherlands* as sharing the same attitude towards life, an attitude which hasn't changed since 1945. Of course, you may not mean this, so put me right if I've got you wrong
Re: Fortuyn.
The only good facist is a dead facist?
My arse. What's so good about this bloke dying? As several people have said, this basically creates a martyr - albeit, thanks to the fact he was gay, perhaps a difficult martyr for you usual meatheaded Facist to pick up.
But that's kind of what worried me about Pim Fortuyn; he certainly didn't fit the *stereotype* of a right winger, which made him all the more worrying.
I don't think Nick Griffin or Le Pen would be subject to the same opinions being expressed that I've been hearing from people today; but Fortuyn seems, especially with hindsight, to have picked up a kind of 'lovable racist' image.
Yeah, he may have played up the racism to get his face on talkshows, and wow, he might have been gay, but so fucking what? He was still a racist, unless I missed the meeting where being gay was a get out of jail free card for intolerance...
Having said that, it's worrying, this. It's the first political assasination in the Netherlands since the 17th century, apparently; and it's beginning to look like Europe is beginning to draw battle lines between the disenfranchised on both left and right. For an anti-facist to decide that the gun is the best form of protest worries me. It also gives the Far Right a chance to raise their game, and have their own 'war on terrorism' (trust me, someone on the Far Right'll say it soon enough.)
The Haus of Correction time:
1: The preferred spelling to use is "Muslim" rather than "Moslem." In the same way as the word "Hindoo" was used by the British to refer to Hindus, the word "Moslem" was used by them for Muslims. It was often used as a slur and therefore many Muslims consider "Moslem" to be a derogatory term.
From the Asian-American Journalist's Association stylebook.
and 2: *being really bloody pedantic, you'd get picked up on Holland if you called The Netherlands Holland over there - I know I did. |
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