PETER VAN DER VEERIn this sense, his political role was similar to that of Jo ̈rg Haider in Austria, Filip de
Winter in Belgium, and Jean-Marie Le Pen in France, but Fortuyn himself most closely
identified with Silvio Berlusconi, given his savvy with media politics and his ideological
and emotional distance from the traditional far right. Fortuyn understood that there was
an incipient backlash against migration and globalization. He capitalized on it, but did
not create it. The recent rejection of the European constitution is another manifestation
of this backlash. The European Union is often seen to stand for the slow disintegration of
Dutch national integrity, and it became decidedly unpopular after the introduction of the
euro.^3
At the end of the 1990s, one could also sense an alienation of the Dutch from their
established image in the international area. The Srebenica tragedy of 1995, in which over
seven thousand Muslim men were killed under the eyes of a Dutch U.N. battalion (Dutch-
bat) that had come to protect them, festered for some time in Dutch politics. One thing
that became clear in the aftermath of the massacre was that the Dutch peacekeepers had
developed a strong dislike for the Muslim population of the area, whom they considered
to be poor, dirty, and cunning. While it is unclear whether one has to like the people
whom one protects, the dislike expressed by some of the soldiers became an element in
the public perception of the Dutchbat’s performance. The Dutchbat came to stand for
the total failure of Dutch goodwill in international politics, for a lack of political realism,
and for the corrosive effects of the welfare state on masculine valor. Footage of Dutchbat
soldiers celebrating their evacuation, which had been shown on Dutch television, was seen
as especially distasteful when the genocide of Srebenica Muslims later became known. In
1996 the government asked the NIOD (a Dutch research institution for war documenta-
tion that was founded to deal with Dutch history during World War II) to do a thorough
historical investigation of what really happened. This research received ample funding
and was probably the largest research project ever undertaken by historians and social
scientists in the Netherlands. The NIOD’s final report was presented in 2002 and led to
the resignation of the Dutch cabinet a few months before the general elections took place.
The political situation in which Fortuyn emerged as a formidable contender was one
in which the ruling parties had lost credibility in dealing with both the most important
domestic issue, immigration, and the most important international issue, Holland’s supe-
rior moral standing among the nations. Moreover, the ruling parties had run out of steam
in managing the economic downturn and political instability that affected the world econ-
omy. Even voters who were not especially attracted to Fortuyn’s message felt that a funda-
mental change was needed, and Fortuyn seemed to have the charisma to bring this about.
The attacks on the United States on September 11, 2001, seemed further to confirm
Fortuyn’s message that the world had changed and that fearsome Muslim terrorists were
ready to attack Western civilization. To respond to these new challenges, one needed new
leaders, and Fortuyn seemed to fit the bill.
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