The National Review’s Rob Dreher joins Reason’s Charles Paul Freund (“Fortuyn’s Folly“) and the blogosphere’s erudite Doc Weevil (“The Limits of Tolerance”) in examining the media machinations that turned openly Gay ex-socialist educator Pim Fortuyn into a “far-right” extremist bigot: “Extreme? Pim Fortuyn was not who they say he was“:

[…] what accounted for Fortuyn’s ‘extreme right’ reputation was not his tax or agricultural policies, but his views on immigration and acculturation, which were easily caricatured by malicious opponents.

For example, Fortuyn, who was openly gay and a self-confessed libertine, came out in favor of repealing Article 1 of the Dutch constitution, which forbids the government and individuals from discriminating on ‘religion, belief, political opinion, race or sex, or on any other grounds whatsoever.’ That makes him a racist, sexist, anti-religious bigot, right?

Wrong. He was a civil libertarian who believed in free speech. As written, this constitutional clause potentially forbids frank and open discussion of the crime problem in Holland, which is largely one of predominantly Arab youth gangs. As NRO’s Dave Kopel has observed, ‘In other words, Fortuyn [was] proposing that free speech protection in Holland be expanded to the levels of the American First Amendment.’

If this counts in Europe as “right-wing extremism,” is it really any wonder that the European press can characterize the West Bank as “Massacre” Central, or the Israeli leadership as a gaggle of blood-thirstly “war criminals,” with such ease…?

[related: Matthew Yglesias offers some thoughts, then scuttles off to Amsterdam for some hash brownies…]

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