It’s Tinfoil Hat Time…

Time to return to Andrew Sullivan again… Apparently, I’m not the only one who’s been emailing him to complain that Pim Fortuyn was not killed by Muslims. Undeterred, he’s now saying that Fortuyn was "murdered for standing up to Islamist intolerance and hate. He was killed by a far leftist who supported the Islamists". He quotes, as evidence for this, the entry for Pim Fortuyn in Wikipedia.

 

Oh dear, Andrew, if you’re going to rest your case on a Wikipedia entry, let’s take a look at the Dutch version of Wikipedia, shall we? In particular, the entry for Volkert van der Graaf.

 

His motive for the murder is given there as: "Hij gaf als motief dat hij in Fortuyn een steeds groter wordend gevaar voor de samenleving zag, met name voor kwetsbare groepen, zoals asielzoekers, moslims en mensen met een WAO-uitkering, aldus de verklaring van het Openbaar Ministerie" (he gave as the motive that he saw in Fortuyn an ever-growing danger for society, in particular for vulnerable groups such as asylum-seekers, muslims and people on benefits, according to the statement of the Public Prosecutor). Van der Graaf saw in Fortuyn the rise of another Hitler. That, it seems clear to me, was his reason for the murder, not because "he supported the Islamists". Van der Graaf viewed Muslims in Dutch society simply as an example of a vulnerable group who were being exploited by Fortuyn for political ends.

 

Indeed, the English entry for van der Graaf states much the same thing: "He said he saw Fortuyn as a steadily increasing danger for vulnerable groups in society, namely Muslims. It was thereby a combination of Fortuyn’s stigmatising views, the polarising way that he presented them and the great political power that Fortuyn was threatening to obtain. He saw no other possibility for himself than to end the danger by killing Fortuyn".

 

Frankly, I think Sullivan is tub-thumping and stretching the facts to fit his theory. Tinfoil hat time, Andrew…