With the support of powerful sections of business and the media, the LPF set out to exploit popular anger and political confusion within the working class to install a right-wing government, over which its business backers would have a controlling interest. It serves as a lighting rod for discontent, blaming social ills in the Netherlands on immigration and the Islamic religion, and thereby fomenting divisions in the working class and preparing the ground for new attacks on welfare and democratic rights.

Many of those who voted for Fortuyn’s party undoubtedly saw their vote as an expression of protest against the PvdA, and are far from endorsing all of Fortuyn’s views. Many more within the Netherlands are horrified at the apparent popularity of anti-immigrant Islamophobia, but as of yet have no viable political perspective to oppose this trend.

The fact that the far right and its business backers are the beneficiaries of the collapse of Dutch social democracy should sound a clear and urgent message across all of Europe on the need for genuinely independent political parties of the working class, based on an international socialist programme, to be built.

By Ulrich Rippert and Steve James
18 May 2002
Article reprinted courtesy of the World Socialist Web Site: http://wsws.org

Please also see our article, "Dutch Assassination", on Pim Fortuyn's death, in our War of the Shadows section.