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Are *long* quotes in foreign languages suitable in Wikipedia? What is the consensus on this issue? My thought is that a short, very important sentence could well be preserved in the original, but more than a sentence seems a bit unwieldy. Comments? Dze27
- perhaps they could be converted to footnotes -- I only put them in in case anybody wanted to check or improve the translations.
Apparently he is only called 'right-wing' by people trying to dismiss him. He did not accept this label for himself. So I removed the 'right-wing' description from the article.
- But surely it would be useful to characterize his politics? Just saying "he's a politicians, formerly Marxist, controversial for his views on Islam and immigration" is almomst meaningless. You still don't know anything about what he stands for. AxelBoldt
- The same could be said regarding Volkert van der Graaf. Right-wing and left-wing is a stereotype which isn't descriptive. It it far from NPOV. I wouldn't say he was a politician either because he wasn't in the Second Chamber yet. Rather, he was a politician in spe.
More useful still to state what his positions are, and let the reader decide for himself whether they are right-wing. As far as I'm concerned, Bill Clinton was right-wing; Rush Limbaugh (and, to be fair, most of the U.S.) would disagree with me. Not vital information except to illustrate that left/right statements are relative. :-) Koyaanis Qatsi
I don't think Bill Clinton is right-wing, or left-wing, or anything else, other than an opportunist who will morph into whatever is necessary to swing votes. But that is neither here nor there. The question of Fortuyn's political alignment is important because his views were different from what is typical in European politics - different from the right-wing and the left. The attempts to describe him as 'right-wing' do not aim towards clarifying what he stood for, but towards obscuring what he stood for. Instead of acknowledging the emergence of a real new political alternative, the European media seems to want to deny the existence of this alternative, and dismissing Fortuyn as "right-wing" is a means of doing this. This is being discussed in detail at http://www.andrewsullivan.com, btw, and I think a discussion should be included in the main article, though it may be hard to do this in a NPOV. - Tim
- The current text is better than just saying he was 'right wing', But it might be better to attribute that description to a specific person or group. ClaudeMuncey
- Pretty much every article you read about him starts with "right-wing populist". Or maybe only in the left-wing publications I tend to read... :-)
- I also wonder why his earlier confessed Marxism has been removed from the article. It is similarly reported everywhere. I'll put it back in absent any objections. --AxelBoldt
- I removed it because it said "Marxist professor" and I think his marxism preceded his professorship. but I don't have info on it.
- Does anyone have a source which points out he was a Marxist in his younger years? I heard from here and there he was an Anarchist but i have no source either except for the TV and some other vague sources.
Tim, I wonder which of his positions are not traditionally right-wing. Anti-immigration, stronger policing, government out of education and health care would all be described as "right". Only his open homosexuality and support of tolerance in that area seems to not fit the typical picture, but it is hardly a central point of his politics. AxelBoldt
- If I can jump in on that, AxelBoldt, while he wanted to stop further immigration, he did not advocate the repatriation of curent immigrants, in fact he proposed legalising everyone in the country by a stoke of the pen before closing the border. Very different from the Le Pen / Haider kind of rightwingism. Also, he never AFAIK advocated the dismantling of the Dutch welfare state. Yes, he did have rightwing followers, but "populist" is a far more accurate description of the man himself than "rightwing". IMHO anyway. clasqm
NPOV
His main support came from white dutch and asian people from the not-elite neighbourhoods of Rotterdam in which they had daily experience with the problem caused by illegal immigrants and gangs of african youngsters which had been tolerated by the other dutch parties.
That sentence is clearly POV. I don't know enough about Fortuyn to rewrite it a NPOV way maybe:
His main support came from white dutch and asian people from the not-elite neighbourhoods of Rotterdam. His supporters say this was because they had daily experience with the problem caused by illegal immigrants and gangs of african youngsters which had been tolerated by the other dutch parties.
Saul Taylor 05:40, 22 Dec 2003 (UTC)
Please add links to Fortuyn's speeches or writings (in full text) or add it here (quotation). Thanks
Pim
I'd just say that he's a man concerned with the rising of muslim intolerance, not with muslims themselves. He had is own thoughts and ideas. Categorizing those thoughts and ideas is not very easy. Saying that he was right or lef-wing is reducing a person to only two points of view (if I can say that when speaking of left and right in politics)
POV
I came here to correct a vandal, but I didn't feel happy with a plain revert since I didn't feel the article is good NPOV. One specific example:
- The claim is made that Pim was "not anti-immigrant". At the same time, he wanted to almost comlpetely restrict further immigration. If this is done then it disallows people from re-uniting with their families and does descriminate against existing immigrants.
A serious attempt has to be made to find proper criticism of Pim, who was certainly a widely and strongly criticised politician, and to incorporate them into this article.
Legacy & left vs. right debate
I can't be bothered to write it at the moment, but I think it's important to write something on Fortuyn's legacy: the LPF, influence on contemporary politics & attitudes on immigration. Also, while Fortuyn did in fact combine elements form leftist as well as rightist ideology (and this should certainly be mentioned), there's no doubt that >90% of the people would categorise him as right-wing (maybe not far right-wing, though). His sympathy was also clearly with other right-wing parties (CDA, VVD) than with left-wing parties. So, in conclusion, I feel he should be labeled as right-wing (and populist as well, but that's another dispute), but it should be mentioned that his politics were also something entirely new, and combined right-wing and left-wing aspects. Junes 13:22, 5 Feb 2005 (UTC)
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