Tropical Europe, Or 'Viva Evita!': Reflections on the assassination of Pym Fortuyn.(Brief Article)

It's a little colder, and the bougainvilleas aren't in bloom, but Europe this spring looks a lot like Latin America. The cozy consensus that has long governed the Old World is giving way to a culture of mass rallies, extremist leaders and dramatic assassinations, and no one seems to know what to do about it.

Europe's leaders have failed. They have failed to articulate a vision beyond the euro. They have failed to address the deeply felt problems of marginal whites and the unintegrated immigrant underclass. They have failed, beyond dreamy exhortations to "tolerance," to address the rise of radical Islam in their urban slums.

This abandonment has left the field open for all kinds of colorful extremists, exhibiting an almost Latin theatricality that is a deeper menace to the fatigued status quo than any other force. While Tony Blair hires and fires spin doctors, France has marshalled all its invective to denounce Jean- Marie Le Pen. He was trounced by a margin that would have brought a smile to the face of Trujillo or Stroessner, leaving the country to sigh with relief. But the real threat to la republique is the bankruptcy of the establishment candidates--one a gangster, one a dullard--and the void that's left voters believing their only real choice is between abstinence and protest. It is the same sensation that led So Paulo's voters in the 1970s to elect a horse as mayor.

Similarly, in the Netherlands, we have the spectacular rise and fall of Pim Fortuyn. Like Eva Peron, nothing in life became Fortuyn so much as his leaving it: a man feared and ridiculed is on his way to beatification. Between him and the venerable old guard represented by outgoing Prime Minister Wim Kok, the Dutch were asked to choose not between competing ideas but between fabulousness and fastidiousness. Also like Evita, Fortuyn was not so much far right as far out, expressing often incoherent ideas with such campy panache that the media found him irresistible. One interviewer asked if, because his head was shaved, viewers could assume his genitals were, too. Fortuyn leered into the camera and winked: "I'd like to invite all the hot guys in Holland to come find out."

With his killing, the elections in the staid, elegant Netherlands now look like those in Venezuela, whose last contest pitted a ravishing Miss Universe against an invective-spouting barbarian, or Colombia, whose current ballot lists one candidate who has been kidnapped and another who stopped campaigning out of fear for his life. Sure enough, one of Fortuyn's main allies has ...