Are legal organizations that fight for animal rights partly to blame for the murder of Fortuyn?
Shortly after Pim Fortuyn’s violent death, various sympathizers directed emotional reproaches to “left-wingers”. Left-wing politicians and personalities were said to have ‘demonized’ Fortuyn, and to have incited hatred. I think this is totally misplaced and unjustified. Maybe here and there people tended to typify too much, which is always regrettable. But the same thing happens the other way around. Fierce accusations and descriptions, after all, go hand in hand with great contradictions in politics and morality. This seems inevitable, and the fact that it is possible even graces democracy. Persons or organizations can only be deemed partly responsible for the bloody tragedy if there was direct incitement of physical violence and hatred. As far as I know, none of that happened. Neither did I hear anything of the sort from the field of animal rights activists. Furthermore, left-wingers are said to tolerate extremist groups. Again, this accusation is unjustified. After all, the extremis
