Speak your mind, lose your life

20 November 2004

Anthony Browne says that the terrible murder of Theo van Gogh in Amsterdam is further proof that radical Islam is not compatible with liberal democracy

True to his polemicist style, van Gogh said lots of objectionable things about Muslims, such as calling extremists ‘goatfuckers’. But that doesn’t excuse the Guardian pigeonholing him as a ‘loudmouth racist’ as a way of avoiding thinking about the complexities of the issue. He was a lifelong socialist, from a leading left-wing family. A journalist friend of his told me at his funeral: ‘He was left-wing, but he had his eyes open. He started seeing these dark developments in society, and surprised himself by having right-wing thoughts.’ A staunch Dutch feminist who knew him told me that his work standing up for women oppressed by religion had inspired her to dedicate her life to it.

Van Gogh was a friend of Pim Fortuyn, the populist politician murdered two years ago for offences against Islam. The hate-mongering Left demonised Fortuyn as a far-right racist, but he was no such thing. On the contrary, he was a flamboyant left-wing homosexual sociology professor who firmly opposed racism and had many black followers. But he started campaigning against Muslim immigration and denounced Islam as ‘backwards’ when homosexual teachers were sacked in the Netherlands because Muslim parents didn’t want their children taught by gays. He was outraged that decades of campaigning for gay rights was going backwards, and that everyone was too frightened to speak out.

What angered them all — van Gogh, Hirsi Ali and Fortuyn — is the way the intolerant left-wing hegemony of political correctness was strangling free speech and democracy — not just causing the problems in the first place, but trying to destroy those who discuss them. At his funeral, van Gogh’s mother, Anneke, lambasted the ‘politically correct thought-police’ while his sister spoke about his ‘aversion to violence and crimes against democracy’.