National Review Online’s Rod Dreher starts out his column on the meaning of the Fortuyn assassination with a caveat: "We will not be able to gauge the full impact of Pim Fortuyn’s murder on European politics until we know who killed him, and why." Well, I’ve settled the first question, thanks be to Google: the murderer is Volkert van der Graaf, a 32-year-old environmentalist described (but not named), in this Reuters story, as a "vegan animal rights activist." The story cites an internet posting authored by the assassin, and it was easy to google him from there. Van der Graaf is an activist in Milieu-offensief [Environmental Offensive], an eco-militant who, describing his passion for the cause, wrote:
"People think it normal that you eat animals, and that you let fish suffocate in nets when you catch them. But inside me arose a sense of justice; such things shouldn’t be happening in a civilized country."
Sound familiar? It should. For this was the rallying cry of the politically correct Left and its "conservative" equivalent against Jean Marie Le Pen: such things shouldn’t be happening in a civilized country. Who knows what phrases, picked up out of the media ether, a madman will recognize as a license to kill? But when he finds an echo of his own inner anger on the front pages of all the newspapers, calling out to him to do his duty – how can he refuse?
[For more on this story, and its implications, check out Raimondo’s upcoming column, to be posted tonight by 10 PM (Pacific Standard Time.)]
