[2] Fortuyn also supported tougher measures against crime and opposed state bureaucracy,[3] wanting to reduce the Dutch financial contribution to the European Union.

[6] Fortuyn explicitly distanced himself from "far-right" politicians such as the Belgian Filip Dewinter, Austrian Jörg Haider, or Frenchman Jean-Marie Le Pen whenever compared to them.

[8] Fortuyn was assassinated during the 2002 Dutch national election campaign[9][10][11] by Volkert van der Graaf, a left-wing environmentalist and animal rights activist.

[12] In court at his trial, van der Graaf said he murdered Fortuyn to stop him from exploiting Muslims as "scapegoats" and targeting "the weak members of society" in seeking political power.

Wilhelmus Simon Petrus Fortuijn was born on 19 February 1948 in Driehuis within the Dutch municipality of Velsen, as the third child to a middle class Catholic family.

From 1991 to 1995, he was an extraordinary professor at the Erasmus University Rotterdam, appointed to the Albeda-chair in "employment conditions in public service" and ran an education consultancy business.

When his contract ended, he made a career of public speaking, writing books and press columns, and worked as a weekly columnist for Elsevier.

He gradually involved himself in politics through regularly appearing on televised debate shows and became a familiar public figure for his charismatic and flamboyant speaking style.

In 1986, his views shifted towards neoliberalism in the hope that the free market would lead to further individual emancipation, ending a perceived oppression by state bureaucracy.

[21] In 1989, Fortuyn left the Labour Party and during the 1990s became a member of the centre-right VVD and was briefly a political consultant to the Christian Democratic Appeal in the early 2000s.

[22] Though on economic matters Fortuyn would largely remain a neoliberal,[23] culturally he soon became strongly influenced by the neoconservative political philosopher and chief editor of the weekly Elsevier Hendrik Jan Schoo who made him a columnist in 1993.

[24] Schoo deplored that a progressive new class would have promoted multiculturalism, founding an anti-racist civil religion on article 1 of the Dutch constitution, forbidding discrimination.

In his 1995 book De verweesde samenleving ("The orphaned society"), Fortuyn claimed that the progressive movement of the 1960s had eroded traditional norms and values.

Both the roles of the "symbolic father" and the "caring mother" had been lost, leaving an orphaned population without guidance, to live out a meaningless decadent existence.

Although he was already in contact with the newly formed Livable Netherlands (LN) party, he also considered running for the Christian Democratic Appeal which he had worked as a consultant for, or even creating his own list.

[40] Months later, Van der Graaf confessed in court to the first notable political assassination in the Netherlands since 1672 (excluding World War II).

"[47] In the TV program Business class, Fortuyn said that Muslims in the Netherlands did not accept Dutch society; he believed that the religion of Islam was fundamentally intolerant and incompatible with Western values.

Fortuyn distanced himself from Hans Janmaat of the Centrum Democraten, who in the 1980s wanted to remove all foreigners from the country and was repeatedly convicted for discrimination and hate speech.

Fortuyn proposed that all people who already resided in the Netherlands would be allowed to stay, provided the immigrants adopted the Dutch society's consensus on human rights as their own.

He thought Muslim culture had never undergone a process of modernisation and therefore still lacked acceptance of democracy and women's, gays', lesbians' and minorities' rights.

On the contrary, Fortuyn claimed he wanted to protect the socio-culturally liberal values of the Netherlands, women's rights and sexual minorities (he was openly gay himself), from the "backward" Islamic culture.

The LPF also won support from some ethnic minorities; one of Fortuyn's closest associates was of Cape Verdean origin, and one of the party's MPs was a young woman of Turkish descent.

[60] Columnist Jan Blokker wrote that "[a]fter reading [...] I realized once again that Professor Pim may really be called the Jean-Marie Le Pen, the Filip Dewinter, the Jörg Haider and the new Hans Janmaat of the Netherlands.

[63] Fortuyn often responded to criticism by stating that his views were misunderstood or distorted by the media, and in turn rejected comparisons and expressed his personal distaste for radical far-right politicians in other European countries.

that was broadcast shortly before his death, Fortuyn accused members of the Dutch government and political establishment of putting his life in danger through repeatedly demonizing him and his beliefs.

Some commentators in the mainstream political class speculated that Fortuyn's perceived martyrdom created greater support for the LPF, hence that party's brief surge to 17% of the electoral vote and 26 of the 150 seats in the Dutch Parliament.

Although the LPF was able to form a coalition with the Christian Democratic Appeal and the People's Party for Freedom and Democracy, it was bereft with internal strife and quickly lost steam.

[68][69][70] Former Dutch Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende also stated that he later agreed with some of Fortuyn's criticisms of multiculturalism and the purple coalition under Wim Kok.

[73] In 2004, in a TV show, Fortuyn was chosen as De Grootste Nederlander ("Greatest Dutchman of all-time"), followed closely by William of Orange, the leader of the independence war that established the precursor to the present-day Netherlands.

The program later revealed that William of Orange had received the most votes, but many could not be counted until after the official closing time of the television show (and the proclamation of the winner), due to technical problems.