The assassination of Pim Fortuyn, leader of the Dutch far right killed near Amsterdam on 6 May, is one of the issues that most attracts the attention of the international dailies. The tribute paid to Fortuyn by “all citizens” is commented on by John Tagliabue ( Herald Tribune), who writes as follows about the murdered Dutch politician: “Fortuyn wasn’t an easy man to pigeonhole. He was proud of being homosexual and equally proud of being an agitator who had asked that immigration be halted and had derided the Islamic world for its backwardness”; but what, according to the journalist, all the Dutch “admired” in the assassinated political leader was “his courage of putting his finger on the real problems and provoking the search for solutions, while the political establishment was busily occupied with exchanging favours”. Also dedicated to the assassination of Pim Fortuyn is the editorial of Thomas Schmid (8/5) in the daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung: “Fortuyn he writes was an exception […]. He was the first European populist, postmodern in everything and for everything: not the enemy but a child of the change of values“, Great coverage in the French dailies was naturally given to the re-election of Chirac to the Elisée, thanks to his victory over Le Pen in the run-off. A France at once “satisfied and perplexed” is analyzed by Bruno Frappat, in La Croix of 7/5, emphasizing that what was sanctioned by the victory of Chirac was “a triumph without triumphalism, based on the arithmetic of a percentage of vote unprecedented and cumbersome in scale. A combative defeat, chosen by approximately one Frenchman out of every five”. “The lesson of fear”, is the headline carried by Le Monde (8/5), which hosts on its front page an editorial by Pascal Bruckner in which he points out that the National Front of Le Pen has reawoken in France the “fear of extremism, but also the consciousness of a cancer that is insensibly devouring us. This anxiety, providing it is channelled towards a good outcome, may be fruitful: instead of making us attribute our ills to an external cause, it will lead us to introspection; instead of leading us to incriminate the guilty, it will incite us to the pain of reopening old wounds”. The massacre committed by a lone gunman in a secondary school at Erfurt, in Thuringia, on 26 April, still occupies the front pages of the German press; the factual reports and eye-witness accounts of the episode have now given way to analysis and minute reconstructions, to try to understand how a massacre of this kind could have happened. The comments of sociologists and psychiatrists, who have investigated the personality of the mass-murderer Robert Steinäuser, are also enlisted. The weekly Spiegel (6/5) splashes its cover with the headline “ The life and death of Robert S.” and dedicates a number of reports to the massacre, in which various authors analyze Robert’s personality, his passion for videogames, his adoption of a mask, and in which an attempt is made with the help of a psychiatrist to reconstruct the profile of the homicidal student. The daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung also devoted ample coverage to the case. On 3/5 it published an open letter of the Steinhäuser family, in which we read: “ We were a quite normal family, and ever since that Friday we continue to ask ourselves where did Robert’s hatred and despair come from and why we didn’t become aware of it“. The same paper contains other articles retracing other similar massacres perpetrated by adolescents. On 4/5, the day of the funerals, an editorial in the same Frankfurt daily bears the title “ strength from terror” and dwells on the restrictive provisions that the political authorities intend to make: “ it’s all terribly just, and yet it sounds so futile“. The massacre declares the same editorial did not only “involve the victims and their families but the whole of society“, “ It was a moment in which it became clear to the politicians that, apart from the economic data, the unemployment figures and those on the State deficit, there is still a lot else that cannot be shirked. For example ‘that parents must not lose sight of their own children’“.
