AMSTERDAM, Netherlands, Jan. 24 (UPI) — A member of the Netherlands Parliament jokes that Immigration and Integration Minister Rita Verdonk doesn’t want English to be used on the street. Verdonk, a liberal member of Parliament, called for a national “Code of Conduct” last weekend to strengthen the Dutch national identity by promoting use of the Dutch language. The idea was rejected by young members of her VVD Party, Expatica News reported, but the legislation was discussed by politicians considering compelling speaking of Dutch. “Oh, no. Minister Verdonk doesn’t allow me to speak English in public anymore,” said Parliament member Bert Bakker of the D66 Party. Verdonk said she does not want to ban speaking of other languages but says non-native residents of the Netherlands need to know what is expected of them.
That Rita Verdonk, the minister for integration and making Holland unattractive for dusky foreigners, is a dumb cow we already knew. Time after time she has proposed new laws or guidelines either completely unworkable, or forbidden by the Dutch Constition or EU laws, or both. Time after time her department has been responsible for fuckups which cost people their lives (the fire in a detention centre for asylum seekers at Schiphol, the murder of two Somalian refugees shortly after their forced return to Somalia, handing over data on returned asylum seekers to the Congolese security services, etc.) without her ever taking her repsonsibility and resigning. I didn’t think she could sink any lower, but she managed.
How? By wanting to make speaking Dutch obligatory in public spaces!!! Think about that for a moment. Forget all the moral and legal reasons why this is absurd, just think about how difficult this is to enforce. What about tourists for example. Will they have to speak Dutch? Or what about the Fresians, will they have to give up their language?
Even though it seems she has since tried to frantically backpedal over these remarks I’ll still happily tell her what she can expect from me, one of those non-native residents.
She can expect me to tell her fuck off and die. I mean, just look at the bloody woman! The epitome of the smug self-satisfied, shop at V&D suburban Dutch woman, the kind that every day hacks at your ankles, shoves her elbows in your ribs and postively radiates hostile self-righteousness and a massive sense of entitlement. Verdonk is what happens when the exurban white-flighters, the same ones who profess Christianity but quietly send donations to Vlams Blok and their ilk , get any power. I’m quite happy to tell her to FOAD in fucking English in the open – Dam Square good enough? I’m an EC citizen and I’ll say what I like, where I like, in whatever damn language I like. Free expression is still my right, Google and the NSA not withstanding.
Those who have the vague idea that The Netherlands is a liberal, tolerant nation are falling for the coffeeshop and red light tourist hype. This is the country that produced the Boers and apartheid and there are those who, now just as then, think the Netherlands is the pinnacle of creation and that non-Dutch are genetically inferior. Even the terms used for natives and foreigners, autocthones and allocthones respectively, with their pseudo-scientific ring, feed into that delusion of innate superiority.
The likes of Verdonk and her minions are all too prevalent right now in Dutch society, in business, bureaucracy and in daily discourse, and they make life hell for anyone whose first language is not Dutch. They know this and they revel in it. Even if you try to speak Dutch, make a real effort to learn, it’ll never be good enough. No-one can ever be really Dutch, except them, and of course their Dutchness, the narrow, provincial bigoted kind, is the one and only true standard by which all are to abide.
Little people, with little minds, in a little country. The kind of people who would collude with the Judenrat or extraordinary rendition and torture. Fuck them.
Tags: Netherlands, Verdonk
