In less then a month the Dutch parliamentary elections will be held, with a predicted outcome as uncertain as that of the UK elections. Yet despite this few if any political parties are campaigning. What’s happened that made them stop?
The airplane crash in Lybia is what happened. With some seventy Dutch passengers killed in the crash, the main political parties jointly decided that campaigning at such a time of national grief would be wrong.
A noble but wrong decision. That the crash was a tragedy for the people killed, their families and friends nobody will argue otherwise, but this tendency to make every such disaster into a national tragedy, owned by all of us and in which we are all supposed to be emotionally involved is ghoulish and hysterical. There is no connection between the crash and the elections, no reason that having a political campaign go on is somehow offensive to the bereaved — if it was, so much else should be stopped as well, because how could you shop for pleasure at such a time of national tragedy?
Ironically, it’s the Dutch media which has been accused of ghoulish behaviour by the government, at a press conference after a meeting of the prime minister with the families of the victims, who were asked to show some respect and keep their distance from the grieving relatives. True, some of the media (e.g. De Telegraaf, Holland’s most manipulative newspaper [1]) have crossed the line between reporting tragedy and wallowing in it, but what do you call politicians attempting to co-opt the same tragedy by stopping their campaign? That’s not a mark of respect, but a cynical exploitation of populist sentiment. It’s also cowardly, a pre-emptive capitulation to supposed media pressure if the decision had not been taken. It’s all of a piece with all those useless “silent marches” whenever some fucker murdered his family and committed suicide afterwars. It’s not doing anybody any good, but boy does it make us feel better about ourselves; aren’t we good people to dissapprove of murder?
[1] And also the most enthusiastic collaborator with the nazi occupation during WWII, which is one reason I’ll never read that rag willingly, but that’s beside the point.