On this day five years ago Theo van Gogh was shot and killed by Mohammed B, in Holland’s first (and so far, only) Islamist terror attack. At this late date I’m not sure I still stand entirely by what I wrote at the time, as I tried to push back somewhat too hard against an unrelenting stream of Islamophobia that his murder unleashed. I tried to explain what might have driven van Gogh’s murderer at a time when his motivations were still far from clear, as well as why his murder didn’t make van Gogh into a free speech martyr. Looking back I came on too strong and my point was lost in te confusion.
But I still believe it is wrong to call van Gogh a martyr of free speech. His killing was a political deed, intended as a a warning and threat to those Mohammed B. saw as enemies of Islam, but this in itself is not enough to make him a martyr, just like John Lennon wasn’t made a martyr when he was murdered by a deranged fan. Van Gogh never had to fear state prosecution, or social ostracation for his views, no damage to his career. That one random nut decided he needed killing therefore did not turn him retrospectively into a martyr.
This myth however has served as a focal point for Dutch Islamophobia, confirming the supposed dangers Islam offers to our liberal, tolerant society. Van Gogh’s murder shows the dangers of allowing this alien philosophy to grow unchallenged, showing the need for strict measures to make sure Muslims living in the Netherlands fully share our values — or leave the country. He provided the excuse for all sorts of people to let loose their id, all in the name of freedom of speech, aimed at a part of the Dutch population increasingly seen as alien and unbelonging by a growing segment of (white) voters. It was only after van Gogh’s murder that Islamophobia found its official voice in Geerd Wilders’ PVV, which since than has grown larger and larger, while the established parties seem to have no answer to its rightwing populism, waffling between joining in and condemning it.
A recent and telling example is how the current social democratic minister for integration, Eberhard van der Laan, who today took a strong stance against Wilders by calling his party “dangerous”, while alos having been in the news last week for feeling “uncomfortable” about Turkish and Moroccan people living in council housing while saving up for a house in Turkey or Morocco to retire to — real Dutch people never buy houses in Spain to spent their winters in, apparantly. This sort of me-tooish populism helps legitimise Wilders, while the attacks on him make him look the victim of the “Den Haag establishment” as well as the only honest man there, not changing his opinion ever other day.
Van Gogh’s murder accelerated an already present tendency towards intolerance in the Netherlands, fetishised the idea of free speech as being as rude as you want to without consequences, paved the way for the PVV to quite possibly be the largest party at the next elections, while setting back any serious attempts to deal with integration problems. It may therefore have been the most important political event in the country’s recent political history.
Alex
November 3, 2009 at 5:43 amfetishised the idea of free speech as being as rude as you want to without consequences
This. This is a point I spent much time trying to get over during the Danish cartoon thing; yes, society has an obligation to protect free speech, just as it has an obligation to winch you off a freezing mountainside or the keel of a capsized ship – but that’s not an argument for climbing Ben Nevis in November in a bikini or trying to sail the winter North Atlantic in a bathtub, and neither is it an argument for pointlessly insulting whole religions and then coming crying to me for sympathy.
The other thing about both van Gogh’s film and cartoongate was that neither of them deserved to be published just on editorial grounds; the film was an exercise in the pornographic gaze, with added self-righteousness, and the cartoons were just not very good – unfunny, unenlightening, not particularly well drawn or original. There is no free speech obligation to publish crap, just as my right to free speech doesn’t create a co-relative obligation on anyone to listen.
Jenny
November 4, 2009 at 3:50 pmAlex: Surely though that still doesn’t make his murder or the threatening of bombing the newspapers that published the cartoons okay
Alex
November 5, 2009 at 5:18 amObviously not. This is a strawman argument; if he’d been killed in a car crash brought on by driving too fast, nobody would find it at all difficult to feel that a) this was a tragedy and b) he was partly responsible.
Jenny
November 5, 2009 at 2:05 pmBut even if we dislike the cartoons, they have a right to be expressed? Your personal view doesn’t necessairly matter in this case.
Omri
November 11, 2009 at 7:29 pmWell, if people OTHER than Van Gogh and Wilders were willing to tackle problems like THIS head on instead of engaging in insistent denial and will ful blindness, people such as, oh, you, yourself, then maybe it would not act as a rallying flag for unsavory populist types.
A little quote:
The orthodox school has been in the building in Buitenveldert, where about 10% of the residents are Jewish, for 16 years. The school had about 250 students fifteen years ago, now only 180. That’s connected to the departure of Jews to foreign lands. Many of them go for the US, UK, Israel and Antwerp, where people think the Jewish communities are safer.
There were always threats, but they’ve increased in recent years, says the administration. It varies from juveniles who call up the school and shout ‘Al Qaida’ to curses, throwing stones, stabbings and spitting.