Well, I’ve calmed down a bit. Polycarp, Kimstu and chukhung, you haven’t been nitpicking. Actually, you have made a vital point. There have been, indeed, more political murders in Holland in the last 500 years. Not just the ones on Pim Fortuyn, and the one Willem the Silent. Actually, there’s quite a pattern.
And then there’s also the murders on Johan van Oldebarneveldt and the brothers De Witt. The hijacking of a train by Ambonese terrorists in the 1970’s, resulting in many casualties. The kidnapping of Gerrit Jan Heijn in the early 1990’s, that wasn’t just doen for financial gain, but had a lot of envy and resentment behind it. The attack on ultra-rightwing leader Janmaat, that left his wife wheelchair bound. The bombing of secretary of state Aad Kosto. All incidents are different, but still, it is a lot of political violence for a country that otherwise prides itself on its low violent-crime-rate. So where does this pattern emerge?
Holland is a country of myriad interest groups, unions, clubs, networks, action groups, churches and political parties. We have at least 20 political parties every year, and at least 8 established ones, where the USA has 4 at most. The average Dutch person is a paying member of at least 15 groups with an Opinion .**)
All these Dutch groups constantly bicker. Fiercely. Vehemently. But verbally. Both with each other and amongst themselves.
As I said, this bickering can become quite fierce. In a country with so much wealth, people have time to argue. It is, after all, a luxury to get worked up about Ideas and Identities.*) Usually the mutual hatred is too abstract to become personal, to become focused. You can hate the commies or the liberals, but you wouldn’t know where to start in eradicating them.
But sometimes, a man or woman steps forward. A New Person. Usually an outsider, not a member of one of the existing groups. With a strong opinion, strong charisma, a lot of ambition, strong verbal skills, strategic skills, and most importantly: no fear of antagonizing others. Courageous, if you like. His charisma is sometimes unintentional; there’s the appeal of the village idiot, the appeal of the Fool. Janmaat was a village idiot, and Pim Fortuyn and van Gogh qualified, at times, as Fools. (Fortuyn had his butler and his two fluffy lapdogs in tow; van Gogh posed as an fat obnoxious dirty cherub, beerbelly hanging from his loincloth, in his own TV-dating show).
New Persons have the talent to make their arguments seem alluring, reasonable, en vogue, clear. They are constant in the news, people discuss them. They create issues, new rifts, a new balance of power.
Pim Fortuin was the prime example, van Gogh was one, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Willem the Silent, even Janmaat, in a way. ***).
The result is that within existing groups, panic takes hold. The balance of power appears to be shifting. The opposite group has an unfair advantage in the New Person, a secret weapon! Within the group, there is talk of how much we hate that person, how dangerous he is to our good cause, how he lies and cheats and manipulates. He MUST be cheating and lying, otherwise he wouldn’t seem right. There is no way he CAN actually be right? Because WE were right !? Right?
In short, The New Person is evil and dangerous. He doesn’t play by the rules. He corrupts the innocent and may seem appealing to those who are dumb enough not the see that WE are right. (“Right?” “Yeah, fucking right there bro!”). Usually, much talk of “what if somebody shot Hitler in 1938” ensues.
But within a typical Dutch group, everybody leaves it at that. They might get worked up within themselves, sidetracked, arguing fiercely amongst themselves about why, exactly the guy is dangerous and why, exactly, he’s wrong, and if he should be stoned or just hanged, but that’s about it. The worst thing the group will do is print a political caricature, or draft an hateful song.
But within some groups there will be a silent, serious guy. A Quiet Guy. He has heard about the evilness of the person, and that has struck a chord in his heart. The Cause is his identity; he has had enough brushes with the enemy to hate them fiercely, but not enough to see they are humans like himself; and he hasn’t got much to live for outside the cause.
The Quiet Guy sees it all to clearly: the loudmouthed people in his group may have seen the danger, but they will do nothing about it. They are useless. He, our Quiet Guy, may not be a talker, and he may not be very popular, but he will be the one who DOES something. A private nature ensures our Quiet Guy will go about his preparations alone, unchecked and uncorrected by his peers. His private nature is strengthened by a mixture of pride (“I’m doing this alone!”) and insecurity (“if I tell somebody, they will tell me not to do it, or they will take it from my hands, or they will point out flaws in it and then I have to defend myself against them and I can’t do that because I don’t stand a chance against those loudmouths, I never have”).
And if our Quiet Guy has done it right, and has been able to lay his hands on a gun, his mission will succeed. And the new Person will lay on the ground, dead, while the camera’s are flashing.
And all the groups he belonged to will be genuinely shocked and feel, and say: well, New Person WAS a scumbag, but he didn’t deserve this, this is terrible.
The Quiet Guy has been named Mohammed B, Volkert van der Graaf, Balthazar and in a way, Osama Bin Laden. Is he a nut? Yes and no. Not in the cold efficiency by which he did what he did; not in his idea’s; he is only nutty in the length he will go for his idea’s.
There is a genuine problem with the integration of Islamic immigrants in the Netherlands, and there will be for one or two generations more. But the shooting of van Gogh (and the subsequent outrage amongst the other Dutch Muslims) proves, if anything, how well that integration is underway.
This week, we have witnessed a very Dutch, very typical Dutch political murder, I think.
*) Struggles about economics are usually more practical, and they are also shorter, with a clear outcome; we got the vote and we got half the raise.
**) This in stark contrast to most Islamic countries, where the strongest and best organized level of organization is the family, with above it a large void without checks and balances, and above that void the (religious) government - or tyrant.)
***) Lesser examples are (or were) Wiegel, Peter R. de Vries, Bolkenstein. But they were/are less antagonizing