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Theo Van Gogh: His Views and After
November 10, 2004 - 9:13am -- jim
Anonymous Comrade writes:
Theo Van Gogh: His Views and After
Theo van Gogh, murdered in Amsterdam. Was he a hero, anti-Semite, misogynist, or Islamophobe? To find out, we have to look at his own words, translated for English speakers. What will be the consequences of this murder?
The murder of Dutch film maker and columnist Theo van Gogh in Amsterdam on 2 November 2004 in Amsterdam shocked many people. Not only in The Netherlands, but also abroad, reactions were, understandably, often emotional. Many of them described Van Gogh as a martyr for free speech. That leaves the question: free speech for himself and people of his views, or also for his targets?
Many reactions by people in, e.g., England, were by people who didn't know the writings of either Van Gogh or his critics first hand in Dutch. I will try in this article to help provide this information, necessary for a rational assessment.
So, first, the murder is terrible, should be condemned, and everyone should make an effort to prevent violence like this from happening again.
However, if I would keep saying that one plus one makes three; and then someone murders me; I hope no one will write that I was a mathematics genius (as at least some people seemed to do on Van Gogh; not mathematics, but you get the point).
Theo van Gogh's inspiration were films like A Clockwork Orange; and French author Louis-Ferdinand Céline (a supporter of Hitler during World War II), both with human depravity as central theme.
So let us see, from what Van Gogh himself said:
1. Van Gogh on Jews
2. Van Gogh on women (including MP Ayaan Hirshi Ali)
3. Van Gogh on war and socialism
4. Van Gogh on immigrants from Muslim countries
5. Who killed him and why?
1. Van Gogh on Jews
"fornicating yellow stars [which Jews had to wear during Nazi
occupation] in a gas chamber
the crematoriums burn only diabetic [in Dutch literally: sugar-sick]
Jews". Van Gogh, in Moviola magazine, 1991. The court then fined him
1000 guilders for anti-Semitism.
He pictured Jewish TV presenter Ms Sonja Barend in a concentration
camp. Jewish author Leon de Winter he pictured in "Treblinka [camp] style
fornication with barbed wire around his dick."
When Jewish historian Ms Evelien Gans criticized Van Gogh, he wrote
in Folia Civitatis magazine: "I suspect that Ms Gans gets wet dreams
about being fucked by Dr Mengele [Nazi doctor at Auschwitz]."
He hoped (Volkskrant, February 1995) Ms Gans would sue him: "Because
then Ms Gans will have to explain in court that she claims that she
does not get wet dreams about Dr Mengele."
2. Van Gogh on women (including MP Ayaan Hirshi Ali)
Van Gogh’s last, a few minutes long, film, was written by a Dutch MP, Ms Ayaan Hirshi Ali, naturalized refugee, from the ex-royal family of Somalia. See on her, in Dutch,
http://www.tijdschriftlover.nl/artikelen/artikelen _islam.html
an article by Surinamese Dutch Black (not Islamic) feminist Troetje
Loewenthal.
On http://www.sp.nl/include/sh_opinie.php?code=406 another critical
article on Ms Ali; this one by Anja Meulenbelt; arguably the best known
Dutch feminist and now Socialist Party Senator.
Ms Ali is MP for the VVD party: in government; the most openly pro-
capitalist party in Parliament. Arguably, they are the Dutch equivalent of the British Tory party (though more "secular" than especially the
Christian fundamentalists in the Tories). The VVD, and Ali, and Van Gogh,
enthusiastically support all wars of George W. Bush; and government expulsion of ten thousands of refugees from The Netherlands; including Somali women refugees from female circumcision; who now have to fear it if the responsible VVD minister succeeds with her expulsion plans.
Female genital mutilation, by the way, is not an Islamic custom, as it happens in Somalia and among Christians in Kenya. Not among Turks or Moroccans, the biggest groups of immigrants from Muslim countries in The Netherlands. Ms Ali proposed in a Parliament speech to give the African continent not a cent of aid any longer.
Anja Meulenbelt quotes Theo van Gogh, who said that feminists should stop
campaigning against husbands' violence in marriages: "Gentlemen who
give a tough hiding are quite attractive to some ladies really." That
remark was on women in general, not especially on Muslim women. But
as we know, about a hundred years ago, Lord Cromer was the boss of the anti-women's suffrage league in Britain; and in colonial Muslim Egypt, sounded very "feminist".
The theme of Ali’s and Van Gogh’s film was Islamic wives beaten by their husbands; said to be inspired by the Koran. Beaten Muslim women reacted very angrily to the film on Dutch TV: "I was beaten by that no good husband. Not by the Koran! Making this a Koran issue will just give them an excuse." The film was sort of soft porn David Hamilton-Emmanuelle style naked [Christian Moluccan actress playing an Islamic woman] woman in see through clothes with Koran verses written on it. The women said this cheapened and sensationalized their extremely real issues with their husbands.
On a British Internet forum, a comparison was made between “Van Gogh making films vividly critical of Islam and the likes of Bunuel or Scorsese who made films that challenged the basis of catholicism”. However, there is a difference. Bunuel and Scorcese came from a
background were Catholicism/Christianity was the dominant religion,
at least during their childhoods. While never-a-Muslim Van Gogh
called all Muslims, most of them in The Netherlands a lot more poor
or powerless than he was "goatfuckers". Not once: probably a hundred
times or more in writing (I did not count).
The Internet message continued: “There is therefore no comparison with the BNP or NF, whose staple diet is attacks and violence by Black men against White women, not intra communal violence.”
However, even though Van Gogh, contrary to Ms Ali, was no party politician: intra communal violence, including hypocritical pity about female circumsision, WAS the staple diet in party political broadcasts by the now defunct Centrumpartij, then the Dutch sister party of the British extreme Right, over 10 years ago.
When, in 2002, Pim Fortuijn (he himself preferred the more “aristocratic” spelling Fortuyn) founded an anti-immigration party, with 4 other people, one was ex Centrumpartij leader J. Boiten (when his past came out after Fortuijn’s death, Fortuyn's [their spelling] party dismissed Boiten as parliamentary assistant. Boiten claims Fortuijn knew all on his Centrumpartij past).
Van Gogh helped Fortuijn write political speeches. Fortuijn wanted him as an MP for his party; but Van Gogh refused, as he hated other prospective candidates.
Can a fascist party be led by an open gay in some individual cases, even though gay bashing is a main point of the extreme Right? Yes it can. Michael Kühnen, leader of the National Socialist Action Front of Germany was openly gay and had a macho theory to justify it. He died of AIDS in 1991. Right now, Dutch Michiel Smit (see photos on
http://www.geenstijl.nl/paginas/michielsmit/ ) the leader of Nieuw
Rechts, New Right, is openly gay. Though Fascist competitors used and use that against both.
3. Van Gogh on war and socialism
Van Gogh strongly supported George W. Bush's wars, and opposed all socialism in his columns. Van Gogh wrote on Paul Rosenmöller, ex dockworker, then Green Left party leader: "May he get a joy bringing brain tumor. Let us piss on his grave".
4. Van Gogh on immigrants from Muslim countries
As I said, Van Gogh routinely substituted “goatfucker” for “immigrant to The Netherlands from an Islamic country.” Including in his book Allah knows best, 2001: "There is a Fifth Column of goatfuckers in this country, who despise and spit at its native people. They hate our freedom." "Soon, the Fifth Column of goatfuckers will hurl poison gas, diseases and atomic bombs at your children and my children.”
However, nothing justifies the murder of Van Gogh. The main immediate effects of it were further racist backlashes in The Netherlands, with an Islamic primary school in Eindhoven firebombed for the fourth time; mosques and buildings of secular Moroccan immigrant organizations attacked at night. Very many Dutch Moroccans participated in, and/or organized, protests against the murder of Van Gogh. However, that did not impress bigots. Vice Prime Minister Zalm (VVD) declared, in George W. Bush style, “war on extreme Islam.” Though one murderer, however terrible, is not a state’s army in any dictionary. Neither Van Gogh nor his attacker were in military or other state service.
5. Who killed him and why?
The arrested suspect wrote a rambling five page letter and left it at Van Gogh’s body.
Though his parents were from Morocco, he was raised in The Netherlands in Dutch and apparently did not know Arabic. The letter had nothing on Van Gogh. It was a long ramble on purported quotes from the Jewish Talmud. The suspect was said to be upset by his mother's death and TV footage
of US soldiers killing wounded Iraqi civilians. There is not any
proof that he did not act alone. So, an INDIVIDUAL killed Van Gogh.
Not "Islam". Not even "political Islam."
Again: not, NEVER ANY excuse for this terrible murder. It seems
murderer and victim had something in common: both fairly intelligent
but mentally disturbed. Van Gogh often had depressions, according to
Dutch daily NRC. So, indeed, he certainly cannot be equated to a
calculating racist politician, who is never alcoholic or takes drugs.
Dutch poet Remco Campert wrote: "De mortuis nil sini bene. [Say only
good things on people after they die.] That is a maxim which Van Gogh
violated consistently. I think I would insult him if now I would say
sugary nice things on him." Campert continued his article with Van
Gogh's quotes on Jews. Then: "These are not really the words of a
true hero of free speech."
[For further reading, see also for instance
http://www.opinionjournal.com/forms/printThis.html ?id=110005855
Fatal Detraction
BY LEON DE WINTER
Friday, November 5, 2004
http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2004/11/300491.html
Anti-Islam rage in the Netherlands
04.11.2004
In German:
http://germany.indymedia.org/2004/11/97221.shtml
Amsterdam: Filmemacher T.Van Gogh erschossen
02.11.2004 ]
Anonymous Comrade writes:
Theo Van Gogh: His Views and After
Theo van Gogh, murdered in Amsterdam. Was he a hero, anti-Semite, misogynist, or Islamophobe? To find out, we have to look at his own words, translated for English speakers. What will be the consequences of this murder?
The murder of Dutch film maker and columnist Theo van Gogh in Amsterdam on 2 November 2004 in Amsterdam shocked many people. Not only in The Netherlands, but also abroad, reactions were, understandably, often emotional. Many of them described Van Gogh as a martyr for free speech. That leaves the question: free speech for himself and people of his views, or also for his targets?
Many reactions by people in, e.g., England, were by people who didn't know the writings of either Van Gogh or his critics first hand in Dutch. I will try in this article to help provide this information, necessary for a rational assessment.
So, first, the murder is terrible, should be condemned, and everyone should make an effort to prevent violence like this from happening again.
However, if I would keep saying that one plus one makes three; and then someone murders me; I hope no one will write that I was a mathematics genius (as at least some people seemed to do on Van Gogh; not mathematics, but you get the point).
Theo van Gogh's inspiration were films like A Clockwork Orange; and French author Louis-Ferdinand Céline (a supporter of Hitler during World War II), both with human depravity as central theme.
So let us see, from what Van Gogh himself said:
1. Van Gogh on Jews
2. Van Gogh on women (including MP Ayaan Hirshi Ali)
3. Van Gogh on war and socialism
4. Van Gogh on immigrants from Muslim countries
5. Who killed him and why?
1. Van Gogh on Jews
"fornicating yellow stars [which Jews had to wear during Nazi
occupation] in a gas chamber
the crematoriums burn only diabetic [in Dutch literally: sugar-sick]
Jews". Van Gogh, in Moviola magazine, 1991. The court then fined him
1000 guilders for anti-Semitism.
He pictured Jewish TV presenter Ms Sonja Barend in a concentration
camp. Jewish author Leon de Winter he pictured in "Treblinka [camp] style
fornication with barbed wire around his dick."
When Jewish historian Ms Evelien Gans criticized Van Gogh, he wrote
in Folia Civitatis magazine: "I suspect that Ms Gans gets wet dreams
about being fucked by Dr Mengele [Nazi doctor at Auschwitz]."
He hoped (Volkskrant, February 1995) Ms Gans would sue him: "Because
then Ms Gans will have to explain in court that she claims that she
does not get wet dreams about Dr Mengele."
2. Van Gogh on women (including MP Ayaan Hirshi Ali)
Van Gogh’s last, a few minutes long, film, was written by a Dutch MP, Ms Ayaan Hirshi Ali, naturalized refugee, from the ex-royal family of Somalia. See on her, in Dutch,
http://www.tijdschriftlover.nl/artikelen/artikele
an article by Surinamese Dutch Black (not Islamic) feminist Troetje
Loewenthal.
On http://www.sp.nl/include/sh_opinie.php?code=406 another critical
article on Ms Ali; this one by Anja Meulenbelt; arguably the best known
Dutch feminist and now Socialist Party Senator.
Ms Ali is MP for the VVD party: in government; the most openly pro-
capitalist party in Parliament. Arguably, they are the Dutch equivalent of the British Tory party (though more "secular" than especially the
Christian fundamentalists in the Tories). The VVD, and Ali, and Van Gogh,
enthusiastically support all wars of George W. Bush; and government expulsion of ten thousands of refugees from The Netherlands; including Somali women refugees from female circumcision; who now have to fear it if the responsible VVD minister succeeds with her expulsion plans.
Female genital mutilation, by the way, is not an Islamic custom, as it happens in Somalia and among Christians in Kenya. Not among Turks or Moroccans, the biggest groups of immigrants from Muslim countries in The Netherlands. Ms Ali proposed in a Parliament speech to give the African continent not a cent of aid any longer.
Anja Meulenbelt quotes Theo van Gogh, who said that feminists should stop
campaigning against husbands' violence in marriages: "Gentlemen who
give a tough hiding are quite attractive to some ladies really." That
remark was on women in general, not especially on Muslim women. But
as we know, about a hundred years ago, Lord Cromer was the boss of the anti-women's suffrage league in Britain; and in colonial Muslim Egypt, sounded very "feminist".
The theme of Ali’s and Van Gogh’s film was Islamic wives beaten by their husbands; said to be inspired by the Koran. Beaten Muslim women reacted very angrily to the film on Dutch TV: "I was beaten by that no good husband. Not by the Koran! Making this a Koran issue will just give them an excuse." The film was sort of soft porn David Hamilton-Emmanuelle style naked [Christian Moluccan actress playing an Islamic woman] woman in see through clothes with Koran verses written on it. The women said this cheapened and sensationalized their extremely real issues with their husbands.
On a British Internet forum, a comparison was made between “Van Gogh making films vividly critical of Islam and the likes of Bunuel or Scorsese who made films that challenged the basis of catholicism”. However, there is a difference. Bunuel and Scorcese came from a
background were Catholicism/Christianity was the dominant religion,
at least during their childhoods. While never-a-Muslim Van Gogh
called all Muslims, most of them in The Netherlands a lot more poor
or powerless than he was "goatfuckers". Not once: probably a hundred
times or more in writing (I did not count).
The Internet message continued: “There is therefore no comparison with the BNP or NF, whose staple diet is attacks and violence by Black men against White women, not intra communal violence.”
However, even though Van Gogh, contrary to Ms Ali, was no party politician: intra communal violence, including hypocritical pity about female circumsision, WAS the staple diet in party political broadcasts by the now defunct Centrumpartij, then the Dutch sister party of the British extreme Right, over 10 years ago.
When, in 2002, Pim Fortuijn (he himself preferred the more “aristocratic” spelling Fortuyn) founded an anti-immigration party, with 4 other people, one was ex Centrumpartij leader J. Boiten (when his past came out after Fortuijn’s death, Fortuyn's [their spelling] party dismissed Boiten as parliamentary assistant. Boiten claims Fortuijn knew all on his Centrumpartij past).
Van Gogh helped Fortuijn write political speeches. Fortuijn wanted him as an MP for his party; but Van Gogh refused, as he hated other prospective candidates.
Can a fascist party be led by an open gay in some individual cases, even though gay bashing is a main point of the extreme Right? Yes it can. Michael Kühnen, leader of the National Socialist Action Front of Germany was openly gay and had a macho theory to justify it. He died of AIDS in 1991. Right now, Dutch Michiel Smit (see photos on
http://www.geenstijl.nl/paginas/michielsmit/ ) the leader of Nieuw
Rechts, New Right, is openly gay. Though Fascist competitors used and use that against both.
3. Van Gogh on war and socialism
Van Gogh strongly supported George W. Bush's wars, and opposed all socialism in his columns. Van Gogh wrote on Paul Rosenmöller, ex dockworker, then Green Left party leader: "May he get a joy bringing brain tumor. Let us piss on his grave".
4. Van Gogh on immigrants from Muslim countries
As I said, Van Gogh routinely substituted “goatfucker” for “immigrant to The Netherlands from an Islamic country.” Including in his book Allah knows best, 2001: "There is a Fifth Column of goatfuckers in this country, who despise and spit at its native people. They hate our freedom." "Soon, the Fifth Column of goatfuckers will hurl poison gas, diseases and atomic bombs at your children and my children.”
However, nothing justifies the murder of Van Gogh. The main immediate effects of it were further racist backlashes in The Netherlands, with an Islamic primary school in Eindhoven firebombed for the fourth time; mosques and buildings of secular Moroccan immigrant organizations attacked at night. Very many Dutch Moroccans participated in, and/or organized, protests against the murder of Van Gogh. However, that did not impress bigots. Vice Prime Minister Zalm (VVD) declared, in George W. Bush style, “war on extreme Islam.” Though one murderer, however terrible, is not a state’s army in any dictionary. Neither Van Gogh nor his attacker were in military or other state service.
5. Who killed him and why?
The arrested suspect wrote a rambling five page letter and left it at Van Gogh’s body.
Though his parents were from Morocco, he was raised in The Netherlands in Dutch and apparently did not know Arabic. The letter had nothing on Van Gogh. It was a long ramble on purported quotes from the Jewish Talmud. The suspect was said to be upset by his mother's death and TV footage
of US soldiers killing wounded Iraqi civilians. There is not any
proof that he did not act alone. So, an INDIVIDUAL killed Van Gogh.
Not "Islam". Not even "political Islam."
Again: not, NEVER ANY excuse for this terrible murder. It seems
murderer and victim had something in common: both fairly intelligent
but mentally disturbed. Van Gogh often had depressions, according to
Dutch daily NRC. So, indeed, he certainly cannot be equated to a
calculating racist politician, who is never alcoholic or takes drugs.
Dutch poet Remco Campert wrote: "De mortuis nil sini bene. [Say only
good things on people after they die.] That is a maxim which Van Gogh
violated consistently. I think I would insult him if now I would say
sugary nice things on him." Campert continued his article with Van
Gogh's quotes on Jews. Then: "These are not really the words of a
true hero of free speech."
[For further reading, see also for instance
http://www.opinionjournal.com/forms/printThis.htm
Fatal Detraction
BY LEON DE WINTER
Friday, November 5, 2004
http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2004/11/300491.htm
Anti-Islam rage in the Netherlands
04.11.2004
In German:
http://germany.indymedia.org/2004/11/97221.shtml
Amsterdam: Filmemacher T.Van Gogh erschossen
02.11.2004 ]