Here's a good photo.

Remember that I translated parts of Theo van Gogh's online columns a few years ago? A Dutch writer by the name of Erik Weijers has found more stuff worth translating and has done so here. Enjoy.

"The Scream" was finaly unveiled yesterday in Amsterdam. As you may recall, the idea to remember the murdered filmmaker in this way ran into some predictable resistance, but finally it is here. Judging from the various Dutch press reports only some thousand people showed up for the event which is rather disappointing to say the least.

Here are some photos of the unveiling, the older man in the second one is Theo's father, no doubt reliving the bitter experience of having to survive his son.

Related Post
Against Tyranny

And of course the entire Theo van Gogh archives.

The first review of the Buscemi remake of Theo van Gogh's Interview is in – it’s playing at Sundance - and it isn't all that enthusiastic. There probably will be more comments on the film in days to come, all worthwhile stuff sure, but personally I am far more interested in how the media circus will deal with the fact that this is a Theo van Gogh movie.

UPDATE: A more positive review here.

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Interview, Van Gogh & Buscemi
Risky Business
Remakes and Remembrance
Hollywood does Van Gogh

And for newcomers, the entire Theo van Gogh file is here.

I've received a number of e-mails from readers asking about Steve Buscemi's remake of Theo van Gogh's film Interview. Well, it's done and you can go and see it this week at the Sundance Festival. More details here.

New York Magazine has a preview of Buscemi at Sundance:

In Hollywood, Steve Buscemi is the comic you recruit to pepper your star vehicle with some jittery laughs; he’s the nervy villain in your action movie; the virtuoso weirdo in your Adam Sandler comedy; the guy standing next to Nicolas Cage. But at the Sundance Film Festival, which kicks off January 18, Buscemi is an indie god among video-store clerks: patron saint of character actors, working stiffs, and last-true-believers everywhere. In L.A., the paparazzi might miss him, but in Sundance, they hound him—and this year, he knows how they feel.

I will link to any reviews that come out in the next week and if any of you happens to be at the festival and see 'Interview', let me know and I will post your comments.

Theo van Gogh continues to attract visitors to this site and some of them send me long e-mails with their thoughts, ideas or in one particular case with a story of a chance encounter with the man himself. A reader from Los Angeles writes:

Mid-August 1982. I was traveling back from the south of France after having spent a week trolling the various beaches of the Cote d’ Azur. I’m not a rich guy by any stretch of the imagination. I was in college at the time, attending the University of Georgia, and had saved some money from a part-time job to travel during my summers. And I had just spent a layover night on one of those polyester brown couches out at Schiphol Airport. The next morning I decided to go into the city before my plane departed for America later that afternoon. At 10:00 in the morning, I walked into a small café. I was the only patron. The owner was behind the bar, cleaning up, and we struck up a conversation. I mentioned I was a film student at my university.

And as if on cue, a dark, silhouetted mass blackened the doorway, cutting out the morning sun. The café owner said, “Well, you and Theo will get along just fine.” With cigarette dangling from his mouth, tousled blonde hair mopping his forehead, and a torn, black, leather motorcycle jacket barely fitting around his torso, Theo Van Gogh slid onto the barstool next to me. He barely took notice of me at first and ordered a beer.

For the next hour, Theo warmed up to me, if you can really call it that, and a lively debate about films, politics, America, Europe, and societal norms kept our conversation going nonstop. I remember him lighting cigarette after cigarette. I can still recall him leaning in close to make a point, his eyes dull and burning into me, daring me to contradict him. I was, quite frankly, a bit afraid of him. He had the air of a bully. But he never showed a threatening side. It was his commentary, his cynicism, his growling way of presenting his opinions that suggested that tinge of an adversarial edge. I remember that I began to see his lion façade as just that…a façade. Underneath was a thoughtful, articulate man.

When talk turned to our love of film, he both derided but also subtly enthused about the nature of American blockbuster filmmaking. He didn’t want to admit openly that he sought that kind of presentation in his work.

Having been just a novice film student, I had recently seen the movies of Paul Verhoeven at that time, specifically “Turkish Delight” and “Soldier of Orange”. He just snorted at that. No comment.

That’s when Theo confessed and said that he was actually a reputable director in the Netherlands. He told me that his first film, “Luger”, had won awards. It had recently shown on television, he said, and the station had received hundreds of angry calls about the kitten-in-the-washing-machine scene. He was very amused by that.

When the conversation shut down, it stopped abruptly. He was done with me. But before he left, he said I should keep an eye out for his work when I get back to the States. He hoped to be internationally known soon. He walked to the back wall of the café and took down a poster that was stapled to a board. He asked the café owner for a pen and he wrote his name on the back of the poster. He said, “Now, you’ll know who I am,” with a mix of pride and indifference. And off he went.

Right now, that poster hangs in a frame over my desk here at work. It’s the movie poster to “Luger.” On the back is his written name, along with a stamp from the café, “Café Bellefleur, Singel 12 – Amsterdam.”

As I have pointed out before, keeping Theo’s memory alive is in many cases better served by talking about his life and times rather than just about the way it ended.

Ayaan Hirsi’s tainted relationship with her adoptive homeland. The latest:

The [Dutch] cabinet has denied that it put Ayaan Hirsi Ali in political isolation following the terrorist murder of Theo van Gogh. Justice Minister Ernst Hirsch Ballin rejects suggestions that Hirsi Ali was sent to the US to prevent her unleashing more Islamic violence with her sharp tongue.

Columnists Afshin Ellian and Leon de Winter wrote in an article in newspaper De Volkskrant in October that the government decided to send Hirsi Ali temporarily to the US following the 2 November 2004 murder of her friend and filmmaker Van Gogh. A Muslim cut his throat on the street in Amsterdam and on his body, stuck a knife with a letter saying Hirsi Ali would be the next victim.

In her biography – English version to be released in February 2007 – Ayaan Hirsi Ali devotes some twenty-four pages to her bizarre adventures following Van Gogh’s murder. The Dutch security services arranged, as a precautionary measure, for her to disappear from the public scene, which resulted in two separate overseas stays in the northeastern US and a brief sojourn in Germany. The levels of security as well as the various actions of the justice apparatus appeared to be overzealous and at times even illogical.

Hirsi Ali describes that initially she was barred from phone and internet access, allegedly to avoid her being tracked down by would-be assassins. A curious approach as I can’t imagine any jihadist monitoring internet activity would instantly conclude that someone googling ‘Van Gogh murder’ in a Best Western in Portland, Maine would pinpoint that as the secret location of the infamous Dutch parliamentarian of Somali descent. At the same time her security detail went to the extreme lengths to avoid her being recognized, but when a Turkish hotel proprietor in Germany identified her correctly as that Dutch-Somali parliamentarian “whose friend had been murdered” Ayaan was told it was late, not that big a deal and asked to stay in the said hotel where she consequently spent a restless night.

It is beyond the scope of this post to summarize the whole two month adventure, but in view of the news above and what Hirsi Ali says in her book, I believe the claim that she was ‘neutralized’ in the immediate aftermath of the Van Gogh murder is credible. What is also evident to me is that this was not a deliberate move by Dutch authorities, but that its potential became evident during the process of securing Hirsi Ali. She was moved around a lot the first few days and security levels went up steadily, while at the same time the reactions to the murder in Dutch society accelerated to levels where the outcome was increasingly unpredictable. The Dutch government had an obligation to protect Hirsi Ali, but in doing so realized it had the perfect means to silence her too. And surely, that is something that will never be formally acknowledged.

Hirsi Ali herself won’t speak out on this either, and for good reasons by the way. Although she has moved to the Washington, DC area, her security is still partly provided by the Dutch government and it would be rather counterproductive and ungrateful to question their work based on what essentially is a theory of some of her friends. That by the way should also be taken to heart by journalists who can’t resist asking her about her security. Hirsi Ali can’t and won’t answer these questions not because she needs to remain tactful towards her minders, but because her life remains on the line for as long as she lives.

Here is a rather extraordinary and verbose review of Murder in Amsterdam from the hands of Rafia Zakaria, not sure if he is related to the other Zakaria. An American-Muslim, this Zakaria clearly rejects fundamentalism but is equally troubled by the way in which Van Gogh and Hirsi Ali promoted enlightenment values. You have to read it to appreciate it, but Sullivan would no doubt find a few worthy 'poseur alerts'. To give you a flavor:

In reality however, the ramparts of political polarisation in the Netherlands have been drawn in such a way that even the most oppressive tactics against Muslim women, ones Hirsi Ali rightfully denounces, have become reinterpreted as marks of resistance that must be held onto as a sign of loyalty to faith and culture. When the same voices that enunciate racial taunts reinvent themselves as bearers of the virtues of the Enlightenment, it comes as a scant surprise that the Enlightenment itself is rejected as yet another imperialist tool of subjugation.

You might as well read to whole thing if you feel like broadening your horizon beyond the usual fare served up about Buruma's book.

NOTE: My ever perceptive readers have pointed out that Rafia Zakaria is a she, not a he. More about her here.

UPDATE: Mario Vargas Llosa has also weighed in on the book, albeit in German. Blogger Pierre Joris however has translated the most significant part of Vargas Llosa's review:

The people in the west have it good, they live in safety. And although newspapers and television tell them how terrible things are out there, they have forgotten that it is freedom, human rights and democracy – concepts that now sound like hollow phrases in their ears – that they have to thank for their standard of living and legal security. Which is why they are wallowing in self-pity and apathy, and why they get annoyed as soon as someone interferes with their comfortable life. If the culture of freedom survives the challenge of religious fundamentalism, it would not be going too far to say that it will mainly be thanks to new citizens like Afshin Ellian and Ayaan Hirsi Ali. They have first-hand experience of the horrors of religious obscurantism and political barbarity and they know the difference.

Joris is not convinced about this statement, but I am as it underlines one of my core themes about Islamic fundamentalism. While it is a definite threat to free societies, our inability to confront it and deal with it is possibly even more lethal.

Related Posts
More Buruma Reviews
Murder in Amsterdam - Reviewed

They keep coming, and each has its own particular angle. Rogier van Bakel - another Dutchman who has opted for life on the other side of the ocean - considers the attitudes of one of van Gogh's Muslim protegés and is not exactly encouraged.

And: The Tyee weighs in with Death of a Liberal Delusion. My review is here.

My column for Pajamas Media - about Van Gogh of course - is now up, together with another translated video. This may be a good point to thank Roger Simon - a moviemaker himself - for his relentless support in getting this story out in the blogosphere and beyond.

Today it is exactly two years ago that Theo van Gogh was murdered. Over the past few days I have written about some aspects of the murder and the incredible threats we face these days when it comes to ‘free speech’. Some time has passed, but I think that the attempts to regulate and control speech, stifle debate, silence commentators and cleanse history have only grown in intensity since that fateful day in Amsterdam. And I do not just refer to jihadists. Western governments and special interest groups are equally playing their part, the only difference being the sophistication and stealth by which they attempt – and sometimes succeed – to frame the boundaries of a debate.

Yes, there is a comprehensive Theo van Gogh file on this site, but I have my personal favorites and they are in random order:

Van Gogh on … – This post translates some excerpts form his columns and give a flavor – especially for the non-Dutch continent among you - about Theo’s views on a variety of issues.

Van Gogh Killer Sentenced – Rather than spent time on the man who went to prison for life, I focused on some of Van Gogh’s peculiarities and tried to recreate the man he was.

Al-Zarqawi on Clogs – One of the most visited posts on this site ever, it contained translated parts of the note Bouyeri left on Van Gogh’s body. Dutch authorities suppressed the note for 48 hours out of fear for inciting more violence, but in the end understood the value of releasing it to the world at large.

Yes - this video is in Dutch, but the point is to show a man who is relieved that he has just completed a movie (about the Fortuyn murder) and who is deeply happy and thankful that he can do this for a living. Theo did not live to see the release of this production.

UPDATE: One of Theo's friends, Dutch columnist Max Pam wrote a remembrance piece (and a last photo) as well, throwing in some comments on Buruma's book about the murder. It's in Dutch, but suffice it to say, he doesn't like the book all that much and counts no less than some 125 to 150 factual inaccuracies in it. Interesting.

Some of you may recall the charged debate about a monument for Theo van Gogh. Initially, the district city council was reluctant to have it in its neighborhood, afraid as it was to inflame ‘certain emotions’. That is all in the past and early next year will see the unveiling of The Scream from the hand of Dutch artist Jeroen Henneman:

A bit underwhelming to be frank, and I find it hard to connect this sculpture with Theo van Gogh’s memory and all that he stood for. There is a memorial in Amsterdam that is far more impressive and although it commemorates the fallen Dutch resistance fighters of World War II, I find it equally applicable today. What is so powerful and moving is the text, from the pen of H.M. van Randwijk, a former Dutch resistance leader:

It is hard to translate (as for instance “zwicht” rhymes with “licht” in Dutch) and this is the best I can do:

A people that bows to tyrants

Will lose more than life and belongings

Then, the lights will go out

If we want to remember Theo van Gogh and all the others who fought for freedom, free speech and everything a free and democratic society stands for, then all we need to do is to recite Van Randwijk’s extraordinary and forceful words.

Munira Mirza makes a great point about how fearmongering is used to stifle debate in Britain and concludes:

Controversial issues require heated debates, not conformity of opinion. Projecting the worst-case scenario of race riots can end up encouraging a form of self-censorship. If people are given scare stories about public reaction, they may be less likely to stick their head above the parapet. This allows ill-informed opinions to reign and prejudices to fester. We need to have a much more positive conception of free speech, particularly the kind that ruffles feathers and arouses passions. A healthy democracy can only work if people are not afraid to disagree, even if that means taking a not-very-gentle tone.

Van Gogh's point, entirely.

And since it is Van Gogh-week we should also give a hand to those whose ability to exercise their right of free speech is under pressure. Jeff Jarvis provides a few useful links: colleagues in peril.

Here are the details of the sermon in which Sjeik Fawaz of the As Soennah mosque in The Hague called for Theo van Gogh and Ayaan Hirsi Ali to contract incurable diseases to the extent that they would eventually be begging for their own deaths. Of course, this can be registered in the department of demonization and creating a climate where violence or a murder is very likely to be committed. You could also call it 'outsourcing'. The Dutch TV-show NOVA managed to get an interview with the imam yesterday and you can watch it here.

In short, the imam – who has no doubt had some solid western-style media training – does everything he can to distance himself from terror and the Van Gogh murder. He refers to his speech as “a peaceful way to channel feelings of anger” which according to him is an acceptable way to deal with certain feelings in Islamic culture: “A peaceful way if you can’t get justice”. And: “if you don’t find anyone who can give you justice, than you address Allah in order to get it”. It was equally revealing to hear the imam talking about the Danish cartoons and note “what Van Gogh and Hirsi Ali did was far worse than those cartoons”. A longer post on what these two 'did' can be found here.

The interview is in Arab with Dutch subtitles and it is interspersed with extraordinary audio from the sermon in question. Even if you can’t understand it I encourage you to watch the video as it is highly revealing on a number of levels.

As you have noticed, this week is focused entirely on Theo van Gogh, Ayaan Hirsi Ali and free speech. Two years after Theo's death it seems nothing has changed, in fact, things are getting progressively worse in Europe. The latest from Germany:

A Turkish-born lawmaker who urged Muslim women in Germany to take off their head scarves has received death threats and is now under police protection, a spokesman for her party said Tuesday.

Two weeks ago, Ekin Deligoz, a member of Germany’s opposition Green Party, said “the head scarf is a symbol of women’s oppression.”

And then there is this nugget from Britain, which would probably do well in the jawdropping moment of the week contest (where John Kerry outdid everyone else):

A reader from Worthing, West Sussex, recently attempted to buy a copy of Ian Buruma's Murder In Amsterdam: The Death of Theo Van Gogh and the Limits of Tolerance in her local bookshop. 'I'm sorry,' said the sales assistant, 'but the book has been banned.'

Atlantic Books, who publish Mr Buruma, assure us that the book is not only freely available but also selling well. It turns out a wholesaler misinformed the bookshop. However, the assistant must take responsibility for the following - startling - suggestion: 'Why not try Mein Kampf instead?'

What?

According to Ayaan Hirsi Ali, it is only the liberation of women that can bring about lasting reform in the Muslim world. It has been the core piece of her agenda as an "enlightenment fundamentalist" as it is called these days, and it is the central theme of the short movie Submission which she co-produced with Theo van Gogh. While the story behind the film and its eventual impact are now well-known, I wondered about its intentions and brief history prior to it becoming a global firestorm after Van Gogh’s violent death.

According to her biography (due out in the US and Canada in February 2007) the idea for the film came from Hirsi Ali who responded to Van Gogh’s experiences with Muslim leader Aboe Jahjah (see below) and his increasing irritation over the submissive role of women in Islam. Once that idea was seeded in the moviemaker’s hyperactive brain, he wasted little time in getting the project to fruition and he urged Hirsi Ali to produce a workable script. The movie, only ten minutes long, was produced during the summer of 2004 and aired in the 'Zomergasten' (“Summer Guests”) show from the VPRO, a station traditionally known for its somewhat alternative and intellectual programming:

Van Gogh paid the costs of the film, 18,000 Euros himself. De VPRO paid him 2,000 Euros. Next week the film will be available on the filmer’s website. “I will send it to Al-Jazeera” says Van Gogh. “They broadcast these Bin Laden films, so they probably won’t object to this one”

Van Gogh’s boldness was matched by Hirsi Ali’s care. She cleared the airing of Submission first with the VPRO, who were fine with it but thought her idea to let it be part of Zomergasten somewhat unusual. She went one step further and consulted with her party members – she was after all an elected member of parliament for a governing party – and the reactions differed. Elder statesman Bolkestein was concerned. Vice-Premier and Finance Minister Gerrit Zalm betrayed his basic skill set as a numbers man by rationally verifying that the texts from the Koran quoted in the film were indeed accurate. Johan Remkes, Minister for the Interior, could not understand why Ayaan was so worried over security and protection. The same sort of response was offered by the Defence Minister Henk Kamp whose reaction was as shocking as it was revealing (from Hirsi Ali's biography):

“I asked him: what is the status of security?” Kamp responded: “the Muslim community has had to swallow a lot this year. It has hit them hard – they won’t respond to this”

It is telling that politicians with security in their portfolio – defence and interior – were the ones most oblivious to the dangers of the film. The Dutch press however knew immediately that something was amiss with the production and wasted no time plastering it on the front pages:

“New Provocation Hirsi Ali” said the NRC Handelsblad which revealed as much about the content of the short film as it did about the newspaper’s editorial sentiments. But it begs the question: did such a deliberate attempt to offend her religion create a situation in which a debate could be waged over the role of women in Islam? Neither Ian Buruma in his book, nor Hirsi Ali in hers, give a satisfactory answer to that question and I suspect that there isn’t one, yet. Hirsi Ali however did argue in the said TV show what she would like to see as the possible outcome:

“If you want something to lead to a discussion, if you want people to start thinking, then you have to do things that will place them in front of dilemmas. And not by way of violence or something like that, but through words and representations, that is the way I do it. Of course, there is a chance that people will say, ‘yes, the format is such that I am no longer interested in the contents’. But I am convinced that there are women who simply can not look away from this, women who won’t just look at the message’s format.

Muslim women – the few that saw the movie - reacted mostly defensively, and preferred to indeed look away. But the film and its deadly outcome reached another audience: the western non-believers, who all of a sudden realized to what extent ‘free speech’ had come under extreme pressure in their own society. Ayaan’s provocation to the Muslim world turned out to be one directed at the ‘free’ western world.

Submission’s real value therefore may only prove itself over time. Recognizing that freedom of speech should never be compromised is one, liberating the Muslim world quite another and an even more difficult one. Like most reform movements, attempts at change are usually perceived as being either unwarranted or arriving too early. That perception does not apply to Submission, but the evidence of that has yet to reveal itself. It did however come too early for the man who made and relentlessly championed it.

One of the core themes in all my writings about the Theo van Gogh murder has been that the mainstream media in most of the world was not well equipped to understand the complexities of Dutch society and the peculiar dynamics that led up to Theo’s murder two years ago this week. It requires knowledge and context and only now are journalistic efforts about the Dutch and their immigration woes starting to acknowledge that. The boilerplate “the Dutch were tolerant, immigrants Muslims moved in, a murder happened, and now tolerance is over and the Dutch have turned right” is not an adequate way to analyze the deep social and political rifts that have captured the small nation. For that you need someone with a deeper understanding of the situation and in Ian Buruma, a Dutch-English writer who spent most of his adult life away from The Netherlands, have we found someone who could probably be trusted with the task to write a book about the Van Gogh murder. His Murder in Amsterdam: The Death of Theo van Gogh and the Limits of Tolerance is the result, and it is an excellent and riveting read.

Buruma doesn’t disappoint, putting even a mixture of shame and recognition on my face when he writes that the Dutch are a little too complacent, too smug, something that turns into absolute panic and manifest surprise when that feeling of smugness is challenged by the outside world. The best example of which is their national sport, soccer, where the Dutch have an ingrained sense that they’re the best but when they lose they scream out, “How come? We were the best!”. And this of course applies equally to the unfolding immigration farce and the ensuing murder which ended the much vaunted Dutch idyll. "Did we really deserve this? How come, we tried to be so nice, can anyone possibly explain this?" It is this lack of understanding and failure to accept basic realities as they are, which constitute a terrible default in the Dutch character and Buruma addresses it head on.

And not only that. He digs deep into the Dutch psyche, most notably the contentious relationship the present Dutch have with their chequered past role during World War II, which is a recurring theme around which much of the narrative is built. It is vital in understanding why immigrants have been treated the way they have and it is equally forceful in revealing how references to those years can have a devastating impact on the present day political debate. Buruma no doubt delves into his own vault of youthful experiences, but updates them with interviews, meetings and site visits during his stay in The Netherlands and so turns his book into a fairly comprehensive socio-political case study. From that perspective it would have been nice to have a thicker volume than the 265 pages that we eventually got, but in the end the book needs to be pumped into a mass marketing channel too I guess.

There has been a fair bit of criticism for Buruma, most notably that he failed to take a clear moral stance and was not sufficiently judgmental in taking sides in the conflict between free societies and nascent Islamism. To be frank, I was relieved to for once have a book in my hands that did not do that. Buruma is clear enough in what he thinks about jihadism, and instead gives us equal access to the Dutch and Moroccan cultures, and more specifically to Theo van Gogh’s life and Mohammed Bouyeri’s life. The only point where I do part ways with Buruma is his less than generous description of Pim Fortuyn whom he describes as 'pandering in nostalgia', even going as far as comparing the murdered professor-politician to the late Princess Diana. It’s a criticism often heard from those that do not entirely accept the intellectual underpinnings of Fortuyn’s political platform. The back to basics part is often mistakenly interpreted as a desperate “please take us back to the 1950s” call.

But the events that triggered Van Gogh’s murder are well-described. The total religious-cultural separation and potential for disaster, become very clear when Van Gogh and friends had organized a debate with the European-Arab League, led by Abou Jahjah. The latter refused to debate when he learned that Van Gogh was to be the moderator and walked out of the studio with his bodyguards. A debate followed outside the studio where young Moroccans shouted insults to Van Gogh who brushed them off with the usual crass Dutch humor along the lines of “if Allah protects you, why do you need bodyguards?”. It prompted one of his friends to say “It was then, that I realized how deeply they hated him. For us, it was just a game, a debating game. For them it was deadly serious”

That in a nutshell describes the incredible distance that even Theo van Gogh never fully understood. In a way he made exactly the same mistake as his fellow countrymen that were diametrically opposed to him when it came to dealing with immigrants. They advocated respect, political correctness and a far different approach to the issue, but they also failed to see that the mechanics of the debate were never about economics or culture. It was religion and a pretty stern and narrow approach to that, something the increasingly secular Dutch had long forgotten.

In the end of the book Buruma tries to explore ways where tolerance could neutralize the perils of radical Islam and hopes that religion can ultimately become the subject of reasoned debate, even for Muslims. This quote from the writer makes it clear where the boundaries between the Koran and fundamentalism are:

“Revolutionary Islam is linked to the Koran, to be sure, just as Stalinism and Maoism were linked to Das Kapital, but to explain the horrors of China’s man made famines or the Soviet Gulag solely by inviting the writings of Karl Marx would be to miss the main point”

Yes, correct, but this conclusion can also be explained in another direction by arguing that however well-meaning the basic tenets of Islam are, they have the potential to be turned around into a deadly totalitarian ideology. Theo van Gogh in his own distinctive way was not given to this type of socio-political analysis, but instinctively understood the dangers of history in the making. Yet at the heart he remained a Dutchman, a little too complacent and somewhat oblivious of the immediate perils. One can only imagine the panic he must have felt when he was butchered to death on an Amsterdam street.

Others Reviewing
Claire Berlinski - Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world in the Globe and Mail
Bruce Bawer – When Worlds Collide in The Boston Globe
Eric Weinberger – The Perils of Going Dutch for the Wilson Quarterly
Theodore Dalrymple - The Avant-Garde of the Apocalypse in City Journal
Brendan Kiley - Bicycle Drive-Bys in The Stranger
Matt Steinglass - Murder in Amsterdam in Salon
And our friend Tigerhawk, who is still reading the book

This is a Dutch expression, and you probably understand its deeper meaning. Consider this:

The Dutch parliament ordered an investigation Thursday into how much the country's top intelligence agency service knew about an Islamic extremist before he shot and stabbed film maker Theo van Gogh.

Lawmakers, including members of the government, supported a motion by the opposition Labor Party ordering an evaluation of why the intelligence agency knew Mohammed Bouyeri belonged to a radical group known as the Hofstad Network but did not consider him a major threat.

It has taken two years to get to this point and legal impediments – reasons cited by the government for delaying the inquest – seem not entirely plausible. What is remarkable though is the timing of the motion asking for an investigation. Yes, we are one week away from the second anniversary of Theo van Gogh’s murder and four weeks away from a general election. No prizes for those who can answer the question as to why it was Labor that has picked this week to move this issue back on the agenda.

And no, I do not expect this investigation to yield any worthwhile revelations, just like the inquest into Fortuyn’s protection failed to produce anything disruptive. That is often not the point of any of these exercises; they are used to placate some pressing voter concerns and more broadly to put the national conscience at ease.

Talking about Van Gogh, I have been getting a lot of mail about Ian Buruma's book Murder in Amsterdam which was released last month. I want to spent more time on it next week as mark the second anniversary of the murder, together with my own and other's reviews. In the meantime check out this instructive interview with Buruma on PBS. Key excerpt:

JEFFREY BROWN: At the end of the book, you write, "This story is not over. What happened in this small corner of northwestern Europe could happen anywhere as long as young men and women feel that death is their only way home." That sounds rather bleak, actually.

IAN BURUMA: Well, it's bleak in the sense that we do have to contend with this revolutionary movement inside Islam and that that's not going to go away fast. And we have to get used to it and find all means to protect ourselves against it.

But it's not necessarily -- my pessimism is not necessarily so bad that I think that the Muslims cannot become integrated European citizens; I think they can, and I think many are.

More next week.

Paul Vallely in the Independent takes on those that have been so keen on defending free speech in the wake of the long line of incidents where Muslim sensibilities were offended. He argues:

But in many places there is a growing realisation that freedom of expression is not absolute but needs to be governed by a sense of social responsibility. To elevate one right above all others is the hallmark of the single-issue fanatic. Sometimes it is wise to choose not to exercise a right.

Vallely is not mistaken in arguing for social responsibility, but he fails to have noticed that our definition of it has changed over the centuries. The church these days for instance is no longer entitled to prosecute and torture blasphemers, it has now settled for being on the receiving end of endless taunts.

Furthermore, it may be worth pointing out that many commentators – especially those in the blogosphere – have been arguing for unrestrained freedom of expression precisely because so many democracies found ways to either curb or ‘streamline’ this very basic right, well before the recent incidents. The Danish cartoon and Berlin opera affairs actually served as a wake-up call to those that hadn’t quite realized how far some societies had traveled down the road of mild but forceful oppression. Just consider how hate speech laws have come to be interpreted by some courts or how the offended have used them to silence and even penalize others. No, the debate over free speech goes back way further than Vallely likes to suggest.

However, free speech does indeed carry a certain level of responsibility to the extent that we all should balance our expressions against what others might possibly feel. Theo van Gogh is a much admired person here on this site, yet I personally would never have used the term “goatfuckers” to describe a certain group of, well, immigrants. Yet, he was allowed to do so and he initially got away with it because most Dutch had accepted him in his role of the unruly critic. His use of language was for some a reason to love him, for some a reason to dismiss him as an irrelevant village idiot. Yet, his sense of humor, and style, was in sync with the way Dutch popular culture had developed over time into a very coarse and direct one. In van Gogh’s mind, he not only had the right to say what he said, he probably had met his own or the new Dutch “social responsibility” test. Of course he was aware of provoking some sort of counter reaction, that was one of his key objectives. Yet, he never should have faced the threat of being taken to court for this, or undergo the eventual and brutal death sentence that befell him. Our free and supposedly enlightened democracy should have insulated him from these ghastly downsides of free speech.

So while some may judge that you are “crossing the line from humour to abuse” there simply can not be a situation where a pre-defined judicial or social test neutralizes the individual’s ability to exercise or use that time sensitive test of social responsibility. Nor should those who feel offended be protected by a ‘social blanket’ - and many have come to expect this level of protection - which in the end can only stifle an open and healthy debate. Such openness is never easy, it may be awkward for some, but it is what free speech is today.

UPDATE: Gideon Rachman today on the FT's blog:

But perhaps the most disturbing element is not this or that incident – but the accumulation of pressure, the self-censorship it undoubtedly provokes and the way in which the gradual restriction of free speech is becoming less commented-upon, as it simply becomes part of normal life in Europe.

And of course Ayaan Hirsi Ali in an older interview with Der Spiegel, published today on AEI: "We are constantly apologizing, and we don't notice how much abuse we're taking"

It was only a matter of time before a noted writer would take on the Van Gogh murder for a book, and it is Ian Buruma’s Murder in Amsterdam that will hit stores early next month. LA Weekly's Brendan Bernhard has taken a look, and he is not overly enthusiastic:

Readers of Murder in Amsterdam are likely to close the book with a heavy heart. One reason is that the problem it addresses, the emergence of militant Islam as a divisive political/religious force in the West, is not going to go away soon. Another is that, though full of learning and skilled if tepid reporting, Buruma’s book often feels muddled, ungenerous and confusing. There is plenty of scholarship on display, but no compelling point of view.

There is, however, an off-putting strain of snobbery. Buruma, an Asia specialist and the author of Inventing Japan, Anglomania and, most recently, Occidentalism: The West in the Eyes of Its Enemies, grew up in Holland but left it as a young man in the 1970s. Now a New Yorker, he clearly feels he’s gone on to bigger and better things. He rarely misses a chance to take a swipe at some aspect of Dutch life, whether it’s the “dank and gray” area of the Hague he was raised in or the “arrogance” of the great national soccer teams of the 1970s and ’80s

Interesting. Not sure if I come across as an arrogant former Dutchman, but if I do, let me know. Then there's this:

Learned and informative as it is, there is something distinctly feeble about this book. It draws to a close with a description of Dutch soccer fans on a train, decked out clownishly in nationalist orange garb, jumping up and down “with a fervor that blurred the borderlines between ecstasy and fury.” Buruma buries his face in a newspaper and tries to pretend he’s not there. “Don’t you love Holland?” one boorish fan bellows at him. (An honest answer might have been “Actually, no, dude. I’m an International Man of History.”) But of this World Cup–style bellicosity, Buruma then goes on to say, “It was a return to an invented country, no more real than a modern Dutch Muslim’s fantasy of the pure world of the Prophet. Both fantasies contain the seeds of destruction.”

Odd. I haven’t read the book and so I am reluctant to comment at this stage, but as soon as I have I will do my review. In the meantime feel free to browse the Van Gogh archives, there's sufficient material there to compile another book about the murdered moviemaker.

Remember the objections against a monument to remember Theo Van Gogh and how officials changed course after the ensuing debate? Well, the sculpture is ready, almost:

A sculpture in memory of murdered film director Theo van Gogh will be unveiled in Amsterdam's Ooster Park on 7 September. Mayor Job Cohen and district council chairperson Martin Verbeet will attend the ceremony, Oost/Watergraafsmeer district council said on Tuesday. It is not yet known who will unveil the artwork, entitled De Schreeuw (the shout or scream). It was made by Jeroen Henneman and was chosen from a total of 148 submissions.

Let's see if the 'unrest' that the opponents of this project foresaw will materialize.

At the Malkin dinner table ...

It looks like I will be on the Tammy Bruce show at 10:30 Pacific Time to talk about the latest violent installment of the Theo van Gogh affair. Listen to it here.

UPDATE: Think that went well, sorry for the late notice. Tammy's blog is here.

Ebru Umar, a Dutch writer of Turkish descent and a good friend of the late Theo van Gogh - she contributed to his website and took over one of his columns after his death - was attacked in Amsterdam on Friday, reports Arjan Dasselaar. He wryly adds that the Dutch public news service – which in terms of breaking news is usually an excellent source – has so far, two days after the attack, failed to report it.

Newspaper de Telegraaf however has a brief audio interview with Umar in Dutch who confirms that two Moroccan youths followed her and after saying “that’s her!” knocked her down just as she was about to enter her house.

Freedom of speech in Europe, under sustained attack.

In Moscow, next week. Of course, his documentary work is excluded, a measure taken by the production company:

The lack of documentaries is a security measure, said Viktor Fedoseyev, an organizer of Kinoteatr.doc, in a Monday interview. The companies that own the rights to the films have decided not to show them since this "could threaten the creators of the films, those people who took part in them," he said.

"Submission" was pulled from Rotterdam International Film Festival last year due to security concerns expressed by its production company, Column Productions. Hirsi Ali has received numerous death threats and now lives under 24-hour protection. The film is no longer being distributed.

The Russian organizers "reacted very calmly" to the decision not to show Gogh's documentaries, Fedoseyev said. "They can be dangerous, and particularly so in Russia."

Well, even involvement with less controversial Van Gogh productions generates threats as Sienna Miller has discovered, although I am beginning to think that some of these rumors surrounding Miller have a bit of a 'tabloid' character to them.

In all my writings about Theo van Gogh never did I pay any real attention to the famous brother of his great-grandfather, Vincent. It wasn't immediately relevant to the story - apart from Theo's rants about royalties the Dutch state owed his family - and therefore I left it out almost all of the time.

There is a Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam and the last time I visited it was in 1990, the year that marked the 100th anniversary of Vincent's tragic suicide. Of all the paintings on display the one that left the deepest impression and continues to do so, was Wheatfield with Crows painted not long before Vincent van Gogh's death in the French village of Auvers-sur-Oise. This work is often interpreted as representative of the painter's dark side which manifested itself through depressions and ultimately his suicide at age 37. For that he picked a wheatfield where he shot himself.

Of course, when you look at the work it isn't overly difficult to extrapolate its significance to Europe today. Dark clouds are gathering over the shining wheatfield and the crows further add to the sense of gloom. In such an ominous situation it is not easy to find an easy and quick way out and Vincent van Gogh appropriately included three paths, representing three different directions. If I were to translate these to Europe today it would probably mean: muddle through, take decisive action or give up. As obvious as the choice may seem, it is incredibly hard to make a positive one as Vincent van Gogh himself discovered.

Even though the subject matter is not Islam, the mere association with Theo van Gogh tends to be a risky undertaking according to this news snippet:

A bodyguard will protect Sienna Miller against attacks from fanatical Muslims during the making of her new movie.

The actress is to star in Although Interview, a remake of a film by Dutch director Theo van Gogh, who was brutally murdered in 2004 for making a film about Islam and women.

Producers therefore fear that Miller and her co-stars could be targeted by similar politically-Islamic fanatics.

An insider on the movie – which begins filming next week – said: "We'll ensure that Sienna and her co-star Steve Buscemi get protection."

Moviestars and crews these days always have the benefit of some sort of security detail so I do not think we should be making too big a deal out of this. However, if the eventual release of this production is accompanied by an intense media focus on the maker of the original and his unorthodox views - which by the way will serve as an eyeopener for Hollywood - then it may well attract some hostile reactions.

Despite fairly stringent security measures - welcome to the new world of critical moviemaking - Roger Simon got to see some excerpts from Theo Van Gogh's Submission I at the American Film Renaissance festival:

I had seen Submission, Theo van Gogh and Aayan Hirsi Ali's famous attack on the misogyny of Islam, some months ago on the web. But seeing it on screen in a theatre (as it was intended) is a different experience. What surprised me about the excerpt we saw Sunday was the visually-stunning level of the filmmaking (not to mention its star, Ms. Hirsi Ali - I knew that already.) This is the only film of Theo van Gogh's I have ever seen, but he clearly knew what he was doing with a camera - another reason to lament his hideous premature death. As for Submission itself, the excerpts were too brief to make much comment. I wonder why the festival didn't show the whole thing. Were they not allowed to or were they simply too anxious under the circumstances?

Good question. I concur with Roger's suspicions here as there is precious little appetite to be associated with this movie. It will be interesting to see how the sequels will be received in theaters and beyond.

NOTE: More cutting edge movieblogging over at Mondo Hollywood.

Is in the works and it will prove to be every bit as controversial as the first edition. Dutch parliamentarian Ayaan Hirsi Ali has started working on the sequel which will focus on Islam’s hostility towards gays. Being well aware of the dangers to contrast hard won western freedoms and rights with Islamist religious dogma, the moviemakers are taking no chances:

“ ... the threat to everyone taking part is deemed so great that there will be no faces shown on screen, no end credits, and the entire production team will remain anonymous.

There’s probably one name they can use, or no, actually two. Both Pim Fortuyn and Theo van Gogh paid the ultimate price for being honest and prescient. For them, there's nothing to fear anymore.

In relation to the Van Gogh murder over at the Gates of Vienna, and, it's partly written by me.

It wasn’t that the moviemaker wasn’t aware of it, more than once had he been threatened. “You dead!” shouted one Muslim immigrant at him, and the moviemaker had laughed him off: “Come back when you’ve learned some proper Dutch!”. On the November morning when the world was bracing for the American presidential election, and when the moviemaker had returned from dropping off his young son at school, someone turned up to do what so many had been threatening to do. And not only did he succeed; his Dutch was fluent enough to pen an elaborate suicide letter laced with threats and pin it with a knife on the body of the lifeless moviemaker.

It was the act that the Dutch had feared most and which they knew had been coming one way or the other. When maverick politician Pim Fortuyn was murdered two years before, the country breathed a sigh of relief that the killer was a local animal rights activist. A lone nut. And when Theo van Gogh’s killer was apprehended, only minutes after the murder, the Dutch justice apparatus was all too keen to hope it could somehow portray the murderer as another lone nut. The idea of a highly motivated and well-armed jihadist was almost unspeakable. So, for almost three days the contents of the suicide note were suppressed in the faint hope of averting the day of reckoning. A day on which more than three decades of failed immigration policies and multiculturalist experimentation would die.

But it was too late, even before the chilling note made its way into the media; the masses had taken to the streets in a phenomenal display of outrage, mourning and yes, probably fear. The fear was not so much the violence itself, although the prospect of regular decapitations and easily recruitable local suicide bombers along the canals wasn’t very encouraging. No, the fear was that the end of the Dutch dream had finally arrived. Now a real test of will was thrown in front of each and every Dutchman. The culture of live and let live, entitlement, fun under the sun, it was all way past its peak. And while some got it, some failed.

It’s not hard to compile a long list of those who failed, but let me highlight just a few. The Rotterdam Film Festival decided not to show the movie Submission which had contributed to Van Gogh’s death, confirming justified fears that free speech was now under serious pressure. The Dutch queen missed a royal opportunity to unite the nation by reverting to a hollow politically correct gesture and retreating to her palace soon after. Shortly after the killing she visited a youth center for immigrants, leaving some to wonder whose queen she actually was. And while the media struggled, it didn’t take long for some writers to start arguing that hard measures to curb jihadism and take on the integration of Muslim immigrants reeked of a return to Nazism. Not only did this group want to pretend that this was just a “political murder” rather than a religious one. No, some entrenched groups were all too willing to give in to the fear that the Dutch model had failed and started to fight desperately to resurrect it, at all cost, and against all logic.

Still, there were those that were willing to look fear into the eyes and face the enemy. The deputy prime-minister declared without hesitation that jihad had arrived in the Dutch streets and some fairly drastic counter-terrorism measures were soon unveiled. And the decades of failed integration policies were finally addressed by a zealous minister who quickly earned herself an iron lady nickname. Her agenda was ambitious: deporting radical imams, mandatory integration tests for immigrants and rapid deportation of illegal aliens, all measures that were no longer taboo. In doing that a clear sign was given that a debate initiated by a gay professor, an unruly film director and a Somali immigrant was now sufficiently mature to be taken on by mainstream Dutch politicians. The fact that two of these initiators had been murdered and that one has to spend the rest of her life under very tight security may have had something to do with that.

And that brings us back to Theo, the man on the bike, the father, the errant moviemaker, the jester, the drinker, the womanizer, the man so full of life that he could not bring himself to see that it would soon be over. His death allowed fear to engulf the Dutch street and to create two groups, the fearing and the fearless. Neither group has so far been able to come up with a real strategy for the future of the troubled nation which – as we’ve seen in Paris this week – will become part of the battlefield called Europe. Theo was one of the few to see it, say it, and die for it.

NOTE
I’ve written an awful lot about this affair and now, one year on, it is not easy to distill all the significant aspects into one post, so I encourage you to flip through the archives, here. My personal favorite however was the one which translated some of Theo van Gogh’s writings that had appeared on his own weblog. It gives you a flavor of his ideas, his humor, and his intellect. Read the whole thing if you want to do something for Theo van Gogh today.