Van Gogh

This piece will not be about the famous one-eared Dutch painter but rather about one of his descendants, the film director/columnist/tv presenter Theo van Gogh. In November 2004 he was brutally slaughtered in broad daylight while he was riding his bicycle in Amsterdam where he lived.

His murderer was an irate Moroccan who felt sufficiently offended by Theo’s brazen and unyielding criticism of some aspects of islam that he held to be a threat to the free and open society that Holland is. Or was.

Van Gogh didn’t much like organised religion and also frequently insulted Christianity, causing offence to many. The difference being that when you insult a Christian the chances are that you’ll survive the incident. Theo van Gogh was meddlesome and quarrelsome and loved nothing better than to cause a stir and create some mayhem. He had been a columnist for most of the major newspapers and magazines, always to be given the sack after a few months for having caused some controversy or other. He bowed to no one in his verbal impertinence and in itself this could be considered a prized Dutch characteristic.

His films were small-scale avant-garde affairs which drew a modest loyal audience. His talkshows were a must see and the stuff of legends. Always keen to point out hypocrisy and façade, his grilling of politicians and would-be celebrities was hilarious, as he was intelligent and very eloquent and combined this with a wicked sense of humour.
He held this outspokenness to be one of the most important values of Western society in general and the Netherlands in particular. He was a peaceful warrior for the freedom of speech, always restricting himself to the verbal attack only.

Van Gogh held that some of the fundamentalist tendencies in islam as they are prevalent in Dutch society were a grave danger to the free society that Holland was famous for in the minds of many. He saw it as his duty to deride the fanaticism, denounce the dumb followers of the intolerant imams, and to ridicule those who would inflict their narrow-minded antiquated views on free-thinking, libertarian Amsterdam.

He was also a single parent raising a young son. He might have chosen his battles more wisely in hindsight. With his brutal murder he demonstrated the dangers of this widespread brand of this supposedly ‘peaceful religion’.

One of his friends was the Somali-born critic of fundamentalist islam Hirsi Ali. His murderer stuck a dagger into his chest pinning a death-threat letter addressed to her. She dared to be a critic of a culture, a religion she had once shared.

The left in Holland thought that in the race to win votes they would be able to embrace the intolerant in the land of tolerance. Theo van Gogh’s untimely and savage death highlighted a division in Dutch society - in many ways a failed multicultural society like France - that will play out over the next decades.

In this instance the dagger was mightier than the pen. We cannot afford to forget about him.