How did they accomplish this?:
- the minister ordered a prosecution of the man several years after the complaint was filed. The weak excuse was that it took that long to find his address. (Nekschot is a peseudonym meaning “shot into the neck”, but they could have asked his web provider)
- for the arrest his house was stormed by 10 police officers. (they might just as well have made a phone call).
- he was held in prison for three days - much longer than is usual after an arrest for this kind of crime.

The Dutch reactions in this affair are also motivated by the fact that we have a government with two Christian parties. The liberal oppositian is afraid that when anti-Islamic publishing is restricted this will automatically mean that anti-Christian publishing is also restricted.

I am more concerned, on a daily basis, with what happens over here in my own context. Even when I know that the things over there do to a certain extent influence things that happen over here. I’ll even have a few posts on this within due time.

Hey Marbel,
That’s a thought-provoking comment. Do you have any source to back that up?

Thanks.

Insults on the adresses of Jezus, the Pope, Abraham etc are more or less the mild once.

Anyone ever hired a Syrian propaganda movie or a Palastinian one?
Against the tastless stuf our Muslim friends fabricate Nekschot`s drawings look rather innocent.

I think that the arrest is ridiculous, and AFAICS most people agree. They claim that the official complaint was made in 2005, but it took 3 years to discover Nekschot’s identity (/me is not impressed). Since the complaint was made about his public work it is strange that they had to arrest him and search his house : he can hardly be accused of hatespeech if he doesn’t do it in public. They also allready said that ‘most of his cartoons are within the limits of the law’ and they don’t even know for sure wether they will sue him or not.

Since we had moslims arrested for rather trivial things too (’conspicious behaviour’) and all stats show that immigrants are more often and more severely punished than the whiteskins from comparable class I’d be inclined to ascribe the perception mentioned by polderpundit to those who are most sensitive t populist demagogery. Unfortunately that covers a hugh part of the Dutch population, but I agree with Guy that nuchterheid is more likey to prevail.

I also agree that there should be more public debate, but my (probabely prejudiced) perception is that those most likely to fall for the populist view are not really interested in debate. Facts are boring and even sensationalism can distract only momentarily from the next episode of Big Brother. Sigh.

I think the debate about perceptions is a very important one and your post, as well as your comment here, illustrates that very well. And I agree with you. That is why I said the government (and the press, etc) should start addressing these problems. They should engage in a real debate with the public about what worries them and forget about politics for a moment. So, no debates about who is left or right or who favours multiculturalism or not, etc. Been there, done that, got no T-shirt.

Or, in other words, good old fashioned Dutch nuchterheid.

Personally, I doubt if there is a political conspiracy behind the arrest, but Dutch politicians and society would do well to address what Polderpundit describes as “this antidemocratic attitude” and, more importantly, the perception, wrong or right, that some people get condemned for the very same things others seem to get away with.

I concur with your doubts about the existence of a political conspiracy. There is however, as I think you will have noted too, a climate that is very fertile for any kind of crackpot theory. It is the public perception of this kind of acts that creates and feeds that fertility.

The Dutch government wants to favour the integration of non-western immigrants or “allochtones” (one of the ugliest words invented if you ask me, along with “autochtones”). That is a noble cause, hard to object to (unless you want to deport one million people, which is neither a practical nor a moral thing to do).

So, what happens? I can tell you what a lot of people see happening, their perception:

there is an integration problem, not limited to but mainly concerning muslims. That may well be a small group of muslims (nobody has been able to present convincing data, personally I’m convinced there are no more than a couple of thousand muslim extremists in the Netherlands, but somewhere I read that the Home Security Office works with a guesstimate of 40,000 – hell, that IS scary!), but nobody knows for sure, there is poor communication, and as a result a lot of people think there are a lot of them
instead of acting decisively against individuals who act against society, the Dutch administration arrests a whistleblower (again, I’m talking about public perception, personally I don’t think Nekschot can be considered as a whistleblower, just a tasteless and undertalented cartoonist, but our government just made him a hero, in the eyes of many). And our populist parties must be laughing right now: this is a gold present to them, courtesy of the government.
this is not an unprecedented situation: right after the murder of Van Gogh, the then-minister of justice sought to introduce legislation that would have it made easier to punish not the murder, but Van Gogh himself!

I do not necessarily have the same perception, as always things are more complex, some assumptions aren’t necessarily correct, but I can assure you that a LOT of people think along those lines. And frankly, who can blame them with a government that seems to do things backwards.

As for some people getting away with things that others get punished for, again, how can you blame people for thinking that when they see for themselves (in their streets, in the schools of their kids, on TV and in the newspapers) that if they commit burglary, break windows, pee in the open air or drive too fast, they get fined and/or imprisoned, whereas delinquent youth of foreign origin (the link muslim-Arab is an easy one to make in the mind of the public) get away with it, or are being sent on holiday in their country of origin for “sensitivity training” or whatever idiocy the do-gooders of our society have invented?

Public perception often is black/white thinking (no pun intended), but instead of blaming the public for that, maybe our Regents should start blaming themselves. They are shaping a future where our government will be led by Wilders and Verdonk.

I’m not sure that’s what they want, it certainly isn’t what I want, but it is what they will get.