Gregorius Nekschot: The Forbidden Cartoons

I'm still on my European trip, though I'll officially be resuming my blogging duties on Monday after I return to the U.S. this weekend. But sod that. I have an Internet connection now and want to urgently write about something that's just beyond belief. It so happens that I'm in the Netherlands at the moment, where the outrage took place that is the subject of this post.

Last week's arrest of Dutch cartoonist Gregorius Nekshot (not his real name) was an absurd, scary episode that casts a depressing light on the freedoms that formerly characterized the Netherlands.

Nekshot's home was raided by a team of ten police officers who had been dispatched by the Openbaar Ministerie, the federal Dutch DA's office that works in conjunction with the Netherlands Justice Department. The cops confiscated Nekschot's computer, his sketchbooks, and other materials, then took him to a detention facility where he spent 30 hours in a concrete cell before being released without charges — but after he had been made to promise to remove eight cartoons from his website. The drawings had been the subject of a three-year-old complaint by radical Dutch muslim Abdul Jabbar van de Ven and the lefty "anti-discrimination" organizations that basically seek to censor everything that doesn't jibe with the country's official rainbow-worshiping, we-are-the-world ethos. They claim Nekshot's art incites hatred and violence.

Many of his drawings are certainly crass and crude. Sometimes, they can even be pointlessly insulting. The goatfucker references (see particularly the example in the third cartoon) are just tired, gratuitous, feeble slams, in my opinion.

Then again, Nekshot's oeuvre, on the whole, seems hardly as objectionable as the casual misogyny in much of mainstream Islam; or the lowlands' crime wavelets unleashed disproportionately by Moroccan-Dutch youths; or the refusal of so many Muslim immigrants to show the slightest sign of allegiance to the European countries they've chosen to live in, while availing themselves of every welfare payment and rent subsidy under the sun.

Nekschot says the police threatened to divulge his real name — he's worked under a pseudonym since at least the days that he began working for Theo van Gogh's website — which would be tantamount to deliberately placing him in mortal danger, considering what happened to his former boss and collaborator.

The weekly magazine HP/De Tijd, a respectable news-and-opinion weekly that's been publishing a Nekschot cartoon in every issue for the last few years, has now responded to the affair in the only principled way possible: by printing, in the issue that just hit the stands, the very drawings that got Nekschot arrested. I'm reproducing them here, too, with all props to Nekschot and HP/De Tijd. I hope that my admittedly blatant violation of their copyright will be seen as less important than the fact that the Net-wide redistribution of the cartoons will impress upon narrow-minded little fascists that their attempts to strangle freedom of speech can only lead to the spread of the art that they'd targeted for destruction.

As a former Dutchman, I'm deeply, implacably, and fist-clenchingly pissed that the local politicians and their law-enforcement apparatus have proven themselves (time and again, mind you) no better than total asses like Erdogan, the famed Turkish twit cum prime minister; and no better than any number of other banana republics that think nothing of jailing writers and artists who refuse to toe the party line or to kowtow to censorious religionists.

But on with the show:

the Christmas Imam wishes you blessed holidays and ... a propitious 1426

PROGRESSIVE DUTCH PEOPLE STAY OPTIMISTIC
"This is only the 2nd generation"
"Dough, man... Dough!!"

Muslim Democratic Party presents its logo

Mrs. El Ouroubourou née Klapstra
"Dutch people should learn to adapt a little bit more. At least you can learn something from corrective slaps."

Ali el Wakkie practices Islamic charity
it is my duty to help this obstipated bear

Why muslim youth identify with Palestinians:
hanging 'round...
don't go to school...
no homework...
provoke the police...
collect welfare...

Now also a slavery monument for white indigenous tax payers

ALI IS PLENTY COMFORTABLE ON HIS OTTOMAN
Nowhere does the Koran say you have to do something in return for 30 years of receiving welfare...

Comments

[Martin Owens]

Hmm.

I'm no friend of the Jihadis, but in all fairness I have to say that if those cartoons were penned about Isreal or Jewish people there'd be hell to pay.

At the same time I see your point: to formally suppress this is to endow it with martyr status. Bad move.

Guy got no class, though.

[Jimbo]

Martin, do I have news for you. Such cartoons, and much worse, are being penned about Israel and the Jewish people. Some material distributed by e.g. Iranian and Palestinian media would make your stomach turn, if you care to look for it. I've seen some ghastly "children's" programmes so full of hatred and intolerance against non-Muslims that they gave me nightmares.

i actually find that these pictures are quite funny

[Sammy8245]

Actually, I do believe that cartoons like these do incite hatred and violence.....usually all done by the Muslims.

[thierry]

neither jews or Islamic or Christian, or Socialist, or fashist or what ever power it is,as far it tries to impose his view to all the others,
the real freedom is to leave the critic open, and humour is a light signal of a reality. One of the last window of breathing....
provocation throught humour against a real observation of the twistd morality, twisted respect of people rights brings us like a wake up call.
Please just observe why especialy this man has been in jail ?
then think.
thanks.

[Micki]

Most of the cartoons were quite blunt and boring. By I checked them out BECAUSE the Dutch government censors them.
FIGHT for freedom of expression. Don't let the neocons get the opportunity to further muffle people. This is a typical example where the muslims will get blamed when the western government further destroys peoples liberties.

[Chris Yonts]

It's INSANE to arrest someone over cartoons. A testament to the INSANITY of Islam.

[Martin Owens]

Dear Jimbo:

I am well aware of the homicidal anti-Semitic slime that passes for opinion journalism in much of the Middle East and the Muslim world. I've lived and worked in Saudi Arabia, after all.

My point is, press freedom has to cut both ways or not at all. At least hold all comers to the same standard.

I still think that the cartoonist could have made his point much less coarsely, and without rolling in the same gutter as the Jew-haters, though.

[Martin Owens]

Dear Jimbo:

I am well aware of the homicidal anti-Semitic slime that passes for opinion journalism in much of the Middle East and the Muslim world. I've lived and worked in Saudi Arabia, after all.

My point is, press freedom has to cut both ways or not at all. At least hold all comers to the same standard.

I still think that the cartoonist could have made his point much less coarsely, and without rolling in the same gutter as the Jew-haters, though.

[AbuNudnik]

Oh Martin! Name me ONE instance where publishing anti-Semitic cartoons unleashed violence by Jews.

[Martin Owens]

Dear AbuNudnik

Violence, as a Jewish judge opined when sentencing Michael Milken, can take many forms.

The short answer to your question is that no one outside of an Aryan Brotherhood prison cell would even consider publishing anything anti-Semitic, in writing or pictures. They know that lawsuits are quite likely and blackballing would be inevitable.

Remember the Air Force general who was forced to resign for saying that "the Jews controlled the banks?" Mel Gibson's career terminated for a drunken rant that the Jews somehow "caused all the wars"?

No overt physical damage is necessary when intimidation is genuinely effective. ( Not that people like Rabbi Kahane or the JDL were exactly allergic to going upside somebody's head.) And it is, rightly or wrongly, a very strong taboo in this society to say anything derogatory about Hebrews, and in some cases any disagreement at all is
verboten.

Nor, however, is the other side of the coin any better: the slavish adherence to anti-Isreali propaganda by the PC thugs who
have taken over our universities.

Once again, all I argue for is a single standard applied in a standard manner to all. It may not be perfect justice, but it's probably as much as we can hope for.

[bernieg2]

While purposely inciting to riot and violence, which is the purpose of most anti-Israeli or anti-Jewish cartoons by Muslims, should be a crime, it should not be illegal to insult any group. Showing a Muslim having sex with a goat does not ask anyone to kill a Muslim, only to pity the poor fellow that his religion forbids him the use of prostitutes or his hand.

Making it illegal to insult is only one tiny step from forbidding criticism which is only a tinier step away from forbidding even discussion. Islamic societies have already reached this last step: the Quran is uncreated and immutable, one can repeat mindlessly the various suras but certainly one cannot discuss the possibility that the Quran is not the final word of God. To do so is blasphemy and punishable by death as Rushdie has found out.

On my blog, I do whatever I can to insult Muslims, to show Islam as the savage, primitive, vile, barbaric faux-religion it really is. Hopefully in the US we will be one of the last places to forbid anti-Muslim opinions.