The Dutch Free-Speech Delusion — Confirmed!

Yesterday, I wrote an e-mail to a U.S. colleague who has long divided her time between the Netherlands and the United States. We were discussing our mutual concern about the state of free speech in Holland.

To be sure, I said,

I've written about many beyond-the-pale abuses of power on the part of U.S. law enforcement and state and federal governments. Here's the rub, though: the First Amendment means something in the U.S., and nine out of ten times, authorities who seek to do an end run around it are exposed, and any damage is undone to the extent possible. It's very clear what the highest law in the land says.

Contrast that with the Netherlands, where, much as I love it (or would love to love it)

• Selling unpleasant books like Mein Kampf is forbidden;
• You can be arrested and convicted for calling the Dutch queen an epithet;
• People are dragged into court for displaying a pamphlet that calls religion "a cancer";
• A democratically elected parliamentarian is prosecuted at the highest level for making a film critical of Islam;
• You can be arrested for wearing a T-shirt that implies Dutch law enforcement is corrupt;
• You can be arrested for sporting a tattoo consisting of a mysterious acronym seen as disrespectful to cops;
• You can be arrested, detained for 30 hours, and made to un-publish a handful of web cartoons if your drawings are an affront to a certain religious group.

That's off the top of my head. These things happened. Not a hundred years ago or fifty years ago — just in the last few years.

Each and every one of these outrages occurred in a country where people still tell each other and the rest of the world that they are the freest nation on the face of the planet.

So I got a big chuckle out of Russell Shorto's New York Times Magazine article today (it's pretty much a celebration of the Dutch welfare state), in which Shorto gives the end quote to left-leaning Dutch journalist and historian Geert Mak. And Mak says (drumroll please):

America is the land of the free. But I think we are freer.

Fantastic. Right on cue.

Now, it's not a pissing contest. And the U.S. is far from perfect. But I still slap my forehead over the pigheaded Dutch insistence, facts be damned, that they know better what liberty is — and that they have more of it — than anyone else.

So dream on, Mak. And dream on, Holland. But if you do ever rub the sleep from your eyes, please click on the links above and tell me again how free you are.

And please consider this: There is a high likelihood that my writing about Islam, about the Dutch monarchy, and even the T-shirt I designed would have gotten me in trouble with the law in the Netherlands. Here in the U.S., however, no problem. Even during the darkest days of Bush the Younger (and they were very dark indeed), I had more of a right to speak my mind than I would have had in the Netherlands. In Holland, you're allowed to have 'radical' opinions only if the intelligentsia and the self-professed bien pensants (the media, the pundits, the politicians) more or less agree with you. If not — if you dare utter that, let's say, Islam is a religion hijacked by sociopathic numbskulls, or that the queen is a harlot — you can expect the police at your door.

By contrast, stateside, I can write about Bush or Obama or any religion whatever the hell I want, and though there may be social consequences, there will not be legal ones. I will not be lifted from my bed and arrested and detained by a team of about a dozen law-enforcement officers. This Dutch artist, for one, was not so fortunate.

Comments

[gb]

Excellent post.

[GreginOz]

I must disagree, Roj! I corresponded about a year ago with a guy called Mike (can't find the emails!) who was an American veteran. He was at the VA in Washington trying to sort shit out but he was wearing an anti-war t-shirt. They arrested him and threw him out. I've read of heaps of people in the States being harrassed by pigs for tees or bumper stickers or messages on their house. Ask Radley, I'm sure he could give you heaps of info!

[Rogier]

Greg:

The U.S. victims have recourse under the constitution. By contrast, Holland has various laws that give prosecutors extraordinary powers to go after people who have the 'wrong' OPINIONS, and to make those charges stick. For instance, to this day, Holland has laws on the books against

1) blasphemy
2) incitement to hatred (so uppity filmmakers and cartoonists take their chances when they criticize Islam, for instance)
3) insulting the monarchy
4) insulting a civil servant in function (cops included)

None of these exceptions to free-speech rights exist in the United States.

Travesties of justice do happen on these shores, absolutely, and I think I'm more aware of them (and more prepared to speak out against them) than most. However, as a rule, THOUGHT CRIMES such as the ones I mentioned do not exist here. If some hapless citizen is hassled by a bully-boy troglodyte sheriff who (let's say) didn't like that person's bumper sticker, such a case never goes anywhere.

The Dutch are not nearly so lucky.

The prosecution of Geert Wilders, to name just the latest high-profile example (http://www.nrc.nl/international/article2126874.ece ), simply could not happen under U.S. law.

[hermesten]

And as dark as the Bush days were, they weren't even as dark as the Wilson days just passing out copies of the US Constitution could land you in prison, and it can be argued, the FDR days, when we ran concentration camps.

[Abigail]

There's so little truth to the NYTM piece that it's astonishing that such a lauded publication would run it. The medical care in the Netherlands is third-rate; infant mortality is among the highest in the Western world, cancer deaths are way higher than in the US, and any number of drugs are kept off the market simply because they are too expensive, and if some people can't afford them - and if insurers won't pay for them (and they won't) - no one should be able to have them.

Shorto needs to live in Holland longer and learn to speak and read Dutch before he pretends to know what he's talking about.

And everything Rogier says about the free speech business is 100 percent true.

[Nicolas Eyle]

The last paragraph in the story on the cartoonist is especially disturbing.
Prosecutor Paul Velleman is also leading the OM team that is investigating whether Wilders should be prosecuted for discrimination, according to Geenstijl.nl. In 2005, Velleman decided that the radical E Tawheed mosque in Amsterdam could not be prosecuted for selling books in which calls were made for throwing homosexuals from apartment buildings head-first."
I can understand (though not agree with) those that object to insulting others but to apply it this selectively is reprehensible. I'm amazed that the public doesn't object.

[Rogier]

Nicolas:

The public objected -- was finally FREE to object -- during an approximately two-year window after the murder of Theo van Gogh by an Islamic extremist, in November 2004. During that time, for the FIRST time, the national anger and concern were such that the public prosecutors and the gatekeepers of the media could no longer control the society-wide debate on the limits of free speech, Muslim fundamentalism, immigration and integration, the crime wavelets generated disproportionately by second- and third-generation immigrants of Moroccan descent, and other such topics. Long-held 'anti-Islam' sentiments -- previously suppressed, creating a pressure-cooker situation -- bubbled to the surface. Good thing: No longer were people automatically branded "intolerant," "racist," and "Islamophobic" if they openly talked and wrote about it all. (The censoring madness didn't QUITE stop, see http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2006/04/03/060403fa_fact_kramer and http://www.bakelblog.com/nobodys_business/2005/07/free_speech_nea.html , but things were better for a while.)

However, the Dutch are nothing if not addicted to the notion of a peaceable society, and if it doesn't actually exist within their borders, they'll WILL it so. This is another aspect of the self-delusion I mentioned.

By late 2006, early 2007, with three of the country's biggest agitators gone (Pim Fortuyn and Theo van Gogh murdered, Ayaan Hirsi Ali hounded out of parliament and then out of the country), the old status quo of the 70s/80s/90s returned. That is, speak critically of Islam or of immigration, and you fall outside of "polite" society. You will be ignored and ostracized, and if that's not possible, prosecuted.

If anything, it's worse than before. The dictatorial impulse seems stronger. For instance, the law against insulting the monarch hadn't been applied in decades, but suddenly the prosecutors began clamping down again on people who say unkind things about the queen; and I can't really imagine last year's Nekschot episode having occurred five or ten years earlier.

Committing a thought crime, it seems to me, is now riskier in Holland than at any point during my lifetime.

[alain]

In America you can speek more freely. But in Holland you can BE more freely. No nazi cops, you can drink without fear, you can have a abortion without fear, you can swear on tv and talk with children about sex without fear. Hell you won't get arrested for showing your underpants over your trousers. And this list goes on and on. Offending others is frowned upon maybe too harshly, but what you do to yourself is a lot les restricted.

[Irma]

If anything is worse than taking freedom of speech, it will surely be taking life. As long as America supports deathpannelty (most states), what are we talking about then? And let's not forget the muting of the voice of a complete population, the American natives, the Indians? Even now?

[Irma]

Oh boy.... so far for my English education...
deathpenalty!

[Bastiaan]

Please make sure to get your facts right. No books are forbidden in the Netherlands. Even circulation of Mein Kampf is not prohibited. These are the facts: The copyrights to the Dutch translation are owned by the Kingdom (the translator was a Nazi collaborator and all his belongings were seized after WW2 including intellectual property rights). The state simply felt it beneath its dignity to republish Mein Kampf. Can you imagine the US Congress publish Nazi propaganda? I can't.

Freedom of speech is not absolute, even in the US. Slander is prohibited in the Netherlands, just like in other civilized countries. Geert Wilders is being prosecuted over slanderous remarks. It remains to be seen if he will be convicted.

Unlike the US, the Netherlands are a constitutional monarchy. Constitutionally, the Queen has an absolutely neutral position and is not supposed to take part in any controversial issue whatsoever. Therefore she is not able to defend herself in a court of law, unlike any normal citizen. For these reasons it makes perfect sense to prohibit slander of the Monarch.

I agree with you on the case of Gregorius Nekschot however. He is a satirist and his cartoons certainly should fall under Freedom of Speech protection, unpleasant though they are to some people. I don't think he will be prosecuted, though, but let's wait and see.

Political correctness has certainly gone too far in this country. I would say that the counter movement led by Geert Wilders is swinging the pendulum too far as well. We need to re-find the right balance.