"Something like that would never happen in Holland."

"I am too old to emigrate to America, that beacon of light in an ever darkening world," wrote Theo Van Gogh in his online journal, De Gezonde Roker or The Healthy Smoker. Peaktalk's Pieter Dorsman has set himself to translating salient parts of the brutally murdered provocateur's website from Dutch to English.  He sketches the context of Van Gogh's mission as "lone warrior, especially after Fortuyn's death, who realized that the outcome might not be favorable but that it was best to charge ahead and accept whatever risks that might entail":

Americans complaining about the New York Times and the liberal media should realize that there’s a parallel conservative or radical centrist universe with newspapers, blogs and think tanks in the US that presents an alternative outlet for news and views. Hey, even Canada has a conservative tradition. Nothing of that nature exists in the Netherlands, and Van Gogh was therefore a lonely voice, ostracized, yet he soldiered on: in the wake of Fortuyn’s killing, during the war in Iraq and taking up Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s cause when she started receiving serious death threats. He even managed to secure financing to produce and direct a movie about Fortuyn’s death without having to apply for government subsidies, which is the usual approach in Holland if you want to make a film. Despite his rebellious attitude Van Gogh was a capable and very bright guy. and it wasn’t a surprise that some would be willing to take a chance on him to make this movie, which was released yesterday.

Some excerpts from Dorsman's translations of Van Gogh's website are music to our ears:

What else can you do here in Holland but to watch in amazement at the collusion of politically correct politicians with that underworld of women-hating Imams, Moroccan gay-bashers and anti-American demonstrators?

When Mr. Jahjas’s soul mates killed nearly three-thousand Americans in the World Trade Center, the first point of action for our [Amsterdam] mayor was a visit to the mosque. At schools, mosques, everywhere in Amsterdam there were parties celebrating this great victory on Satan. Cohen kowtowed for the believers and stated: “you’re all part of us!” rather than asking the question “what the hell are you doing here?” Cohen is acting like a wartime mayor, and I don’t mean that as a compliment.” [Van Gogh refers to the many Dutch mayors that collaborated with Nazi occupiers during WWII - Ed.]

Two months before that fatal May 6th I asked on this site why Pim so far hadn’t been shot. Readers were perplexed and asked if I had lost my mind, because something like that “would never happen in Holland”. Right.

America is hated because it embodies the hope of people that yearn for a better life, to have meat everyday, but also to believe in the God they choose, or not. To say what you want without being persecuted. To be a woman without a veil, with the right to vote, free expression and adultery, without being stoned.

"It’s hard to put Van Gogh in a political frame but if I had to do it, it would be what some these days call a radical centrist," writes Dorsman. "He was pro-Bush, but that support was qualified by his sincere dislike of the president’s socially conservative attitudes." That's not far from our own worldview, of course, so the only point of contention left is Van Gogh's alleged gleeful filming of kittens drowning in a washing machine, blogged here. Our reader/commenter Brock calls that story an apocryphal attempt by journalist Ambrose Evans-Pritchard to smear Van Gogh.  Until further evidence is presented to the contrary, we're inclined to agree, remembering the good-natured Instapundo delenda est folks' claims that Glenn Reynolds puts puppies in blenders.

We're taking back our earlier suggestion that the rats are leaving the sinking ship of the Netherlands.  The reported emigration of Dutchmen is reminding us more and more of our own forebears' emigration from all over the world to "our sea-washed, sunset gates":

Keep ancient lands, your storied pomp, cries she with silent lips.
Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me.
I life my lamp beside the golden door.

The New Colossus by Emma Lazarus (1849-1887)

Comments

[zutman]

Oh dear, a kitten in a washing machine. The tell-tale of a devilish soul, for sure.

It was a scene in Van Goghs first film 'Luger' (1981), and ofcourse it was faked. It shocked the audience back then too. That was it's purpose.

[Sissy Willis]

Thanks for the tip, zutman. Checked it out and am still gagging but for different reasons than agitated kittens. I don't blame Van Gogh for being horrified with 60's Marxist feminism, but his misogynous language leaves something to be desired on a family site like this. :)