Subscribers to the Surinam Mailinglist have in the past seen me react with fury at the Netherlanders. Usually I do so after reading Dutch on the internet - whether the poisonous anti-American or anti-Semitic comments written underneath articles in the Algemeen Dagblad, the densely pretentious and wrong-headed editorials in a variety of Dutch newspapers, the blinkered and bigoted discussions in various chatrooms and networking sites, or even the several hundred page long discussions that were on the website of the NRC Handelsblad before we invaded Irak, which demonstrated in depth and breadth how much the average "well-informed leftwing Dutchman" hates the United States, despises Israel, presupposes about Americans and Jews, and has forgotten about the reprehensible history of his own country, and how unimportant the Dutch really are in this world.
Today I will not send them (the Surinam Mailinglist) a poison-pen letter.
I actually rather like most of them..... even that often intensely opinionated and irritating blister Plomp.
Being wrong is by no means being evil. The members of the list are sometimes wrong, but they are as a group, and overwhelmingly as individuals, good people.
Intelligent (and very multi-lingual), too.
I do not wish to give them bile.
Not so most of the writers in the comment string underneath this article:
Hamas spot met ontvoerde soldaat
http://www.ad.nl/buitenland/3350992/Hamas_spot_met_ontvoerde_soldaat.html
I shall not bother translating the article - it's about a Hamas television cartoon making fun of Gilad Shalit. Nor will I bother to translate any of the comments. Just take it from me that many of them reflect a venomous and narrowminded anti-Semitism, anti-Israeliism, and anti-Americanism, which thoroughly guts any Dutch claim to decency.
There are decent people among the Dutch. But as a people they are loathsome.
The vibrancy of the Golden Age, the achievements of their thinkers, the stellar prose and poetry of their many literati, the genius of their scientists - these have not ennobled them, nor enriched their minds. The average Dutchman is likely to be a petty small-minded bigot, without any perspective, ignorant of history, and certain that his own unfounded praeconceptions about the rest of the world are utterly correct. Many of them are blinkered, most of them stubborn. Not a few stupid. But every single one of them is utterly convinced that he is right.
Those few Dutchmen who exemplify civilization are indeed to be prized. But they should not be considered truly Dutch - they would be no less praiseworthy had they been born something else, and they very well might have been far better.
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In all fairness, I Suppose I should mention that the Dutch are not the only group I despise.
I also have an intense and perfectly reasonable dislike of Englishmen, Irishmen, Scotsmen, Germans, Austrians, Danes, Swedes, Norwegians, Arabs, Pakistanis, Egyptians, Persians, Hyderabadis, Brazilians, Texans, and Scientologists.
But because the Dutch are family, I have no motivation to overlook their flaws, and am much more likely to be aware of their failings.
All those other groups, well, whatever.
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5 comments:
My mother is Dutch and I have had many dealings with the Dutch over the years as I have many Dutch uncles and aunts and more than 30 Dutch cousins. I have always found them to be friendly, hospitable and very tolerant of the views and ideas of others. On the down side, they can be very obstinate when looking for a bargain or sticking to their argument. In bargaining they always look for a combination of quality and good value. The British on the other hand tend to boast about how low a price they have paid for something even if it is absolute rubbish.
My mother is Dutch and I have had many dealings with the Dutch over the years as I have many Dutch uncles and aunts and more than 30 Dutch cousins. I have always found them to be friendly, hospitable and very tolerant of the views and ideas of others. On the down side, they can be very obstinate when looking for a bargain or sticking to their argument. In bargaining they always look for a combination of quality and good value. The British on the other hand tend to boast about how low a price they have paid for something even if it is absolute rubbish.
Suppose I would say this about Jewish people:
'There are decent people among the Jews. But as a people they are loathsome. (...) the achievements of their thinkers, the stellar prose and poetry of their many literati, the genius of their scientists - these have not ennobled them, nor enriched their minds. The average Jew is likely to be a petty small-minded bigot, without any perspective, ignorant of history, and certain that his own unfounded praeconceptions about the rest of the world are utterly correct. Many of them are blinkered, most of them stubborn. Not a few stupid. But every single one of them is utterly convinced that he is right.
Those few Jews who exemplify civilization are indeed to be prized. But they should not be considered truly Jewish - they would be no less praiseworthy had they been born something else, and they very well might have been far better.'
Wouldn't this make me an anti-semite? Yet if you say these things about Dutch people, that 's just quote 'perfectly reasonable'.
I agree with many of your observations about the flaws in Dutch culture, but this really goes to far. Stop reading comment sections in Dutch newspapers might help perhaps.
Texans. I lived in Texas, so I can understand that. THEY think they are always right, and they are so not open to other ways, cultures, ways of thinking.
Yet if you say these things about Dutch people, that 's just quote 'perfectly reasonable'.
I agree with many of your observations about the flaws in Dutch culture, but this really goes too far.
My dear Vincent,
You are right, of course. And I'll admit that after living there for nearly seventeen years, and being regularly told (on a daily basis as far as I can remember) that we Yanks we're the sum and source of all evil - plus for the last decade plus reading the sour comments in Dutch on the internet, that I am indeed anti-Dutch. Sometimes venomously so.
Yes, that qualifies as both bias and bigotry. That too I shall admit.
Maar van je familie moet je het hebben, zegt men. I am descended from someone who fled Brabant for the northern side of the three rivers during the war against Spain; his great grandson became a 'British subject' when the Dutch ceded Nieuw Amsterdam to the Brits in 1674 (zonder zich overigens om hun transatlantische burgerij te bekommeren).
There have always been speakers of Dutch in the family - in my immediate family, in this generation, I am the only speaker of Dutch.
En als het aan mij ligt, zal ik ook de laatste zijn. Er zijn gewoonweg te veel mensen aan de Europeesche zijde der Atlantiek waar ik onmogelijk mee kan opschieten, teveel in wiens denkwijzes ik mijzelf nooit zal kunnen vinden, en met wie ik nimmer eender zal zijn.
Tis jammer. Mooie literatuur, merendeels betere poëzie dan men vaak in het Engels vind. Maar te veel van die, van dat, en van zulken.
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