De Jonge: ‘It’s not easy with racism in the Netherlands’ | Inland

This is what the minister says in the annual Abel Herzberg lecture, in which he also looks back on his own uncertainties during the start of the corona crisis. And he is running ahead of the CDA story during the elections next year, in which he strongly opposes liberalism.

Racism

De Jonge refers to the work of the lecture’s namesake, Abel Herzberg, who wrote several stories about the persecution of the Jews in World War II and his own time in various concentration camps. “It would be great if we could say to each other today that anti-Semitism and racism belonged to a dark past. That we had eradicated it root and branch after 1945. But nothing is less true.”

The minister refers to the Black Lives Matter protests following the death of George Floyd, “a justified call for recognition.” According to him, racism is still present in the Netherlands, despite people’s good intentions. “I honestly do not believe that there are large groups of Dutch people who consciously express themselves racist, or who approve of racism. But that is no reason to think that it is not so bad. It’s not easy. ”

According to him, the problem is greatest when people no longer want to understand each other and come up against each other. That is racism. And we have to pull it out of the ground again and again like weeds. Because racism does people injustice. ”

Uncertainties

De Jonge also looks back at the beginning of the corona crisis and the uncertainties in his work as ‘corona minister’. “We all had those insecurities – I felt them too. I want to have a grip, keep control in my work. Getting ahead of things, anticipating things, making a decision when you can oversee its impact. But that was not possible during those first months of corona. ”

The criticism of his work has left De Jonge ‘not completely cold’. At the start of his lecture, he reads out some of the hate speech he received (“mass murderer”, “Hugo Hitler”, “vaccinazi”). Yet he does not want to write off those people, but rather to reach out. Because: “Most hatred is projection of a sense of denial, injustice, fear.”

The idea of ​​reaching out is in line with the direction in which De Jonge, as the new CDA party leader, wants to send his party. He would like to send his party, which is characterized by a right and left flank, to ‘the middle’, as is known. According to him, the solution to the problems lies in ‘a strong society’.

Liberalism

In his lecture, De Jonge turns away from liberalism, for which the current coalition partner VVD is known. Belief in the market is, according to De Jonge, ‘not everything’. But shifting all responsibility to the government is, according to him, ‘just a recipe for more dissatisfaction’.

–