NieuwsuurDirector Theo van Gogh
He was perhaps the symbol of freedom of expression: director, columnist and quarrelsome Theo van Gogh. Twenty years ago this year he was murdered. A voluminous biography about Van Gogh’s life will be published next week. “He has always remained provocative.”
From an early age, Van Gogh was convinced that freedom of expression should be absolute, says biographer Jaap Cohen. He is the son of Job Cohen, who was mayor of Amsterdam at the time of Van Gogh’s murder. For the biography De Bolle Gogh he spoke to more than 150 family members, colleagues, friends and enemies about Van Gogh.
Cohen drew on Van Gogh’s own personal archive, which is stored in no fewer than twenty boxes at the Institute for Social History in Amsterdam. “He has kept things from all periods of his life. School reports from primary school, notebooks, medical records and letters. Lots of letters,” says Cohen.
Cohen discovered that unhindered airing of his thoughts was part of his habit from an early age. For example, a teacher wrote in one of those school reports: ‘He has his own opinion about things and does not hide his opinion.’ Cohen: “You can see that in his later life.”
Murdered
On November 2, 2004, at the age of 47, Van Gogh was shot and stabbed in the street by the radical Muslim Mohammed B. who believed that Van Gogh had insulted Islam, including with his film Submission about the position of women in Islam.
Cohen worked for seven years on the biography about the man who has fascinated him from an early age. “I grew up in the 90s myself. You never knew what to expect with Van Gogh. And his columns were so harsh and rude, he really tried to touch people’s souls. I was amazed by that and thought: how can you write this? Why are you saying this?”
Cohen finds an answer to these questions in Van Gogh’s ability to effortlessly find people’s weaknesses. “He could read people very well. He used that talent for interviews and for great friendships, but also in a reverse way. He knew exactly which buttons to press to elicit reactions.”
Good friend and film producer Gijs van der Westelaken agrees. “Once he had a victim, if someone was on the ground, he had to stay on the ground. The job of a columnist is also to insult at times, and he could do that like no other.”
Writer Lale Gül believes that society has not made any progress in the past twenty years. “It says a lot that no new Van Gogh has emerged yet.”
According to Lale Gül, freedom of expression is not going well
Van Gogh pushed sensitive buttons with people, but also with subjects. In the 1990s, ‘the multicultural society’ was a theme that he noticed provoked many reactions, Cohen says. “At that time it was much more complicated to speak out sharply about it. That was first done by Frits Bolkestein (then VVD leader, ed.) and later by Pim Fortuyn. Van Gogh just did not talk about it in civilized terms. He did that in his own way and that was often very rude.”
Van Gogh did not make any friends with this approach, but when he was criticized, he did not back down. “Then he went the extra mile. For Van Gogh, freedom of expression equaled the freedom to offend.”
Threats
During the 1990s, threats against Van Gogh became increasingly fierce. “He must have received that, but in his eyes the attack was the best defense,” says Cohen. “He pretended not to be afraid and I think he also tried to convince himself that he didn’t have to be afraid. But he certainly knew he was in danger.”
“With today’s knowledge, you could call that reckless or naive. Politicians and famous Dutch people are protected much more than before, also because of threats on social media. That is the downside, but I don’t think Theo van Gogh would be an alternative. He would never have reined himself in.”
2024-01-13 06:00:01
#Van #Gogh #freedom #expression #equaled #freedom #offend
