Twenty years after Theo van Gogh’s death, are you allowed to write whatever you want? – Joop – BNNVARA

November 2nd marks twenty years since Theo van Gogh was murdered. Murdered for what he said and what he showed as a filmmaker. Murdered for his unvarnished criticism of Islam. He did not want to believe that what he said about the Quran, Mohammed and his followers could mean the end for him. Van Gogh made no concessions. He said what he thought. He did not express himself as an idealist, but primarily as a motivator. He liked to kick against sacred cows, against the hypocrisy and against people he hated. Much has been said and written about his style: cheeky, insulting, controversial, over the line.

Van Gogh was in the news for the first time after a political piece in the satirical magazine Moviola. On May 8, 1984 he watched Sonja Barend’s much-watched talk show. Leon de Winter, Frits Barend and Rudolf van den Berg were guests. The purpose of the conversation was the release of the film De Winter Bastille. Van Gogh saw a complacent leader who expressed himself as a semi-intellectual. A man who spoke for a long time, quietly and uncertainly. He was especially disappointed when the conversation turned to the significance of the three guests being Jewish. After World War II, everything that happened in society was nothing compared to what happened to the Jews. About the meaning of being a Jew, De Winter said that it meant ‘a lot and a little, everything and nothing’ and he then said that it could also be a useful truth. ‘You can write about it, you can make films about it’. Van den Berg said that being able to write endlessly about being Jewish is a gift from God.

The next day Van Gogh went out to Moviola:
‘What’s the smell of caramel in here?
“Today they only shoot diabetic Jews!”

Van Gogh faced years of legal battle with De Winter. Van Gogh was dismissed as an anti-Semite and De Winter completely turned away from Van Gogh. To him, Van Gogh remains a leper to this day. There was no clear conviction from the court.

Twenty years after Theo van Gogh’s death, are you allowed to write whatever you want? It certainly hasn’t gotten any easier. If you don’t like something you write, you will be met with a flood of criticism on social media. The criticism is often harsh. Anyone who reads comment columns in newspapers or comment sites on the Internet will still see reasonable comments. Filtered by the editors there seems to be decency. But anyone who listens to the unfiltered noise of social media such as Because of the power of social media to create communities that support criticism of people or institutions, writing what you want is not without risk. The number of politicians, administrators and writers who are at risk has never been higher. For fear of threats and loss of freedom, saying what you want is often subject to (self) censorship. ‘A pleasant conversation’, as Van Gogh spent years on TV, is not capable of many subjects or personal stories. We see polarization and people in trenches about everything: developments in the Middle East, people who may or may not be allowed into the country, polarization between left and right, environmental groups and farmers, the Department Europe and Russia, Trump and Harris…

Where is the philosophy, the positive dialogue? The nuance in Van Gogh’s columns was also missing. Van Gogh’s inspirations ranged, often crossing the line. His prompts evoked emotion. They were motivations for a reason. There is no incentive to hate and want to get rid of people. The aim of his inspirations was to arouse emotion to inspire reason, to question what people do, what people believe and how people have organized their lives. Van Gogh had shamefully elevated it to an art form, but at the same time, as his biographer Jaap Cohen writes on the back cover of his magnificent biography, ‘Van Gogh maintained a large network of friends. Actors and actresses walked away with it. And he was an unarmed interviewer, who tried to get answers to life’s questions with which he himself was struggling through ‘pleasant conversations’.

The essence of Van Gogh is to inspire and say what you want with the aim of stimulating debate, gaining a greater understanding of why people move the way they do and being able to put the world between brackets Inspiration, beyond emotion, towards purpose and vision is what we can learn from Van Gogh. Now you just have to understand the art of insult before you pick up a knife!