The Last Critical Eye - Latter-day saints

When I first started writing these Critical Eye columns, the Netherlands was still in shock over the murder of controversial filmmaker Theo van Gogh.

Listen to Perro read his last column:

He'd been knifed to death in an Amsterdam street, with a note stuck to his body making it look like the fundamentalist Islamic equivalent of 'pin the tail on the donkey'. And to make matters worse, our then justice minister believed the best way to halt such shenanigans was by reviving an ancient blasphemy law and using it against anyone who had anything nasty to say about Allah.

All of which gave me the feeling that at that particular point in our history, the traditional Dutch value of free speech was under unprecedented threat.

Knife in the back
By the end of my run as a commentator, one leader of a Dutch political party had vowed never to speak to Radio Netherlands Worldwide again unless a certain column of mine was removed from the internet. And in an eerie parallel to Theo Van Gogh, one of our regular listeners had promised me 'a knife in the back or worse' if I ever had the audacity to travel to her part of the globe. So I guess I must have been doing something right.

And I guess that really, I should be proud that my radio station is now about to reinvent itself as a bringer of free speech to all parts of the world where it's in short supply. Oh dear, so how do I say this politely?

Scapegoats and interesting friends
The government that's been behind RNW’s extreme makeover, is also the first Dutch government that's jumped into bed with both the populist PVV and the Christian fundamentalist SGP.
As to the former, well…as I once suggested, the greatest danger Geert Wilders' lot present is not that they're a one issue party that bashes Muslims, but that they're NOT a one-issue party and will go looking for new scapegoats – judges, journalists, Brussels – whenever it proves convenient.

And as to the SGP, well… surely there's a place in the Guinness Book of Records for a prime-minister who calls himself liberal yet is thick as thieves with a party that would bar women from parliament. I mean, with friends like that, who needs the Taliban?

Superior angelic beings
But back to RNW, where our great new role as purveyors of free speech doesn't just mean 'in with the new' but also, inevitably, 'out with the old'. For one thing, it will no longer be our brief to cast glances – critical or otherwise – at the situation here in the Netherlands.

I mean, God forbid those poor souls we're meant to provide free speech to should think the Dutch are people of flesh and blood rather than superior angelic beings acting out of innate moral superiority.

Also, it's out with the bunch of stragglers and eccentrics I've been calling my colleagues, most of whom are being replaced with bright young things reflecting our new target audience aged 15 to 30.

Giants
I'm no spring chicken myself, having malingered here ever since the early 1990s, when I was a poor young graduate from Trinity College Dublin with his whole life still in front of him. But in my two decades at RNW, I have had the honour of walking with giants. Most of whom have remained unsung for much too long.

People like David Swatling, whose radio ears should be insured for at least a cool million. Iain Macintyre, whose wit and encyclopedic knowledge will always be second to none. Theo Tamis, who doesn't want anyone to know he's fluent in Arabic and who was chucked out of university for being too clever by half. Or Jonathan Groubert, whose erudition since he started out here has grown at about the same rate as his waistline.

Best of luck
Those are only a few names, of course. All of them having found shelter here at RNW in the knowledge that they'd probably be much too strange and unusual for Dutch society at large. So what will become of them – or me – without our safe haven? I honestly don't know.

What I do know is that the new RNW has quite a challenge ahead of it, with those remaining on board expected to be living examples of a value the Netherlands itself has too often been halfhearted about, to say the least. All that's left for me to do is to toast the colleagues who, like me, are going on to other and no doubt greater things and to wish the latter day saints who remain here the very best of luck. I think we're all going to need it.

(/hs)