Thursday, May 31, 2007

Why do allegedly conservative commentarors ignore Theo Van Gogh's racism?

Andrew Bolt and Janet Albrechtsen both seem to share an admiration for Theo Van Gogh and his colleague, former Dutch far-Right MP Ayaan Hirsi Ali.

Bolt is particularly lavish in his praise for Van Gogh, despite the fact that the latter was openly anti-Semitic and spoke disparagingly of European Jews who suffered immensely during the Holocaust. Van Gogh was also grossly sexist and homophobic, as well as being a supporter of far-Right parties.

One wonders whether Bolt agrees with Van Gogh’s description of Muslims as

... goat f#ckers.


Or his articles in which he spoke of his fantasies about

... copulating yellow stars in the gas chamber.


Would Bolt agree with the language Van Gogh used in an article in the Amsterdam university magazine Folia in the early 1980’s when he had Jewish writer Leon de Winter perform the “Treblinka love game” with “a piece of barbed wire” around his “dick”?

I wonder if Albrechtsen would share a Van Gogh joke at dinner parties. How about something like

... I suspect that [Jewish] Ms Gans gets wet dreams about being f*cked by Dr Mengele.


I also wonder if Janet Albrechtsen would laugh at Van Gogh’s other examples of Holocaust humour. Perhaps she might use this one in one of her columns:

Hey, it smells like caramel today - well then, they must be burning the diabetic Jews.


Bolt and Albrechtsen were at the forefront of attacking Sheik Hilaly for his catmeat comments. Yet will they equally condemn Van Gogh for his 1981 debut movie Luger? In the movie, Van Gogh has showed a gangster pushing his pistol into a woman’s vagina. He was later quoted as saying:

Most women I consider little speaking c*nts. Women do not think with their heads, but with their c*nt.


I apologise to readers offended by the disgusting nature of the language quoted here. I wonder if Bolt and Albrechtsen will apologise to their readers for promoting Van Gogh as a champion of free speech and enlightenment. If gross and despicable anti-Semitism, homophobia, Islamophobia and promotion of sexual violence represent their idea of enlightenment, I’d prefer to stay in the dark.

© Irfan Yusuf 2007