Holocaust education is to encourage reflection, not to encourage a taboo [EN]

Walther Rathenau was a philosopher, businessman and minister of foreign affairs in the early Weimar Republic. He was also a Jew.He would now be classified as a Liberal Conservative or a right Social Democrat. All the same, many reasons for revanchists, anti-Semites, PI-ler, Mafiosis und Ulfkotte-people to hate him. So much so that he was murdered in 1922 by three so-called Fememörderern with a hand grenade.

He makes the difference between predetermined conclusions  from superficial analogies from history (or the collective memories) on one hand and, on the other hand, the enlightened thinking, not  the based upon stories attached to prejudice, but engaged to comparison with what is now happening. Stating: 

Denken heißt Vergleichen In short: To think is to compare

What we get to hear now too often in the debates about the supposedly necessary exclusion of potential terrorists and enemies of the Enlightenment in "our West", are the prejudiced conclusions of "the" History.
But, THE history does not exist. Only stories do exist. Narratives that communicate what people think or thought that woul be important.

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Eindelijk! PvdA NOOIT met Wilders samen (Bos) [NL] 12.12.09

Eindelijk is de kogel door de (linkse) kerk! Op het Apeldoornse PvdA-congres (12.12.09) verklaarde partijleider Wouter Bos onder grote instemming:

,,Het Nederland van Wilders is ons Nederland niet", zei Bos. De stellingname van Bos werd door de partijleden met een langdurig ovationeel applaus begroet.

(NRC-Handelsblad, Derk Stokmans, 12 en 14 december 2009; de foto is ook ontleend aan de NRC, copyright Roel Rozenburg)

Nu het CDA nog.

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Wilders en zijn kornuiten willen censuur op kinderprogrammas! [NL] 29/10

Ahem! In 1993 maakte het team van 'Kinderen voor Kinderen' van de VARA een filmpje over de verscheurdheid (en de rijkdom) van het hebben van twee vaderlanden. Voor kinderen. Marokkaanse kinderen. Nu neemt 'Esther' (Islam in Europe) gretig de parlementaire vragen van de Wilders-valet Martin Bosma over (English version in this next post):

De PVV wil van minister Plasterk weten waarom Kinderen voor Kinderen gisteravond heeft gezongen “Allah Akbar”, de veroveringskreet van de jihad*). 

Lees verder bij De Lage Landen!

London must allow Wilders' agitation 14/10 [EN]

February 2009, British Government did the right thing. They did not allow Geert Wilders to come on British soil in order to spread his venomous ideas under the umbrella of the anti-European UKIP party.

Blocking an elected representative from a befriended country is indeed exceptional. But in my view, British Government set an example of integrity, ashaming Dutch Parliament, that allows a no-membership "party" to agitate on racial issues. Most parties in Holland, exception made for the left liberal D66 group as well as for the "Green-Left", are stuck like rabbits in the headlights of a Mercedes, not knowing what to do about this utterly un-Dutch Wilders movement.

Wilders is jubilating

The London Immigration Court, in condemning yesterday the UK Government decision concerning Wilders' dangerous upsetting of public order, put itself on the accomodating Chamberlain (1938) line. I hope that the UK Government will oppose that decision and continue in a more Churchillian line, blocking continental follies and preserving democracy and humanism in Europe as a whole.

But, for the moment, Wilders is jubilating.

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