A specter is haunting Europe: the specter of Xenofobia. Like many other European countries, the Netherlands have not been able to resist the temptation of creating 'the other' and then seeing it as a threat. The threat to which we can canalize all our fears and frustrations, our real and imagined socio-economic problems, security problems, identitiy problems and ideas of marginalisation, our fears. But fears are never imagined, they are real. We just have to deal with them in the right way. Globalisation, Europeanisation and immigration are intimidating phenomena, how to react and reorganise is not always immediately or entirely clear. But the underbelly feelings are the least constructive and rational reaction and they should not be exploited by our politicians.
I was always really proud of the Netherlands, our free and tolerant country. Where policies where rational, evidence based and progressive. No longer so, I am no longer proud. I am ashamed. Maybe tolerance, which is firmly based in our culture and allowed the protestants and catholics to live side by side, in spite of their radical different beliefs, is not all that. The tolerance that we have now lost as a society it seems. Maybe what we really need is an open mind. But I will take tolerance as a substitute any time, because if we let go of that, ugly things appear.
SB
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment