Zacht Ei - Bruce Bawer on Dutch (in)tolerance and gay bashing

Monday, May 9, 2005

Bruce Bawer on Dutch (in)tolerance and gay bashing

In an email to Andrew Sullivan about the attack on Chris Crain:

As for the cops finding the guys who beat up Chris Crain: I wouldn't be surprised to learn that they haven’t lifted a finger. They probably thought he was nuts for confronting the guys. The authorities’ traditional policy is: keep your head down and don’t provoke anybody. In January, two schoolboys in IJsselstein were ordered to remove Dutch flag patches from their backpacks because Moroccan students might consider them provocative. It turned out this flag ban is officially in force at many schools. Meanwhile Muslim kids have pictures of van Gogh's murderer on their lunchboxes because they consider him a hero, and nobody dares tell them to remove those pictures. In a recent article, a teacher at a school in Amsterdam said that a decade ago, ten-year-old Muslim kids were saying, 'We Moroccans are going to take over the Netherlands'; now five-year-olds who can hardly write are scrawling 'Fuck you Netherlands' on scraps of paper.

Read it all here.

One thing Sullivan neglected to mention is that he and Bawer are wrong: it's our fault! According to Human Rights Watch at least:

It said gays are the victim because immigrants take revenge for the injustice they encounter themselves.

Riiiiiiight. Twinkle twinkle little bat, how I wonder what you're at...

18:11

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Largo et andante

Cold in May

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You know what, Arjan, I really feel sorry for Mr. Crain and his boyfriend. What has happened to them is absolutely unacceptable under any circumstances and the perpetrators are cowardly criminals of the worst kind as far as I'm concerned. The point I'd like to make though is that the gay bashing problem is not a new phenomenon in Amsterdam, it has been going on since I can remember. As far as the Moroccan youth being the main perpetrators now isn't new either, with the growing number of Moroccan inhabitants, this has been the case since the mid eighties. What is new now however is that it seems like it's finally getting the necessary attention in the media, because of the growing concerns with regard to immigrants and Islamofascism. This is a good thing in itself, but my main concern is what is being done to counteract this problem once and for all. People need to demand that further steps be taken, increase police surveillance, educate people, impose city ordinance with higher punishments, whatever it takes.

Myrtus (ip:152.163.100.5) 9 May 2005 - 22:56 uur

"Half of Amsterdam's population is of non-Dutch origin." !

It won't be a party town for much longer. Unless the sex-trade mafia are bigger thugs than the Islamofascists (which is likely).

1630r (ip:81.154.4.126) 9 May 2005 - 0:29 uur

Our LGBT comrades identify the only "acceptable" enemy - conservative Christians. Muslim thugs can beat up gays and blame the pope!

http://uk.gay.com/headlines/8504

"The attack against Crain and his partner comes on the heels of what human rights experts call a rising tide of religious extremism worldwide -- even in places such as the Netherlands, long celebrated as a bastion of tolerance and human rights."

"Scott Long, director of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Program at the Human Rights Watch, cited a number of recent indicators that religious intolerance is on the rise, including the selection of an arch-conservative new pope, claims by American evangelist Pat Robertson that liberal judges are more of a threat to the United States than terrorism, and an Italian nominee to the European Commission last fall who called homosexuality a "sin".

"Fundamentalism isn't just an Islamic phenomenon -- it's global," Long said.

"There's still an extraordinary degree of racism in Dutch society," Long said. "Gays often become the victims of this when immigrants retaliate for the inequities that they have to suffer."

1630r (ip:81.154.4.126) 9 May 2005 - 0:51 uur

"It won't be a party town for much longer."

I don't know about that... the Surinamers and Antilleans, who collectively outnumber the Moroccans, are pretty good partiers.

vaara (ip:195.86.124.243) 9 May 2005 - 12:49 uur

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Bruce Bawer on Dutch (in)tolerance and gay bashing

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