Saturday, June 10, 2006

Nationalist madness of Dutch working class turns areas into cosmic centres of headache

Appearently there is some kind of footy tournament going on in Europe and the world. The European Championship?

I do not care much about sports.

What is interesting is that in the UK people are being told not to fly their flag to show their support for their national team. And half a year ago a British soldier coming back from the Iraq war was told to take down the flag (St. George) he was flying because there had been a complaint (1!) from a (1!) Muslim.

The footy fan was told by his Housing Chief. I guess a Housing Chief is a bureaucrat who has something to do with council housing.

I wonder what would happen if they tried that in The Netherlands. Dutch working class neighbourhoods, well, white working class neighbourhoods turn into areas of "Oranjegekte" or "Orange-frenzy". Look at the picture, below. All the houses and bars will be decorated in this way. It is really peculiar. This picture is quite moderate.


I haven't seen streets in Amsterdam decorated this way, but probably in Amsterdam-North there will be some streets decorated this way. It used to be so that the country would go crazy when the Dutch football team was competing for the European and World Championships. But it seems to be getting progressively worse.

At the same time a survey by motivaction, a marketing research firm, revealed that 1 out of 10 Dutchmen regard themselves as racists and that hostility to Islam and Muslims runs very high, both in the cities and on the countryside. A third of the Dutchmen regard themselves as a "little bit racist".

As far as I know such figures have not been published before. The definition of racism in the survey was befuddled, as examples of hostility to Islam were also taken as tokens of racism.

But it turns out that large numbers of Dutchmen not only view themselves as racists, but will also identify themselves as such to researchers. Well...

I think that one of the reasons why Dutchmen go to such extremes to show their support of the national football team, because they see it as a moment when they can assert their ethnic and national pride.

Another thing:



with Queensday (30 April) THE big hit for wearing Orange items were orange plastic helmets of the STAHLHELM model. The model adopted by the stormtroopers at the end of the First World War and the standard helmet of the German Infantry in World War 2.



Talk about politically incorrect.

So what does THAT mean?

2 comments:

Kiddo said...

Boy, am I happy that you haven't descended into World Cup madness like everyone else. At least that strange obsession isn't making me as sick as the fuss over the St. George's flag. As for you guys, I kind of like it when you get all oranged up.

togo said...

Reinds me of one of my all-time favorite films, Soldier of Orange.