The Minister and the Merchant

Dutch media: less restrained on the downside of immigration

This blog previously featured a story on the Dutch media increasingly catering to the need for news reflecting the public's suspicions about immigrants, particularly Muslims.

The Minister and the Merchant

When Dutch commentators and pundits reflect on the soul of the Dutch nation, they will often use the parabel of the Minister and the Merchant. This is the "Koopman and the Dominee" parabel. On the one hand the Dutchman has always tried to project an image of stern Protestant rectitude. The Minister. On the other hand he REALLY wants to make money. The Merchant.

The Media as the Minister

In the pervailing climate of Political Correctness or Neo-Marxism it was the Minister who usually won out in the way the media reported from the multicultural frontlines. With the advent of the internet and readership of the dead tree media falling like a felled fir tree, the Merchant is in ascendance.

The Merchant strikes back

Today leftist newspaper "De Volkskrant" hawked a "More Morroccan Criminals in Rotterdam" story, which I used as one of the sources for my previous article. What is remarkable is the prominent place the article received in the paper version of the "De Volkskrant" today: frontpage in the upper left hand corner.



(The painting is a portrait of the 17th Century Dutch Merchant Jan Six by Rembrandt)

PC losing its grip as glasnost

As far as I know it is a first for "De Volkskrant". It is exemplary of where the media in The Netherlands are heading. The Soviet Union embarked on a policy of openess "glasnost" in 1985. This was meant to assist in reforming the Communist system. But the relaxing of censorship caused so many absurdities of the system to come to the fore, that the elite lost its faith in the ideology altogether and this spelled its doom withing less than a decade.