For those who’ve been following the developing debate over Dutch film Fitna, it’s now finished up all over the internet (as I expected it would). Pommy over at the Australian Libertarian Society has a link, as does Saint at Dog Fight at Bankstown. Once I’ve watched it, I’ll update this post. In the meantime, your thoughts in the comments, please. And do try to keep it civil, if you don’t mind.
UPDATE I from the ABC:
Meanwhile, a coalition of Jordanian media says they will take Mr Wilders to court over the film and urged Arab leaders to review ties with Denmark and the Netherlands.
‘We held an urgent meeting Thursday evening and decided to sue extremist and Zionist deputy Geert Wilders,’ over the film deemed offensive to the Koran, Islam’s holiest book, coalition spokesman Zakaria al-Sheikh said.
Sheikh said the coalition of 30 Jordanian independent newspapers, websites and radios would also initiate a campaign to boycott Dutch products in addition to launching legal proceedings against Mr Wilders in Jordan.
He also urged Arab leaders at a weekend summit in Damascus ‘to denounce campaigns hostile to Islam and review their ties with countries like Denmark and the Netherlands where these campaigns were launched’.
They really do need to get over this ‘Zionist Deputy’ palaver. Really and truly.
UPDATE II: First up, much higher production values than I expected. Second, the cartoonist trying to sue for copyright infringement has got Buckley’s (it’s most likely ‘fair use’). Third, the stuff-up with the rapper and the murderer is legally rather awkward. On the other hand, the rapper - if he plays his cards right - may be able to turn the publicity to his commercial advantage.
Now, a few impressions on the fly: With respect to content, I think it’s important to view this as a very Dutch film. Much of it is commentary on two things about which Dutch people are peculiarly sensitive (my aunt and uncle live in Rotterdam, my uncle being the Dutch half of the combo, so I’ve seen this close up).
The first is the routine, almost casual anti-semitism among many Muslims. The Netherlands - if you needed reminding - was home to Anne Frank. She became the Holocaust’s iconic representative before, say, Oskar Schindler, Elie Wiesel or Primo Levi. Every Dutch schoolchild knows her story and the majority have visited the house in Amsterdam where she hid. Islamic anti-semitism interacts in a destructive way with the Dutch national memory of the Holocaust as mediated through the prism of Anne Frank and Hitler’s extermination of the Netherlands’ Jewish population.
The second is the gay-bashing that seems pervasive among segments of the Dutch Muslim community. (I refuse to use the PC word homophobia, as it really doesn’t capture what happens in practice. Many gays cope perfectly well with hatred, but assaults and routine ‘verballing’ are another matter). The Dutch are - rightly or wrongly - very proud of their status as ‘out there’ liberals, and they manage it very well. I’ve seen people pouring out of a church in the red light district directly across the road from a bunch of streetwalkers. Each group ignored the other beautifully - it was a study in non-engagement. The Dutch are very good at this (the country is surprisingly conservative in terms of manners). Like the English, their system works because of a set of cultural values that raises looking the other way to a high art.
When confronted by radical Islam, however, the Dutch response and the English response have diverged. I’ve written elsewhere that I consider this in part to be a manifestation of the different varieties of liberalism endorsed in the two countries. The English make with their customary stiff upper lip and simply discriminate against Muslims on the quiet. The Dutch - to greater or lesser degrees - pull out the perfectionist sledgehammer and say ‘you will fit in, or else’. Wilders goes too far for many of the moderate perfectionists, but remember those same moderate Dutch pollies approved forcing all prospective immigrants to watch a film about ‘life in Holland’ that - among other things - features two men kissing.
Just a few stray thoughts on the fly.
UPDATE III: That didn’t take long - now on YouTube as well. They’ve clearly given up trying to yank it.
UPDATE IV: LiveLeaks have pulled Fitna, based on ‘credible threats’ to their employees (which they attribute to ‘irresponsible reporting’ in the British media). There are, however, multiple versions up on YouTube at the above link.
UPDATE V: There is also what appears to be a quasi official site here. Scroll down a bit for a copy of the film. There’s also - as you’d expect - a multitude of links (and a download option) here.
38 Comments
I found this quote from the new Fitna website http://www.themoviefitna.com/
” However, Muslims at seven mosques in the southern city of Eindhoven are preparing to lodge a collective complaint against Wilders on the grounds that he is encouraging hatred. ‘Freedom of expression is a right… but it is not an excuse to upset fellow human beings,’ they said in a statement. ”
Wayne Sanderson would no doubt agree with their calls for a therapeutic totalitarianism to cushion everyone’s fragile psyches from reality.
LiveLeak have removed the flick. Due to threats to our staff it says.
Freedom of expression is a right… but it is not an excuse to upset fellow human beings
It’s a means of upsetting fellow human beings inevitably. If I were a Muslim I’d be complaining about my co-religionists’ behaviour more than anything.
Wayne Sanderson would no doubt agree with their calls for a therapeutic totalitarianism to cushion everyone’s fragile psyches from reality.
Oh so Steve Edwards says Wayne’s a bad guy oh really like he ever did anything. Look Wayne Sanderson is a very well respected
re-seller of New York Times materialjournalist and atotal coward and hypocriteincisive commentor on current events so consider yourself bollocked.Hehhehheh Adrien. BTW all the links should work for copies of the film - they’re in the updates at the bottom of the post.
For some reason Pommy’s ALS post caught the crest of a wave - front page of WordPress.com and number 2 on google news, with the result that the site’s had Blair-like (or greater) levels of hits in a 24 hour period. Some pretty random comments, too.
As Pommy notes with his earlier post, there is a rather odd dichotomy - Wilders preaches Western values of tolerance and free speech, but he is essentially calling for intolerance of a certain religion. I wonder if he thinks that Islam and other religions can co-exist or not?
The ironic thing, as with the Danish cartoons, is the way in which various Islamic groups and countries are claiming that the film is offensive and inaccurate, but radical Muslims are also making death threats against LiveLeaks… Any violent retaliation against Wilders will prove his point rather nicely.
The film makes me think of a book I read once about communication - how does one best get one’s message across? If this film’s central message is that Muslims need to rethink the violent and unpleasant aspects of their religion, as the film claims, then I don’t think a vehicle such as this would be the way to achieve it. It would immediately make even a moderate Muslim defensive of his or her religion, rather than open to reasonable criticism.
I suspect there were two responses Wilders wanted - to provoke a backlash among Dutch people to Islam (or at least, some more extreme practices of some Islamic groups), and to make a point that the response to films which criticise Islam is often violence (although I note that the Dutch Muslim population seems to have sensibly decided that the best response is to be moderate).
You can view the film on youtube but at least 6 mins have been cut,why?
YouTube doesn’t have a long play option, which google video does. You can only watch all of it on YouTube if it’s been chopped in two. This site has the complete version.
Have anyone had a gander at the ads that google has served up for this thread?
Yeah I noticed ‘em. It’s a good example of misfired advertising.
Still nothing beats “Coke brings your ancestors back from the dead” yet.
Similar google ads were turning up on the actual official Fitna site, too - gotta love capitalism!
I don’t know if its our own OBVIOUSLY “Zionist-dominate media” but every news reporting I have seen of this to-do has featured some Mad Muhammadan frothing at the mouth over “Zionists.” WTF do “Zionists” have to do with a Dutch MPs 15 minute cyber-flick?
Oops. Forgot to link to my source for the claim that Zionists run Australian media.
Source: Margoyle hersel.
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/07/26/1090693889416.html
It’s one thing Muslims are simply going to have to lose if they want any of their other concerns to be taken seriously, John. Of course people in Europe are going to be sensitive about dingbat conspiracy theories about Jews. Europeans were the last bunch to get suckered by dingbat conspiracy theories about Jews, and look where that finished up!
There’s a great interview with Wilders in last week’s Speccie. What he’s saying is simple. The only limit on freedom of speech should be on speech that incites violence. Speech that inspires “hatred” should be protected. The irony here is that the dhimmis of the left want to ban the latter, but seem quite happy about the former. Thus when islamofascists cry out for death against the infidel, that is somehow all right. But if I use the word niggardly, I should immediately lose my job, my house and everything I own to appease the PC faeces suckers of the media. Islam is a crappy, evil religion, whose founder believed in war and conquest in the name of God. Christianity’s founder believed in tolerance and forgiveness. Yet our lefties praise the Islamic scum and put down Christianity at every opportunity.
My understanding is that Wilders wanted to ‘ban the Burkha’, and possibly also the Koran (although I’ve not seen a link for the latter) is the Spectator piece online?
[Here's a link to the story about banning the Koran; if it's true, he's either changed his mind and said so to the Speccie, or he's a hypocrite].
SL
Oh I am not questioning the news groups. I am commenting more on those who are actually making the claims about “Zionism.” That is, the mad Muhammadans themselves. Sure, get your turban in twist over the film, but once they start dragging Zionism into the game, they look too ridiculous for words.
Islam is a crappy, evil religion, whose founder believed in war and conquest in the name of God. Chrisitianity’s founder be;lieve in tolerance and forgiveness.
Which is why Christians have always been so peaceful and tolerant.
Jihadists are a bunch of anti-Enlightenment freaks the world could do without but most Muslims don’t see it that way. I’ve known many Muslims who are the epitome of respect and tolerance and many Christians who’re the exact opposite.
This cartoon write-off of Islam is produced by the exact same mind-set that infects the Jihadist dickheads. Could you all move to the moon please. There’s not so much there to destroy.
SL
There is a huge difference between one “western” INDIVIDUAL wanting to “ban” the Koran, burqha, or cigarettes, heroin, kiddy porn, blah, blah, blah, and the STATE wanting to do so.
Yes Adrien
I have found the ‘debate’ on Fitna on various blogs disappointing and formulaic. Wilders is a stirrer and has achieved his purpose but has he changed anybody’s minds? JG and RL are off on their prewritten script already.
what the fuck exactly does that mean, JG?
Do some research before opening that gap in your face, you annoying BASIC subprogram.
There seems to be quite a few different things going on here, many of which are - in the philosophical sense - incommensurable.
The first is the Islamic attitude towards Jews. I’m being broad brush here because I’ve met about 2 Muslims in all the Muslims I know who don’t have some sort of weird hang-up about Jews. That includes the moderate and reasonable ones, too.
The second is Christians writing off Islam because it’s violent. Well, so was Christianity until domesticated by liberalism. This involved being beaten into a cocked hat by people like Voltaire, Mill, Darwin etc. This was not pretty to watch (and its echoes can be heard in the creationism fooferaw).
The third is Wilders’ role as liberal ‘pin up boy’. He’s not, unless he’s retracted the ‘ban the Koran’ piffle he spouted early last year. As I said in the post, I find the film interesting in large part due to its Dutchness, and because I’m writing about the extent to which laying claim to ‘national attributes’ is compatible with liberalism for my jurisprudence paper here at Oxford.
Jason
It is not expressed in Old Icelandic. It simply means that getting all hot and bothered about one individual’s views - and whether or not he is a hypocrite - on banning things is no indictment. What matters is whether or not the Ducth state is considering said bannings.
I am not sure that any “research” is really needed for this discussion. A pre-written script is not really out of place for a pre-written to-do.
Please Explain.
the explanartion is you’ve diverted the topic. Skeptic was talking about the consistency of Wilder’s position. is the attention seeking clown a threat to anyone? of course not, no more than you are.
Jason
Ah, actually I am right on topic, dude. Read before you bloviate!
Wilders is an MP, John, and the party he leads damn near took government when Pim Fortuyn was leader. Is Wilders another Fortuyn - an openly gay man and liberal perfectionist who quoted Joseph Raz in the Dutch parliament? I don’t know, but I’m not convinced by the claims made by liberal perfectionists, in that they seem (to me, with a half-written jurisprudence paper on this topic) to be flavouring - however lightly - liberalism with a dash of totalitarianism.
SL, to what extent do you think the European (or ‘perfectionist’) version of liberalism owes itself to the influence of Rousseau (thus distinguishing itself from the English understanding which has a different pedigree). There seems, to me, shades of Rousseau in this idea that people should be forced — by requiring them to abandon certain reading material or take off certain clothes — to be “free”.
I think there’s a great deal of Rousseau in there, Amir but proving it is very difficult, especially in the case of Joseph Raz. Raz never quotes Rousseau, has a demonstrably different view of authority (much closer to the Hartian/Benthamite/Millian liberal tradition - he was taught at Oxford, remember) and is clearly pluralistic in a way that, say, John Finnis is not (Finnis is a much more doctrinaire perfectionist, but then that’s to be expected as he is also a natural lawyer).
Raz is a proper liberal legal positivist - he just happens to argue that ‘liberal’ values are ‘expressions of the good’ in a moral sense - ie they trump religious values.
It’s almost as though he’s Rousseau reborn, but far subtler, more nuanced, much harder to defeat in argument. He knocks Nozick’s account of coercion into a cocked hat, among other things. Hayek is the one thinker who seems to outflank him, in part because Hayek openly admits the value of instrumentalist arguments.
If it’s Rousseau it’s contradictory. Rousseau says the evils of the world come from society. Get rid of this bad society and we’ll all dance and sing (and dump our kids on orphanages).
Liberal perfectionists seem to think you get there by tweaking society’s nobs. Fine tuning.
I would have thought Rousseau’s romanticism was the antithesis of liberalism.
All I can say is read The Morality of Freedom, Adrien. I have spent two and half terms at Oxford trying to knock holes in Raz, and only now am I finally getting anywhere, and only in certain places.
He’s not contradictory at all, that’s the thing. I wanted to believe that he was, but the more I’ve read of his stuff, the more I’ve come to realise that defeating his arguments is going to take a sustained intellectual effort - in part because he is so careful about where he positions himself, and in part because he is a very kind and humane man in the best liberal tradition. This illuminates his best writing.
But I can see why Fortuyn and friends would be quoting him all over the place, too.
Thanks Skeptic I’ll take a look when I’ve got a chance.
I don’t think Rousseau is counterthetical to liberalism at all John. The Romantic/Enlightenment dichotomy is not the same thing as political dichotomies. There are classical (Enlightenment, reason-based) liberals and classical autocrats. There are Romantic autocrats and Romantic democrats. And after a certain point in the 19th century we’re all both classical and Romantic at the same time.
But Rousseau’s view of society as a contract is compatible with liberalism. Many liberals however may take a more Hobbesian view of human nature.
Actually from what I’ve heard from you of Raz isn’t one of things using govt policy to ‘liberate’ citizens living in oppressive social contexts like traditional Islamic families?
If so it’s not contradictory exactly.
Evil Society = Traditional Context
And then he’s advocating the use of the State to dissolve or limit the ‘Evil Society’. This is where it seems to become contradictory because what gives the State the right to decide that this is the evil society and therefore actively enforce some sort of disassociation as opposed to enforcing the law which enshrines the rights of those within the ‘Evil Society’ to associate as they please.
Sounds a little like Escher jurisprudence to me. Have fun.
Now that, I’m keeping. It may even score a guernsey in my essay. V. nice.
Now, off to do more work
Your most welcome Skeptic.
“The Dutch - to greater or lesser degrees - pull out the perfectionist sledgehammer and say ‘you will fit in, or else’.”
Deru kugi wa utareru.
‘The nail that sticks up gets hammered down flat’, for those without Japanese. Took a while to read in romajii, but once I said it out loud…
You speak Japanese, SL?
Used to speak Japanese, Tillman. I did Shotokan Karate for many years and trained in Japan for a few months. I haven’t used it since 2000, really.