Geoff Coupe's Blog

Reflections on life at “De Witte Wand”…

Category: Society

  • Let’s Cultivate Xenophobia

    I see that the US Administration thinks that:

    Europe faces “civilisational erasure” within the next two decades as a result of migration and EU integration, arguing in a policy document that the US must “cultivate resistance” within the continent to “Europe’s current trajectory”.

    I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised that the current US Administration would espouse the Great Replacement Theory along with its other dubious morals.

    I await the time when I’m deported back to India, because that was where my great-great-grandmother came from.

  • Rewriting History

    I see that the Trump virus that causes the rewriting of history has apparently reached the Netherlands.

    The Guardian reports today that displays commemorating African American servicemen in the visitors’ centre at a Dutch War Cemetery have been removed.

    At least the local community and others are up in arms about it. The provincial government of Limburg will be formally asking the American Battle Monuments Commission (ABMC), which runs the cemetery and the US Ambassador to put the commemoration panels back on display.

    “Lest we forget” – well, unless you are a member of a group in Trump’s crosshairs of course – then you will be marginalised and swept aside at the earliest opportunity…

    Addendum 12 December 2025: It’s now been reported in the Dutch newspaper the Gelderlander that it was the then Secretary of the AMBC himself who caused the displays removal out of fear following the publication of Trump’s “Anti-Woke decree”.

    On March 19 of this year, he emailed the staff of ABMC about Trump’s decree, which put an end to the ‘discriminatory equality ideology’. Although the ABMC was not mentioned, the then Secretary Charles Djou emphasized that the committee had to comply with Trump’s anti-woke policies to avoid negative publicity.

    He wanted to make sure that the databases on fallen African Americans and Native Americans did not violate the decree. And he asked the head of the visitor service, to check whether there are “panels” in the visitor centres in the overseas cemeteries that could cause problems for the committee.

    A day later, the head of education and public information, responds saying that certain texts have been removed from the ABMC site and that the database is not accessible to the public. He also suggests the removal of the panels from the Visitor Centre.

    The Deputy Secretary at the time, Robert Dallesandro agrees, saying in an email: “That panel has to go. Frankly, it never should have been there in the first place.”

    I note that Charles Djou has since departed from the AMBC, and Dallesandro has taken over as acting Secretary. He clearly sees no problem with rewriting history.

  • Swinging to the Right?

    The dust has now settled following the Dutch election. While the result won’t be officially given until next week (after the postal votes from Dutch ex-pats have been counted), it seems almost certain that the D66 party, led by Rob Jetten has got the most votes.

    It was a close-run thing, with the PVV of Geert Wilders matching the 26 parliamentary seats garnered by D66.

    For a governing majority in the Dutch parliament, Jetten needs more than 75 seats, so, as usual in Dutch politics, he needs to form a coalition with other parties. And there’s the rub. He has said that his ideal would be to form a coalition with the Groen-Links/PvDA, VVD and CDA parties. That would make a Centrist coalition, with the GL/PvDA on the left wing and the VVD on the right, However, the fly in the ointment is the leader of the VVD, Dilan Yeşilgöz. She has made it clear that she won’t work with the GL/PvDA party. Her party has been moving increasingly rightwards, and the gulf between it and the socialist GL/PvDA is now seemingly too great.

    Personally (because I am a life-long socialist, just like my parents were), I would be happy with Jetten’s preferred coalition, because it would seek to serve the broadest spectrum of the population. He himself has said that he wants to serve all of us.

    Yeşilgöz on the other hand will want to supplant GL/PvDA with a hardline Rightist party, such as JA21, which would push the coalition to the Right.

    If that happens, then I fear that Dutch politics will remain in the quagmire of blaming all the country’s ills on immigrants, and fail to address the real issues and problems as happened with the last government. Ironic really, since Yeşilgöz herself is an immigrant.

  • On The Eve Of Elections

    We have a general election tomorrow to choose who will lead us in the next government in the Netherlands.

    I can’t say that I’m looking forward to the outcome; after all the good people of the USA voted in Donald Trump for a second term and similarly in Argentina they have just voted for Javier Milei in the Midterms, thus doubling the number of seats he has. It seems that rational thought is a diminishing resource in humanity.

    Here, people say that they are losing their trust in politicians, yet the last time around they put Geert Wilders in front. On the other hand, I can quite understand the loss in trust – it’s just been revealed that two government members of Wilders’ PVV party have been behind some truly slimy AI-generated ads attacking Frans Timmermans, leader of the GroenLinks/PvDA party. Of course, they lied in parliament about it, so I can totally understand the loss of trust in some politicians.

    Martin and I will be casting our votes tomorrow in an attempt to restore balance towards a society that believes in equal opportunities for all and one that does not demonise migrants.

  • Who Is My Neighbour?

    Here in the predominantly rural region of the Netherlands known as the Achterhoek, the traditional concept of Noaberschap (neighbourliness) is still very strong and much-touted by many.

    It does rather beg the question of “who is my neighbour?”, though.

    We are starting to see demonstrations against immigrants and asylum seekers in many places throughout the Netherlands. This has arisen because the main asylum seekers reception centre (azielzoekerscentrum or AZC) in Ter Apel is often in the news because of overcrowding and local authorities are seeking to build new AZCs.

    With a general election just a few weeks away, the PVV of Geert Wilders and other right-wing parties are focusing on the issue of immigration, engendering fear, uncertainty and doubt in the minds of voters.

    The result has been demonstrators demanding that their local authority scrap any plans for future AZCs. There have been threats made to local councillors. Violence is in the air.

    Just in the last few weeks there have been demonstrations in Aalten and Eibergen – two places not very far away from us.

    In Eibergen, a local figure and conspiracy-theorist, Ton Koenderink, called for solidarity with the demonstrators from all Achterhoekers:

    Wij bunt Achterhoekers, en as-ie een Achterhoeker bunt, dan kum-ie op veur Achterhoekers!

    Which is Achterhoek’s dialect for:

    We are Achterhoekers, and if you are an Achterhoeker, then stand up for Achterhoekers!

    I’m not a Christian, but I think I would remind Mr. Koenderink of the answer that Jesus gave to the question: “Who is my neighbour?” with his parable of the Good Samaritan. A good neighbour is someone who shows mercy towards his fellow human beings, rather than hatred or passing on the other side of the road.

  • A Critique of Pure Stupidity

    Are they playing four-dimensional chess? Well no, the simpler explanation, and the one that fits, is that the entire top of the US Administration is staffed by stupid, incompetent and vengeful people. I wonder how the USA (and the rest of us) will ever recover from this?

    A critique of pure stupidity: understanding Trump 2.0 | Donald Trump | The Guardian

  • Meanwhile…

    My last post concerned the rise of the extreme right in the UK. It turns out that the UK is not the only place where the extreme right is feeling emboldened. As I was writing it, anti-immigration protesters were gathering in the Hague, and things turned ugly.

    The rioters were shouting slogans such as “We are the Netherlands”- er, no, you are not. You are right-wing thugs.

    The problem is that the political discourse is becoming increasingly right-wing populist. A motion put forward in the Second Chamber last week by the oxymoronically titled Forum for Democracy to ban AntiFa as a terrorist organisation was enthusiastically adopted by all the usual suspects: the PVV, BBB, Ja21, and they were joined by the SGP and the VVD. The latter was originally a centrist party, but has moved rapidly to the right over the past few years.

    The motion was passed (just) with a majority of 1 vote.

    This resulted in an article in the Volkskrant with the headline “Dangerous Bravado Say The Experts“.

    Fortunately a member of the CDA party has now raised sensible questions with the Justice Minister concerning the hurdles to this motion actually becoming law.

    We have a general election coming up next month. We’re in for a bumpy ride.

  • A Dangerous Moment For Britain

    Despite living for more than half of my life in The Netherlands, I still follow events in the UK closely. And recent events, such as the sudden proliferation of St. George’s flags and the far right march in London have proved both unsettling and depressing to me.

    Chris Grey, as usual, provides an excellent analysis of what seems to be happening in the UK – I urge you to read it.

  • An App To Be Avoided

    ByGOT – one step away from being an actual app…

  • On The Right Side Of History

    Like my father before me, I’ve been a Labour supporter all my life, but now I fear that the UK Labour Party has lost its way. These are not terrorists, but people protesting against the genocide in Gaza.

  • Roll Up! Roll Up!…

    I would like to think that Marina Hyde’s withering contempt would actually count for something, but to a person with no apparent morals whatsoever, it clearly won’t..

    Hurry, hurry, hurry! It’s Trump’s great Ukraine giveaway. Bargains galore, if your name is Vladimir Putin

  • Jaw-Dropping Indeed

    God help us, or should that be God help the US?

  • The Nobel Peace Prize 2025

    I nominate Francesca Albanese for this year’s Nobel Peace Prize. She deserves it. To award it to Trump would be an utter travesty.

  • The Alan Turing Lecture 2025

    Sandi Toksvig gave this year’s Alan Turing Lecture. I urge you to watch it. She is thought-provoking about the nature of bias and the creeping stultification of thought that seems to be pervading Western societies.

    The Mappa Mundi Project that she is involved with is also very interesting. It has the simple but essential goal of telling the stories of women. There’s a Chinese Proverb (probably apocryphal) that “women hold up half the sky”, but women only account for 0.5% of recorded human history.

    On a related note, the book “Half the Sky” by Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn is worth reading…

  • The Aids Memorial Quilt

    I remember visiting the warehouse in San Francisco where the Aids Memorial Quilt is stored in 1992, and then seeing the Dutch contributions to the quilt laid out in the Vondelpark in Amsterdam during the 1998 Gay Games.

    I wept both times.

    Now the UK Aids Memorial Quilt is being displayed in London’s Tate Modern museum for a short time.

    Lest we forget.

  • The Lesson of 1933…

    Professor Marci Shore explained in a video Opinion Piece for the New York Times why she was leaving the US to teach in the Canadian University of Toronto:

    The lesson of 1933 is – you get out sooner rather than later

    What might have seemed hyperbole at the time of the video’s making seems to be becoming more grounded in the reality of events in the US. She expands on her views in this interview in today’s Guardian. Required reading, I would suggest…

  • No Man Is An Island

    I was born on the Isle of Man and grew up there. Fortunately, I was able to leave it and have a full life elsewhere. Not everyone was able to do that.

    This documentary hits me hard and the final words are very powerful.

  • A Force For Good

    The death of Pope Francis is a loss to the world. He was a radically different Pope to the authoritarian Pope Benedict and brought compassion to the papacy.

    He was not afraid to speak truth to political power and clearly viewed Trump as a force for evil, decrying Trump’s deportations of migrants. He wrote, in an open letter to American bishops, that he had “followed closely the major crisis that is taking place in the United States with the initiation of a program of mass deportations,” adding that any policy built on force “begins badly and will end badly.”

    So now the process of choosing his successor begins. As an atheist, I obviously have no skin in this game, but I would hope that his successor will carry the torch of Pope Francis’s moral authority forward and not be a Pope that returns to the attitudes of Benedict.

  • A Digital Coup

    Carole Cadwalladr has a warning for us all…

    Addendum 21 April 2025: And in this piece for the Observer newspaper, Carole gives the backstory to that TED talk. It’s worth reading, but depressing in that, once again, it shows that AI is being driven by Careless People*.

    *From the Great Gatsby:

    They were careless people, Tom and Daisy- they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.

  • RIP Alexei Navalny

    Today it is one year since Alexei Navalny died in a Russian Penal Colony. By coincidence, last night I finished reading his memoir: Patriot. It is an extraordinary book and terrifying as an insight into the Putin machine. Navalny is a great loss to Russia, and to humanity, killed by a system run by a thug.

    The Observer has an editorial today describing Navalny as “Principled, charismatic and humorous, the murdered Russian opposition leader was everything Vladimir Putin is not”. It is worth reading and ends on a particularly chilling note:

    When Trump calls Putin a “genius” who exhibits great “common sense”, does he understand – does he care – that he is dealing with a ruthless killer? When, shattering the western consensus that Putin is an aggressor to be repulsed at all costs, Trump proposes a chummy tete-a-tete on Ukraine, does he have any idea how he is manipulated by this cynical ex-KGB thug? Does JD Vance, Trump’s ignorant vice-president, realise what a dangerous game he plays when he flirts with Europe’s pro-Putin neofascist far right? It seems not. Navalny would put them straight. Except he’s dead.