Geoff Coupe's Blog

Reflections on life at “De Witte Wand”…

Category: Society

  • 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.

  • Trump Spews Shit Again

    Really, we are in for four years of this?

  • A Sermon For The Age

    This week, Marianne Edgar Budde, the bishop of Washington delivered a sermon in front of President Trump urging him to show mercy towards LGBTQ+ and migrant communities. The president condemned it as ‘nasty’.

    I’m not a Christian, just an atheist by nature, but it’s a very good sermon. It speaks truth to power. No wonder Donald Trump hated it and described her tone as “nasty”. The fault lies with you, Donald.

  • A Grain of Rice

    Remember the old story about the grain of rice and the chessboard? Here’s a modern day take on it used to illustrate the disparity of wealth in the US. Do watch it.

    @realestatebulldog

    Who’s hungry? #eattherich

    ♬ original sound – Whisper Pickle

  • Abandon Hope, All Ye Who Enter Here…

    So Mark Zuckerberg has just announced that he will be getting rid of all his factcheckers on Facebook and joining Elon Musk on the race to the bottom in social media. He’s clearly kissed Trump’s ring.

    To reuse a particularly powerful turn of phrase: “they are swirling in a human cesspit of their own making”…

    As Chris Stokel-Walker writes:

    This is an extinction-level event for the idea of objective truth on social media – an organism that was already on life support, but was clinging on in part because Meta was willing to fund independent factchecking organisations in order to try to maintain some element of honest fact, free from political bias. Night is day. Up is down. Meta is X. Mark Zuckerberg is Elon Musk. Buckle in for a turbulent, vitriolic, and fact-free four years online.