Erik Dijkstra is ashamed afterwards that he simply went along with the culture of fear at De Wereld Draait Door for years. “That is something I do struggle with. That I thrived in that atmosphere.”
De Wereld Draait Door will go down in the history books as an infected program now that the fearful misconduct of Matthijs van Nieuwkerk and his horror assistant Dieuwke Wynia has been leaked. More and more people involved confirm the stories, including the well-known former employees Lex Uiting and now also Erik Dijkstra.
Erik is terrified
Erik has worked at DWDD for a long time. “To be honest, I was completely shocked by the article. I read it on Friday evening and then I read it twice on Saturday,” he says NPO Radio 2. “I worked there as a Jackal, spent seven years on the editorial staff full-time and then regularly joined the table as a host.”
He continues: “What shocked me in that article: there was not a single word in it. I recognized everything in it and I also experienced it in that way. What I am shocked about myself and also struggle with a bit is that that very hard culture was still a culture of fear and that I also went along with it to a large extent.”
‘It was part of it’
Guilt-conscious, Erik lets it be known that he thought that culture of fear was normal all along. “I was one of those people who thought it was part of the program and if you couldn’t handle that, then you didn’t belong there. That’s something I do struggle with. That I apparently also thrived in that atmosphere and that I have come to find that normal.”
The number of people who have suffered from that culture of fear is enormous. “It wasn’t five people or anything. There were fifty of them, who say that it is about transgressive behavior. I think that’s terrible.”
Totally crazy
Erik also sometimes saw people being fired crying. “I thought: apparently this is not for you or this level is not for you or you should make a different kind of television. When I look back on it now, I think: I started to find something normal that was actually really not normal and was actually completely crazy.”
He concludes: “It’s bizarre that we all thought that was normal.”
