It is always good to pay attention to the eloquence of our representatives. Because as Mr Aboutaleb rightly points out: we use language and rhetoric to come together to ultimately formulate policy and make decisions. Anyone who uses language for that purpose would generally do better not to offend the other person too much. Hurting is by definition not eloquent. Right?
Also read
This is the second part of the Thorbecke lecture, the first part can be found here
No. Swearing, coarse (visual) language and swearing, it can be of high quality. For decades, theaters full of good left-wing baby boomers laughed their heads off at the tirades of Youp and Freek. Elite newspapers published cartoons of naked choirboys with a Catholic cross between their buttocks and of right-wing politicians and presenters depicted as rats. And broadcaster BNNVARA posted a cartoon of the PVV leader Geert Wilders, who was seriously threatened with death, with bloody scissors in the back. The polemics of Dutch columnists and opinion makers, from Hugo Brandt Corstius to the inflammatory rhetoric against Pim Fortuyn of almost every old media columnist active at the time, it was all both extremely rude and very eloquent.
The moderation of tone, in short, can never be a criterion for the quality of the speaker, illustrator or writer. Not even in politics. And what exactly is that, hurtful language? What do we find rude or shocking?
Nice words
We can say that the use of offensive language, scary diseases, genitals and curses cannot tolerate any other interpretation than that it is rude. But many terrible things can be said in the political arena in a very civil tone. With very nice words.
Recent example: the parliamentary debate on the hunt for Jews in Amsterdam. A pogrom was downplayed and even denied, the predominantly Muslim perpetrators were portrayed as victims. In passing, the friendly nation of Israel, a country full of Jews who have been forcibly expelled elsewhere in the Arab world, a country that must defend itself against brutal aggression from Islamic states and terrorist groups, was accused without any evidence of committing a genocide. Well. How extremely rude, uncivil and hurtful do you want it to be? I haven’t heard any complaints about ‘the tone’ there.
One of the first things to go with softness is truth
And don’t misunderstand me, I can say, write or draw anything. If there is anyone who has stripped freedom of expression to its core, it is me. But I still notice a problem with that so-called softness and civility, and that is a political foundation called the truth.
One of the first things to go with softness is truth. Soft language refers to a soft reality and no matter how much we would all like it: the world is not soft and civilized. Sometimes a pogrom is just a pogrom, even if the perpetrators are hurt by that term.
Shouldn’t hurt anyone
But this is also the case in more nuanced debates. Take the debates about gender and in particular about transgender people and the relevant legislation. Someone must of course be addressed as an individual with the desired name and gender, which is polite and requires no effort. Consciously continuing to call someone by the wrong name and gender is harassing behavior. But correct grammar and biological reality are not concerned with soft language and hurt feelings. People in the Netherlands are he or she. Freak ‘pronouns’ impose and thereby commit crimes against grammar such as ‘they want to be addressed as the pronouns them/them’? We don’t have to go along with that, no matter how much they say they are hurt by this denial of their unique self.
And anyone who wants to go through life as a woman, even though he was born as a man, cannot change the fact that she remains genetically and biologically a man. In social interactions she can be a woman through and through, but in the medical, legal and sporting world that option does not apply. And we see how the debate about this is polluted with an appeal to being ‘nice’ and not hurting anyone.
So although I agree with Mr Aboutaleb’s plea for less scoring drive, more civility and no unnecessary insults in the political arena, I would still like to stand up for, where possible, the usefulness and beauty of a hard truth or continue to see a furious scrubbing.
And his call for more humor in politics? Please. But be warned, the best jokes are often on (or over) the edge.
This is a shortened version of the second part of the 16th Thorbecke lecture, held on December 15 in Nieuwspoort, The Hague.