One of my favorite journalistic genres is ‘The Netherlands through the eyes of abroad’. With every comma that The New York Times or dedicate another international title to us, you can feel the nation’s fragile self-confidence growing, even though those pieces are usually written by a Europe correspondent who is probably working diligently through Google Translate from a location far away from here.
This week we existed by the grace of the fuss about the Hef, the Rotterdam bridge that has to be temporarily dismantled because Jeff Bezos’ new sailing yacht cannot pass under it. RTV Rijnmond brought the news early in the morning of Wednesday 2 February (‘SCOOP!’), followed by the national media. Not even twelve hours later The Washington Post already been on the site for a while, followed by Bloomberg, The Guardian, of the mirror, Die Welt and Le Parisien. The BBC also calls the decommissioning plan controversial RTV Rijnmondas if it were just that little bit more true than when a reporter wrote it down.
Great symbolism of course. The sailing yacht of one of the richest men in the world, a multi-billionaire who just a few months ago flew through space in a gigantic, gray penis, threatens to run aground in the Koningshaven, Rotterdam, the Netherlands. The megalomania knows no bounds, it had to be bigger, more luxurious, higher – but Jeff had just missed the Hef, the steel-and-rivet-built left back of the port city. The municipality may have already given permission for the dismantling, but Rotterdam did not give up that easily. GroenLinks asked a emergency debate to the council under the heading ‘this is going a bridge too far’, the local party leader of Bij1 concluded that ‘capital dominates in Rotterdam’, a SP councilor tweeted ‘fuck you Bezos’. A picture of De Hef in the form of a guillotine went on Instagram, a DJ from 3FM “decided to express his frustration in a rap”, according to the radio station. on Twitter. The text read: ‘Boss. Bezos. Boat. To build.’
That was when the revolutionary spirit started to annoy me a bit. “Not super exciting,” said the owner of the company that will dismantle the bridge. ‘In principle, it can be done in one working day.’ It would take a week to build up and a week to break down, the project leader Bridges of the municipality of Rotterdam said. All in all, not very problematic for a bridge that is no longer in use. The project leader pointed out the employment that the construction of a 430 million euros sailing yacht will bring to the region, which is not unimportant for a working-class city. And yes, Bezos would of course bear the cost of the entire operation.
I thought I heard that famous Rotterdam ‘don’t talk but clean’ mentality, but it was drowned out by the anger that there are even rich men who can build these floating, phallic monsters. Symbolism took over from reality.
Seen in this way, what appeared to be a firm fist was actually the epitome of impotence. From justified frustration about the lack of affordable housing, in the city and in the rest of the country. And from frustration about the fact that men like Bezos have hardly paid any taxes for years, not here and nowhere. For that we have to look to those above us, the politicians who fail to solve these problems. The project leader Bridges and Other Civil Engineering Works of the Municipality of Rotterdam has little to do with it.