It's okay to feel intimidated by verbal terrorism. It's natural. But what's to be done?

It’s a little over thirty-nine years ago that I picked up a basic Dutch grammar to learn some Dutch. You guessed it: a girl was involved in this on-the-surface inexplicable action for a boy born and bred on the North Shore of Sydney. It’s thirty-six years since my first visit to Holland where I spent two open-eyed, open-mouthed weeks in the Zeeland, a province in the South-West of the country. It’s thirty-five years since I went to Holland with my Dutch wife to live and work. It turned out to be a two and half year stay.

It was an invigorating time as I became immersed in a cultural environment so different from what I was used to. Nothing was more thrilling (I do mean thrilling) in this surprise-a-day cultural environment than the task of learning Dutch. Even my frequent stumble and mistakes have their own endearing memories.

I once asked a girl whether she smelt (ruik je?) instead of whether she smoked (rook je?) as I offered her a cigarette. "Do I smell?' she said in dismay. I remember my very correct father-in-law red-faced and just about blowing his lunch out through his nose in the effort to stop laughing as I innocently asked for an escalator (roltrap) on my sandwich instead of a rolmop (a rolled pickled herring).

As I reached a working competence in Dutch I began to understand that a language is actually a clear window on the culture. To know a country intimately one has to learn the language. The Dutch sound very different when speaking English. For one thing regional accents and dialects fall away in the sterilising step from one language to the other.

But as my proficiency in Dutch increased I became aware of something else: the freewheeling use of foul and abusive language in public, especially by people in the arts, media and politics. In this the Dutch were decades ahead of a country like Australia. Through the years on regular visits to Holland I have noticed that it has only got worse. Last July I wrote a comment on the subject pointing out that the use of foul and abusive language in Holland had been extended to include the very worst of English foul and abusive words.

My comment was about the growth around the world of the Dutch and Belgian broadcaster BVN that by satellite was piping into lounge rooms of English-speaking countries language the local broadcasters would not dare to use - because most people still find public use of such language unacceptable.

During a reality show on Dutch television late last year to select the lead singer/actress for a theatre season of Evita, one of the judges paraded himself wearing a T-Shirt with "fancy a f---" in big thick red letters on the back. Appalling. Totally inappropriate. What was the point? What is going on in the minds of those people? I thought. Why doesn't someone object? Surely not all Dutch people are happy with this sort of demeaning exhibition?

To her great credit Queen Beatrix spoke out about the ongoing degradation of the country's language last January. Naturally, she was challenged by the usual suspects in the media on the grounds of free speech. She should not meddle in such public matters; she should stick to Queening.

Wasn't there anybody in the media who had the courage to break away from the pack, support the Queen and say "enough is enough"? On 25 March last, Liesbeth Wytzes presented a blog on Elsevier online headed: "For once stop that swearing and raging." Her opening paragraphs read:

If you ask me what one of the biggest changes is in Holland, I would certainly name the increased coarseness in society. And especially the uncontrolled verbal coarseness.

Twenty, thirty years ago there was probably a lot of swearing and abusive language, too. But then the Dutch were self-controlled and polite enough to keep it behind closed doors or, better still, under their breath. At least then others were not troubled with it.

In the meantime that self-control has totally disappeared...

Bravo - not least because her words would have elicited a stream of foul words from some of her media colleagues. Free speech! What brought her to this desperate stage where she was afflicted by such madness as to break from the pack?

She says that she was riding her bike through one of the narrow streets of Amsterdam when a car came towards her at a great speed. Frightened of being crushed against against the side wall, she yelled out, "Hey, watch out!" Do you think the driver of that car would have realised that he was driving dangerously in such a narrow street (those familiar with Amsterdam know how narrow the streets are in the inner city) and acknowledged that with an apologetic wave. In your dreams! Liesbeth Wytzes relates what happened next:

The car stopped, the driver got out and began to abuse me so terribly that I stood whirling around on my feet.

She wonders where all the aggression and energy came from that early in the morning and on such slight provocation. She comments sounding somewhat apologetic:

Perhaps I am over sensitive, but from such a confrontation an unpleasant feeling remains with me the whole day.

No, it's not over sensitive, and people in Holland have got to realise this. And have the courage to do something about it. The concrete circumstances reveal brutal aggressive behaviour that is totally unacceptable in a civil society. Letting this sort of behaviour prevail is surrendering civil society the creeps and crooks that have captured the streets in Holland. One of the major reasons Holland remains in paralysis about this problem is the prevailing analysis and defence of the right of free speech.

On 23 January 2007 Gerry van der List wrote a blog on Elsevier online (I no longer have the link) saying that the acquittal of one or other feral male for using foul language against the police (He said: "F--- you!" Yes, in English) was correct. Here is his reason:

Abuse does not cause pain: that is the justification for the right to use coarse language. You may express your displeasure in every way as long as you do not use physical violence. That forms the core of the right to free speech.

Schelden doet geen pijn: dat is een rechtvaardiging voor het recht op grove taal. Je mag je onvrede op alle manieren uiten als je maar niet tot lichamelijk geweld overgaat. Dit vormt de kern van de vrijheid van meningsuiting.

This is a typical rationalistic formulation where the abstract right is absolutized without reference to the actual circumstances. A rationalistic formulated right is inflexible. Any exception to an abstract right argued in this manner will begin to undermine it. Adding the limit of physical violence is not relevant. Indeed, it is not a limit, violence being physical and words being words. The addition of the false limit is actually an admission of an objection to the absolute right of free speech. But the background to the increasing appearance of targeted anti-vilification legislation in liberal democracies is a subject for another time.

Liesbeth Wytzes should see that the verbal terrorism she was subjected to is vigorously protected by her colleagues for, make no mistake, van der List has outlined a right whose rationalistic analysis would be shared by the gross of his colleagues. The right protects the abuser and not the victim.

A second consideration for Ms Wytzes is how far van der List’s right would extend in her case, before she thought she was entitled to act. But then on what grounds? On his account that man could have rightfully abused her for the next ten minutes, thirty minutes, one hour, indeed, the whole day. If he had gone over to violence he would have been arrested on grounds that had no relevance to his right of free speech. Let’s go on. He could wait outside Ms Wytzes’s home and continue to abuse her. He could follow her to her work, all protected by van der List’s right….I need not labour the point. If she felt shaky the whole day because of the brief period of abuse, imagine the effect after a whole day of abuse. I surely don’t have to present argument and evidence when I claim that such intense abuse could harm a person so psychologically that they are rendered unfit for work. How effective would a thoroughly intimidated journalist be?

A third consideration is that the abuser could spend the whole day rightfully abusing people if he had a mind to it, all protected by the same right. A hundred people could be the victim of that man during one particular day.

It’s not difficult to see that such a right would do enormous harm to civil society if even a small percentage of the population was unrestrained in expressing their contempt and disapproval of those around them. I would say on the evidence that Holland has reached that point. What to do about it? For a start Ms Wytzes should reassess the analysis of the right of free speech that prevails in Holland - and that gave protection to the man who verbally terrorised her.

There is a different analysis, one that philosophical conservatives have been repeating since Edmund Burke first outlined his objections to individual subjective rights two hundred years ago. But this is not the place to go into that competing analysis. My object here was to offer an explanation, at least in part, for the increasing coarseness in speech and behaviour in Holland, and the logical consequences of a concept of free speech that the dominant political class in Holland accepts and prescribes.

For a person who learnt his first words of Dutch in his early twenties, and felt a thrill at each step of mastery until he was reading classic works of Dutch literature (not the modern stuff), it is deeply saddening to see the damage that is being done to Dutch language and culture by the crudity that appears uncheckable at the moment.

comments: gerard@gerardcharleswilson.com