Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Preface
- 1 Why Jews are more guilty than others?: An introductory essay, 1945-2016
- Part I Post-Liberation Antisemitism
- 2 ‘The Jew’ as Dubious Victim
- 3 The Meek Jew – and Beyond
- 4 Alte Kameraden: Right-wing Antisemitism and Holocaust Denial
- 5 Jewish Responses to Post-Liberation Antisemitism
- Part II Israel and ‘the Jew’
- 6 Philosemitism?: Ambivalences regarding Israel
- 7 Transnational Left-wing Protest and the ‘Powerful Zionist’
- 8 Israel: Source of Divergence
- 9 ‘The Activist Jew’ Responds to Changing Dutch Perceptions of Israel
- 10 Turkish Anti-Zionism in the Netherlands: From Leftist to Islamist Activism
- Part III The Holocaust-ed Jew in Native Dutch Domains since the 1980s
- 11 ‘The Jew’ in Football: To Kick Around or to Embrace
- 12 Pornographic Antisemitism, Shoah Fatigue and Freedom of Speech
- 13 Historikerstreit: The Stereotypical Jew in Recent Dutch Holocaust Studies
- Part IV Generations. Migrant Identities and Antisemitism in the Twenty-first Century
- 14 ‘The Jew’ vs. ‘the Young Male Moroccan’: Stereotypical Confrontations in the City
- 15 Conspiracism: Islamic Redemptive Antisemitism and the Murder of Theo van Gogh
- 16 Reading Anne Frank: Confronting Antisemitism in Turkish Communities
- 17 Holocaust Commemorations in Postcolonial Dutch Society
- 18 Epilogue: Instrumentalising and Blaming ‘the Jew’, 2011-2016
- References
- Index
12 - Pornographic Antisemitism, Shoah Fatigue and Freedom of Speech
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 December 2020
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Preface
- 1 Why Jews are more guilty than others?: An introductory essay, 1945-2016
- Part I Post-Liberation Antisemitism
- 2 ‘The Jew’ as Dubious Victim
- 3 The Meek Jew – and Beyond
- 4 Alte Kameraden: Right-wing Antisemitism and Holocaust Denial
- 5 Jewish Responses to Post-Liberation Antisemitism
- Part II Israel and ‘the Jew’
- 6 Philosemitism?: Ambivalences regarding Israel
- 7 Transnational Left-wing Protest and the ‘Powerful Zionist’
- 8 Israel: Source of Divergence
- 9 ‘The Activist Jew’ Responds to Changing Dutch Perceptions of Israel
- 10 Turkish Anti-Zionism in the Netherlands: From Leftist to Islamist Activism
- Part III The Holocaust-ed Jew in Native Dutch Domains since the 1980s
- 11 ‘The Jew’ in Football: To Kick Around or to Embrace
- 12 Pornographic Antisemitism, Shoah Fatigue and Freedom of Speech
- 13 Historikerstreit: The Stereotypical Jew in Recent Dutch Holocaust Studies
- Part IV Generations. Migrant Identities and Antisemitism in the Twenty-first Century
- 14 ‘The Jew’ vs. ‘the Young Male Moroccan’: Stereotypical Confrontations in the City
- 15 Conspiracism: Islamic Redemptive Antisemitism and the Murder of Theo van Gogh
- 16 Reading Anne Frank: Confronting Antisemitism in Turkish Communities
- 17 Holocaust Commemorations in Postcolonial Dutch Society
- 18 Epilogue: Instrumentalising and Blaming ‘the Jew’, 2011-2016
- References
- Index
Summary
The previous chapter on football antisemitism concluded with a reference to an internet column titled ‘The peeled shrimp’, in which it was suggested that players of Ajax, the Amsterdam club with a ‘Jewish’ image, got themselves circumcised. This can be construed as a form of pornographic antisemitism. The fascination for and aversion of the Jewish circumcised penis has been around for centuries. This chapter starts by briefly addressing the history of the image of ‘the Jew’ as perverse, and will then elaborate relatively recent Dutch cases.
The juxtaposition of three phenomena in football – ‘Shoah fatigue’ or Schlusstrichbedürfnis, ‘a desire to provoke’ and ‘pornographic antisemitism’ – would also manifest itself in a completely different social context: in the columns of the widely cherished enfant terrible Theo van Gogh (1957-2004). In 1984 this filmmaker and columnist published a notorious antisemitic pamphlet, resulting in a string of lawsuits. These judicial confrontations touched upon two urgent topics in the 1980s public debate: the question of unrestricted freedom of speech and recurring recriminations of an alleged Jewish monopolisation of suffering. These topics remained on the agenda, engaging various followers of Van Gogh, or kindred spirits, including the painter Ronald Ophuis (b. 1978), as shown in two of his controversial paintings.
The Netherlands into which columnist and filmmaker Theo van Gogh was born no longer exists. Van Gogh was someone who strongly rejected multiculturalism, particularly when it came to facilitating professing the faith of Islam, a religion he frequently came to refer to in pornographic terms. This grandson of the brother of the world-famous painter Vincent van Gogh became known worldwide for entirely different and very sad reasons: in 2004 he was killed by the Dutch Islamist Mohammed Bouyeri (b. 1978).
A short history of pornographic antisemitism
There are quite a few Dutch expressions and children's verses in which ‘the Jew’ figures, to put it mildly, as someone deviant, also from a physical and sexual perspective. The expression ‘Jew it’ was used to tell smokers to cut off the top of their cigar.
Trek je vaders laarzen aan! Put on your dad's boots!
Moeder, die zijn me te groot. Mother, they’re too big to fit.
Snij er dan een stukje af! Then cut something off!
Moeder, ‘k ben geen jood. Mother, I’m not a Yid.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Holocaust, Israel and 'the Jew'Histories of Antisemitism in Postwar Dutch Society, pp. 315 - 340Publisher: Amsterdam University PressPrint publication year: 2016