The Geert Wilders trial

[Louis VI the Fat]

Let me ask you a simple question: do you know any Indo's? No? I do. None of them froth at the mouth when the subject of Muslims comes up. In fact, some of our best mutual friends are Muslims. Moluccans, perhaps, are a different matter, but even they usually aren't raging PVV-voting Islam haters. That is, perhaps, only a small and bitter element of the Moluccan minority -- and even then that segment of Moluccans is probably a lot more bitter at the Dutch majority and the Dutch state for lying to them, not delivering on their promises and putting them in concentration camps.

But you probably don't know what Moluccans are, or do you? And you don't know what I mean when I say the Dutch state lied to them, do you? 'Cause you aren't exactly showing much knowledge of our society and our (colonial) history in this thread. In fact, because of your posts, I'm having a hard time not flying into a screaming rage about overbearing, know-it-all Frenchmen.

A) Moluccans are not relevant.
B) Of course I know what Moluccans are. 'Louis VI' is only a forum name. We, 'Louis', are a group of experts with knowledge encompassing everything under the sun.

Moluccans are 'Harkis', Indos are 'Pieds-noirs'. The former are indigenous peoples. The latter are colonists, sometimes of mixed race. Predominantly mixed in the case of Indo, mostly European in the case of the Pieds-noirs, unless one considers the Mezzogiorno to be Africa and
Each group has its own history, and lingering sensitivities.

Harkis/Moluccans are indigenous people who sided with the colonisers.
After the independence war was lost, the Harkis/Moluccans could no longer remain in the colony, which didn't want them anymore and where they were not safe. For having served militarily for the cause of the motherland, they were shipped to Europe. There they were unwelcome too, for being indiginous peoples, non-Europeans. This, and the sense of betrayal by the motherland for whom they fought harder than the motherland fought for them, caused a lot of resentment, which lingers on to this day.

See? It is not hard at all to understand Moluccans.
Nor Indos. The Dutch claim to uniqueness does not hold up. The difference between the Netherlands and the rest of Europe is not the past itself, but a willingness to deal with this past. Ireland has suffered from too much historical awareness. Poland suffers from too much historical navelgazing. The Netherlands, for its part, deals with its past by silence.
On the upside, silence is an excellent means of forgetting, persist in it for long enough and history vanishes indeed.


The Dutch, both the Europeans and those repatriated from Indonesia, have chosen to forget. But this is difficult for the repatriated. People tend to ask themselves questions, to wonder where they came from. They see old family pictures. The family home in that other land. They remember with bitter fondness the colony - which was their natural home, where they had lived for as long as Europeans have lived in the US.
There is the trauma of the motherland - cold, unhospitable and alien. In both people and climate. There is the cold shoulder from their 'European' neighbours. The allegations levelled at them of colonialism, of exploitation. The lost family belongings, sometimes even wealth.
The climate, the food, the family home - none of which were ever experienced again for most. There was never full acceptance in the motherland, the displaced colonial remains more foreign in the motherland than in the homeland from which history had driven him away. So foreign, so cold, that many moved on, emigrated to a new future altogether -America, Canada, Australia

Ask your Indo friends. Ask your friends' parents, grandparents. Yes, dig deep enough and you will find the traumas, they will be there.



Displaced peoples, diaspora, forced relocation - it is nothing new. These are intensely studied fields of 20th century history. Just why the Pieds-noirs in France are a bulwark of the FN, why the Vertriebene in Germany are far more to the right than the German population at large, or why the Indos of the Netherlands tend towards the hardright must remain a subject for another post. I shall gladly oblige should people be at all interested in discussing this.