Henk Hofland en de Massa 29

Ik citeer de omroep waarvoor ik als journalist langere tijd heb gewerkt:

De 'beste Nederlandse journalist van de twintigste' eeuw zat op 1 augustus 1986 met Ischa Meijer in een afgesloten kamer op de tweede verdieping van de Hilversumse VPRO-villa. Hofland was in 1986 al ruim veertien jaar columnist voor het NRC en was daarvoor hoofdredacteur geweest bij het Algemeen Handelsblad. Nadat dat dagblad fuseerde met de Nieuwe Rotterdamse Courant was hij korte tijd mede-hoofdredacteur, totdat er een geweldig conflict tussen hem en de hoofdredactie uitbarstte. Hij schreef naar aanleiding van dit conflict - en andere grote ergernissen over de gang van zaken bij besturend Nederland - de essaybundel 'Tegels Lichten,' zijn 'wraakboek' tegen de 'notabelen.' […]

Voordat hij in 1968 de jongste hoofdredacteur van Nederland werd bij het Algemeen Handelsblad, leidde hij kort het zaterdagse Supplement. Na de fusie met de Nieuwe Rotterdamse Courant bleef Hofland aan als hoofdredacteur, maar raakte verzeild in een enorm conflict met de directie, waar hij in 1986 nog altijd met veel woede en frustratie op terug keek. 

Hij vertrok als hoofdredacteur, maar kwam in 1972 terug als nooit tevoren met de bundel 'Tegels Lichten, of: Ware Verhalen over de Autoriteiten in het Land van de Voldongen Feiten.' De bundel bevatte geruchtmakende essays over allerlei 'affaires.' Hij schreef het boek uit woede en frustratie over de Nederlandse doofpotcultuur. 

Hofland begon in hetzelfde jaar zijn tweede carrière bij het NRC Handelsblad als columnist.

http://www.vpro.nl/speel.POMS_VPRO_056184.html 

Over het bombardement van Rotterdam op 14 mei 1940, waarbij 'naar schatting 650 tot 900 mensen' om het leven kwamen, merkte Hofland 41 jaar later op: 'Wat een enorme infame daad dat geweest is, hè, van de Duitsers' om het aansluitend te kwalificeren als 'één van de grootste misdaden.' Verder verklaarde de zogeheten 'beste journalist van de twintigste eeuw' het volgende: 'Ik ben een contactgestoord persoon, ik wil het liefst in m'n eentje zitten. Ik hou niet zo van dat gelul.' Veelzeggende opmerkingen voor een opiniemaker die onverhulde propaganda bedrijft voor NAVO-interventies, onder aanvoering van de VS, die, zoals bekend, miljoenen burgerslachtoffers hebben veroorzaakt, doden, zwaar gewonden, vluchtelingen. Meer dan 90 procent van hen ongewapende burgers. Maar voor een 'contactgestoord persoon' die 'niet zo' houdt 'van dat gelul' van andere mensen is het niet vreemd dat zijn autisme hem onverschillig en ongevoelig heeft gemaakt voor het leed van anderen. Hun leed is niet meer dan 'collateral damage,' en is voor hem daarom een te verwaarlozen detail in zijn ideologisch en manicheïsch mens- en wereldbeeld. In echte verhalen van echte mensen van vlees en bloed is hij niet geïnteresseerd, die zijn slechts 'gelul' voor een journalist die zich als 'hufter' opstelt, als ik even het bargoens mag lenen van de grijze éminentie himself zodra hij het over het 'volk' heeft dat zich, in zijn ogen, steeds 'platter en dikker' manifesteert. 

De aanleiding waarom in zijn ideologie het leed van de bevolking geen rol van betekenis speelt, is duidelijk: hij vindt het 'gelul.' Immers, wat moet de immorele spreekbuis van de gevestigde orde ermee, als 'dat gelul' niet in zijn propagandistische krompraat past. Daarmee is evenwel niet de oorzaak gegeven waarom Hofland ongevoelig is en blijft voor de werkelijkheid van het leed van anderen, die overal waar de belangen van de westerse elite moeten worden verdedigd of uitgebreid 'één van de grootste misdaden' over zich heen krijgen, zoals de slachtoffers van de NAVO-interventies in Afghanistan, Irak, Libië en Syrië dit ervaren. Waarom is hij ongevoelig voor de verhalen van de slachtoffers van de door hem bepleite westerse terreur? Men hoeft namelijk geen historicus te zijn om te weten dat 

No other system spilled more blood; no other system plundered more resources and enslaved more people, than the one we are told to describe by lofty and benign terms like 'Western parliamentary democracy' or 'Western constitutional monarchy,'

zo schreef Andre Vltchek, de van origine Russische auteur, onderzoeksjournalist en filmmaker in zijn boek Fighting Against Western Imperialism (2014). Ook Hofland weet dit, maar toch blijft hij spreken van 'het vredestichtende Westen,' alsof het neoliberale kapitalisme een altruïstisch systeem is. Wat is de diepere oorzaak dat Hofland 'vaderlandslievende eerzucht en strijdlust' prijst, terwijl volgens de Verenigde Naties in een moderne oorlog de aantallen doden onder burgers 

'have climbed from 5 per cent at the turn of the century... to more than 90 per cent in the wars of the 1990s,' en nieuwe 'weapons and patterns of conflict that include deliberate attacks against civilians are increasingly turning children into primary targets of war'? 

Waarom zijn voor hem de slachtoffers van de westerse terreur 'Unpeople'? De oorzaak van zijn levensbedreigende leugen, waarbij miljarden straatarme individuen worden behandeld als 'onmensen,' is allereerst simpelweg het feit dat de ideologie de gehersenspoelde opiniemaker blind heeft gemaakt voor de werkelijkheid. Andre Vltchek over de ideologische

writers of ‘new stories’ and manufacturers of pseudo-reality do their absolute best to block this line of thinking. There is no discussion about the fact that the world is now fully enslaved by Western neo-colonialism, that it is controlled and oppressed to the greatest possible degree.

The past is already fully changed and re-written, with collaborators coming from the ranks of both academia and so called ‘liberal’ and ‘creative elites.’ Grotesque lies are thousands of times repeated and therefore, as was suggested by the chief ideologist of Nazi Germany, they became truth. As Joseph Goebbels so correctly observed, many decades ago: 'If you repeat a lie often enough, it becomes the truth.'

The lies are retold about China, the Soviet Union, Latin America, about Western colonialism, and neo-colonialism, the Cold War, Afghanistan, and so many other essential places and events. Almost all related stories, except those that were pre-selected, approved, and useful for the propaganda, had been successfully eradicated, muted, or at least ridiculed.

Inside the Empire itself, almost nobody is protesting, except when it comes to demands for higher wages and better benefits. The Western masses became the most complacent, uncritical group of people anywhere in the world. It is obvious from the art they are producing and consuming, from their political affiliations, from their aspirations.

An amazing paradox has developed, without being noticed or commented on: the system, which has been professing both individual choice and extreme self-centeredness, actually managed to reduce a substantial part of the human race to an obedient, thoughtless, submissive, and frightened mass of uniformed beings convinced about their own superiority.

The individuality of people almost entirely vanished. Their identity is now closely linked and fully dependent on the manufactured identity of television stars, pop musicians and footballers.

'Extreme self-centeredness,' zo is, denk ik, de stoornis waaraan Henk Hofland lijdt het treffendst omschreven. Het verklaart waarom hij de verhalen van anderen als 'dat gelul' betitelt. Als enig kind afkomstig uit een kleinburgerlijk en beschermd milieu draaide vanaf zijn eerste jaren de wereld om Henk zelf. Als redelijk intelligent jongetje was hij van kindsbeen af niet wezenlijk in anderen geïnteresseerd, en zeker niet wanneer die anderen hem ook nog eens in de weg stonden bij het verwezenlijken van zijn brandende ambities. Vandaar dat hij 'autobiografische gegevens niet [wenst] te verstrekken.' Maar omdat hij toch gehoord wil worden, en vooral ook door anderen bevestigd wil worden, sprak hij zijn mond voorbij toen hij tegenover Ischa Meijer zijn essaybundel 'Tegels Lichten,' betitelde als een 'wraakboek' tegen de 'notabelen' in de polder. Daarmee demonstreerde hij de juistheid van de zienswijze dat wraak de reflex is van een rancuneus mens die zich tekort voelt gedaan. De Amerikaanse schrijfster Laura Hillenbrand wees er terecht op dat de

paradox of vengefulness is that it makes men dependent upon those who have harmed them, believing that their release from pain will come only when their tormentors suffer.

En dat Hoflands 'notabelen' geenszins hebben geleden blijkt wel uit het feit dat na het verschijnen van 'Tegels Lichten' in 1972, hij door een opportunistische koerswijziging de meest gerespecteerde spreekbuis werd van dezelfde gevestigde orde, waarop hij 'wraak' had willen nemen. Hij moest wel eieren voor zijn geld kiezen, want anders hadden de 'notabelen' korte metten met hem gemaakt. Wiens brood men eet, diens woord men spreekt. Dit besef, voortkomend uit het gevoel dat hij nooit van de elite zou kunnen winnen, liet een angel in hem achter, een bepaalde weerzin en onderhuidse woede, die met de jaren niet meer werd getemperd door een jeugdig elan. Zijn mateloze en tot op zekere hoogte gekoesterde wraaklust nam toe. De opiniemaker van bourgeois-Nederland richtte zijn pijlen niet langer op de gevestigde orde, maar op de zwakkeren, degenen die niet kunnen terug praten, en van wie hij geen consequenties te vrezen heeft. Hoflands houding bevestigd de wijsheid van de zestiende eeuwse Engelse filosoof Francis Bacon dat 'degene die op wraak zint zijn eigen wonden openhoudt.' Zodoende moet 'de beste journalist van de twintigste eeuw' voortdurend de werkelijkheid en, paradoxaal genoeg, zichzelf geweld aandoen. Hij is immers de woordvoerder geworden van de 'notabelen' die hem in zo erg gekrenkt hadden dat hij er vele jaren later 'in 1986 nog altijd met veel woede en frustratie op terug keek.' 

Henk Hoflands wraak kan niet anders dan geprojecteerd worden op de zwakkeren, of dit nu de onderklasse in Nederland is of de 'onderklasse' in de wereld, degenen die geen recht van spreken bezitten in het fascistisch universum van de geprezen opiniemaker van de 'politiek-literaire elite' in de polder. In tegenstelling tot de geborneerde Hofland die 'het liefst in' z'n 'eentje' zit omdat 'Ik niet zo van dat gelul [hou],' reist Andre Vltchek de wereld af, niet op zoek naar ideologische kletspraat maar naar werkelijke verhalen, gebaseerd op werkelijke ervaringen. 

It is logical and essential that the Empire tries to make sure that the real stories get discredited, destroyed, wiped out from the face of the earth; in order to prevent lapses, in order to make sure that human brains stop doubting and accept what they are being served.

Even the closest historic allies of real stories have been kidnapped, corrupted, and forced against them: books, films, music, and theaters, even fairytales.

But to the dismay of their tormentors, while in terrible pain, abandoned and endlessly sad, the stories do not seem to yield. It is because they are brave and proud, as human beings essentially are, and they know that so much depends on them – they are holding one of the last lines of defense against the capitalist genocide, against commercialization of life itself, against the attempt to exterminate human species as we know it.

As a storyteller I know all this, because they, the stories, are always talking to me. I also know that we will hold that imaginary defense line until the very end, together, come what way, with others who are still capable of thinking and hoping, and dreaming.

We will never cease telling the stories, real stories, because that is what human beings have been doing for centuries and millennia; telling stories, listening, learning, reading, moving forward, reluctantly, stumbling but moving nevertheless. We will be holding the line of defense against cultural fascism, because to succumb would simply be like betraying everything that makes life worth living.

For centuries and millennia people were dreaming about justice and kindness, they were fighting for better world where everyone has roof over the head, and food, free education and medical care, where there is no fear and no danger coming from beastly and greedy usurpers.

The ‘real’ stories were carrying such dreams, in their core.

Several years ago I sat in an old Café Brasilero in Montevideo, Uruguay, with one of the greatest Latin American writers, Eduardo Galeano, a man who wrote some of the most magical and powerful stories in the 20^th century.

Before we parted, he said:

'I am a hunter of stories; I listen to the stories, then I give this back to the people after putting the stories through a creative process. My position is always that in order not to be mute, one shouldn’t be deaf. One has to be able to listen in order to speak. I am a passionate listener. I listen to reality. Reality is a magic lady, sometimes very mysterious. To me she is very passionate. She is real not only when she is awake, walking down the streets, but also at night when she is dreaming or when she is having nightmares. When I am writing, I am always paying tribute to her – to that lady called Reality. I am trying not to fail her.'

If the regime decides to starve us, real storytellers, we will, as in the marvelous story of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, 'No One Writes To the Colonel,' rather 'eat shit,' than to betray that magic lady called Reality. The stories, the reality is not for sale, as the truth itself is not for sale.

Volgende keer meer over H.J.A. Hofland.

'Ik ben een contactgestoord persoon, ik wil het liefst in m'n eentje zitten. Ik hou niet zo van dat gelul,' aldus de immer naar aandacht snakkende opiniemaker.

Crimeans Keep Saying No to Ukraine

March 22, 2015

Exclusive: In a rare moment of honesty, a Western news outlet, Forbes, admits that the people of Crimea expressed their legitimate will in last year’s referendum when they voted to abandon Ukraine and rejoin Russia, an inconvenient truth for the U.S. State Department and press corps, writes Robert Parry.

A central piece of the West’s false narrative on the Ukraine crisis has been that Russian President Vladimir Putin “invaded” Crimea and then staged a “sham” referendum purporting to show 96 percent support for leaving Ukraine and rejoining Russia. More recently, Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland claimed that Putin has subjected Crimea to a “reign of terror.”

Both elements have been part of the “group think” that dominates U.S. political and media circles, but this propagandistic storyline simply isn’t true, especially the part about the Crimeans being subjugated by Russia.

Russian President Vladimir Putin addresses a crowd on May 9, 2014, celebrating the 69th anniversary of victory over Nazi Germany and the 70th anniversary of the liberation of the Crimean port city of Sevastopol from the Nazis. (Russian government photo)

Consistently, over the past year, polls conducted by major Western firms have revealed that the people of Crimea by overwhelming numbers prefer being part of Russia over Ukraine, an embarrassing reality that Forbes business magazine has now acknowledged.

An article by Kenneth Rapoza, a Forbes specialist on developing markets, cited these polls as showing that the Crimeans do not want the United States and the European Union to force them back into an unhappy marriage with Ukraine. “The Crimeans are happy right where they are” with Russia, Rapoza wrote.

“One year after the annexation of the Ukrainian peninsula in the Black Sea, poll after poll shows that the locals there — be they Ukrainians, ethnic Russians or Tartars are all in agreement: life with Russia is better than life with Ukraine,” he wrote, adding that “the bulk of humanity living on the Black Sea peninsula believe the referendum to secede from Ukraine was legit.”

Rapoza noted that a June 2014 Gallup poll, which was sponsored by the U.S. government’s Broadcasting Board of Governors, found that 82.8 percent of Crimeans said the March 16 referendum on secession reflected the views of the Crimean people. In the poll, when asked if joining Russia would improve their lives, 73.9 percent said yes and only 5.5 percent said no.

A February 2015 poll by German polling firm GfK found similar results. When Crimeans were asked “do you endorse Russia’s annexation of Crimea,” 93 percent gave a positive response, with 82 percent saying, “yes, definitely.” Only 2 percent said no, with the remainder unsure or not answering.

In other words, the West’s insistence that Russia must return Crimea to Ukraine would mean violating the age-old U.S. principle of a people’s right of self-determination. It would force the largely ethnic Russian population of Crimea to submit to a Ukrainian government that many Crimeans view as illegitimate, the result of a violent U.S.-backed coup on Feb. 22, 2014, that ousted elected President Viktor Yanukovych.

The coup touched off a brutal civil war in which the right-wing regime in Kiev dispatched neo-Nazi and other extremist militias to spearhead a fierce “anti-terrorism operation” against resistance from the ethnic Russian population in the east, which – like Crimea – had supported Yanukovych. More than 6,000 Ukrainians, most of them ethnic Russians, have been killed in the fighting.

Despite this reality, the mainstream U.S. news media has misreported the crisis and distorted the facts to conform to U.S. State Department propaganda. Thus, many Americans believe the false narrative about Russian troops crushing the popular will of the Crimean people, much as the U.S. public was misled about the Iraq situation in 2002-03 by many of the same news outlets.

Or, as Forbes’ Rapoza put it: “At some point, the West will have to recognize Crimea’s right to self rule. Unless we are all to believe that the locals polled by Gallup and GfK were done so with FSB bogey men standing by with guns in their hands.” The FSB is a Russian intelligence agency.

The GfK survey also found that Crimeans considered the Ukrainian media, which has been wildly anti-Russian, unreliable. Only 1 percent said the Ukrainian media “provides entirely truthful information” and only 4 percent said it was “more often truthful than deceitful.”

So, the people at the frontline of this conflict, where Assistant Secretary Nuland, detected a “reign of terror,” say they are not only satisfied with being restored to Russia, which controlled Crimea since the 1700s, but don’t trust the distorted version of events that they see on Ukrainian TV.

Practical Reasons

Some of the reasons for the Crimean attitudes are simply pragmatic. Russian pensions were three times larger than what the Ukrainian government paid – and now the Ukrainian pensions are being slashed further in compliance with austerity demands from the International Monetary Fund.

This month, Nuland boasted about those pension cuts in praising the Kiev regime’s steps toward becoming a “free-market state.” She also hailed “reforms” that will force Ukrainians to work harder and into old age and that slashed gas subsidies which helped the poor pay their heating bills.

Last year, the New York Times and other U.S. news outlets also tossed around the word “invasion” quite promiscuously in discussing Crimea. But you may recall that you saw no images of Russian tanks crashing into the Crimean peninsula or an amphibious landing or paratroops descending from the skies. The reason was simple: Russian troops were already in Crimea.

The Russians had a lease agreement with Ukraine permitting up to 25,000 military personnel in Crimea to protect the Russian naval base at Sevastopol. About 16,000 Russian troops were on the ground when the Feb. 22, 2014 putsch occurred in Kiev – and after a crisis meeting at the Kremlin, they were dispatched to prevent the coup regime from imposing its control on Crimea’s people.

That Russian intervention set the stage for the March 16 referendum in which the voters of Crimea turned out in large numbers and voted overwhelmingly for secession from Ukraine and reintegration with Russia, a move that the Russian parliament and President Putin then approved.

Yet, as another part of its false reporting, the New York Times claimed that Putin denied that Russian troops had operated inside Crimea – when, in fact, he was quite open about it. For instance, on March 4, 2014, almost two weeks before the referendum, Putin discussed at a Moscow press conference the role of Russian troops in preventing the violence from spreading from Kiev to Crimea. Putin said:

“You should note that, thank God, not a single gunshot has been fired there. … Thus the tension in Crimea that was linked to the possibility of using our Armed Forces simply died down and there was no need to use them. The only thing we had to do, and we did it, was to enhance the defense of our military facilities because they were constantly receiving threats and we were aware of the armed nationalists moving in. We did this, it was the right thing to do and very timely.”

Two days after the referendum, which recorded the 96 percent vote in favor of seceding from Ukraine and rejoining Russia, Putin returned to the issue of Russian involvement in Crimea. In a formal speech to the Russian Federation, Putin justified Crimea’s desire to escape the grasp of the coup regime in Kiev, saying:

“Those who opposed the [Feb. 22] coup were immediately threatened with repression. Naturally, the first in line here was Crimea, the Russian-speaking Crimea. In view of this, the residents of Crimea and Sevastopol turned to Russia for help in defending their rights and lives, in preventing the events that were unfolding and are still underway in Kiev, Donetsk, Kharkov and other Ukrainian cities.

“Naturally, we could not leave this plea unheeded; we could not abandon Crimea and its residents in distress. This would have been betrayal on our part.”

But to make it appear that Putin was denying a military intervention, the Times and other U.S. news outlets truncated Putin’s statement when he said, “Russia’s Armed Forces never entered Crimea.” The Western press stopped there, ignoring what he said next: “they were there already in line with an international agreement.”

Putin’s point was that Russian troops based in Crimea took actions that diffused a possibly violent situation and gave the people of Crimea a chance to express their wishes through the ballot. But that version of events didn’t fit with the desired narrative pushed by the U.S. State Department and the New York Times. So the problem was solved by misrepresenting what Putin said.

But the larger issue now is whether the Obama administration and the European Union will insist on forcing the Crimean people – against their will – to rejoin Ukraine, a country that is rapidly sliding into the status of a failed state and a remarkably cruel one at that.

Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his latest book, America’s Stolen Narrative, either in print here or as an e-book (from Amazon and barnesandnoble.com). You also can order Robert Parry’s trilogy on the Bush Family and its connections to various right-wing operatives for only $34. The trilogy includes America’s Stolen Narrative. For details on this offer, click here.

https://consortiumnews.com/2015/03/22/crimeans-keep-saying-no-to-ukraine/