Multicultural Netherlands on edge thanks to World Cup and Holland Festival

 By Wijbrand Schaap

Whether it Holland Festival something to do with the World Cup? Almost every four years there is that question. And it is bound to become topical again if 'we' unexpectedly get beyond the famous first round. The NOS News will show images of empty streets and empty theatres, with a few, hopefully for them, distinguished people who, despite the excitement, still managed to get the Concertgebouw enter. Then the reputation will be reaffirmed and everyone will once again know how the Netherlands is supposed to be. With an elite that ignores popular feeling and a people that stands behind our boys as one.
Funnily enough, something like this is already noticeable before the start of the festival. Thanks to two commercials. Daily newspaper The Telegraph advertises its World Cup subscription in a spot in which all of the Netherlands is shown as under the spell of Orange. Until the last 5 seconds. Then, as a kind of afterjoke, we see a family, slightly Hindustani in appearance, standing with green flags in an otherwise orange street and we hear them say that they still feel a bit strange. Opposite this is an internet viral of the Holland Festival, in which we see mostly bewildered Moroccans and Turks, confronted in their jobs as pizza delivery men or bakers with Dutchmen doing classical Arabic singing.
Both spots each show guts in their own way. The Telegraaf adds a scene to the spot that would probably cause a few lawsuits in America, and the Holland Festival does go very far within the boundaries of what is now known as Ĺink Hobby: coquetting with a national arts festival that Islamises the entire elite under the leadership of a Lebanese.
We are curious to see whether this will be referred to by this or that in some debate in the coming week, in the run-up to the elections.