Hero Brinkman: Facts are for the elite, it's all about the tone

Classical music is elitist, most conductors and orchestra members don't have a clue what they are doing and audiences have absolutely no clue. Subsidised art should be both accessible to a large audience and socially engaged. Furthermore, I believe that The Joshua Tree might be the best record ever. Was signed, Hero Brinkman in HP/De Tijd.

Very cleverly placed HP/De Tijd the most provocative statements online, and soon came the predictable reactions. Brinkman doesn't understand anything about conducting, doesn't hear the difference between Mahler and Sibelius himself, of course there are many people who enjoy listening to Radio4 and so on.

Each one understandable. And Brinkman will have read it all chuckling: ha, there they go again, all those culture geeks, they are all falling for it again.

Because who is stirring? The classical music lovers, of course. The rest of the Netherlands thinks, yes, that's also true, it's elitist and I don't understand a thing about it either. And that conducting? Surely anyone can do that with a few lessons, or so I learned. Maestro.

Thus Brinkman is once again framing lustily. For someone working for the Amsterdam criminal investigation department, Brinkman seems remarkably bad at collecting facts, let alone looking at them soberly. So he sighs: "And if you want to go to the Concertgebouw Orchestra, you can easily spend one hundred and eighty euros for a ticket. Then I think: if such a ticket is so expensive anyway, you might as well throw fifty euros on top and close the subsidy tap."

That even for one of the Concertgebouw Orchestra's most expensive concerts you don't have to pay more than 122.50 and even then you can get in for 30 euros, oh well. Facts are completely unimportant to politician Brinkman. He doesn't want a substantive discussion at all either, it won't achieve anything anyway. He learned that all too well in his time with the PVV. You make a bunch of nonsensical remarks about conductors and the ignorant public, people fall over them, even get defensive about the importance of subsidising the Concertgebouw Orchestra, but what sticks in their minds is: why can't those rich elitists pay a few tens more.

Brinkman does it very cleverly: he deliberately attacks the Concertgebouw Orchestra, which many people think is for the elite anyway, with inaccurate numbers. He says nothing about museums (frankly, I don't like visual art), opera and other orchestras, but deftly creates a climate in which people think: yes, it's too crazy for words. Art should be widely accessible and a bit of commitment is allowed too!

It is tempting to ridicule Brinkman and his plea for engaged art seems to come straight from the 1970s Dutch Labour Party quiver. Hero Brinkman peppers away at it anyway. Did Halbe Zijlstra talk about Metallica? Then I start talking about U2 and Simple Minds. When Arno Rutte asked for an apology from an entire sector, I say that culture is very important, but must be committed and widely accessible.

And who exactly is Brinkman? After he quit the PVV and continued as a one-man faction, he did not win a single seat in 2012. Nor will he succeed with his as yet unnamed new party. But ignoring and dismissing Brinkman's argument as mere populist pub talk is too easy. After all, the underlying message is clear: less subsidy for what Brinkman thinks voters see as elitist culture. And in the run-up to elections where every party is desperate for those few more votes, that message is all too readily adopted by other parties. PVV and VVD are champing at the bit and the Labour minister in charge is swerving from one piece of advice to another.

The question remains whether Hero Brinkman himself was framed by HP/De Tijd, because surely it can't be a coincidence that his 'cultural agenda' is in the theme issue of the very same year Praise of satiety has been placed?