‘I was brought up with the 1951 translation of the Bible, but also glad that since then translations have appeared in which new words have been found.’ Thus Gouke Moes, double-deputy minister of OCW. With this interesting formulation, he responded during the Culture legislative consultation to the question of PVV MP Bosma, who wanted to know what Moes thought of the ‘sensitivity reader’ phenomenon in some publishing houses. A fine example of BBB diplomacy.
Although the personal opinion of a minister is irrelevant, the now again full-on racist organ-rattling Bosma tried something with Gouke Moes, knowing that privately the man is at least as rabidly extreme as the former parliamentary speaker. When asked, the minister was willing to say in his third term that as a child he had enjoyed ‘all the jokes and pranks surrounding black piet and sinterklaas’.
Trumpism
The legislative consultation of 19 January 2026 was thus a curious meeting. The Chamber was talking to a minister who had done very little, in a ministry that, thanks to NSC minister Eppo Bruins, has kept quiet for the past Cabinet term. Now, double-demissionary, it is waiting for a new Cabinet, which will have to find a new majority with a sizeable minority for every decision. This could be with a centre-left party like Green Left/PvdA, but also with the bloc on the right, consisting of PVV, JA21, FvD and BBB. Parties that hold fairly strict substantive views on art.
The most remarkable thing about this debate came right at the beginning. PVV's Martin Bosma has been in a groove full of racist cliché repertoire since 2010, with attacks on ‘woke’, ‘left’, people of colour and transgender people and a recurring plea for a Black Pete. This time, he started with something new. Cheering with approval, he cited the Trump regime's new defence strategy in the US: Western culture would be destroyed by leftist elites, using the American euphemism for ‘repopulation’: civilisational erasure’.
This genuflection to Trumpism was audibly heartily supported by Annabel Nanninga of JA21, Pepijn van Houwelingen of FvD and Caroline van der Plas of BBB. On the Monday when the fresh US autocrat states that he wants to obliterate Greenland because Norway did not award him the Nobel Peace Prize, this is disturbing to say the least.
Hazing
This time, the attacks by the Trumpist Bloc, as we can now thus unceremoniously refer to these four parties, were directed not only at minorities and artists, but also at the two new MPs on the committee, namely Heera Dijk of D66 and Eveline Tijmsma of the CDA.
Bosma had taken it upon himself to hazing Heera Dijk, with his advocacy of Zwarte Piet and attacks on people of colour, the persistent use of the word ‘white’ and emphasising the superiority of his western species. Annabel Nanninga opened fire on Eveline Tijmsma by dismissing the CDA as ‘that party that is about heritage and regional art’.
Both debutant MPs restrained themselves admirably. In particular, Heera Dijk's self-control next to Bosma could almost be called herculean, that's how crude Bosma was being.
And then came Pepijn van Houwelingen and Caroline van der Plas.
Indians and eskimos
Since, apart from Volt, the coalition and GL-PvdA, no other party was present, the Trumpists had every opportunity to spew their bile. They made grateful use of it, knowing that the current minister must also have nothing to do with things like diversity and inclusion. Nanninga complained that she was no longer allowed to refer to the original inhabitants of the US as natives of India, and to call the Inuit by the way they prepare their food.
Pepijn van Houwelingen wanted to abolish all subsidies except those for castles, and also argued that the Council for Culture should no longer be allowed to discuss subsidies, “because it contains people who warn against disinformation, and so FvDers have no chance there.”
Caroline van der Plas was keen to stop all subsidies to cultural institutions that had called for a boycott of Israeli cultural organisations that supported the Netanyahu regime in its genocidal war against the people of Gaza.
Prinsenhof
The other parties' pleas, for indexation of cultural subsidies and better incomes for young creators then snowballed into discussions about a restoration subsidy for the Delft Prinsenhof and extra millions for the Van Gogh Museum.
Gouke Moes announced a number of written replies, so these are now already on the desk of his successor. The latter will in all likelihood start work in March.
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