Communication is a powerful weapon. According to Mayor René Verhulst of Ede in Gelderland. And strangely enough, he’s not talking about the power of the 32 m/f communications department of his own municipality.
No, he looks in the magazine Domestic Governance back to the commotion that arose after I questioned a book in an earlier column in which he satirized EdeDorp, a weblog that bothered him. “It is a great good that you can comment,” he says, “but also a great danger.”
Parliamentary questions followed the column, because was it actually appropriate for a mayor to lecture his own citizens through such a booklet? Also De Volkskrant and The Gelderlander delved into the issue.
To be honest, I’m a bit shocked by the fuss. In my column I was indeed strict with the mayor, but I did not want to silence him in any way. It’s actually quite something, a mayor who passes his own council, aldermen and communications department to finally be able to say something that hasn’t been discussed for hours.
Journalists can also be a bit more frugal with their indignation when it comes to their own profession.
For example, I was amazed at the amount of newspaper columns and talk show time that was devoted to the misadventures of three members of the media guild who had to go to the station to identify themselves during a group arrest of the Extinction Rebellion activists. I could imagine the police response: “Journalists not only have rights, but also duties.”
It is not Belarus here, you thought involuntarily, where even reading the opposition media meanwhile puts you at risk of years of imprisonment.
I therefore did not intend to return to the matter again. But the mayor’s response disturbed me more than reassured me.
It is mainly the anonymity of one of EdeDorp’s sharpest pens that appears to bother Verhulst. “Some things don’t belong,” he says about this in Domestic Administration, “You should not give space on your platform to someone who wants to remain anonymous.”
What he does not realize is that his own book is in a sense also anonymous criticism. Because every time he is addressed about his intentions, the work suddenly turns out to be fiction or cabaret. But when asked what he intends to do with his book, he suddenly turns out to be targeting his own citizens.
It’s the ambiguity that worries me here. The fact that a mayor adds a ‘but’ to a sentence in which he calls freedom of expression a great good.
When mayors are threatened by people who abuse free speech, they naturally find me by my side. But a manager who determines what ‘belongs’ on a critical citizen blog and what does not, is a bit of a squeeze. Then you are not yet in Belarus, but you are on your way to the border. Because communication is indeed a powerful weapon. That is precisely why it does not belong to the power alone.
A version of this article also appeared in NRC in the morning of October 18, 2021
Communication is a powerful weapon. According to Mayor René Verhulst of Ede in Gelderland. And strangely enough, he’s not talking about the power of the 32 m/f communications department of his own municipality.
No, he looks in the magazine Domestic Governance back to the commotion that arose after I questioned a book in an earlier column in which he satirized EdeDorp, a weblog that bothered him. “It is a great good that you can comment,” he says, “but also a great danger.”
Parliamentary questions followed the column, because was it actually appropriate for a mayor to lecture his own citizens through such a booklet? Also De Volkskrant and The Gelderlander delved into the issue.
To be honest, I’m a bit shocked by the fuss. In my column I was indeed strict with the mayor, but I did not want to silence him in any way. It’s actually quite something, a mayor who passes his own council, aldermen and communications department to finally be able to say something that hasn’t been discussed for hours.
Journalists can also be a bit more frugal with their indignation when it comes to their own profession.
For example, I was amazed at the amount of newspaper columns and talk show time that was devoted to the misadventures of three members of the media guild who had to go to the station to identify themselves during a group arrest of the Extinction Rebellion activists. I could imagine the police response: “Journalists not only have rights, but also duties.”
It is not Belarus here, you thought involuntarily, where even reading the opposition media meanwhile puts you at risk of years of imprisonment.
I therefore did not intend to return to the matter again. But the mayor’s response disturbed me more than reassured me.
It is mainly the anonymity of one of EdeDorp’s sharpest pens that appears to bother Verhulst. “Some things don’t belong,” he says about this in Domestic Administration, “You should not give space on your platform to someone who wants to remain anonymous.”
What he does not realize is that his own book is in a sense also anonymous criticism. Because every time he is addressed about his intentions, the work suddenly turns out to be fiction or cabaret. But when asked what he intends to do with his book, he suddenly turns out to be targeting his own citizens.
It’s the ambiguity that worries me here. The fact that a mayor adds a ‘but’ to a sentence in which he calls freedom of expression a great good.
When mayors are threatened by people who abuse free speech, they naturally find me by my side. But a manager who determines what ‘belongs’ on a critical citizen blog and what does not, is a bit of a squeeze. Then you are not yet in Belarus, but you are on your way to the border. Because communication is indeed a powerful weapon. That is precisely why it does not belong to the power alone.
A version of this article also appeared in NRC in the morning of October 18, 2021
Communication is a powerful weapon. According to Mayor René Verhulst of Ede in Gelderland. And strangely enough, he’s not talking about the power of the 32 m/f communications department of his own municipality.
No, he looks in the magazine Domestic Governance back to the commotion that arose after I questioned a book in an earlier column in which he satirized EdeDorp, a weblog that bothered him. “It is a great good that you can comment,” he says, “but also a great danger.”
Parliamentary questions followed the column, because was it actually appropriate for a mayor to lecture his own citizens through such a booklet? Also De Volkskrant and The Gelderlander delved into the issue.
To be honest, I’m a bit shocked by the fuss. In my column I was indeed strict with the mayor, but I did not want to silence him in any way. It’s actually quite something, a mayor who passes his own council, aldermen and communications department to finally be able to say something that hasn’t been discussed for hours.
Journalists can also be a bit more frugal with their indignation when it comes to their own profession.
For example, I was amazed at the amount of newspaper columns and talk show time that was devoted to the misadventures of three members of the media guild who had to go to the station to identify themselves during a group arrest of the Extinction Rebellion activists. I could imagine the police response: “Journalists not only have rights, but also duties.”
It is not Belarus here, you thought involuntarily, where even reading the opposition media meanwhile puts you at risk of years of imprisonment.
I therefore did not intend to return to the matter again. But the mayor’s response disturbed me more than reassured me.
It is mainly the anonymity of one of EdeDorp’s sharpest pens that appears to bother Verhulst. “Some things don’t belong,” he says about this in Domestic Administration, “You should not give space on your platform to someone who wants to remain anonymous.”
What he does not realize is that his own book is in a sense also anonymous criticism. Because every time he is addressed about his intentions, the work suddenly turns out to be fiction or cabaret. But when asked what he intends to do with his book, he suddenly turns out to be targeting his own citizens.
It’s the ambiguity that worries me here. The fact that a mayor adds a ‘but’ to a sentence in which he calls freedom of expression a great good.
When mayors are threatened by people who abuse free speech, they naturally find me by my side. But a manager who determines what ‘belongs’ on a critical citizen blog and what does not, is a bit of a squeeze. Then you are not yet in Belarus, but you are on your way to the border. Because communication is indeed a powerful weapon. That is precisely why it does not belong to the power alone.
A version of this article also appeared in NRC in the morning of October 18, 2021
Communication is a powerful weapon. According to Mayor René Verhulst of Ede in Gelderland. And strangely enough, he’s not talking about the power of the 32 m/f communications department of his own municipality.
No, he looks in the magazine Domestic Governance back to the commotion that arose after I questioned a book in an earlier column in which he satirized EdeDorp, a weblog that bothered him. “It is a great good that you can comment,” he says, “but also a great danger.”
Parliamentary questions followed the column, because was it actually appropriate for a mayor to lecture his own citizens through such a booklet? Also De Volkskrant and The Gelderlander delved into the issue.
To be honest, I’m a bit shocked by the fuss. In my column I was indeed strict with the mayor, but I did not want to silence him in any way. It’s actually quite something, a mayor who passes his own council, aldermen and communications department to finally be able to say something that hasn’t been discussed for hours.
Journalists can also be a bit more frugal with their indignation when it comes to their own profession.
For example, I was amazed at the amount of newspaper columns and talk show time that was devoted to the misadventures of three members of the media guild who had to go to the station to identify themselves during a group arrest of the Extinction Rebellion activists. I could imagine the police response: “Journalists not only have rights, but also duties.”
It is not Belarus here, you thought involuntarily, where even reading the opposition media meanwhile puts you at risk of years of imprisonment.
I therefore did not intend to return to the matter again. But the mayor’s response disturbed me more than reassured me.
It is mainly the anonymity of one of EdeDorp’s sharpest pens that appears to bother Verhulst. “Some things don’t belong,” he says about this in Domestic Administration, “You should not give space on your platform to someone who wants to remain anonymous.”
What he does not realize is that his own book is in a sense also anonymous criticism. Because every time he is addressed about his intentions, the work suddenly turns out to be fiction or cabaret. But when asked what he intends to do with his book, he suddenly turns out to be targeting his own citizens.
It’s the ambiguity that worries me here. The fact that a mayor adds a ‘but’ to a sentence in which he calls freedom of expression a great good.
When mayors are threatened by people who abuse free speech, they naturally find me by my side. But a manager who determines what ‘belongs’ on a critical citizen blog and what does not, is a bit of a squeeze. Then you are not yet in Belarus, but you are on your way to the border. Because communication is indeed a powerful weapon. That is precisely why it does not belong to the power alone.
A version of this article also appeared in NRC in the morning of October 18, 2021