Who expected that the opinion weekly EW (formerly Elsevier) would welcome the move to the right in the elections, is not familiar with the magazine. “Why a Wilders I cabinet is not good news for the Netherlands,” was written on the cover after the results. In the same issue, editor-in-chief Arendo Joustra dealt with the VVD, under the headline “How the VVD committed suicide in 4.5 months as the largest party”.
“We do not consider ourselves right-wing,” says Joustra firmly, in a conversation in his office with wall-to-wall bookcases in Amsterdam.
When Joustra was editor-in-chief for ten years, he compiled a collection of essays with the title Handbook Editor-in-chiefand the subtitle How you become, are and remain so. He had already taken those first two steps, but he also had a good understanding of how to achieve the latter. When Joustra (66) stops as editor-in-chief at the end of this month, he will have held that position for 24 years.
When he took office on January 1, 2000, the Netherlands had a 'purple' cabinet (PvdA, VVD, D66) led by the social democrat Wim Kok. Pim Fortuyn was a columnist for Elsevier. Beatrix was queen, with a role in cabinet formations. And the internet was still in its infancy.
“Grossically, half of the Netherlands voted right and the other half left. Elsevier was somewhat the voice of one half.”
So the voice of the right after all?
“We have never presented ourselves that way, but it always shows, even if we don't see ourselves that way. We are cheerful, optimistic, and entrepreneurial. Much more important is that there was a kind of gray blanket over The Hague, because the two antagonists PvdA and VVD were together in that purple cabinet. So there were hardly any discussions. You were sometimes bored by political debates. This gave us an open playing field.
“In Dutch journalism there was, and still is, a tendency to seek consensus. We didn't have that tendency. We actually enjoyed examining ideas received in the spirit of Henk Broekhuis, pseudonym of Karel van het Reve. Democracy lives on discussion. That's why I always read people I disagree with, it makes me sharper. You need that to become a better country.
“Everything changed of course – politics but also the media landscape – with Pim Fortuyn, 9/11 and the rise of the internet.”
Fortuyn was a columnist for Elsevier for eight years. How did his murder affect the magazine?
“That week's issue was just going to the printer when he was shot. It was of course a shock. But we had to get to work straight away. We were able to completely change the song in just a few hours. He considered me a kind of friend, but I felt much less like him because he was an impossible man who you would rather not invite to your party.
“During election time we had to distance ourselves from Fortuyn and we wanted that too. But it was not always seen that way, as is now the case with Plasterk and The Telegraph be considered as one. Of course we had many more columnists than just Fortuyn.
“When he was murdered he was no longer a columnist. We had a difficult relationship with him. When it came to migration, he was very concerned with cultural differences and religion. We looked at it more from the question: does our economy need that migration? By importing cheap labor you ensure that companies do not innovate with labor-replacing machines. So with cheap labor you keep your country poor in a sense. The companies that the migrants initially came to work for, in the textile industry and shipbuilding, have all collapsed. It was a stay of execution.
“Since Fortuyn, there has been a group of people who are angry or unhappy in a world that is globalizing, people who feel that they no longer have control over their own lives. Since then, that group has been rolling through the political landscape like a ball of mercury. One time it ended up with Fortuyn, another time with Wilders, with the VVD, with the SP, in 2019 during the provincial council elections Forum suddenly became the largest, in 2023 first BBB, now the PVV and if in two years When there are elections again, that ball will end up somewhere else.
“I find it interesting to look at what happened to the left-wing parties. Personally, and that seems very strange when you write that down, I am a kind of Marxist in my thinking from my high school days. I look empirically, at class, at being and consciousness. From there I look for the cause of shifts in society and ask myself: what causes these movements? Why did the left-wing parties let that underclass run away?
“That is a mystery. But it may have something to do with the fact that the left did not originally represent the authorities, but was actually a movement against power. When the left became part of power, it was more difficult to maintain the image that you can go there to oppose the government.”
You accuse Wilders in EW…
“Just say Elsevier..”
…not only that he calls a deputy prime minister a witch, but 'worse still, that he continuously undermines democratic institutions, for example by portraying the House of Representatives as a 'fake parliament' and the judiciary as a left-wing activist political group. The fact that he demonizes entire population and religious groups and refuses to apologize for this indicates that he can never function as prime minister of 'all Dutch people'.” A harsh judgment for right-wing readers.
“We have never been friends with Fortuyn, nor with Baudet. Others have sometimes described us as 'neatly right-wing'. What I wrote was that Wilders now presents himself differently, but that a fox loses his hair but not his tricks. Either he has been acting in recent years, or he is acting now. And you have to be careful, because the shelters are full of women who thought that their husband had really changed because he kept saying so.”
Elsevier's circulation has fallen sharply in recent years, from 150,000 in 2007 to around 50,000 now. How did that happen?
“There are all kinds of explanations for this. The good news is: until recently we were with a large multinational (Relx, formerly ReedElsevier, ed). That keeps you on your toes, so we have always made a decent profit and we still do. For us, the financial figures are just as important, or more important, than the circulation figures.
“You can also see that circulation has fallen in weeklies in other countries. Being in America U.S. News & World Report and Newsweek in fact stopped. Time Magazine, the icon that set the example for all weeklies, only appears every other week. In the Netherlands, two weeklies have become monthly magazines, HP/De Tijd and Free Netherlands. Now you only have weekly opinion magazines NIW, The green and Elsevier.
“What bothers us all in the media is that what readers want is no longer tied to a frequency of appearance or a specific title. Whether you publish as a daily newspaper, as a weekly magazine or once a month: everything on the internet has the same value. If you search on the internet you will find everything, but the title no longer matters. What remains are your own views, how you view society.
“There are many opinions in the Netherlands. But an opinion, for an opinion magazine, is based on research. And not on something you find or feel or your emotion.
“If you see the newspapers now, and I read them all, they seem to agree very much with each other – with De Telegraaf as an outsider. Even the Journaal and RTL Nieuws are fairly similar. For example, you hear little other talk about the banks or big business, which are the big evil. But that is precisely our raison d'être: not to go along with the consensus.”
What are your biggest concerns in the current situation?
“I have two major concerns. How will the Netherlands still earn its money in twenty years? When people write about business, it is mainly about the damage it causes, much less about the benefits it brings. Without companies like Shell, the entire energy transition is not possible. And think about the millions of people who work at such companies.
“The geopolitical situation is even more worrying. The ease with which it is denied, because it is easier, that we have a war on our continent that we must not lose. Which we have fought out by a kind of mercenary army, namely the Ukrainians. While America has said they can't fight two wars at the same time. In the Netherlands and Europe we think that we have a kind of strategic autonomy, without armies that can even remotely achieve that.
“In fact, we should not aim for 2 percent of GDP for defense expenditure, but for 4 percent. We still think we live in some kind of paradise on the North Sea and everyone wants to have money. As if that war doesn't cost money. And who will fight if Russia invades the Baltic countries? Yes, our army. But which Dutch people are still prepared to fight?”
The political situation in your own country is not one of your biggest concerns?
“As long as we hold on to our institutions, I am quite optimistic. We have talked about the PVV and how it undermines our system, but I am shocked when a PvdA-GroenLinks congress says that the monarchy must be abolished. The monarchy is important as a non-political entity, which acts as a kind of political umbrella over a country with fifteen political parties and six or eight religions, providing a certain unity at a time when many people think they no longer have control over life.
“You have to be very careful when pulling loose threads from a system that has been built up over 200 years. If you're not careful, you'll pull out a lot more. Institutions provide a framework, you have to stick to that, especially in turbulent times.”
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