Update from H. Numan:
The DA will prosecute the people who blocked the coaches of the ‘peaceful’ demonstrators. The DA takes this form of vigilante justice very serious. Those brave people don’t have to worry about a jail term or even a steep fine.
Immediately a crowd-funding action was started to collect money to pay for the fines and legal assistance. A lawyer volunteered to defend the accused, free of charge. Legal experts have already said the DA cannot charge them with the very serious crime of incitement to riot or racial hatred. All he can do is fine them for delaying traffic. If everyone is penalized to the maximum, €15,000 is necessary to cover it. The crowd-source already has $25,000. Anything over the amount will be donated to a charitable cause.
Every year about this time the Progressive Left in The Netherlands attempts to get Black Pete banned, and every year they fail. This year is no exception.
Our Dutch correspondent H. Numan has the story.
Black Pete: The continuing story
by H. Numan
Folks, it’s becoming a tradition. Our social justice warriors call for racism, and I have to debunk them. Every year it happens again. And again and again. Always about nonsensical issues. For example, the Golden Carriage contains allegoric images of dark people. Racism! Give lots of money to Suriname and the other former colonies for compensation! Remove those images instantly! The Golden Carriage was build in 1898, when values were very different. Slavery didn’t exist anymore, nor did the artists feel particularly racist when they painted their allegory. You cannot look at history with our current view of today. Doesn’t work. But that never stopped progressive ignoramuses.
Another example: the word for waiter in French is garçon. It also means boy. The very few American progressive ignoramuses who do speak (some) French are appalled. This is beyond the pale! They call waiters ‘boy’! The shame! The humiliation! The fact that ‘boy’ has a different meaning in American English doesn’t mean that this word is racist or even offensive in other languages.
Exactly the same goes for Zwarte Piet, or Black Pete, in The Netherlands. We have a centuries old tradition: Sinterklaas, Saint Nicholas. You celebrate it too, but a more recent version of it. And on a different date. We celebrate Sinterklaas right now, with the highlight on the evening of 5 December. You celebrate Santa Claus on Christmas. Santa Claus is a mixture of Dutch, German and English traditions merged together into Santa Claus. In the 19th century these traditions crossed the ocean to America where they merged in what Santa is today.
The Dutch version is the original, and much, much older. It was already known in Germanic times. Woden rode his eight-legged horse Sleipnir over the rooftops to toss little gifts or sweets through the smoke holes. The Germanic tribes didn’t have chimneys as yet.
Christianity came along. The festival couldn’t be eradicated, so Woden became Saint Nicholas. Poor Sleipnir lost four legs and became a white stallion. Saint Nicholas then probably got a black demon as helper. That’s how the tradition survives today in Central Europe. In the Low Countries those black demons became Moors around the time of our 80-year war with Spain. Black Pete wears 16th-century Spanish-style clothing; that is not a coincidence.
Black Petes are jet black, and look a lot like American minstrel singers. That is all that socialists need to create pandemonium. If they look like racist minstrels, they must be racist minstrels. What we see is what we want to see. Anything else is ignored, ridiculed and beaten into submission.
The Dutch tradition is much more family-oriented than the American tradition. It still is mainly a children’s festival that grown-ups also celebrate. Every Dutch child (minus our more recent mohammedan imports) knows Saint Nicholas lives in a huge palace in Spain. Not at the North Pole. Together with his Black Petes. Once a year he gets on a steamboat (fairly recent tradition), to arrive somewhere in the Netherlands in the middle of November. This year that was on Saturday 18 November, in the little Frisian city of Dokkum. The arrival is broadcast on national TV. The mayor will welcome Saint Nicholas and his Black Petes, and accompany them when they make their entrance in the city.
Children are wildly excited now. In the evening they can place their shoe in front of the fireplace. Usually with a bowl of water for Saint Nicholas’ horse Amerigo and a carrot for him (Amerigo, not Saint Nicholas) to munch on. Again, the name of the dapple horse is a fairly recent tradition. It didn’t have a name in the past and it wasn’t dapple but white. The saint rides the horse of course, of course, while Black Pete walks alongside him over the rooftops, and drops little gifts and sweets through the chimney. Bad kids don’t receive anything, perhaps a stone or something. But that coal tradition is fading away. This tradition became your sock or stocking with coal or presents on the chimney. The difference is that we do that every evening until 5 December. You do that only on Christmas Eve. The gifts are most often small gifts or sweets for children. Big or expensive gifts are not customary here.
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A move to impeach President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe has been initiated in parliament by Zanu-PF, the beleaguered president’s former party. The removal of President Mugabe could take place before the week is out.
