Down with America: the Anti-American Dance
From the desk of Luc Van Braekel on Sat, 2005-09-10
"Down with America" is the title of a recent song by the popular Belgian musician Raymond van het Groenewoud. Written in Dutch and published by EMI , "Weg met Amerika" ("Down with America") will be available in record shops as of next week, and was played on Belgian state radio last Thursday and Friday.
Here is a quote from the lyrics of the song:
Hamburgers and coke, yes you already knew
But do you also know the cause of the general decay?
Short-sighted thinking, loud talking
Sticking to one-liners forever
Down with America! Down with the jerks from America
Down with America! [...]
Down with American colonialism
Down with that ugly, biting English
All the Anglo-Saxon pretence, arrogance
Yes, a hot pick up their ass
And that is that [...]
I am from the Belgian, the European panel
And I ask you: “Clear my channel! Clear my channel!”
Megalomaniac unicellular idiots
Kiss my ass, yes, kiss my balls
Incitement to hatred against people based on (i.a.) nationality is a crime in Belgium. In practice however, this law is only enforced when Arab, muslim or African minorities are criticized. Hate speech against the Americans or the British remains unsanctioned, as was recently shown when the leftist newspaper De Morgen published an article that complained about the British, "with their unique mixture of wantonness and arrogance, their pathetic addiction to drink, their bad taste, and actually just their ugliness and thickheaded presence".
In January 2003, the Flemish commercial radio station Q-Music was sanctioned by the Flemish Council for Disputes in Radio and Television, after a complaint from the Center for Equal Opportunities and Opposition to Racism (CEOOR). In their radio show, presenters Erwin Deckers and Sven Ornelis had described Venus and Serena Williams as 'monkeys'. The CEOOR decided that their way of reporting was "a gross insult to all our non-white citizens. The vulgar language [...] contributes to the banalization of racist speech. Hence, the program incited to hate based on race".
More and more, it seems that racist or semi-racist expressions are punished when they originate from popular culture or from right-wing politicians and are directed against muslims, Arabs or Africans, but that similar expressions remain unpunished when they come from 'progressive' artists and leftist intellectuals and are directed against the Americans, the British or the Dutch. |
