As Monday’s ‘March for civilisation’ came to a halt in The Hague, poet laureate Ramsey Nasr addressed prime minister Rutte – and ‘orc’ Halbe: ‘Your cabinet is dehumanising us’.

Dear Mr Rutte,
I take it you or at least your Hobbit loving menial Halbe are listening
I’m not here for the arts. You want the arts to be independent and that is fine. According to you the American way of doing things will be up and running within 18 months and who knows, perhaps you are right. You probably have them lined up already, all those rich people who can’t wait to fill the gaps left by your orc.
I know, the whole of Europe is cutting back and there are countries much worse off than this one. I’m not here to ask for the money back. But here’s the thing: why do we have a junior culture minister who has manifested himself as a hater of culture? You wouldn’t give the foreign ministry to a man who’s never been abroad, would you?
I don’t think so. Only the culture ministry got landed with an orc.
And it could have been done differently, Mark, more elegantly. C’est le ton qui fait la musique. It could have done without the disdain and schadenfreude. I know you play the piano. That is nice. And I frequently meet your fellow party members in theatres, concert halls and museums. That is also nice. I even sat next to Frits Bolkestein once during a concert. That was the nicest thing of all. So why is your own parliamentary party leader telling Volkskrant readers that he can’t really think of a reason why tax money should be spent on culture? Stef Blok thinks people want to hear this, prime minister, and is making political gain out of this. And he didn’t stop there. ‘Zoos have educational value. And bicycle shops have an effect on health but don’t get any subsidies for that,’ he said.
Of course you and I know that zoos and bicycle shops are subsidised in some way or other, look at the National Cycle Plan. Stef Blok is fibbing, I think. But he is a member of the VVD and they don’t fib. It is all very confusing.
Art doesn’t sell. I think you are using art as a scapegoat, a bit like the immigrants. Suddenly we’re all parasites with nothing better to do than to sit on our backsides waiting for the next stipend. I can’t help the way my thoughts run sometimes. When I’m feeling really pessimistic I think that you talk about art in this way because it is an easy target and a vote winner. You don’t want more people to go over to the PVV. But maybe I’m being silly.
It’s not as if we’re such a burden. Someone who knows about these thing once told me that there’s a piggy bank with more than 5 billion just sitting there. It’s the mortgage relief piggy bank. Mortgage relief is a kind of subsidy for people who want to buy a house. There are very rich people who don’t need this subsidy and if this money were to be put in a piggy bank we would have five billion euros. Think about it.
Again, I’m not here for the arts. I’m here for our culture. This cabinet has ceased to see culture as the basis of our civilisation. It’s a plaything to be discarded at will.
You, prime minister, disregard everything that cannot be caught in the net of the market. The immaterial frightens your ministers, too. That is why your health minister can unashamedly say that depressions and other psychiatric illnesses should be ‘sorted out privately’.
If that is what you really mean why not say so. Say: ‘Dear citizens of the Netherlands, we believe that might is right.’ Be honest and don’t pretend you are protecting the vulnerable.
Don’t call it ‘an impulse for quality’. And whatever you do don’t call it ‘giving this beautiful country back to its people’.
Not only are you ignoring the millions of Dutch people who come from different backgrounds, you also are also erasing the memory of this country. You know Harry Mulisch, Ramses Shaffy, Vondel, Baruch de Spinoza…not a drop of Dutch blood between them. The Netherlands was built on immigrants. Not that it matters as long as you don’t go around saying otherwise.
There are some things that separate men from animals. Art is one of them. Acquiring knowledge and helping others as well. Art, knowledge and altruism make us human.
When a government chooses not to support these things and hones in on the arts knowing it will derive little benefit from this, something has gone very wrong with our civilisation.
And of course we could spend all out money eating, buying houses, fucking or sleeping. Because art acts as an irritant, like an immigrant acts as an irritant, like doubt or nuance or the complaints of a depressive act as irritants. These things make us doubt utopia. The utopia of the racially pure nation, for example, or the ideal of the free market. And that is what irks you, prime minister.
Today is not about the arts, it’s about humanity. This cabinet is dehumanising us.
We, just as anybody else have to face these cutbacks painful though they are. But we want them to be fair and respectful of our country’s culture.
This is an unofficial translation