People should turn away from hateful nationalism and learn from history, according to a speech by Prince Constantijn at a cultural awards evening.

At a ceremony for a set of international awards founded by his father, Prince Claus, the prince apologised for giving a serious address rather than his usual entertaining anecdotes. But he said that he felt compelled to speak out against hatred and “intellectual laziness”.

“My father was a war child,” he said. “Four years as a German soldier in World War II… scarred him for life and blessed him with an antenna for the risks of conformism, group think, nationalist hate and xenophobia. He taught me the importance of civil courage and that everyone has the duty to think for themselves and challenge the dominant viewpoint if it clashes with civil rights, freedom and basic humanist values.”

In front of his brother, King Willem Alexander, and a room of invitees to the Prins Claus “impact” awards, the prince praised the six international award winners for standing up for artistic freedom in sometimes repressive regimes.

But his address was also apparently aimed closer to home: the government narrowly avoided collapse due to concerns about “discrimination” in the “tone” of some coalition parties on ethnic minorities, in the wake of apparently anti-semitic violence around a Tel Aviv Maccabi/Ajax football match.

“In an essay about nationalism, written in 1945, George Orwell acknowledges that no human is immune to hate and nationalism but that’s a moral duty to fight against it,”  said Prince Constantijn. “And to do this, it requires that we discover who we truly are. What foiled us. To know what is history and prejudices. What the source of our hate is. And to accept that, without denying it, and then address it.”

He said that the six “laureate” award-winners challenged dominant narratives in their own countries: Rosa Chávez, a poet from Guatemala, Sana Na N’Hada, a filmmaker from Guinea-Bissau, Va-Bene Elikem Fiatsi, a multi-disciplinary performer from Ghana, Nguyễn Trinh Thi, a video artist from Vietnam, Myrlande Constant, an artist from Haiti and Mu Cao, a poet from China. The artists variously celebrate indigenous, feminist, ecological and sexually diverse perspectives. All but Constant were able to travel to accept their prize at the Royal Palace Amsterdam on Tuesday night.

The prince said their work challenges “us” to be more tolerant and less political. “Everything these days has become political – some even use the word weaponised,” he said. “And this is definitely the case when investigating identity, exposing political frames…and standing up for people, being an ally, especially when they face being cancelled. We are [overrun] with data, images, opinions, soundbites and reels, and find it hard to process the overload of inputs.

“Instead we may choose to retreat in our bubbles and echo chambers, nudged by algorithms and social media platforms. And in this deluge of information, easy truths can become our guide. But we cannot be intellectually lazy. We have to stay alert and bear responsibility for shaping our own opinions.”

He is not the only member of the Dutch royal family to make a political statement after the violence in Amsterdam last month, which mayor Femke Halsema regretted likening to “memories of pogroms”.

The Dutch king Willem-Alexander had immediately issued a strong statement saying “we must not look away from anti-semitic violence in our streets” or forget the lessons of history.

Three-quarters of the Dutch Jewish population was murdered by the Nazis in the Second World War, with a level of cooperation from the occupied Dutch state, transport companies, police and local people.