The previous chapter on football antisemitism concluded with a reference to an internet column titled ‘The peeled shrimp’, in which it was suggested that players of Ajax, the Amsterdam club with a ‘Jewish’ image, got themselves circumcised. This can be construed as a form of pornographic antisemitism. The fascination for and aversion of the Jewish circumcised penis has been around for centuries. This chapter starts by briefly addressing the history of the image of ‘the Jew’ as perverse, and will then elaborate relatively recent Dutch cases.

The juxtaposition of three phenomena in football – ‘Shoah fatigue’ or Schlusstrichbedürfnis, ‘a desire to provoke’ and ‘pornographic antisemitism’ – would also manifest itself in a completely different social context: in the columns of the widely cherished enfant terrible Theo van Gogh (1957-2004). In 1984 this filmmaker and columnist published a notorious antisemitic pamphlet, resulting in a string of lawsuits. These judicial confrontations touched upon two urgent topics in the 1980s public debate: the question of unrestricted freedom of speech and recurring recriminations of an alleged Jewish monopolisation of suffering. These topics remained on the agenda, engaging various followers of Van Gogh, or kindred spirits, including the painter Ronald Ophuis (b. 1978), as shown in two of his controversial paintings.

The Netherlands into which columnist and filmmaker Theo van Gogh was born no longer exists. Van Gogh was someone who strongly rejected multiculturalism, particularly when it came to facilitating professing the faith of Islam, a religion he frequently came to refer to in pornographic terms. This grandson of the brother of the world-famous painter Vincent van Gogh became known worldwide for entirely different and very sad reasons: in 2004 he was killed by the Dutch Islamist Mohammed Bouyeri (b. 1978).

A short history of pornographic antisemitism

There are quite a few Dutch expressions and children's verses in which ‘the Jew’ figures, to put it mildly, as someone deviant, also from a physical and sexual perspective. The expression ‘Jew it’ was used to tell smokers to cut off the top of their cigar.