Column: 'Let Love Rule'

The Occupy Wall Street movement has arrived in The Hague. Indignant protestors, the ‘Indignados’, demonstrated on 15 October on the Plein and Malieveld.

Peaceful, creative, full of humour – just as in 95 other cities in the world. There were only riots in Rome. That’s a pity.

In The Hague the statue of William of Orange is occupied. A young man stands on the statue’s pedestal. He holds a sign. The sign says ‘I am an architect, I went to university. I am unemployed. I want to work.’

An attractive young woman dances next to him. She could be a model. She is also holding a banner up to the brilliantly blue sky above The Hague. It reads: 'Let Love Rule.' She dances to the rhythm of the drums which other protestors are beating. The mood on the Plein is festive. The strong police presence, positioned in the background on the Binnenhof, does not need to intervene.

Occupy is a lifestyle

The worldwide Occupy movement is mainly against the shameless culture of greed and bonuses among the banks, which lies at the heart of the current global debt crisis. The new protest movement is diffuse. It doesn’t have any leaders or heroes (as yet). It (still) doesn’t have a well-substantiated ideological foundation apart from the socialist-tinted criticism of capitalism. However, this does not represent the Occupy movement’s mainstream. Occupy is a lifestyle. The protestors are not ‘left-wing dreamers’ or ‘right-wing hooligans’. They are young and old and a remarkable number of people from the middle classes. The people who have to foot the bill for what essentially the greedy bankers – but also incompetent politicians – have done to us.

Greed

'Greed is good', Gordon Gekko says in the film ‘Wall Street’. But 'Greed is good' changed into 'Greed is God'. The greed became a god, an idol, a golden calf, symbolised by one name: Bernard Madoff. Mayor Jozias van Aartsen proved once again that he is a true liberal. He allowed the Occupy demonstrators to camp out on Malieveld and continue to protest a week longer. He gets my compliments for this.

P.S.: Madoff is facing a lawsuit. However, there won’t be any legal proceedings at the International Criminal Court in The Hague against another crook: Muammar Gaddafi. And that’s a pity.