Top official, Taco Dankers, of Ongehoord Nederland, a new right-wing Dutch public television channel, resigned due to reports linking him to antisemitic propaganda.
Taco Dankers, head of the supervisory board at Ongehoord Nederland (Unheard Netherlands), quit after the NRC daily reported that he makes antisemitic comments in interviews and promotes conspiracies about Jews in his think-tank. The populist channel is due to join the Netherlands’ public television system in January 2022 and receive 3.6 million euros in public funds.
“NRC reported on Tuesday that Dankers was the head of Gefira, a radical right-wing group that has claimed that mass migration to Europe is a Jewish plot to “dilute” the West and that the Jews were responsible for much of the Netherlands slave trade,” writes The Times of Israel.
Moreover, the NRC report claims that during a 2017 interview, Dankers promoted a common conspiracy theory that “the Rothschilds and the Jews (are) pushing a program” for mass immigration.
Dankers claims that his staying would harm the broadcaster due to the controversy around his person, and therefore resigned from his post. Nevertheless, he added that he strongly distances himself from antisemitism, racism and statements that lead to polarization, discrimination and hate speech.
The Dutch public broadcasting system NPO said that “antisemitism and racism have no place in public broadcasting.”
Ongehoord Nederland declared that it aims to broadcast “unheard” opinions, including those that are “rejected as populist on the basis of political correctness.” Nonetheless, the media said it was aligned with the views of the far-right PVV party of Geert Wilders and the Forum for Democracy party of Covid-sceptic politician Thierry Baudet.
Photo credit: mandiner.hu
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