ABSTRACT
The intellectual roots of the nihilist and ironic discourse of GeenStijl can be traced back to the Dutch 1960s, when a peculiar right-wing intellectual figure emerged on the scene, epitomized by famous writers such as W.F. Hermans and Gerard Reve. W.F. Hermans used his nihilism as a weapon to fight progressive Dutch intellectuals who moralized over the legacy of the Second World War. In this capacity as a critic of Dutch post-war progressivism, Hermans has been hailed as the intellectual godfather of the conservative campaign against political correctness that gathered pace in the 1990s. Similarly, Gerard Reve has been identified as an intellectual godfather of sorts to the right-wing backlash of the 1990s and 2000s. The intellectual Bas Heijne identified Gerard Reve as the greatest influence on the part ironic, part pestering, part deadly serious tone of Dutch populism. This chapter argues that Reve and Hermans formed an underexplored right-wing current in the wave of secularization of the 1960s and 1970s. It shows how Theo van Gogh and later GeenStijl continued in this tradition of right-wing iconoclasm.
