On Literature and Teaching

  Our duty is to resist Aldous Huxley wrote a little book many years after his classic ‘ Brave new world’ , reflecting on some of the ideas from his novel and how they had evolved over time – especially as WW2 had taken place in-between, and the Cold War was in full flow. And Huxley writes: ‘ Perhaps the forces that now menace freedom are too strong to be resisted for very long. It is still our duty to do whatever we can to resist them’ . Here in the Netherlands, after Sweden, after Finland, after Italy, Hungary, Poland, Serbia and Switzerland, a General Election (to elect members of Parliament, in order to form a new government) has seen a Far-Right political party win the most seats, and by some margin. The Netherlands’ electoral system is fully proportional, so that, typically, the Parliament is made up of many parties, inevitably leading to coalition governments (not one party can ever obtain a majority on its own). So we’ve got this Party for Freedom – a telling name if th