Perhaps a symbol of freedom of expression: director, writer and firebrand Theo van Gogh. Twenty years ago this year, he was killed. A massive biography of Van Gogh’s life will be published next week. “He has always remained provocative.”

From an early age, Van Gogh was convinced that freedom of expression should be absolute, says biographer Jaap Cohen. He is the son of Ayoub Cohen, who was the mayor of Amsterdam at the time of Van Gogh’s murder. For CV De Paul Gogh He spoke to over 150 family members, colleagues, friends and enemies about Van Gogh.

Cohen relied on Van Gogh’s personal archive, which was stored in no less than twenty boxes at the Institute of Social History in Amsterdam. “He kept things from all periods of his life,” Cohen says. “School reports from elementary school, notebooks, medical records, letters. Lots of letters.”

Cohen discovered that airing his thoughts unhindered was part of his habit from an early age. For example, one teacher wrote in one of those school reports: “He has his own opinion about things and does not hide his opinion.” Cohen: “You can see that in his later life.”

On November 2, 2004, when he was 47 years old, Van Gogh was shot and stabbed in the street by Muslim extremist Muhammad B. Who believed that Van Gogh insulted Islam, including in his film. surrender About the status of women in Islam.

Cohen worked for seven years to write a biography of the man who had fascinated him since his youth. “I grew up in the ’90s. You never knew what to expect from Van Gogh. His columns were so harsh and rude, he really tried to touch people’s souls. I was amazed by that and thought: How can you write this? Why are you saying this?”

Cohen finds an answer to these questions in Van Gogh’s ability to easily detect people’s weaknesses. “He could read people very well. He used this gift to conduct interviews and make great friends, but also in the opposite way. He knew exactly which buttons to press to provoke reactions.”

Good friend and film producer Gijs van der Westelaken agrees. “Once he had a victim, if someone was on the ground, he had to stay on the ground. The job of a columnist is also to insult sometimes, and he can do that like no other.”

Writer Lali Gul believes that society has not made any progress during the past twenty years. “Many say there has not yet been a new Van Gogh.”

Van Gogh pushed sensitive buttons with people, but also with subjects. Cohen says that in the 1990s, “multicultural society” was a topic that he noticed sparked many reactions. “At that time it was much more complicated to speak sharply about this subject. This was done first by Fritz Bolkestein (then leader of the VVD, ed.) and then by Pim Fortuyn. Van Gogh did not speak about the matter in civilized terms. “He did it in his own way and it was often very rude.”

Van Gogh had no friends with this approach, but when he was criticized, he did not back down. “Then he went further. For Van Gogh, freedom of expression was equivalent to freedom to offend.”

During the 1990s, threats against Van Gogh became increasingly ferocious. “He must have received that, but in his view attack was the best defence,” Cohen says. “He pretended not to be afraid, and I think he also tried to convince himself that there was no need to be afraid. But he definitely knew that he was in danger.”

“Knowing today, you could describe it as reckless or naive. Politicians and famous Dutch figures are much more protected than before, also because of threats on social media. This is the downside, but I don’t think Theo van Gogh would be the alternative. And he wasn’t To never restrain himself.”