Matthias Vanderaspoilden, deputy editor-in-chief at Humo, responded to this, again in De Standaard. “Arnon is a valued columnist for Humo. I can see that he takes it very personally, and that he also attacks the person. I would have preferred it if Arnon had given us his opinion first, then we could have debated it.”
According to Grunberg, that reaction misses the point. “In response to my piece in De Standaard (…) Matthias (Vanderaspoilden, ed.) said in that same newspaper that I ‘take it very personally’. Not a word about SA songs that have marched into Humo”, he writes today in an open letter in which he informs Humo that he is stepping down after 25 years “with immediate effect”.
“We regret this decision and would like to thank Arnon Grunberg for 25 years of cooperation,” Vanderaspoilden responded to the Belga press agency.
A passage from Grunberg’s letter of resignation:
“I am in favor of the broadest possible conception of freedom of expression. I would defend the right of neo-Nazis to demonstrate, but that does not mean that I have to march in the demonstration. You are free to trivialize and welcome revisionism in your magazine, but that does not mean that I wish to publish alongside the revisionist.”
“There is a lower limit, I never thought I would write this down, and it has been reached. My cooperation with your weekly magazine, my participation in your satirical community, is hereby terminated, effective immediately, as they say.”
