De Volkskrant — Right-wing men are sensitive men, Sid Lukkassen knows

Reporter’s column. Margriet Oostveen in Duiven. 18 November 2021.

Ask radical-right philosopher Sid Lukkassen why he signed up for a filmed ‘sex date’ with ‘left-wing girl Jini’, and he says: ‘That was a multi-causal cluster of considerations.’ Typical Dr Sid.

He went away for a while after being exploited for Honeypot, the film by the artists’ collective Kirac. For anyone who missed the controversy: at his date with Jini plus a film crew, Lukkassen is talked out of his clothes and belittled so thoroughly by the project’s originator, artist Tarik Sadouma, that nothing works any more. ‘The impact it had on my sexuality and masculinity,’ says Lukkassen, ‘was just too weird.’

Afterwards, Sid Lukkassen phones the makers in tears. He wants out of the film, but even that makes it into the film. Sadouma coldly announces that he considers Lukkassen a justified sacrifice on the altar of art. And De Balie screens the film despite protests by feminists.

By then, Sid Lukkassen was already in Slovenia, the country of his new girlfriend, Vesna, where he says he was also treated for ‘neck problems caused by all the stress, by Professor Igor Ratzinger’.

People who knew him feared he might harm himself. ‘With good reason,’ say Lukkassen and his mother Tiny, who takes turns with his father Vincent sitting in on the conversation. Kind, proud parents. They did not continue their education as Sid did, they say. They have barely discussed the film, but now that they do, Tiny in particular listens and joins in with interest.

Tea and biscuits. Sid Lukkassen, who fears that Western civilisation will succumb to ‘mass immigration’, waves away my criticism of Forum for Democracy: ‘How do you think things are going?’ ‘I want to build a pillar. Create, bring things into being.’

What happened to him is the humiliation that usually befalls women, through websites such as GeenStijl, for example. Unlike those women, Sid Lukkassen has been zealously defended there. Volkskrant columnist Loes Reijmer has already written about it.

Kirac kept trying to lure him out for a long time, says Sid Lukkassen. He shows me a message from ‘Jini’: she promises him a ‘blowjob’ if he comes to the Honeypot premiere.

How could a radical-right philosopher who wears his doctorate like a medal fall for this so completely? Was it because of an autism spectrum disorder, as has been suggested?

Lukkassen: ‘Autism is not something any of us in this family concern ourselves with. We concern ourselves with people, not diagnoses.’

His father Vincent, who occasionally picks a bit of fluff off Sid’s jumper, says they did not have him tested for autism as a child, but did have him tested for giftedness, ‘and that has its advantages and disadvantages. Sid often sees the good in people.’

And there had been many setbacks in Sid Lukkassen’s life in the months before filming. The FVD members of the European Parliament, where Lukkassen worked for the European Conservatives, switched to JA21. Sid Lukkassen still starts shouting whenever MEP Derk Jan Eppink comes up. His beloved grandmother died. He had his tonsils removed. And his French-Cypriot girlfriend Christina broke up with him; they had been living together in her Brussels apartment for a year. He thought they would marry; she chose her career.

Now he is living with his parents again, in his old childhood bedroom with dinosaur posters and all his qualifications on the wall, from a ‘Social Skills Training Certificate’ to his doctorate.

There was so much hatred towards Sid Lukkassen, says Sid Lukkassen. He wanted to ‘break through that armour’. The girl Jini seemed to be that armour.

‘Yes!’ Tiny now says.

Me: ‘You understand that?’

Tiny: ‘Absolutely. I don’t think there is a single political party that has no supporters among our friends. But we meet as equals.’

Sid: ‘If only I could break through that armour, there would be hope again.’

Tiny: ‘For human kindness!’

Sid: ‘I wanted to experience someone seeing me. It was about me.’

Sid Lukkassen calls right-wing men ‘sensitive men’, lost in ‘the compartmentalised society where authentic rootedness and attachment are cut to pieces and accelerated into atoms’.

It seems lonely not to be able to explain everything you mean, I say.

‘Exactly,’ says Sid Lukkassen. ‘Any woman who googles me doesn’t want all that political shit. And I’ll have that for the rest of my life.’