We Hebben Een Serieus Probleem

Submission 37,147

Part of a series on English to Dutch Translations. [View Related Entries]

About

We Hebben Een Serieus Probleem refers to a viral post on X / Twitter in mid-January 2024 by Dutch politician Geert Wilders and the response by English-speaking users who found the similarities between the Dutch and English languages entertaining, similar to English To Dutch Translations memes. The tweet notably became a reaction image meme format as it spread online.

Origin

On January 17th, 2024, Dutch political leader Geert Wilders (under the X handle @geertwildersppv) posted (seen below) about his concerns on X / Twitter surrounding a law proposed in the Netherlands that would mandate local municipalities across the country to make accommodations for migrants seeking asylum. His post about the topic earned almost 7,000 likes in two days.^[1]

The law was proposed because in 2024, amid the ongoing European migrant crisis, processing centers for asylum seekers in the Netherlands were reportedly overcrowded and underequipped.^[2] Wilders, who made his career as an anti-immigration and Euroskeptic politician,^[9] was opposed to the law.

Spread

Following Wilders' post, a number of English-speaking users began to discuss it as an example of the Dutch language's strangeness and beauty. For example, on January 18th, 2024, X user @MattBinder received over 168,000 likes in a day for proposing that the Dutch language sounded like English being spoken by the Star Wars character Jar Jar Binks (seen below, left).^[4]

Also on January 18th, X user @Grosdoriane referred to the post as a "new dutch reaction image," earning over 30,000 likes and 3,000 reposts in less than a day (seen below, right).^[5]

On January 18th, X user and The Eric Andre Show editor Jonathan Kramer (@dietkramer) "did the voice" (seen below) in a repost of the @MattBinder tweet of the original Wilders post, earning over 8,600 likes in a day.^[6]

The post by @MattBinder featuring Jar Jar Binks was also reposted on January 18th to the subreddits /r/2westerneurope4u and /r/PrequelMemes, where it received 2,800 and 3,800 upvotes, respectively, in less than a day.^[7]^[8]