Henk Hofland en de Massa 69

Tony Judt: The Best Man Among Us

Sunday, 24 May 2015 00:00 

By Jonathan Freedland, The New York Review of Books | Op-Ed

When the Facts Change: Essays, 1995–2010

by Tony Judt, edited and with an introduction by Jennifer Homans

Penguin, 386 pp., $29.95

More than a decade ago, I met Tony Judt for the first time. We drank whiskey in the lobby of a smart London hotel. He looked a little out of place: the scholar among the expensively dressed international businessmen and women, a visiting American professor who was also a former Londoner, born and raised in some of the city's shabbiest neighborhoods.

Only a few months earlier, in October 2003, The New York Review had published Judt's best-known or, more accurately, most notorious essay, 'Israel: The Alternative.' There he had declared the Middle East peace process dead, and the prospect of a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict buried along with it. It was time, he had argued, to think afresh, even to turn toward the notion of a single state in historic Palestine, one that would be a secular home to both Jews and Arabs. Yes, it would mean the dissolution of the Jewish state and an end to the Zionist movement that had given it birth. But perhaps there was no longer a place in the world for such a state. Surely Israel had become 'an anachronism. And not just an anachronism but a dysfunctional one.'

That essay had brought the roof down on Judt's head. He was not only denounced in the most vicious terms by the usual suspects on the American Jewish right and barred from speaking on at least one occasion, but also condemned by former friends and allies. He had been a contributing editor at The New Republic but suddenly found his name removed from the masthead. A onetime activist in a Zionist youth movement, a volunteer during Israel's 1967 war who had put his Hebrew to use as a translator, Judt was now declared by Israel's most unbending cheerleaders to be a nonperson…

That encounter in the London hotel lobby offered a glimpse of a crucial aspect of Judt's character: his refusal to surrender to dogma. An ideologue would have insisted that the truth was the truth was the truth and that there could be no adjustment for context. But Judt understood that the same argument could have different meanings in different situations, that even the most firmly held principles had to take account of variations in time or place, and that, sometimes, a position had to shift.

Freedom from dogma is the golden thread that runs through 'When the Facts Change,' a collection of Judt's essays - many of them first published in The New York Review - from 1995 until his premature death in 2010, aged 62, from Lou Gehrig's disease. The volume is staggeringly broad in its range, testament to the extraordinary eclecticism of Judt's interests and knowledge. He writes learnedly on Israel, France, Britain, the United States, Central Europe, the Holocaust, social democracy and much else. He is able to analyze both contemporary politics and modern history with deep erudition. There are profiles of Polish intellectuals alongside demolitions of Bush-era foreign policy, hymns to the glories of the railways next to detailed surveys of European welfare spending.

The common element is intellectual pragmatism. The title, apparently chosen by Judt's young son, refers to the riposte regularly attributed to John Maynard Keynes and cited often by the author: 'When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?' […] 

The question that hangs over any anthology of journalism, even one of the highest quality, is always the same: What relevance does it have for today? In Judt's case the easy answer is to point to evidence of uncanny prescience. His essay 'Europe: The Grand Illusion,' is a typical example. It was written in 1996, three years before the launch of the euro in a period fervent with excited euro-federalism. It was written by a man free of the sulking, Little Englander introversions of many of his fellow Brits: Judt spoke French, German, Italian, Czech, and some Spanish and had made his name as a historian of France. He had only just established, in 1995, the Remarque Institute, dedicated to bringing Europe and his newly adopted home, the United States, closer together. If anyone could have been expected to be a euro-enthusiast, it was surely Tony Judt.

Yet in 1996 he was full of realism and caution. 'The politics of immigration will not soon subside,' he wrote, reading the runes correctly. As it expanded, the European Union was rapidly dividing into 'winners' and 'losers,' he noted, describing accurately the situation that obtains now, nearly two decades later. The losers, he warned, would turn to nationalism. Right again.

Still, it's not for his powers of prophecy that people continue to look to Judt.

http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/30935-tony-judt-the-best-man-among-us 

De intellectuele en morele integriteit van de joods-Britse historicus, wijlen Tony Judt, ontbreekt volledig bij de Nederlandse intelligentsia. Eén van de oorzaken is dat, zoals de journalist Martin van Amerongen in een portret van H.J.A. Hofland schreef, de  leden van de 'politiek-literaire elite' in het polderland 'allemaal bij elkaar over de vloer komen, met alle inteeltverschijnselen van dien,' waardoor geen van hen en zeker ook 'een man als H. J. A. Hofland niet functioneert als het geweten van de vaderlandse journalistiek,' terwijl zijn claque hem wel ziet als 'de beste journalist van de twintigste eeuw.' Uit angst controversieel te zijn zodra hij de waarheid spreekt, kiest 'Hofland instinctmatig voor de Welingelichte Kringen of voor de man die zijn declaraties tekent,' aldus de typering van Van Amerongen. Hofland en de Nederlandse intelligentsia drijven gemakzuchtig met de tijdgeest mee. Zij zijn veranderingsgezind wanneer dit in de mode is en behoudend zodra de neoliberalen aan de macht zijn. Wat in Nederland doorgaat voor tolerant is niets anders dan pragmatisme. Daarom kon uit de 'linkse' stad Amsterdam procentueel twee keer zoveel joodse burgers worden gedeporteerd als uit België en drie keer meer dan uit Frankrijk, waardoor driekwart van de joden in Nederland werd uitgeroeid, met steun van Nederlandse verraders, de Nederlandse politie en de Nederlandse Spoorwegen. De mentaliteit onder Nederlandse intellectuelen is die van het pragmatisch collaboreren met de 'powers that be,' of die nu fascistisch dan wel democratisch, maakt niets uit. Zodra het erop aankomt strekken hun normen en waarden niet verder dan de eigen portemonnaie. De intelligentsia is een onmisbaar onderdeel van 'a world of widely communicated nonsense' waarin, zoals de Amerikaanse socioloog C. Wright Mills stelde 'any statement of fact is of political and moral significance' en  de 

quality of politics depends very much upon the intellectual qualities of those who are engaged in it. Were the 'philosopher' king, I should be tempted to leave his kingdom; but when kings are without any 'philosophy,' are they not incapable of responsible rule?

In The Sociological Imagination (1959) benadrukte Mills dat 

if men do not make history, they tend increasingly to become the utensils of history-makers and also the mere objects of history-making,

een feit dat eveneens opgaat voor de Nederlander. Volgens Johan Huizinga ontbreekt het de Nederlander aan een heroïsch levensgevoel dat noodzakelijk is om geschiedenis te kunnen maken. 'Hoe kan het anders? Een staat, opgebouwd uit welvarende burgerijen van matig grote steden en uit tamelijk tevreden boerengemeenten, is geen kweekbodem voor hetgeen men het heroïsche noemt,' aldus de grootste historicus die Nederland ooit voortbracht. Men collaboreert hier liever met de macht dan in verzet te komen. 'Hypocrisie en farizeïsme belagen hier individu en gemeenschap!' schreef Huizinga in het interbellum, waaraan hij toevoegde dat 'het niet [valt] te ontkennen, dat de Nederlander, alweer in zekere burgerlijke gemoedelijkheid, een lichte graad van knoeierij of bevoorrechting van vriendjes zonder protest verdraagt.' Dit laatste is een kenmerkend verschijnsel onder de 'politiek-literaire elite,' die propagandisten als Hofland en Mak onweersproken hun gang laat gaan. Mills constateerde meer dan een halve eeuw geleden:

Surely this is the paradox of our immediate situation: the facts about the newer means of history-making are a signal that men are not necessarily in the grip of fate, that men can now make history. But this fact is made ironic by the further fact that just now these ideologies which offer men the hope of making history have declined and are collapsing in the Western societies. That collapse is also the collapse of the expectations of The Enlightenment, that reason and freedom would come to prevail as paramount forces in human history. And behind it there is also the intellectual and political default (gebrek. svh) of the intellectual community.

Where is the intelligentsia that is carrying on the big discourse of the Western world and whose work as intellectuals is influential among parties and publics and relevant to the great decisions of our time? Where are the mass media open to such men? Who among those who are in charge of the two-party state and its ferocious military machines are alert to what goes on in the world of knowledge and reason and sensibility? Why is the free intellect so divorced from decisions of power? Why does there now prevail among men of power such a higher and irresponsible ignorance? 

In the United States today, intellectuals, artists, ministers, scholars, and scientists are fighting a cold war in which they echo and elaborate the confusions of officialdom. They neither raise demands on the powerful; for alternative policies, nor set forth such alternatives before publics. They do not try to put responsible content into the politics of the United States; they help to empty politics and to keep it empty. What must be called the Christian default of the clergy is as much a part of this sorry moral condition as is the capture of scientists by nationalist Science-Machines. The journalistic lie, become routine, is part of it too; and so is much of the pretentious triviality that passes for social science. 

Al in de jaren vijftig voorzag C. Wright Mills haarscherp dat de van zichzelf en haar omgeving vervreemde kapitalistische doctrine in een totalitair systeem zou uitmonden. 

[i]f we take the simple democratic view that what men are interested in is all that concerns us, then we are accepting the values that have been inculcated, often accidentally and often deliberately by vested interests. These values are often the only ones men have had any chance to develop. They are unconsciously acquired habits rather than choices.

Vanuit dit inzicht wees de Britse auteur John Berger erop dat grote delen van de arbeiders- en middenklasse 'zich niet helder kunnen uitdrukken als gevolg van de grootscheepse culturele deprivatie. De middelen om datgene wat ze weten te vertalen in gedachten is hen ontnomen… Ze bezitten geen voorbeelden die ze kunnen volgen, waarbij woorden ervaringen duidelijk maken.’

In feite gaat dezelfde 'culturele deprivatie' op voor wat Henk Hofland aanmatigend de 'politiek-literaire elite' noemt,  een kongsi van elkaar bevestigende opportunisten met een uiterst beperkte ideologische blik op de wereld. Wanneer Geert Mak zijn EU van 'Geen Jorwert zonder Brussel' verdedigt, dan is zijn eerste en allerbelangrijkste argument dat

de EU een markt [is] van bijna een half miljard mensen met de hoogste gemiddelde levensstandaard ter wereld. Alleen al voor Nederland is de Unie goed voor tweederde van onze totale export, eenvijfde van het nationale product. We hebben nu een open toegang tot die markt. Gaan we die deur echt dichtgooien?

Het is één van die duizenden voorbeelden waarbij de 'intelligentsia' in de polder geen 'alternatives before publics' geven, maar burgers domweg presenteren met voldongen, neoliberale feiten. Vandaar ook dat Mak zijn publiek naderhand via de televisie meedeelde dat 'meneer Poetin' het neoliberale Avondland zo ernstig bedreigt dat hij 'Europa [dwingt] om meer aan defensie uit te geven.' Koren op de molen van het militair-industrieel complex dat bij monde van de Nederlandse Commandant der Strijdkrachten, generaal Tom Middendorp, als volgt reageerde:

Of we het nu leuk vinden of niet, in veiligheid en vrijheid moeten we blijven investeren. Of zoals Geert Mak in de uitzending ‘Eén op één’ concludeerde:

'Vrijheid komt niet vanzelf. Voor vrijheid moet je knokken. Moet je concessies doen. Moet je ruzie over maken. Rode koppen krijgen en uiteindelijk weer naar de stembussen sjokken. Dat is allemaal vrijheid. Vrijheid moet je verrekt alert op zijn, want anders glipt het zo door je vingers.'

Volgens bestsellerauteur Geert Mak en zijn mainstream-collega's is er geen alternatief.  Voor hen geldt dat het neoliberale systeem en zijn NAVO de 'vrijheid' die 'niet vanzelf [komt]' verdedigen. Op die wijze is 'Vrede oorlog' en 'vrijheid slavernij.' De zogenaamde progressieve polder-politici en hun intellectuele spreekbuizen beaamden in de jaren negentig maar al te graag de visie van de sociaal-democratisch voorman Wim Kok dat '[e]r geen alternatief [is] voor de maatschappelijke constellatie die we nu hebben,' zijnde het neoliberalisme, en dat het 'dus geen enkele zin [heeft] daar naar te streven.' Het zijn juist deze mensen die vanaf eind jaren zeventig, begin jaren tachtig, de kant kozen van wat nu ineens door politici en hun woordvoerders als Geert Mak 'het grootkapitaal' noemen. Vrijdag 10 april 2015 berichtte de NRC Handelsblad:

Prominente PvdA’ers en GroenLinksers pleiten vandaag in NRC Handelsblad voor linkse machtsvorming. 'De linkse partijen moeten gaan samenwerken,' zegt PvdA-voorzitter Hans Spekman. 'Laten we alle kinnesinne opzij zetten en de krachten bundelen tegen het grootkapitaal.' Oud-GroenLinks-leider Femke Halsema roept op tot het sluiten van een 'links stembusakkoord' bij de volgende verkiezingen.

Nu de PVDA dreigt te worden weggevaagd als politiek fenomeen, spreekt de sociaal-democratie ineens weer van 'het grootkapitaal.' Hetzelfde 'grootkapitaal' dat, sinds het aantreden van Wim Kok als PVDA-voorman, door de sociaal-democraten met hun afbraakbeleid is gesteund via deregulering, privatisering en miljarden subsidies aan  de banken van 'het grootkapitaal.' Wanneer '[p]rominente' sociaal-democraten achteraf 'pleiten' voor 'linkse machtvorming,' en Geert Mak eerst moet toegeven dat '[e]r machten aan de gang [zijn] boven Europa, ik zeg echt bóven Europa, het klassieke woord grootkapitaal doet hier zijn intrede. Ik heb er nooit zo in geloofd, maar nu wel, die ons totaal ontglipt en waar je niks tegen kunt doen! En dat vind ik buitengewoon beklemmend,' en vervolgens met evenveel stelligheid laat weten dat 'we' de 'deur' naar de neoliberale 'markt' niet moeten 'dichtgooien,' dan zijn dit treffende voorbeelden van het feit dat achter de politici en hun praatjesmakers in de commerciële media 'the intellectual and political default' schuilgaat waarover Mills al in 1959 sprak. Van precies hetzelfde gebrek aan verbeeldingskracht is sprake met betrekking tot Oekraïne en de Russische federatie. In Frontline Ukraine  (2015) beschrijft de Britse hoogleraar Richard Sakwa de huidige 'Cold Peace': 

The reality of great-power politics is at the very heart of Atlanticism, although couched (geformuleerd. svh) in the language of universalism and cloaked in the benign practices of global governance. For its allies and associates the pax Americana delivered massive public goods in the form of peace and trade, albeit riven by inequality and policing operations to avoid defections from within and to pacify outliers. 

Ultimately, the Ukraine crisis was about Russia's refusal to submit itself to Atlanticist hegemony and global dominance. As I argued earlier, the challenge was at most partial, and certainly not intended as a frontal challenge. Russia's neo-revisionism sought to negotiate a path between classical notions of sovereignty and great-power status and adaptation to the norms of a globalizing world and the realities of the global balance of power. This balancing act has catastrophically failed in 2014. Russia's neo-revisionism assumed that there was space in which it could sustain its 'quiet rise,' on the Chinese model; but Europe is not Asia, and instead Russia has found itself on the frontline of the Atlantic system. Assuming that the EU could police its own border, the US had begun to 'pivot to the East'  to confront the challenger on its borderlands in Europe. 

Maar bij gebrek aan contacten en de juiste informatie beseffen de Hoflanden en Makkianen deze ontwikkeling niet. Hun primitief manicheïsme heeft een vijand nodig, die het Kwaad in de wereld vertegenwoordigt, het Kwaad dat zelf geen motieven heeft, behalve dan om, net als de duivel, Kwaad te doen. Met andere woorden: 'Poetin' kent geen ander motief dan machtslust, terwijl het Westen juist 'vredestichtend' is, en zich dus nog meer moet wapenen tegen het Russische Kwaad, althans in de visie van Henk Hofland, Geert Mak en het merendeel van de polder-intellectuelen. Het moet toch zo langzamerhand ook hen opvallen hoe volkomen gelijkgeschakeld de 'vrije pers' in Nederland op deze crisis heeft gereageerd. De massamedia zijn dermate gehersenspoeld dat geen enkele spraakmakende Nederlandse journalist van de mainstream-media een onafhankelijke analyse van de Russische drijfveren heeft gemaakt. Nul procent afwijking is gebruikelijk in dictaturen en totalitaire systemen. Ondertussen wijst Richard Sakwa, hoogleraar Russische en Europese Studies erop dat

A cold peace is an unresolved geopolitical conflict that retains the potential to become a full-scale war or to be resolved through some process of negotiation. 

Het is dan ook toe te juichen dat de haviken in Washington en Brussel bakzeil hebben moeten halen. De neoconservatieve zienswijze van Hofland en Mak heeft vooralsnog een nederlaag geleden. De goed geïnformeerde Amerikaanse historicus F. William Engdahl, een 'strategic risk consultant and lecturer' die 'holds a degree in politics from Princeton University and is a best-selling author on oil and geopolitics,' plaatst het conflict dan ook in de volgende context:

WASHINGTON BLOWS ITSELF UP WITH ITS OWN BOMB. US STRATEGY BACKFIRES

By F. William Engdahl

Global Research, May 26, 2015

New Eastern Outlook

Region: USA

Theme: Global Economy, Oil and Energy, US NATO War Agenda

These are sad days in Washington and Wall Street. The once unchallenged sole Superpower at the collapse of the Soviet Union some quarter century ago is losing its global influence so rapidly that most would not have predicted anything comparable six months ago. The key actor who has catalyzed a global defiance of Washington as Sole Superpower is Vladimir Putin, Russia’s President. This is the real background to the surprise visit of US Secretary of State John Kerry to Sochi to meet with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and then a four hour talk with 'Satan' himself, Putin.

Far from a 'reset' try, Washington’s hapless geopolitical strategists are desperately trying to find a better way to bring the Russian Bear to her knees.

A flash back to December 2014 is instructive to understand why the US Secretary of State holds out an apparent olive branch to Russia’s Putin at this juncture. At that point, Washington appeared about to pin Russia to the ground, with its precision targeted financial sanctions and its deal with Saudi Arabia to collapse oil prices. In mid-December the Ruble was in free fall against the dollar. Oil prices were similarly plummeting down to $45 a barrel from $107 only six months earlier. As Russia is strongly dependent on oil and gas export revenues for its state finances, and Russian companies held huge dollar debt obligations abroad, the situation was bleak as seen from inside the Kremlin.

Here fate, as it were, intervened in an unexpected way (at least by the USA architects of the financial warfare and oil collapse strategy). Not only was John Kerry’s September 2014 deal with ailing Saudi King Abdullah delivering heavy pain in the Russian finances. It was also threatening an explosion of an estimated $500 billion in high-risk-high-yield 'junk' bonds, debt that the US shale oil industry had taken on from Wall Street banks in the past five years to finance the much-touted US shale oil revolution that briefly propelled the USA ahead of Saudi Arabia as the world’s largest oil producer.

US strategy backfires

What Kerry missed in his clever Saudi horse trading was the sly double agenda of the Saudi royals. They had earlier made clear they did not at all want their role as world premier oil producer and market king to be undercut by an upstart US shale oil industry. They were happy to give Russia and also Iran pain. But their central aim was to kill the US shale oil rivals. Their shale projects were calculated when oil was $100 a barrel, less than a year ago. Their minimum price of oil to avoid bankruptcy in most cases was $65 a barrel to $80 a barrel. Shale oil extraction is unconventional and more costly than conventional oil. Douglas-Westwood, an energy advisory firm, estimates that nearly half of the US oil projects under development need oil prices greater than $120 per barrel in order to achieve positive cash flow.

By end of December a chain-reaction series of shale oil bankruptcies threatened to detonate a new financial tsunami at a time the carnage from the 2007-2008 securitization financial crisis was anything but resolved. Even a few high-profile shale oil junk bond defaults would have triggered a domino-style panic in the US $1.9 trillion junk bond debt market, no doubt setting off a new financial meltdown that the over-stressed US Government and Federal Reserve could scarcely handle. It could have threatened the end of the US dollar as global reserve currency.

Suddenly in the first days of January, IMF head Lagarde was praising Russia’s central bank for its 'successful' handling of the ruble crisis. The US Treasury Office of Financial Terrorism quietly eased off on further attacks on Russia while the Obama Administration pretended it was “World War III as usual” against Putin. The US oil strategy had inflicted far more damage on the US than on Russia.

USA Russia policy failure

Not only that. Washington’s brilliant total war strategy against Russia initiated with the November 2013 Kiev EuroMaidan coup d’etat has become a manifest, utter failure that is creating the worst imaginable geopolitical nightmare for Washington.

Far from reacting as a helpless victim and cowering in fear before the US efforts to isolate Russia, Putin initiated a brilliant series of foreign economic, military and political initiatives that by April added up to the seed crystal of a new global monetary order and a new Eurasian economic colossus to rival US sole superpower hegemony. He challenged the very foundations of the US-dominated dollar system and her global world order everywhere from India to Brazil to Cuba to Greece to Turkey. Russia and China signed mammoth new energy deals that allowed Russia to redirect its energy strategy from the west where the EU and Ukraine, both under strong Washington pressure, had sabotaged Russian EU gas deliveries via Ukraine. The EU, again under intense Washington pressure threw one monkey wrench after another into Gazprom’s South Stream natural gas pipeline project to southern Europe.

Rather than be defensive, Putin shocked the EU during his visit to Turkey and meeting with President Erdogan when he announced on December 1 that he had cancelled Gazprom’s South Stream project. He announced he would seek an agreement with Turkey to deliver Russian gas to the Greek border. From there, if the EU wants the gas they have to finance their own pipelines. The EU bluff was called. Their future gas needs were more remote than ever.

The EU sanctions on Russia also backfired as Russia retaliated with a ban on EU food imports and a turn to Russian self-sufficiency. And billions of dollars of contracts or exports from German firms like Siemens or France’s Total were suddenly in limbo. Boeing saw large aircraft orders to Russian carriers cancelled. Russia announced it was turning to national suppliers in production of critical defense components.

Then Russia became an 'Asian' charter member of China’s remarkably successful new Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) designed to finance its ambitious New Silk Road Economic Belt high-speed rail network across Eurasia into the EU. Rather than isolate Russia, US policy backfired badly as, despite strong pressures, US staunch allies including Britain, Germany, France and South Korea all rushed to join the new AIIB.

Further, at their May meeting in Moscow, China’s President Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin announced that the China silk road rail infrastructure would be fully integrated with Russia’s Eurasian Economic Union, a staggering boost not only to Russia bit to Eurasia into China, a region containing the majority of the world’s population.

In short, by the point John Kerry was told to swallow hard and fly to Sochi, hat in hand, to offer some kind of peace pipe to Putin, US leading circles, the American Oligarchs had realized their aggressive neo-conservative warhawks like Victoria “F**k the EU” Nuland of the State Department and Defense Secretary Ash Carter were propelling the creation of a new alternative world structure that could spell the ruin of the entire post-Bretton Woods Washington-dominated Dollar System. Oops.

In addition, by forcing her European 'allies' to toe the US anti-Putin line, to the severe detriment of EU economic and political interests, alone her vigorous participation in the New Silk Road Economic Belt project and the economic boom in investment that will bring with it, Washington’s neo-conservatives have managed also to accelerate a probable parting of the ways between Germany, France and other Continental European powers to Washington.

Finally, as the whole world (including even Western anti-Atlantists) came to view Putin as the symbol of resistance to the American dominance. This perception first emerged at the time of the Snowden story but has solidified after the sanctions and blockade. Such perception, by the way, plays a significant psychological role in the geopolitical struggle – the presence of such a symbol opens up novel venues in the fight against the hegemony.

For all these reasons, Kerry was clearly sent to Sochi to sniff out possible soft points for a renewed assault in the future. He told the rogue US-backed lunatics in Kiev to cool it and respect the Minsk cease-fire accords. The demand came as a shock in Kiev. US-installed Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk told French TV, 'Sochi is definitely not the best resort and not the best place to have a chat with Russian president and Russian foreign minister.'

At this juncture the only thing clear is that Washington has finally realized the stupidity of its provocations against Russia in Ukraine and globally. What their next scheme will entail is not yet clear. Clear is that a dramatic policy shift has been ordered on the Obama administration from the highest levels of US institutions. Nothing else could explain the dramatic shift. If sanity replaces the neo-con insanity remains to be seen. Clear is that Russia and China are resolute about never again leaving themselves at the mercy of an incalculable sole superpower. Kerry’s pathetic attempt at a second Russia 'reset' in Sochi will bring Washington little at this point. The US Oligarchy, as Shakespeare’s Hamlet put it, is being 'hoist with their own petard,' as the bomb maker blows himself up with his own bomb.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/washington-blows-itself-up-with-its-own-bomb-us-strategy-backfires/5451747

Zoals gebruikelijk zijn de neoliberale propagandisten Mak en Hofland hier muisstil over. Het ware beter geweest dat ze zich eerst in het onderwerp hadden verdiept voordat ze met hun onnozele maar gevaarlijke praatjes de aandacht claimden. Meer over deze kwibussen later. 

Theater College van Geert Mak. Half geïnformeerd en met een pedanterie die beschamend is. Het kenmerk van de polder-intellectueel.