Donderdag 11 februari 2016 meldde de schnabbelende auteur Arnon Grunberg in zijn inmiddels verdwenen mini-column op de voorpagina van de Volkskrant:
‘Westerse samenlevingen zijn nu democratischer dan ooit,’ schreef Ian Buruma zaterdag in NRC Handelsblad. Buruma stelt dat een functionerende democratie remmen nodig heeft wil zij niet ontaarden in een dictatuur van de meerderheid. Buruma's zorgen zijn terecht.
Het Trumpisme is een opstand tegen de serieuze politiek
Kandidaten genoeg, dus waarom vallen kiezers in zo’n campagne juist voor de clowns, vraagt Ian Buruma zich af…
Volgens Trumps critici speelt Trump in op de onderbuikgevoelens van de meest rancuneuze kiezers, de mensen die vreemdelingen (en vooral Mexicanen) haten, eigenlijk iedereen die gestudeerd heeft wantrouwen en de verkiezing van een president met een zwarte vader nog altijd niet hebben verteerd. Trump, zegt de komiek Jon Stewart, is ‘de identiteit van Amerika,’ of in elk geval de identiteit van een groot aantal blanke, meestal wat oudere en kleinstedelijke Amerikanen.
Dat is allemaal waar. Maar Trump maakt ook deel uit van een verschijnsel dat we in veel democratische landen zien. Rancuneuze kiezers bestaan overal, in de VS, in Europa, en ook in India, waar een populistische partij aan de macht is. Maar er is hier meer aan de hand dan alleen een afkeer van de klassieke politieke partijen. Populisten die beloven dat ze corrupte machtselites een lesje zullen leren, doen het nu overal goed. Maar veel mensen hebben bovendien een uitgesproken voorkeur voor politieke entertainers – zeg maar clowns.
https://www.nrc.nl/nieuws/2015/08/12/het-trumpisme-is-een-opstand-tegen-de-serieuze-pol-1523329-a535926
https://www.nrc.nl/nieuws/2015/08/12/het-trumpisme-is-een-opstand-tegen-de-serieuze-pol-1523329-a535926
In verband met de toenemende ‘vijandigheid’ van de gedepriveerde onderkaste tegen ‘minderheden met een vreemde culturele of religieuze achtergrond,’ stelde Buruma in NRC Handelsblad van 14 maart 2017 dat de de animositeit weer
helemaal terug [is]. Plus de haat tegen kosmopolitische elites. Een goede manier om te polsen aan welke kant iemand staat is de vraag wat hij vindt van de internationale geldschieter en filantroop George Soros.
Over deze veroordeelde beursspeculant beweerde Buruma met grote stelligheid :
George Soros is de personificatie’ van ‘het Westen. Hij is alles wat rechtse volksmenners en antisemieten haten: rijk, een wereldburger, Joods, en een vrijdenker die gelooft in de ‘open samenleving,’ in de geest van Karl Popper, eveneens een Joodse zoon van het Hongaars-Oostenrijkse imperium.
Remembering John McCain, a brave warrior for human rights who stood up against repression and torture.
Met andere woorden, de wereldbevolking is in het simplistische wereldbeeld van Buruma's ‘kosmopolitische elites,’ verdeeld in enerzijds ‘rechtse volksmenners’plus ‘antisemieten’ van elke gezindte die ‘de personificatie van het Westen [haten],’ én anderzijds ‘Joodse vrijdenkers die’ geloven in de ‘open samenleving,’zoals die geformuleerd werd door de ‘Joodse’ — met hoofdletter — filosoof Karl Popper. Vanuit zijn lucratief slachtofferisme suggereert mijn oude vriend nu dat het Westen, net als in de jaren dertig, wordt geconfronteerd met een 'vijandigheid' tussen het ‘Joodse volk’ en de goyim. Iets anders gesteld: de ontwikkelde ‘eternal urbanites,’ zoals de Amerikaanse hoogleraar Yuri Slezkine de joden noemt in zijn alom geprezen boek The Jewish Century (2004), worden nu opnieuw belasterd door de onderontwikkelde 'losers' in het Westen. Wanneer Buruma het begrip ‘urban elites’ gebruikt dan bedoelt hij in feite de ‘eeuwige stedelingen,’ de ‘Joden,’ de ‘Bankers, peddlers (sjacheraars. svh), yeshiva students, and famous rabbi’s’ die allen, in de woorden van Slezkine, ‘travelled far and wide, well beyond the edges of peasant imagination,’ en die toen de moderniteit aanbrak een voorsprong hadden, aangezien ‘It was a typical feature of Jewish economic activity that it could rely on business connections with Jewish communities in even far-flung cities and countries,’ aldus de Joods-Israelische historicus Jacob Katz. Op zijn beurt wijst de historicus Slezkine erop dat net als de ‘Gypsies always just passing through, so, in more ways than one, are the Jews,’ en dat:
If one values mobility, mental agility, negotiation, wealth, and curiosity, one has little reason to respect either prince or peasant. And if one feels strongly enough that manual labor is sacred, physical violence is honorable, trade is tricky, and strangers should be either fed or fought (or perhaps that there should be no strangers at all), one is unlikely to admire service nomads. And so, for much of human history, they have lived next to each other in mutual scorn and suspicion — not because of ignorant superstition but because they have had the chance to get to know each other…
Modernity was about everyone becoming a service nomad: mobile, clever, articulate (welbespraakt. svh), occupationally flexible, and good at being a stranger.
Het probleem is alleen dat een groot deel van de wereldbevolking niet ‘slim, welbespraakt, beroepsmatig flexibel, en goed in de rol van vreemdeling,’ is. Het vereist een zeker opportunisme, onverschilligheid en vervreemding om alleen loyaal te kunnen zijn aan de eigen kleine groep 'winners.' Het ‘Mercurianisme,’ zoals professor Slezkine deze mentaliteit noemt, wordt gekenmerkt ‘by shrewdness (gewiekstheid. svh), quickness, and energy,’ karaktertrekken die in een neoliberale consumptiecultuur, waar alles alleen maar om geld draait, negatief uitwerken voor de ‘losers.’ Vooral ook omdat vandaag de dag, aldus Slezkine:
Hoewel ‘The Jews did not launch the Modern Age,’maar ‘joined it late, had little to do with some of its most important episodes (such as the Scientific and Industrial Revolutions), and labored arduously to adjust to its many demands,’ wisten de joden zich wel beter aan te passen ‘than most — and reshaped the modern world as a consequence — but they were not present at the creation and missed out on some of the early role assignments.’
Hun flexibele overlevingsstrategie maakten joodse ‘tribalisten’ beter geschikt voor de kapitalistische vereisten in een van zichzelf vervreemde massamaatschappij. Het gevolg was dat
The Jewish Age was also the Age of Anti-Semitism. Because of their Mercurian training, the Jews excelled in the entrepreneurial and professional occupation that were the source of status and power in the modern state; because of their Mercurian past, they were tribal strangers who did not belong in the modern state, let alone in its centers of power. This was a completely new ‘Jewish problem’: in the traditional society, Apollonians (autochtonen. svh) and Mercurians had lived in separate worlds defined by their different economic roles; their need and contempt for each other had been based on the continual reproduction of that difference. Now that they were moving into the same spaces without becoming interchangeable, their mutual contempt grew in reverse proportion to mutual need. Except that it was the Apollonians who wanted the Mercurian jobs and the Apollonians who ‘owned’ the nation-state.
The better the Jews were at becoming Germans or Hungarians, the more visible they became as an elite and the more resented they were as tribal aliens (‘hidden’ and therefore much more frightening, to be defined as ‘contagion’ (besmetting. svh) and combated by ‘cleansing’). Even when the transformation, or disguise, seemed successful, the never-ending influx of immigrants from the East, with their secret language, distinctive appearance, and traditional peddling (rondventen. svh) and tailoring occupations, continually exposed the connection. The Jews were associated with both faces of modernity: capitalism and nationalism. As capitalists and professionals, they seemed to be (secretly) in charge of a hostile world; as the ‘administrators’ of national cultures, they appeared to be imposters.
Precies hetzelfde fenomeen voltrekt zich nu in de Verenigde Staten, waar joden disproportioneel zijn vertegenwoordigd in de financiële wereld, de mainstream-media, de academia, Hollywood, de politiek, en waar een rijke, machtige joodse lobby de Amerikaanse Midden-Oosten-politiek bepaalt, om erop toe te zien dat de Joods-Israelische terreur tegen de Palestijnse bevolking ongestoord door kan gaan. Ditmaal groeit juist in de Verenigde Staten de wrok tegen joden als zichtbare groep ‘tribale vreemdelingen,’ van wie de loyaliteit allereerst naar Israel als ‘Joodse staat’ uitgaat, en pas dan naar de VS, het land waar ze zijn geboren en getogen, en in opmerkelijk veel gevallen buitengewoon rijk zijn geworden. De toenemende kloof tussen Hillary Clinton’s ‘deplorables’ en Ian Buruma’s ‘urban elites’ versterkt de afkeer. Het is ook niet onverklaarbaar dat medio oktober 2018 de dodelijkste aanval op joden in de Amerikaanse geschiedenis plaatsvond, waarbij elf synagoge-bezoekers werden vermoord door een dader die schreeuwde: ‘Alle joden moeten dood.’ Terwijl joodse Amerikanen ongeveer 2 procent van de bevolking uitmaken is 8,4 procent van de Congresleden joods. Tegelijkertijd ontdekt een groeiend aantal Amerikaanse burgers dat hun volksvertegenwoordigers akkoord gaan met het feit dat de VS het vuile werk voor Israel opknapt, en het land met miljarden overeind houdt. De zelfbenoemde 'Joodse staat' is een voorpost van het Amerikaans imperialisme dat de belangen van de rijke elite moet beschermen.
Buruma’s voortdurend gejammer dat ‘[p]opulisten die beloven dat ze corrupte machtselites een lesje zullen leren, het nu overal goed [doen]’ toont aan dat de ‘liberals’ geen werkelijke visie hebben op wat zich al langere tijd onder hun ogen afspeelt. Een graadmeter voor de corruptie van de Amerikaanse politiek gaf Matt Taibbi, onderzoeksjournalist van het tijdschrift Rolling Stone, die op 21 december 2018 uiteenzette dat ‘Nothing unites our political class like the threat of ending our never-ending war.’ Taibbi vatte het gevoel onder een groeiende groep Amerikanen kort samen: ‘So we’re withdrawing troops from the Middle East. GOOD!’ om hieraan toe te voegen:
Buruma’s voortdurend gejammer dat ‘[p]opulisten die beloven dat ze corrupte machtselites een lesje zullen leren, het nu overal goed [doen]’ toont aan dat de ‘liberals’ geen werkelijke visie hebben op wat zich al langere tijd onder hun ogen afspeelt. Een graadmeter voor de corruptie van de Amerikaanse politiek gaf Matt Taibbi, onderzoeksjournalist van het tijdschrift Rolling Stone, die op 21 december 2018 uiteenzette dat ‘Nothing unites our political class like the threat of ending our never-ending war.’ Taibbi vatte het gevoel onder een groeiende groep Amerikanen kort samen: ‘So we’re withdrawing troops from the Middle East. GOOD!’ om hieraan toe te voegen:
What’s the War on Terror death count by now, a half-million? How much have we spent, $5 trillion? Five-and-a-half?
For that cost, we’ve destabilized the region to the point of abject chaos, inspired millions of Muslims to hate us, and torn up the Geneva Convention and half the Constitution in pursuit of policies like torture, kidnapping, assassination-by-robot and warrantless detention.
It will be difficult for each of us to even begin to part with our share of honor in those achievements. This must be why all those talking heads on TV are going crazy.
Unless Donald Trump decides to reverse his decision to begin withdrawals from Syria and Afghanistan, cable news for the next few weeks is going to be one long Scanners marathon of exploding heads.
‘Today’s decision would cheer Moscow, ISIS, and Iran!’ yelped Nicole Wallace, former George W. Bush communications director.
‘Maybe Trump will bring Republicans and Democrats together,’ said Bill Kristol, on MSNBC, that ‘liberal’ channel that somehow seems to be populated round the clock by ex-neocons and Pentagon dropouts.
Kristol, who has rarely ever been in the ballpark of right about anything — he once told us Iraq was going to be a ‘two month war’ — might actually be correct.
Trump’s decisions on Syria and Afghanistan will lay bare the real distinctions in American politics. Political power in this country is not divided between right and left, and not even between rich and poor.
The real line is between a war party, and everyone else.
This is why Kristol is probably right. The Democrats’ plan until now was probably to impeach Trump in the House using at minimum some material from the Michael Cohen case involving campaign-finance violations.
That plan never had a chance to succeed in the Senate, but now, who knows? Troop withdrawals may push a collection of hawkish Republicans like Lindsey Graham, Marco Rubio, Ben Sasse and maybe even Mitch McConnell into another camp.
The departure of Defense Secretary Jim Mattis — a standard-issue Pentagon toady who’s never met an unending failure of a military engagement he didn’t like and whose resignation letter is now being celebrated as inspirational literature on the order of the Gettysburg Address or a lost epic by Auden or Eliot — sounded an emergency bell for all these clowns. The letter by Mattis, Rubio said:
‘Makes it abundantly clear we are headed towards a series of grave policy errors which will endanger our nation, damage our alliances & empower our adversaries.’
Talk like this is designed to give political cover to Republican fence-sitters on Trump. That wry smile on Kristol’s face is, I’d guess, connected to the knowledge that Trump put the Senate in play by even threatening to pull the plug on our Middle Eastern misadventures.
You’ll hear all sorts of arguments today about why the withdrawals are bad. You’ll hear Trump has no plan, which is true. He never does, at least not on policy.
But we don’t exactly have a plan for staying in the Middle East, either, beyond installing a permanent garrison in a dozen countries, spending assloads of money and making ourselves permanently despised in the region as civilian deaths pile up through drone-bombings and other ‘surgical’ actions.
You’ll hear we’re abandoning allies and inviting massacres by the likes of Turkish dictator Recep Tayyip Erdogan. If there was any evidence that our presence there would do anything but screw up the situation even more, I might consider that a real argument. At any rate, there are other solutions beyond committing American lives. We could take in more refugees, kick Turkey out of NATO, impose sanctions, etc…
The Afghan conflict became the longest military engagement in American history eight years ago. Despite myths to the contrary, Barack Obama did not enter office gung-ho (enthousiast. svh) to leave Afghanistan. He felt he needed to win there first, which, as anyone who’s read The Great Game knows, proved impossible. So we ended up staying throughout his presidency.
We were going to continue to stay there, and in other places, forever, because our occupations do not work, as everyone outside of Washington seems to understand.
TV talking heads will be unanimous on this subject, but the population, not so much. What polls we have suggest voters want out of the region in increasing numbers.
A Morning Consult/Politico poll from last year showed a plurality favored a troop decrease in Afghanistan, while only 5 percent wanted increases. Polls consistently show the public thinks our presence in Afghanistan has been a failure.
There’s less about how the public feels about Syria, but even there, the data doesn’t show overwhelming desire to put boots on the ground.
When Trump first ordered airstrikes in Syria over Assad’s use of chemical weapons, 70 percent favored sanctions according to Politico, while 39 percent favored sending troops. A CBS poll around that time found 45 percent wanted either no involvement period, or airstrikes and no ground troops, versus 18 percent who wanted full military involvement.
Trump is a madman, a far-right extremist and an embarrassment, but that’s not why most people in Washington hate him. It’s his foreign-policy attitudes, particularly toward NATO, that have always most offended DC burghers.
You could see the Beltway beginning to lose its mind back in the Republican primary race, when then-candidate Trump belittled America’s commitment to Middle Eastern oil states.
‘Every time there’s a little ruckus (rel. svh), we send those ships and those planes,’ he said, early in his campaign. ‘We get nothing. Why? They’re making a billion a day. We get nothing.’
As he got closer to the nomination, he went after neoconservative theology more explicitly.
‘I don’t think we should be nation-building anymore,’ he said, in March of 2016. He went on: ‘I watched as we built schools in Iraq and they’re blown up. We build another one, we get blown up.’
Trump was wrong about a thousand other things, but this was true. I had done a story about how military contractors spent $72 million on what was supposed to be an Iraqi police academy and delivered a pile of rubble so unusable, pedestrians made it into a toilet.
The Special Inspector General for Iraqi Reconstruction noted, ‘We witnessed a light fixture (licht armatuur. svh) so full of diluted urine and feces that it would not operate.'
SIGIR found we spent over $60 billion on Iraqi reconstruction and did not significantly improve life for Iraqis. The parallel body covering Afghanistan, the Special Inspector General for Afghan Reconstruction, concluded last year that at least $15.5 billion had been wasted in that country between 2008 and 2017, and this was likely only a ‘fraction’ of financial leakage.
Trump, after sealing the nomination, upped the ante (zijn eisen opschroeven. svh). In the summer of 2016 he said he wasn’t sure he’d send troops to defend NATO members that didn’t pay their bills. NATO members are supposed to kick in 2 percent of GDP for their own defense. At the time, only four NATO members (Estonia, Poland, the U.K. and the U.S.) were in compliance.
Politicians went insane. How dare he ask countries to pay for their own defense! Republican House member Adam Kinzinger, a popular guest in the last 24 hours, said in July 2016 that Trump’s comments were ‘utterly disastrous.’
‘There’s no precedent,’ said Thomas Wright, a ‘Europe scholar’ from the Brookings Institute.
When the news came after Trump’s election that he’d only read his intelligence briefings once a week instead of every day as previous presidents had dutifully done, that was it. The gloves were off at that point.
‘The open disdain Trump has shown for the agencies is unprecedented,’ said Patrick Skinner, a former CIA official for both George W. Bush and Obama.
All that followed, through today, has to be understood through this prism.
Trump dumped on basically every segment of the political establishment en route to Washington, running on a classic authoritarian strategy — bash the elites, pose as a populist.
However fake he was, there were portions of the political establishment that deserved abuse, the Pentagon most of all.
The Department of Defense has been a money pit for decades. It has trillions in expenditures it can’t account for, refused an audit for nearly 30 years and then failed this year (as in failed completely, zero-point-zero, not producing any coherent numbers) when one was finally funded.
We have brave and able soldiers, but their leaders are utter tools who’ve left a legacy of massacres and botched interventions around the world.
NATO? That’s an organization whose mission stopped making sense the moment the Soviet Union collapsed. We should long ago have repurposed our defense plan to focus on terrorism, cyber-crime and cyber-attacks, commercial espionage, financial security, and other threats.
Instead, we continued after the Soviet collapse to maintain a global military alliance fattened with increasingly useless carriers and fighter jets, designed to fight archaic forms of war.
NATO persisted mainly as a PR mechanism for a) justifying continued obscene defense spending levels and b) giving a patina of internationalism to America’s essentially unilateral military adventures.
We’d go into a place like Afghanistan with no real plan for leaving, and a few member nations like Estonia and France and Turkey would send troops to get shot at with us. But it was always basically Team America: World Police with supporting actors. No wonder so few of the member countries paid their dues.
Incidentally, this isn’t exactly a secret. Long before Trump, this is what Barney Frank (voormalig lid van het Huis van Afgevaardigden. svh) was saying in 2010: ‘I think the time has come to reexamine NATO. NATO has become an excuse for other people to get America to do things.’
This has all been a giant, bloody, expensive farce, and it’s long since time we ended it.
We’ll see a lot of hand-wringing today from people who called themselves anti-war in 2002 and 2003, but now pray that the ‘adults in the room’ keep ‘boots on the ground’ to preserve ‘credibility.’
Part of this is because it’s Trump, but a bigger part is that we’ve successfully brainwashed big chunks of the population into thinking it’s normal for a country to exist in a state of permanent war, fighting in seven countries at once, spending half of all discretionary funding on defense.
It’s not. It’s insane. And we’ll never be a healthy society, or truly respected abroad, until we stop accepting it as normal.
Incidentally, I doubt Trump really follows through on this withdrawal plan. But until he changes (what passes for) his mind, watch what happens in Washington.
We’re about to have a very graphic demonstration of the near-total uniformity of the political class when it comes to the military and its role. The war party is ready for a coming-out party.
De door Matt Taibbi geregistreerde werkelijkheid staat lijnrecht tegenover Ian Buruma’s propaganda voor het Amerikaans militair-industrieel complex en z'n massale bloedbaden, die door Ian als ‘Pax Americana’ worden geprezen. Met het oog op het naderende ‘einde’ van deze ‘Amerikaanse Vrede’ waarschuwt mijn oude vriend zijn lezers dat ‘we ons [zullen] moeten voorbereiden op een tijd waarin we met weemoed terugkijken op het betrekkelijk goedaardige imperialisme uit Washington.’ Dit soort neoconservatieve propaganda kan een Nederlandse opiniemaker moeiteloos slijten aan een provinciale krant als NRC Handelsblad, maar absoluut niet aan goed geïnformeerde Amerikaanse progressieve intellectuelen van het kaliber Matt Taibbi, cum suis. Dat Buruma niet ‘in tune’ is met deze elite blijkt tevens uit het feit dat hij in september 2018 gedwongen werd ontslag te nemen als hoofdredacteur van The New York Review of Books, nadat hij kritiekloos een zelfgenoegzame klaagzang ‘van een #MeToo-dader’ had geplaatst. Door zijn botte Hollandse betweterigheid besefte hij geenszins dat de ‘literaire elite’ in New York zijn mannelijk chauvinisme niet zou accepteren. Hetzelfde gaat op voor zijn verdediging van het Amerikaans ‘imperialisme’ en de NAVO, ‘an organization whose mission stopped making sense the moment the Soviet Union collapsed,’ aldus Taibbi, waardoor dit militair bondgenootschap:
persisted mainly as a PR mechanism for a) justifying continued obscene defense spending levels and b) giving a patina of internationalism to America’s essentially unilateral military adventures.
Feit is dat mainstream-propagandisten als Ian Buruma dit voor de hand liggende feit niet kunnen bespreken, het zou hun imago en inkomen een genadeklap geven. Het gevolg is dat gecorrumpeerde journalisten het nog steeds doen voorkomen alsof ‘it’s normal for a country to exist in a state of permanent war, fighting in seven countries at once, spending half of all discretionary funding on defense,’ terwijl in werkelijkheid ‘It’s insane.’ Men hoeft geen geniale Amerikaan te zijn om te weten dat ‘we’ll never be a healthy society, or truly respected abroad, until we stop accepting it as normal.’ Bovendien wordt grootscheeps geweld noodzakelijk wanneer de helft van de federale begroting die het Congres kan toewijzen, elk jaar weer wordt gespendeerd aan het militair industrieel complex. Het feit dat zowel Republikeinen als Democraten tot de ‘oorlogspartij’ behoren demonstreert ‘the near-total uniformity of the political class when it comes to the military and its role. The war party is ready for a coming-out party.’ De macht in Washington en op Wall Street, steeds vruchtelozer gerechtvaardigd door de dagelijkse propaganda van de ‘corporate media,’ vormt de grootste bedreiging van de wereldvrede. Ondertussen is de VS, volgens oud-president Jimmy Carter, veranderd in ‘an oligarchy with unlimited political bribery,’ een feit dat de Franse auteur en journalist Gilbert Mercier nog eens onderstreept wanneer laatstgenoemde opmerkt dat de VS gerund wordt door een ‘plutocratie’
where oligarchs stay in power from one generation to the next, where a political aristocracy has the impudence to maintain an incestuous relationship with bankers and corporations at the expense of the people that they are supposed to represent, and where a small group of unelected supposed wise men pull the strings in the dark, of one puppet administration after the other. Americans are not, in general, very well informed. This being said, US citizens intuitively understand the corruption and failures of their political class. Five months before the presidential and congressional elections, in June 2012, the public’s approval rating of the US Congress was 17 percent, compared to 75 percent disapproval: one of the lowest levels of confidence in US history.
Over één van de belangrijkste redenen dat de Amerikaanse democratie een wassen neus is, schrijft Mercier:
In the US, just like in branding and marketing, only money talks. There is no room for small brands, and there are only minute differences between the big brands. Unless you have developed a branding fixation or addiction for either Pepsi or Coke, they are hard to tell apart. Both soda concoctions (brouwsels. svh) have a lot of sugar and caffeine, and one could argue that they represent, unless consumed in moderation, a hazard to health. In a society where consumption is king, politics and politicians have become products and brands (merken. svh). When consumers go to supermarkets, they might buy Pepsi or Coke if they like soda. The same consumers have a choice between Democrats or Republicans if they want their votes to count. In this staged election process, politicians have slightly different flavors, but they are basically the same. Most are millionaires who defend the interests of the establishment, as opposed to the interests of the people. Politicians, either Republicans or Democrats, valiantly fight for the banks, Wall Street, giant corporations and the pursuit of war for the profit of the military-industrial complex.
Uiteindelijk maakt het voor het neoliberale kapitalisme allemaal niets uit welke partij wint. ‘The winner of the elections mattered as little as buying a Pepsi instead of a Coke,’ aldus Mercier, die erop attendeert dat al geruime tijd de ‘fascist legislation such as the National Defense Authorizations Act (NDAA) and the Patriot Act were part of the U.S. legal system' en dat
‘But he saw too that in America the struggle was befogged by the fact that the worst Fascists were they who disowned the word “fascism” and preached enslavement to Capitalism under the style of Constitutional and Traditional Native American Liberty,’ wrote the novelist Sinclair Lewis. Corporate fascism is in the US, and it has been here for a while. It is plastered by the brands that sponsor it: Coke, Pepsi, Walmart, General Electric, Chevron, Wells Fargo, etc. Americans are quintessential consumers. Politics are no exception. Anybody with experience in advertising knows that brand fidelity is het key to a successful product. In 2012, Obamney (Barack Obama en Mitt Romney. svh) came in two different flavors and packages, although it was manufactured by the same corporation: American Empire Inc. Consumers had the freedom to choose between Pepsi or Coke, and McDonalds or Burger King, just as they had the freedom to choose who would read the teleprompters in the White House. It was not a matter of governance or policies but of consumer taste.
Of, zoals een reactie op Buruma’s column over Brexit luidt: ‘Democracy is only OK if it produces the results Ian Buruma wants… the people of the Netherlands voted 62% to 38% against the European Constitution. And then the Buruma class proceeded to ignore them.’ Zelfs de schijn van onafhankelijkheid heeft de ‘vrije pers’ laten vallen, zo totalitair is het neoliberalisme geworden.
De hierboven beschreven context is de werkelijkheid waarbinnen Ian Buruma’s stellingen als ‘Het Trumpisme is een opstand tegen de serieuze politiek,’ en‘waarom vallen kiezers in zo’n campagne juist voor de clowns?’ geïnterpetreerd moeten worden.
De ‘serieuze politiek’ dus die vanaf de jaren tachtig de oorzaken heeft gecreëerd van de huidige ‘systemic crisis,’ die de toenmalige ‘clowns’ niet voorzagen, daarbij geholpen door intellectueel corrupte types als Ian Buruma en de rest van de westerse mainstream-opiniemakers, in dienst van de ware macht.
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