De Amerikaanse emeritus hoogleraar sciologie James Petras schreef in zijn essay The Politics of Language and the Language of Political Regression (2012):
Capitalism and its defenders maintain dominance through the ‘material resources’ at their command, especially the state apparatus, and their productive, financial and commercial enterprises, as well as through the manipulation of popular consciousness via ideologues, journalists, academics, and publicists who fabricate the arguments and the language to frame the issues of the day.
Today material conditions for the vast majority of working people have sharply deteriorated as the capitalist class shifts the entire burden of the crisis and the recovery of their profits onto the backs of wage and salaried classes.
In zijn NRC-column van 27 augustus 2020 stelde opiniemaker en hoogleraar Ian Buruma zichzelf de vraag:
hoe is het te verklaren dat niet alleen politici uit de rimboe van Georgia, maar ook soms heel intelligente mensen gaan geloven in de meest bizarre beweringen? Ik denk dat de vrees voor het coronavirus een rol speelt.
Mensen zijn bang, weten niet waar dit alles op uitloopt, voelen zich bedreigd door donkere, onzichtbare machten. En net als in de Oudheid, als mensen het onweer hoorden donderen, zoeken we een verklaring voor die machten: de goden zijn boos. In extra onzekere tijden, laten ook meer lieden die beter zouden moeten weten zich verleiden om zich op een dwaalspoor te begeven.
Sommige van die dwaalsporen hebben een lange traditie. Het idee dat ‘zionisten’ verantwoordelijk waren voor de aanslagen van 9/11 is een duidelijk voorbeeld. Zo ook het feit dat George Soros, een van origine Hongaarse Jood, altijd opduikt in verhalen van mensen die geloven dat geheimzinnige groepen achter de schermen de wereld naar hun hand proberen te zetten.
https://www.nrc.nl/nieuws/2020/08/27/grote-satan-biedt-troost-in-onzekere-tijden-a4010011
Kennelijk uit vrees dat de hoog geschoolde lezer van NRC Handelsblad dit alles niet naar behoren zou begrijpen had de ‘kwaliteitskrant’ al eerder beweerd:
Wie is George Soros en waarom wordt hij zo gehaat? Lees ook: Soros is de ideale vijand: Joods, rijk, pro-migratie
https://www.nrc.nl/nieuws/2018/10/29/de-ideale-vijand-joods-rijk-pro-migratie-a2753187
Laat het voor eens en altijd duidelijk zijn, de commerciële pers gaat ervan uit dat zowel ‘politici uit de rimboe’ als ‘soms heel intelligente mensen’ van oordeel zijn dat de ‘ideale vijand: Joods, rijk, en pro-migratie’ is, waarmee de NRC — misschien ongewild — het aloude stigma van de ontheemde jood heeft geherintroduceerd. Door het gebruik van ‘Jood’ met een hoofdletter volgt de krant de nazi-definitie van de joodse westerling, als zijnde iemand die tot een ander volk behoort en dus een buitenstaander is en blijft. De wrange ironie is dat dit tevens de huidige zionistische opvatting is over iedere jood op aarde, inclusief bijvoorbeeld joodse Chinezen en joodse Arabieren. Er kleeft hier een verdacht aspect aan. Ik zal proberen uit te leggen welk. Wanneer ik een joodse Nederlander spreek, ben ik mij er niet van bewust dat ik, volgens Buruma, met een jood spreek, dus met iemand, behorend tot een ander volk. Integendeel zelfs: ik ben me niet eens bewust van het feit dat hij of zij joods is. Waarom zou ik? Mensen die zich daar de hele tijd wel bewust van zijn, of het nu Ian Buruma is of een antisemiet, beschouw ik als verdacht, omdat zij kennelijk een geheime agenda bezitten. Waarom zouden zij het anders zo belangrijk vinden om van oordeel te zijn dat bijvoorbeeld een joodse Nederlander tot een ander volk behoort? Zo wantrouw ik Buruma eveneens wanneer hij te pas en te onpas in zijn teksten ‘Joden’ erbij sleept, zelfs wanneer zijzelf aan hun jood-zijn geenszins hun identiteit ontlenen. maar zich allereerst als kosmopoliet definiëren. Ik wantrouw mijn oude vriend tevens wanneer hij de beursspeculant George Soros kwalificeert als ‘the international investor and philanthropist’ en ‘a Hungarian-born Jew,’ oftewel de ‘wandering Jew.’ Een ‘investeerder, filantroop’ en ‘Jood’ verkoopt natuurlijk veel beter in kringen van het establishment, dan de omschrijving dat Soros een in Frankrijk, vanwege handel met voorkennis, veroordeelde ‘beursspeculant’ is, die in 1997 de Britse bevolking 3,3 miljard armer maakte door de pond fors in waarde te laten kelderen. Door zijn machinaties wist Soros dankzij ‘Black Wednesday’ (16 September 1992), zichzelf één miljard rijker te maken. Bovendien was deze als traumatisch ervaren gebeurtenis ‘a major factor in the Conservatives finally losing the 1997 general election to Labour, who won by a landslide under the leadership of Tony Blair,’ wiens beleid gunstig was voor de chicanes van de neoliberale Soros en andere gewetenloze geldhandelaren, die de binnenlandse en buitenlandse politiek van diverse landen manipuleren. Hoe ver de interventies van een miljardair als Soros gaan, blijkt uit de bevindingen van de Griekse econoom en politicus Yanis Varoufakis, die van 27 januari 2015 tot 6 juli 2015 minister van Financiën was in het kabinet-Tsipras. Vlak voor zijn aftreden had de geldhandelaar Soros in het geheim contact opgenomen met de Griekse premier Tsipras om hem op te dragen:
Fire Varoufakis! Europe cannot afford to have two open wounds at once — Greece and the Ukraine [where fierce fighting was taking place]. Athens must capitulate to Germany now so that Europe can dedicate itself to resolving Ukraine. For this Varoufakis must be removed.
Months later a further, bitter vindication arrived when the EU and the IMF announced that the same debt swaps and nominal income indexed bonds that I had been proposing for Greece would be used to restructure Ukraine’s public debt,
zo schreef Varoufakis naderhand in zijn boek Adults in the Room: My Battle with the European and American Deep Establishment (2017). Oekraïne, was en is een tot op het bot corrupt land, waar Soros grote financiële belangen had. Maar ook dit verzweeg professor Ian Buruma, hoogleraar democratie, mensenrechten en journalistiek aan de door George Soros met 160 miljoen dollar gesubsidieerde Bard College. Vanzelfsprekend verwacht de miljardair tegendiensten van het wetenschappelijk personeel van deze kleine universiteit in de Amerikaanse staat New York. Ian Buruma heeft dit goed begrepen, want hij beschrijft Soros, die met zijn miljarden politieke invloed koopt, ‘as the personification’ van ’the West.’ En waarom? Volgens professor Buruma omdat deze speculant alles is ‘that nativists and anti-Semites hate: rich, cosmopolitan, Jewish, and a liberal,’ zonder erbij te vermelden dat de ‘liberale’ ‘personificatie’ van ‘het Westen’ ongevraagd zich met interne aangelegenheden bemoeit om er zelf beter van te worden, zoals de zaak Varoufakis aantoont. Waar Buruma ook over zwijgt is datgene waar professor Daniel Bessner op wijst. Deze Amerikaanse hoogleraar die Westerse Civilisatie doceert aan de Universiteit van Washington schreef in The Guardian van vrijdag 6 juli 2018 onder de kop ‘The George Soros philosophy – and its fatal flaw’ dat Soros weliswaar behoort tot ‘the best the meritocracy has produced,’ maar dat juist daarom:
Soros’s failures are so telling; they are the failures not merely of one man, but of an entire class — and an entire way of understanding the world. From his earliest days as a banker in postwar London, Soros believed in a necessary connection between capitalism and cosmopolitanism. For him, as for most of the members of his cohort and the majority of the Democratic party’s leadership, a free society depends on free (albeit regulated) markets. But this assumed connection has proven to be a false one. The decades since the end of the cold war have demonstrated that, without a perceived existential enemy, capitalism tends to undermine the very culture of trust, compassion and empathy upon which Soros’s ‘open society’ depends, by concentrating wealth in the hands of the very few.
For Soros, the goal of contemporary human existence is to establish a world defined not by sovereign states, but by a global community whose constituents understand that everyone shares an interest in freedom, equality and prosperity. In his opinion, the creation of such a global open society is the only way to ensure that humanity overcomes the existential challenges of climate change and nuclear proliferation.
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/jul/06/the-george-soros-philosophy-and-its-fatal-flaw#_=_
Ondertussen blijft het parasitaire neoliberale kapitalisme — waaraan Soros vele miljarden verdient — een steeds onrechtvaardigere wereld creëren, waardoor vandaag de dag ‘The world’s 2,153 billionaires have more wealth than the 4.6 billion people who make up 60 percent of the planet’s population,’ en
‘Our broken economies are lining the pockets of billionaires and big business at the expense of ordinary men and women. No wonder people are starting to question whether billionaires should even exist,’
aldus de ‘Oxfam India CEO Amitabh Behar.’
https://www.oxfam.org/en/press-releases/worlds-billionaires-have-more-wealth-46-billion-people
Bovendien waren er voordat de Covid-pandemie uitbrak nog steeds bijna ‘700 Million People Are Hungry,’ terwijl ‘acute malnutrition in children, responsible for nearly half of all child deaths, now threatens to claim the lives of 10,000 more children each month due to the secondary impacts of COVID-19.’
https://reliefweb.int/report/world/world-food-day-nearly-700-million-people-are-hungry
Een ander feit dat Buruma verzwijgt wanneer hij Soros ophemelt kwam ter sprake tijdens het bekende CBS-programma 60 Minutes van 20 december 1998. De Amerikaanse onderzoeksjournalist Steve Kroft verklaarde voorafgaand dat:
When the Nazis occupied Budapest in 1944, George Soros’ father was a successful lawyer. He lived on an island in the Danube and liked to commute to work in a rowboat. But knowing there were problems ahead for the Jews, he decided to split his family up. He bought them forged papers and he bribed a government official to take 14-year-old George Soros in and swear that he was his Christian godson. But survival carried a heavy price tag. While hundreds of thousands of Hungarian Jews were being shipped off to the death camps, George Soros accompanied his phony godfather on his appointed rounds, confiscating property from the Jews.
KROFT: You’re a Hungarian Jew… who escaped the Holocaust… by posing as a Christian.
Mr. SOROS: Right.
KROFT: And you watched lots of people get shipped off to the death camps.
Mr. SOROS: Right. I was 14 years old. And I would say that that’s when my character was made.
KROFT: In what way?
Mr. SOROS: That one should think ahead. One should understand and anticipate events and when one is threatened. It was a tremendous threat of evil. I mean, it was a very personal experience of evil.
KROFT: My understanding is that you went out with this protector of yours who swore that you were his adopted godson.
Mr. SOROS: Yes. Yes.
KROFT: Went out, in fact, and helped in the confiscation of property from the Jews.
Mr. SOROS: Yes. That’s right. Yes.
KROFT: I mean, that sounds like an experience that would send lots of people to the psychiatric couch for many, many years. Was it difficult?
Mr. SOROS: Not — not at all. Not at all. Maybe as a child you don’t see the connection. But it was — it created no — no problem at all.
KROFT: No feeling of guilt?
Mr. SOROS: No… Well, of course I could be on the other side or I could be the one from whom the thing is being taken away. But there was no sense that I shouldn’t be there, because that was — well, actually, in a funny way, it’s just like in markets — that if I weren’t there — of course, I wasn’t doing it, but somebody else would be taking it away anyhow. And – whether I was there or not, I was only a spectator, the property was being taken away. So I had no role in taking away that property. So I had no sense of guilt.
Hoewel dit interview keer op keer van YouTube wordt verwijderd, duikt het telkens weer op. De lezer moet dus zelf dit interview zoeken op https://www.youtube.com Typerend voor de mentaliteit van Buruma’s investerende ‘filantroop’ is dat hij tegenover Kroft verklaarde: ‘I am basically there to make money. I can not and do not look at the social consequences of what I do.’ En met het geld dat Soros opstrijkt, schakelt de rücksichtslose George democratische instituten uit door het politieke leiderschap van westerse landen direct en in het geheim te benaderen.
Soros met Hillary Clinton in Afrika.
Ondanks dit alles blijft de 'con man' Buruma de ‘con man’ Soros verheerlijken ‘als de personificatie’ van ‘het Westen,’ om vervolgens te suggereren dat kritiek op hem in feite neerkomt op ‘antisemitisme.’ Op deze wijze toont de opiniemaker — die als hoogleraar financieel afhankelijk is van Soros’ schenkingen — hoe actueel nog steeds het dictum is dat ‘wiens brood men eet, diens woord men spreekt.’ Deze houding vormt een toenemend gevaar in de geglobaliseerde wereld, aangezien meer dan 90 procent van wat de westerse massa weet niet door eigen ervaring is verkregen, maar alleen van horen zeggen, oftewel via de ‘corporate press’ en academisch geschoolden, afkomstig van door de elite gesubsidieerde hogere opleidingen, waar de studenten leren zich te conformeren aan de bestaande machtsverhoudingen. Zolang nu de massamedia de opinies van de overgrote meerderheid kunnen beïnvloeden of zelfs bepalen, zal de macht in Washington, op Wall Street, en in de NAVO-satellietlanden geen moeite hebben om toekomstige oorlogen te rechtvaardigen. Hoewel de VS 93 procent van zijn bestaan in oorlog verkeert, berichtte de kritische Amerikaanse website Truthout op 29 oktober 2020 dat 'War Wasn’t a Campaign Issue. What Does That Mean for the Next Presidency?' En als het aan de 'vrije pers' ligt blijft dit zo, al was het maar omdat in de zogeheten 'Pax Americana' meer dan de helft van de federale begroting die het Congres kan toewijzen naar het militair-industrieel complex gaat. De Britse academicus Louis Allday constateerde dan ook in oktober 2020 op Twitter:
The increase in anti-China propaganda reminds me of Baldwin on the Iran hostage crisis in 1980: ‘a hoax. It is a way of distracting attention from what is going on in this country and a way of preparing the American public for another war, to get them riled up (ophitsen. svh).’
Since an ulterior transaction means that the agent (de con-man. svh) pretends to be doing one thing while he is really doing something else, all games involve a con. But a con only works if there is a weakness it can hook into, a handle or ‘gimmick’ to get hold of in the respondent, such as fear, greed, sentimentality, or irritability. After the ‘mark’ is hooked, the player pulls some sort of switch in order to get his payoff.
Over and over the confidence man experiences his isolation from the social matrix by being able to play himself. Over and over he unrealizes (hun werkelijkheid ontnemen. svh) other people by turning his relations with them into maneuvers. Perhaps this is one of the reasons why the model of the con man finally doesn't apply easily or extensively to women. And perhaps this radical, constantly re-enacted isolation explains why, after all the fun and promise, after the dazzle and exhilaration of the confidence man, one senses a disquieting emptiness. Maybe Melville closed by snuffing the light because he knew that if he turned it up, no one would be there.
Die ‘verontrustende leegte’ werd in 1947 beschreven door de Brits-Amerikaanse auteur Christopher Isherwood in zijn verslag over Los Angeles:
Hetzelfde jaar 1947 beschreef de Amerikaanse schrijfster Mary McCarthy in haar essay ‘An unworldly assumption’ de Amerikaanse leegte als volgt:
our nation has been beaten by strangers who have bought the laws and fenced off the meadows and cut down the woods for pulp and turned our pleasant cities into slums and sweated the wealth out of our people… now their work is over the immigrants haters of oppression lie quiet in black suits in the little undertaking parlor in the North End, the city is quiet the men of the conquering nation are not to be seen on the streets
They have won why are they scared to be seen on the streets?on the streets you see only the downcast faces of the beaten the streets belong to the beaten nation all the way to the cemetery where the bodies of the immigrants are to be burned we line the curbs in the drizzling rain we crowd the wet sidewalks elbow to elbow looking with scared eyes at the coffins
we stand defeated America
A nation which asks nothing of its government but the maintenance of order is already a slave at heart — the slave of its own well-being, awaiting but the hand that will bind it.
By such a nation, the despotism of faction is not less to be dreaded than the despotism of an individual. When the bulk of the community are engrossed by private concerns, the smallest parties need not despair of getting the upper hand in public affairs. At such times, it is not rare to see upon the great stage of the world, as we see at our theaters, a multitude represented by a few players, who alone speak in the name of an absent or inattentive crowd: they alone are in action, whilst all others were stationary; they regulate everything by their own caprice; they change the laws and tyrannize at will over the manners of the country, and then men wonder to see into how small a number of weak and worthless hands a great people may fall.
Tocqueville voegde hieraan toe:
An American attends to his private concerns as if he were alone in the world… They by no means think that they are not called upon to take a part in public affairs; they believe, on the contrary, that their chief business is to secure for themselves a government which will allow them to acquire the things they covet (begeren. svh) and which will not debar them from the peaceful enjoyment of those possessions which they have already acquired.
In het hoofdstuk ‘Why Americans Are So Restless in the Midst of Their Prosperity’ schreef Tocqueville de volgende kritiek:
A native of the United States clings to this world's goods as if he were certain never to die; and he is so hasty in grasping at all within his reach that one would suppose he was constantly afraid of not living long enough to enjoy them. He clutches everything, he holds nothing fast, but soon loosens his grasp to pursue fresh gratifications.
Their taste for physical gratifications must be regarded as the original source of that secret disquietude (onrust. svh) which the actions of the Americans betray… He who has set his heart exclusively upon the pursuit of worldly welfare is always in a hurry, for he has but a limited time at his disposal to reach, to grasp, and to enjoy it.
The recollection of the shortness of life is a constant spur to him. Besides the good things that he possesses, he — every instant — fancies a thousand others that death will prevent him from trying if he does not try them soon. This thought fills him with anxiety, fear, and regret and keeps his mind in ceaseless trepidation (huivering. svh) which leads him perpetually to change his plans and his abode (woonplaats. svh).
If in addition to the taste for physical well-being a social condition be added in which neither laws nor customs retain any person in his place, there is a great additional stimulant to this restlessness of temper. Men will then be seen continually to change their track for fear of missing the shortest cut to happiness.
It may readily be conceived that if men passionately bent upon physical gratifications desire eagerly, they are also easily discouraged; as their ultimate object is to enjoy, the means to reach that object must be prompt and easy or the trouble of acquiring the gratification would be greater than the gratification itself. Their prevailing frame of mind, then, is at once ardent and relaxed, violent and enervated…
The same equality that allows every citizen to conceive these lofty hopes renders all the citizens less able to realize them; it circumscribes their powers on every side, while it gives freer scope to their desires. Not only are they themselves powerless, but they are met at every step by immense obstacles, which they did not at first perceive. They have swept away the privileges of some of their fellow creatures which stood in their way, but they have opened the door to universal competition; the barrier has changed its shape rather than its position. When men are nearly alike and all follow the same track, it is very difficult for any one individual to walk quickly and cleave a way through the dense throng that surrounds and presses on him. This constant strife between the inclination springing from the equality of condition and the means it supplies to satisfy them harasses and wearies the mind.
It is possible to conceive of men arrived at a degree of freedom that should completely content them; they would then enjoy their independence without anxiety and without impatience. But men will never establish any equality with which they can be contented. Whatever efforts a people may make, they will never succeed in reducing all the conditions of society to a perfect level; and even if they unhappily attained that absolute and complete equality of position, the inequality of minds would still remain, which, coming directly from the hand of God, will forever escape the laws of man. However democratic, then, the social state and the political constitution of a people may be, it is certain that every member of the community will always find out several points about him which overlook his own position; and we may foresee that his looks will be doggedly fixed in that direction. When inequality of conditions is the common law of society, the most marked inequalities do not strike the eye; when everything is nearly on the same level, the slightest are marked enough to hurt it. Hence the desire of equality always becomes more insatiable in proportion as equality is more complete.
Amongst democratic nations, men easily attain a certain equality of condition, but they can never attain as much as they desire. It perpetually retires from before them, yet without hiding itself from their sight, and in retiring draws them on. At every moment they think they are about to grasp it; it escapes at every moment from their hold. They are near enough to see its charms, but too far off to enjoy them; and before they have fully tasted its delights, they die.
in certain matters [seem] to have agreed, as a people, to deceive themselves, to persuade themselves that they have what they have not, to cover the defects in their civilization by boasting, to fancy that they well and truly solve, not only the political and social problem, but the human problem too. One would say they do really hope to find in tall talk (overdrijven. svh) and inflated sentiment a substitute for that real sense of elevation which human nature, as I have said, instinctively craves (begeert. svh) — and a substitute which may do as well as the genuine article.
The thrill of awe which Goethe pronounces to be the best thing humanity has, they would fain (graag. svh) create by proclaiming themselves at the top of their voices to be ‘the greatest nation upon earth,’ by assuring one another, in the language of their national historian [George Bancroft], that American democracy proceeds in its ascent ‘as uniformly and majestically as the laws of being, and is as certain as the decrees of eternity.’
Het onvermijdelijke gevolg is, volgens Arnold, dat:
the masses of the American people do really come to believe all they hear about their finer nervous organization, and the rightness of the American accent, and the importance of American literature; that is to say, they see things not as they are, but as they would like them to be; they deceive themselves totally. And by such self-deception they shut against themselves the door to improvement.
https://www.nrc.nl/nieuws/2017/06/09/pax-americana-nadert-haar-einde-11006828-a1562395
Hoewel Ian Buruma geen Amerikaan is, maar een Hollander uit Den Haag, gaat ook voor hem dit ‘zelfbedrog’ op. Hij is — net als Geert Mak, en Bas Heijne, en Hubert Smeets, en Chris Kijne — gaan geloven in het oppervlakkige beeld dat hijzelf heeft verspreid. Zij zien elk verschijnsel in de VS door een ideologische bril die de realiteit vertekent. Ook al zouden zij D.H. Lawrence boek Studies in Classic American Literature (1923) lezen, dan nog zullen zij diens scherpzinnige waarschuwing niet begrijpen, namelijk dat nu de:
Red Man is dead, disbelieving in us. He is dead and unappeased (onverzoend svh). Do not imagine him happy in his Happy Hunting Ground. No. Only those that die in belief die happy. Those who are pushed out of life in chagrin come back unappeased, for revenge.
A curious thing about the Spirit of Place is the fact that no place exerts its full influence upon a new-comer until the old inhabitant is dead or absorbed. So America. While the Red Indian existed in fairly large numbers, the new colonials were in a great measure immune from the daimon, or demon, of America. The moment the last nuclei of Red life breaks up in America, then the white men will have to reckon with the full force of the demon on the continent. At present the demon of the place and the unappeased ghosts of the dead Indians act within the unconscious or under-conscious soul of the white American, causing the great American grouch (schreeuw. svh), the Orestes-like frenzy (razernij. svh) of restlessness in the Yankee soul, the inner malaise which amounts almost to madness, sometimes,
en waar wij nu getuige van zijn. Maar daarover de volgende keer.
Geen opmerkingen:
Een reactie posten