Tegen het einde van de Tweede Wereldoorlog schreef George Orwell over de ‘Freedom of the Press’:
Unpopular ideas can be silenced, and inconvenient facts kept dark, without the need for any official ban. Anyone who has lived long in a foreign country will know of instances of sensational items of news — things which on their own merits would get the big headlines — being kept right out of the British press, not because the Government intervened but because of a general tacit agreement that ‘it wouldn’t do’ to mention that particular fact. So far as the daily newspapers go, this is easy to understand. The British press is extremely centralized, and most of it is owned by wealthy men who have every motive to be dishonest on certain important topics. But the same kind of veiled censorship also operates in books and periodicals, as well as in plays, films and radio. At any given moment there is an orthodoxy, a body of ideas which it is assumed that all right-thinking people will accept without question. It is not exactly forbidden to say this, that or the other, but it is ‘not done’ to say it, just as in mid-Victorian times it was ‘not done’ to mention trousers in the presence of a lady. Anyone who challenges the prevailing orthodoxy finds himself silenced with surprising effectiveness. A genuinely unfashionable opinion is almost never given a fair hearing, either in the popular press or in the highbrow periodicals.
To allow the market mechanism to be sole director of the fate of human beings and their natural environment indeed, even of the amount and use of purchasing power, would result in the demolition of society. For the alleged commodity ‘labor power’ cannot be shoved about, used indiscriminately, or even left unused, without affecting also the human individual who happens to be the bearer of this peculiar commodity. In disposing of a man’s labor power the system would, incidentally, dispose of the physical, psychological, and moral entity ‘man’ attached to that tag. Robbed of the protective covering of cultural institutions, human beings would perish from the effects of social exposure; they would die as the victims of acute social dislocation through vice, perversion, crime, and starvation. Nature would be reduced to its elements, neighborhoods and landscapes defiled, rivers polluted, military safety jeopardized, the power to produce food and raw materials destroyed. Finally, the market administration of purchasing power would periodically liquidate business enterprise, for shortages and surfeits of money would prove as disastrous to business as floods and droughts in primitive society. Undoubtedly, labor, land, and money markets are essential to a market economy. But no society could stand the effects of such a system of crude fictions even for the shortest stretch of time unless its human and natural substance as well as its business organization was protected against the ravages of this satanic mill.
In de epiloog van zijn boek Grote verwachtingen in Europa 1999 –2019 beweert Geert Mak, zonder een zweempje ironie, dat ‘we,’ de afgelopen ‘twee eeuwen’ in ‘vrijheid, gelijkheid en broederschap’ hebben geleefd, de idealen van de Verlichte Franse Revolutie, die de bourgeoisie aan de macht hielp. Maar niemand van de polderpers stelde hem de vraag hoe hij als selfmade historicus de bloedige Napoleontische oorlogen, Auschwitz, Hiroshima, Vietnam, Irak etcetera, in zijn Verlichtingsgeloof past. En op die manier werkt de ‘vrije pers’ in het kikkerlandje mee om ‘[u]npopular ideas’ te verzwijgen, ‘and inconvenient facts’ te negeren, ‘without the need for any official ban,’ zoals Orwell al driekwart eeuw signaleerde. De Britse geleerde John Gray verklaart het veel voorkomend gebrek aan rationaliteit vanuit het feit dat:
[f]or most of its disciples the appeal of the Enlightenment has always been that of an ersatz religion. For most of its disciples the appeal of the Enlightenment has always been that of an ersatz religion. The Enlightenment was another version of Christian myth more than it was a critique of Christianity, and the evangelical atheism that has staged an anachronistic revival in recent years is significant chiefly as a sign of the unreality of secularization.
Een schoolvoorbeeld van dit laatste is Geert Mak, die in de linkse jaren zestig van zijn christelijk geloof viel, maar in 2005 verklaarde opnieuw te geloven ‘in een genadige God’ met een hoofdletter, ‘een vriendelijke, vaderlijke God, een milde man, die mensen doorziet in hun zwakheid.’ Mijn oude vriend laat zien hoe de postmoderne petit bourgeois moeiteloos kan terugkeren naar het aloude 'ware' geloof. In het christendom vindt hij datgene wat hij in het Verlichtingsgeloof miste, in de woorden van Mak zelf: ‘dat je deel uitmaakt van een gemeenschap die de hele wereld omvat, dat er lijnen lopen tussen andere mensen en jou en tussen jou en God,’ dat alles ‘geeft soms troost, soms ordening, soms een gevoel van verantwoording. Het geeft lijn aan je handel en wandel.’
Welke 'lijn' de oud pacifist van de PSP en huidige multimiljonair heeft uitgestippeld, wordt duidelijk in onder andere zijn laatste bestseller Grote verwachtingen (2019), waarin hij de strijd aanbindt met de kennelijk goddeloze Vladimir Poetin. Diens ‘vermogen,’ zo beweert Mak, wordt ‘door sommigen — inclusief de CIA’ -- zoals bekend een uiterst betrouwbare bron voor mainstream-journalisten -- ’geschat op zo’n 40 miljard dollar dollar,’ terwijl ‘anderen veel verder [gaan] tot 200 miljard,’ om vervolgens in één adem hieraan toe te voegen dat dit alleen maar ‘speculaties blijven.’ Dit is geen journalistiek, maar stemmingmakerij. Mak's werkwijze demonstreert tevens hoe een opiniemaker van de ‘vrije pers’ zijn eigen integriteit beoordeelt. Het maakt hem niets uit om bekend te staan als een journalist die zonder bewijzen van alles beweert in een poging de integriteit van ‘de vijand’ te schenden. Dit is tevens de werkwijze van NRC-commentator Hubert Smeets, de door de Nederlandse staat gefinancierde Anti-Poetin propagandist, die aan het slot van Grote verwachtingen door Mak nog eens hoogst persoonlijk bedankt wordt voor al zijn informatie.
Afgezien van de wedergeboren christen Geert Mak, blijven de meeste opiniemakers zich vastklampen aan de versleten Verlichtingsgeloof. John Gray stelt zelfs in de heruitgave van zijn boek Enlightenment’s Wake (2007) dat:
Net als het Christendom is het Verlichtingsgeloof een verlossingsleer, het gaat uit van de veronderstelling dat door meer kennis het kwaad zal wijken. In werkelijkheid leidt meer kennis regelmatig tot meer kwaad. In zijn boek Death of the Liberal Class (2010) beschrijft de Amerikaanse journalist en auteur Chris Hedges het volgende:
Hedges waarschuwt ervoor dat: ‘A culture, once it no longer values truth and beauty, condemns its most creative and moral people to poverty and obscurity. And this is our destiny,’ maar voegt vervolgens het volgende citaat van Albert Camus aan toe:
‘A living man can be enslaved and reduced to the historic condition of an object. But if he dies in refusing to be enslaved, he reaffirms the existence of another kind of human nature which refuses to be classified as an object.’
The rebel, for Camus, stands with the oppressed — the unemployed workers thrust into impoverishment and misery by the corporate state, the Palestinians in Gaza, the civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan, the disappeared who are held in our global black sites, the poor in our inner cities and depressed rural communities, immigrants, and those locked away in our prison system. The elites and their courtiers in the liberal class always condemn the rebel as impractical. They dismiss the stance of the rebel as counterproductive. They chastise the rebel for being angry. The elites and their apologists call for calm, reason, and patience. They use the hypocritical language of compromise, generosity, and understanding to argue that we must accept and work with the systems of power. The rebel, however, is beholden to a moral commitment that makes it impossible to compromise. The rebel refuses to be bought off with foundation grants, invitations to the White House, television appearances, book contracts, academic appointments, or empty rhetoric. The rebel is not concerned with self-promotion or public opinion. The rebel knows that, as Augustine (Sint-Augustinus, bisschop, theoloog, filosoof en kerkvader. svh) wrote, hope has two beautiful daughters, anger and courage — anger at the way things are and the courage to change them. The rebel knows that virtue is not rewarded. The act of rebellion justifies itself. ‘You do not become a “dissident” just because you decide one day to take up this most unusual career,’ Václav Havel said when he battled the communist regime in Czechoslovakia:
‘You are thrown into it by your personal sense of responsibility, combined with a complex set of external circumstances. You are cast out of the existing structures and placed in a position of conflict with them. It begins as an attempt to do your work well, and ends with being branded an enemy of society… The dissident does not operate in the realm of genuine power at all. He is not seeking power. He has no desire for office and does not gather votes. He does not attempt to charm the public. He offers nothing and promises nothing. He can offer, if anything, only his own skin — and he offers it solely because he has no other way of affirming the truth he stands for. His actions simply articulate his dignity as a citizen, regardless of the cost.’
The corporate elite does not argue that the current system is just or good, because it cannot, but it has convinced the majority of citizens that there is no alternative. But we are not slaves. We have a choice. We can refuse to be either a victim or an executioner. We have the moral capacity to say no, to refuse to cooperate.
Mijn mainstream-collega’s als Mak, Heijne, Smeets, en Buruma weten dit; geen van hen durft dan ook met mij een publieke discussie aan te gaan over de gedocumenteerde kritiek die ik al geruime tijd op hun beweringen heb geuit. Ook zij weten dat het voor hen onbegonnen werk is om in gezelschap van een dissident het corrupte kapitalistische systeem te verdedigen. Welke dwaasheden zij ook mogen verspreiden, de feiten spreken voor zich. Maandag 20 januari 2020 maakte de ontwikkelingsorganisatie Oxfam/Novib in haar jaarlijks rapport bekend dat:
Economic inequality is out of control. In 2019, the world’s billionaires, only 2,153 people, had more wealth than 4.6 billion people. This great divide is based on a flawed and sexist economic system that values the wealth of the privileged few, mostly men, more than the billions of hours of the most essential work — the unpaid and underpaid care work done primarily by women and girls around the world. Tending to others, cooking, cleaning and fetching water and firewood are essential daily tasks for the wellbeing of societies, communities and the functioning of the economy. The heavy and unequal responsibility of care work perpetuates gender and economic inequalities.
Oxfam/Novib wijst erop dat:
This great divide is based on a flawed and sexist economic system. This broken economic model has accumulated vast wealth and power into the hands of a rich few, in part by exploiting the labour of women and girls, and systematically violating their rights.
At the top of the global economy a small elite is unimaginably rich. Their wealth grows exponentially over time, with little effort, and regardless of whether they add value to society.
Deze situatie is het resultaat van vijf eeuwen westers Christendom en Verlichting, en vormt een toenemende bedreiging voor het voortbestaan van de mens en natuur.
Without decisive action things will get far worse. Ageing populations, cuts in public spending, and climate change threaten to further exacerbate gender and economic inequality and to fuel a spiraling crisis for care and carers. While the rich and powerful elite may be able to buy their way out of facing the worst of these crises, the poor and powerless will not.
Governments must take bold and decisive action to build a new, human economy, that will deliver for everyone rather than a rich few, and that values care and wellbeing above profit and wealth.
Omdat de verschillen tussen arm en rijk in een wereld van 7,7 miljard inwoners zo astronomisch groot zijn geworden dat het de verbeeldingskracht van veel mensen te boven gaat, geeft Oxfam/Novib een aantal concrete voorbeelden:
The world’s richest 1% have more than twice as much wealth as 6.9 billion people.
If you saved $10,000 a day since the building of the pyramids in Egypt you would have one-fifth the average fortune of the 5 richest billionaires.
If everyone were to sit on their wealth piled up in $100 bills, most of humanity would be sitting on the floor. A middle-class person in a rich country would be sitting at the height of a chair. The world’s two richest men would be sitting in outer space.
Taxing an additional 0.5% of the wealth of the richest 1% over the next 10 years is equal to investments needed to create 117 million jobs in education, health and elderly care and other sectors, and to close care deficits.
Hoewel de westerse liberal elites en hun woordvoerders in de ‘corporate press’ volhouden dat de kapitalistische parlementaire democratie, onder aanvoering van de VS, ‘in alle opzichten superieur’ (Bas Heijne) blijft, en dat het neoliberalisme het enige alternatief is voor de toekomst van de mensheid, staat het systeem op ontploffen. Het neoliberale kapitalisme is op alle fronten failliet, ecologisch, politiek, financieel, economisch, moreel, en vooral ook cultureel, in de brede betekenis van het woord. En hoe hard en vaak de mainstream opiniemakers ook mogen beweren dat ‘de populisten’ en hun aanhang het grote probleem zijn, dit verandert niets aan het feit dat de populisten slechts het symptoom zijn van de huidige crisis. De oorzaak van het wereldwijde verzet tegen het neoliberale globalisme is juist het bankkroet van de Verlichtingsideologie met haar naïef Vooruitgangsgeloof en de daaruit voortvloeiende leer van de eeuwige materialistische groei ten koste van de mens en de natuur. Hoe groot daarbij het belang van de elite is, blijkt vooral uit het feit dat in de zogeheten ‘vrije pers’ het ‘debat’ zo beperkt mogelijk wordt gehouden. Nagenoeg nooit zult u de namen van de door mij opgevoerde intellectuelen tegenkomen in de westerse mainstream-media. Hun gedachten worden domweg genegeerd. Het feit dat er niet mag worden afgeweken van de officiële versie van de werkelijkheid demonstreert hoe totalitair de westerse parlementaire ‘democratie’ is. Een andere visie is taboe. Toch ziet de 'corporate press' vanuit commerciële motieven zich soms genoodzaakt een tipje van de sluier op te lichten. Maar dit gebeurt alleen wanneer het echt niet anders kan, en pas nadat zelfs de geprivilegieerden beginnen te beseffen dat hun macht ter discussie staat, waardoor de agenda niet langer exclusief door de elite en haar pers kan worden bepaald. Kortom, wanneer het volk niet meer onzichtbaar kan worden gemaakt, en het politieke niet meer kan worden gedepolitiseerd. Een dergelijk moment breekt telkens aan wanneer de rijken en machtigen in besloten bijeenkomsten de toekomst plannen, en buiten op straat het volk al dan niet luidruchtig staat te morren. Zo verscheen op de voorpagina van de belangrijkste spreekbuis van de liberals, te weten The New York Times, van maandag 21 januari 2020, onder de kop ‘Davos has a credibility problem’ het volgende commentaar van Kevin J. Delaney, ‘a senior editor in the Opinion section’:
DAVOS, Switzerland — Salvador Gómez-Colón, a teenage environmental and humanitarian activist from Puerto Rico, started the day Tuesday by telling business and government leaders that they didn’t have much credibility.
‘We’re tired of too much coming to Davos and going back and not doing anything,’ Mr. Gómez-Colón said. ‘We’re tired of empty promises, we’re tired of too much talk.’
Mr. Gómez-Colón’s remarks echo those of critics of Davos throughout history, including the anti-globalization protesters who took to the streets in a violent demonstration in 2000, decrying the gathering as a ‘meeting of murderers.’
But on the 50th anniversary of the World Economic Forum in Davos, the annual gathering of about 3,000 business, government, and nonprofit leaders to discuss global issues in an Alps ski resort town, the critique carries extra heft.
New survey data from the public relations company Edelman indicates that 56 percent of people globally believe capitalism does more harm than good. Nearly 50 percent of those surveyed said ‘the system is failing me.’ Just 31 percent of respondents said they believed businesses would ‘pay everyone a decent wage,’ though 82 percent said that was the duty of businesses. Trust in government is even lower than in business. ‘It’s a paradox of trust,’ said Richard Edelman, the firm’s chief executive. ‘Economic circumstances are quite good and trust is down, and fears are very high.’
The World Economic Forum’s own research released this week blamed entrenched inequality across the globe for ‘a growing sense of unfairness, precarity, perceived loss of identity and dignity, weakening social fabric, eroding trust in institutions, disenchantment with political processes and an erosion of the social contract.’
‘We cannot deny that there is a general loss of trust and confidence of people,’ acknowledged Klaus Schwab, the forum’s founder and executive chairman.
Against that backdrop, it’s easy to understand skepticism about this gathering that includes more than 100 billionaires, many of whom arrived by private airplane. Despite efforts by the forum to entice and cajole organizations to bring more women, just 24 percent of attendees are female. Business leaders aren’t running toward discussion of pointed topics related to corporate responsibility, like tax avoidance. The author Anand Giridharadas has called Davos a ‘carnival for those who have rigged so many countries around the world,’ and recommended that it be canceled.
Mr. Schwab has framed this meeting around the theme of stakeholder capitalism, a shorthand for business concern for factors like workers and communities and not just their shareholders. To his credit, his response to the trust problem is to try to focus the proceedings on specific efforts around the environment and corporate responsibility. ‘The annual meeting will be a “do show, not a talk show,”’ he vowed on the main stage on Tuesday morning. Among the initiatives showcased here this week are a ‘trillion tree’ project aimed at boosting reforestation and an effort to better audit companies’ social and environmental practices. The forum has a list of some concrete actions that resulted from its 2019 meeting.
But the Davos business community’s increasing acceptance of President Trump, who doesn’t believe in climate change and withdrew the United States from efforts to fight it, doesn’t help. Mr. Schwab diminished the forum’s credibility when he stood shoulder-to-shoulder with Mr. Trump on Tuesday and declared, ‘All your politics, certainly, are aiming to create better inclusiveness for the American people.’
Already there are concerns that new lower estimates for global growth by the I.M.F. could undermine some corporate commitment to climate-change initiatives. ‘The latest signs of economic fragility will force global leaders and chief executives to tackle the more immediate challenges of restoring growth and confidence, rather than focusing on how to address climate change,’ concluded The Financial Times.
Does it matter if skepticism of the business and political elite and capitalism is mounting again? And does it matter if Davos is perceived to be just an expense-account-fueled frenzy of business deal-making and platitudes? Did most people — the constituents of the people here, workers and voters and their children — really think it was anything other than that?
At the very least, it deepens critics’ convictions that business and government leaders can’t be trusted to deal with the world’s most pressing problems.
‘You say: “Just leave this to us. We will fix this, we promise we won’t let you down,”’ the teenage climate activist Greta Thunberg told attendees. ‘And then, nothing. Silence. Or something worse than silence. Empty words and promises which give the impression that sufficient action is being taken.’
For companies to convince people around the world, especially the young, that capitalism is viable, business leaders need to show that they are making hard decisions. The elite gathered here may think that they are making changes, but others don’t think they are doing enough when it comes to the environment and social responsibility. It’s a matter of degree, and speed.
‘Unless this crowd is willing to give up some power and share it, it’s not going to get better,’ said Christy Hoffman, general secretary of the UNI Global Union, a global federation of trade unions.
Maybe there’s hope. At mealtime discussions around the town, that sort of behavior — making the right decision even when it’s not good for you personally — is being praised more generally as a sign of strong leadership.
‘The question we should ask ourselves every year is “What decisions have I made this year that have sacrificed my own personal advantage and gain for the gain of the institution?”’ said Ngaire Woods, the founding dean of the Blavatnik School of Government at Oxford University. ‘If you’ve come up with zero, you’re probably off base.’
In its embrace of both Mr. Trump and Ms. Thunberg, the Davos set seems to want it all: lower taxes and a climate-friendly agenda. But that dance is increasingly straining the patience, and trust, of the rest of the world.
Dit lijkt weliswaar een fundamenteel ander geluid dan bijvoorbeeld Ian Buruma’s pleidooi om Europa een deel van het Amerikaanse ‘dirty work’ over te nemen, omdat ‘wij’ in het Avondland niet langer kunnen verwachten dat de Amerikaanse strijdkrachten de belangen van de westerse elite wereldwijd zullen blijven beschermen. Ik stel met nadruk lijkt, want tegen het einde van Delaney's betoog doet hij het voorkomen alsof hier sprake is van twee gelijkwaardige partijen, te weten ‘Mr. Trump’ versus ‘Ms. Thunberg,’ oftewel enerzijds de schatrijke concerns en banken die een beslissende stem hebben en anderzijds de miljarden jeugdige machtelozen, die een failliet systeem van Trump en al die andere gecorrumpeerde generatiegenoten van mij erven. Helemaal absurd is Delaney's voorstelling van zaken dat de speciaal geselecteerde leden van de exclusieve club in Davos ‘want it all: lower taxes and a climate-friendly agenda.’ Deze stelling gaat impliciet ervan uit dat de elite, die in Davos bijeenkomt, en bestaat uit zo’n ‘3000’ speciaal geselecteerde ‘business leaders, international political leaders, economists, celebrities and journalists’ het allen goed voor hebben met de wereldbevolking, maar in werkelijkheid is de overgrote meerderheid van deze autoriteiten allereerst geïnteresseerd is het behouden van de status quo, en zeker niet in het doorvoeren van hoogst noodzakelijke ingrijpende veranderingen. Sterker nog, er is een revolutionaire omslag nodig om de overleving van de mensheid te garanderen. Bovenal zal het winstprincipe van de kapitalistische cultuur aan banden moeten worden gelegd, wil men de bedreigingen van de mensheid ook maar enigszins neutraliseren. Is het denkbaar dat deze neoliberale club in Davos ook maar een aanzet zal geven voor deze radicale omwenteling? Wordt wakker! Het was de Amerikaanse stand-up comedian George Carlin die jaren geleden de spijker op de kop sloeg toen hij zijn publiek vertelde:
Forget the politicians. The politicians are put there to give you the idea you have freedom of choice. You don't. You have no choice. You have owners. They own you. They own everything. They own all the important land, they own and control the corporations that have long since been bought and paid for, the senate, the congress, the state houses, the city halls, they got the judges in their back pocket, and they own all the big media companies so they control just about all of the news and the information you get to hear. They got you by the balls! They spend billions of dollars every year lobbying to get what they want. Well, we know what they want. They want more for themselves and less for everybody else. But I'll tell you what they don't want. They don't want a population of citizens capable of critical thinking. They don't want well informed, well educated people capable of critical thinking. They're not interested in that. That doesn't help them. That is against their interest.
You know what they want? They want obedient workers. Obedient workers, people who are just smart enough to run the machines and do the paperwork. And just dumb enough to passively accept all these increasingly shitty jobs with the lower pay, the longer hours, the reduced benefits, the end of overtime and vanishing pension that disappears the minute you go to collect it, and now they’re coming for your Social Security money. They want your retirement money. They want it back so they can give it to their criminal friends on Wall Street, and you know something? They’ll get it. They’ll get it all from you sooner or later because they own this fucking place! It's a big club, and you ain’t in it! You, and I, are not in the big club.
By the way, it's the same big club they use to beat you over the head with all day long when they tell you what to believe. All day long beating you over the head with their media telling you what to believe, what to think and what to buy. The table has tilted folks. The game is rigged and nobody seems to notice. Nobody seems to care! Good honest hard-working people; white collar, blue collar it doesn’t matter what color shirt you have on. Good honest hard-working people continue, these are people of modest means, continue to elect these rich cock suckers who don’t give a fuck about you… they don’t give a fuck about you… they don’t give a FUCK about you!
They don’t care about you at all… at all… AT ALL. And nobody seems to notice. Nobody seems to care. Thats what the owners count on. The fact is that Americans will probably remain willfully ignorant of the big red, white and blue dick thats being jammed up their assholes, everyday, because the owners of this country know the truth: it's called the American Dream, because you have to be asleep to believe it.
Nu overal ter wereld geprotesteerd wordt tegen de neoliberale heilstaat, is mijn oude vriend Geert Mak op de ‘bandwagon’ gesprongen om, uitgekookt als hij is, een graantje te kunnen meepikken van de snel veranderde tijdgeest. Niet langer prijst hij de vrije markt, zoals hij nog in 2013 deed, maar anno 2020 verfoeit hij zelfs het hele neoliberale kapitalisme. Zijn verlangen naar hoop, waar hij in 2012 ‘niet zonder’ kon, heeft hij — met het oog op een zo groot mogelijke oplage van zijn nieuwe boek Grote verwachtingen — nu ingewisseld voor een alles behalve hoopvolle boodschap. En stond voor hem in 2004 nog als een paal boven water dat Europa een hoopvolle, zo niet gouden toekomst tegemoet zou gaan, vandaag de dag typeert hij de Europese Unie als een ‘wankele staatsconstructie,’ een ‘bange en bungelende half-federatie,’ en — in navolging van Jacques Delors, die ervoor zorgde dat de euro werd ingevoerd — een ‘unidentified political object.’ Nieuwe tijden, nieuwe meningen, maar ook zijn huidige standpunten zullen binnen afzienbare tijd weer achterhaald zijn, en zal hij opnieuw zijn boodschap moeiteloos wijzigen, zonder dat zijn publiek en de polderpers verwonderd zal opkijken van zoveel opportunisme, want amnesia is de overlevingsstrategie van de massa. Meer daarover de volgende keer.
