I quote a former American ambassador to China, Stapleton Roy, who told me, ‘Kishore, when Xi Jinping made an offer to demilitarize the South China Sea, America should have grabbed that offer and agreed to stop all our military activities in the South China Sea. That would have pushed the Chinese out.’ Of course, the Americans would be out too. But the South China Sea is much more important to China than it is to America. If America steps out, the Chinese military steps out. And that’s a win for America, right? Instead, the U.S. Navy responded by sending naval vessels. So Xi said, ‘Okay. You reject my offer. So be it.’
Onder de kop 'Chinese Aggression' Is Just China Responding To US Aggression voegde er op 18 december 2021 de onafhankelijke Australische journaliste Caitlin Johnstone het volgende aan toe:
It's the same even with the authoritarian domestic policies for which China is frequently criticized by the western world. We learned in a recent Bloomberg article that US spies are finding it hard to conduct operations against the Chinese government because its strict policies make it impossible for them to function.
‘CIA officers in China face daunting challenges posed by China’s burgeoning surveillance state, which has blanketed Chinese cities with surveillance cameras and employs sophisticated facial recognition software to track threats,’ claim the article's authors.
Bloomberg explains that China's anti-corruption measures have made it much harder to recruit CIA assets, writing, ‘Xi’s broad anti-corruption campaign, which has punished more than 1.5 million officials, has also led to greater scrutiny of Chinese officials’ income, making payments to potential sources far more problematic, two former officials said.’
Those efforts were detailed extensively in 2017 by the New York Times, which said as many as a dozen U.S. sources were executed by China, with others jailed, in what represented one of the worst breaches ever of American spying networks, the article also notes.
https://caitlinjohnstone.substack.com/p/chinese-aggression-is-just-china
Ter verduidelijking: Kishore Mahbubani is een Singaporese diplomaat en veel geraadpleegde geopolitieke consultant. Als goed geïnformeerde deskundige van wat er zich ook achter de schermen voltrekt, voorspelt hij:
that it will be an Asian 21st century. Prior to 24 February 2022 the progress of the transition of the balance of power from West to East was progressing as a drawn-out process occurring over a decadal (decennialange svh) timeframe. However, the Western response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is rapidly accelerating this process — an own goal. There is a good chance that 2022 will in hindsight be viewed as the decisive tipping point. Unfortunately, the penny has not yet dropped with Western governments and their compliant media of what their actions have triggered. Enlightened self-interest suggests that a major change in direction is required in the West, Australia included, to make the best of a bad situation.
Mahbubani verwoordt hier de wijd verspreide opvatting in zowel het Westen als in Azië dat de Amerikaanse hegemonie ten einde loopt en de macht naar Azië verschuift. Deze historische omslag heeft ingrijpende gevolgen, waarvan de reikwijdte nog niet volledig in kaart is gebracht. Maar één ding is wel duidelijk: er is een einde gekomen aan de wereldwijde, eeuwenlange hegemonie van de witte man sinds Columbus het continent Amerika voor het eerst betrad. Dit betekent allereerst een drastische inperking van het economische-, financiële-, en politieke ‘Lebensraum’ waarop de fabelachtige, westerse rijkdom zo lang gebaseerd is geweest. Dit noodzaakt een unieke omwenteling van het bewustzijn van zowel de westerse massa als vooral ook de westerse elite. Ik bedoel daarmee het volgende. Wij, westerlingen leven in wat Angelsaksische academici een ‘sensate culture,’ noemen, oftewel ‘a materialistic culture,’ dus ‘a culture that bases its beliefs on only what is visible to the eye. Nothing exists beyond what can be seen. It is a culture based on science. An ideational culture is the opposite of a sensate culture. An ideational culture, also called a spiritual culture, is one that is based on what cannot be seen but can be felt.’
Feit is dat de westerse cultuur ‘geleidelijk aan meer en meer materialistisch is geworden — empirisch, utilitair, hedonistisch, materialistisch, economisch gericht, en gescheiden van het bovennatuurlijke, de werkelijkheid en waarde ervan ontkennend.’ Dit is één van de belangrijke redenen dat zij wezenlijk verschilt van de Russische cultuur. Het is niet vreemd dat Vladimir Putin in één van zijn interviews opmerkte dat zijn favoriete auteurs Dostoevsky en Tolstoy waren. Interessant in dit verband is de toespraak van de Russische president tijdens de ‘19th Annual Meeting of the Valdai Discussion Club, titled “A Post-Hegemonic World: Justice and Security for Everyone.”’ Deze bijeenkomst ‘was held on October 24-27, 2022 in Moscow,’ en ‘was attended by 111 experts, politicians, diplomats and economists from 41 countries, including Afghanistan, Brazil, China, Egypt, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Iran, Kazakhstan, Russia, South Africa, Turkey, the United States, Uzbekistan, and others. Traditionally, more than half of the participants in the Valdai Club meeting are representatives of foreign countries, and this year was no exception.’
Vladimir Putin zei toen over de voortdurende westerse beschuldigingen:
Whatever comes from Russia is all the ‘intrigues of the Kremlin. But look at yourself! Are we all that powerful? Any criticism of our opponents — any! — is perceived as ‘the machinations of the Kremlin,’ ‘the hand of the Kremlin.’ This is some nonsense. What have you fallen to? At least move your brains, state something more interesting, state your point of view somehow conceptually. It is impossible to blame everything on the machinations of the Kremlin.
All this was prophetically predicted by Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky back in the 19th century. One of the characters in his novel The Possessed, the nihilist Shigalev, described the bright future he invented in this way: ‘leaving boundless freedom, I conclude with boundless despotism’ — this, by the way, is what our Western opponents came to. He is echoed by another protagonist of the novel — Peter Verkhovensky, arguing that widespread betrayal, denunciation, espionage is necessary, that society does not need talents and higher abilities: ‘Cicero’s tongue is cut off, Copernicus’s eyes are gouged out, Shakespeare is stoned.’ This is what our Western opponents are coming to. What is this if not the modern Western culture of cancellation?
There were great thinkers, and I am grateful, to be honest, to my assistants who found these quotes.
What can be said about this? History, of course, will put everything in its place and cancel not the greatest works of the universally recognized geniuses of world culture, but those who today for some reason decided that they have the right to dispose of this world culture at their own discretion. The self-conceit of such figures, as they say, goes off scale, but no one will even remember their names in a few years. And Dostoevsky will live like Tchaikovsky, Pushkin, no matter how much anyone wants it.
It was on unification, on financial and technological monopoly, on the erasure of all and all kinds of differences, that the Western model of globalization, neocolonial in its essence, was also built. The task was clear — to strengthen the unconditional dominance of the West in the world economy and politics, and for this to put at the service of natural and financial resources, intellectual, human and economic opportunities of the entire planet, to do this under the sauce of the so-called new global interdependence.
Here I would like to recall another Russian philosopher — Alexander Alexandrovich Zinoviev, whose centenary we will celebrate just the other day, on October 29.
Voor alle duidelijkheid: Zinovjev was een Russische ‘philosopher, writer, sociologist, and journalist. Coming from a poor peasant family, a participant in World War II, Alexander Zinoviev in the 1950s and 1960s was one of the symbols of the rebirth of philosophical thought in the Soviet Union. After the publication in the West of the screening book Yawning Heights, which brought Zinoviev world fame, in 1978 he was expelled from the country and deprived of Soviet citizenship. He returned to Russia in 1999,’ aldus Wikipedia.
Putin: 'Even more than 20 years ago, he (Zinoviev. svh) said that for the survival of Western civilization at the level reached by it, ‘the whole planet is necessary as an environment for existence, all the resources of mankind are necessary.’ That’s what they claim, and that’s exactly what it is.'
De oorlog in Oekraïne is niet alleen een Europese Oorlog, maar een oorlog over de toekomst van de hele mensheid. Dus, de horizon van Europa kan alleen de gehele wereld omvatten.
Von der Leyen stelt dat het ware issue de wereldwijde vraag is naar grondstoffen uit de voormalige westerse koloniën, de ‘Global South.’ Die vraag zal volgens haar de komende jaren ‘exponentieel’ toenemen. Zij benadrukt dat de Europese Unie het Russisch-Chinese bondgenootschap als een eveneens wereldwijde bedreiging ziet die dan ook — ik citeer — ‘wereldwijd moet worden bestreden.’ Het gaat het Westen niet bovenal om mensenrechten en democratie, maar, zoals altijd, om grondstoffen en markten. Als de meest invloedrijke politica van Europa verklaarde Von der Leyen: ‘Neem bijvoorbeeld Lithium of zeldzame metalen; zij zijn van vitaal belang voor onze groene en digitale overgang. Geen enkele windturbine, geen enkel zonnepaneel is mogelijk zonder deze grondstoffen. De vraag ernaar zal exponentieel stijgen. Zoveel is zeker,’ maar ‘Het niet zo goede nieuws is: één land beheerst de wereldwijde markt. Dat is China,’ een mening waaraan zij toevoegde:
het revisionisme van het Kremlin is niet de enige en grootste bedreiging van de op regels gebaseerde orde. De zogeheten onbeperkte samenwerking die door Vladimir Poetin en Xi Jinping is afgekondigd is eveneens een duidelijke bedreiging van de naoorlogse orde… wij moeten deze wereldwijde uitdaging een halt toeroepen, wij moeten het vertrouwen in onze wereldwijde doelen herstellen,’ immers, ‘wij weten dat wij energie nodig hebben, wij hebben duurzame energiebronnen nodig, wij hebben waterstof nodig,’ en bijvoorbeeld ‘Afrikaanse landen bezitten in overvloed alle grondstoffen die noodzakelijk zijn.’
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fW4Sc6JAJEs
https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-33133712
President Putin: Moreover, in this system, the West initially laid a huge head start for itself, since it developed its principles and mechanisms itself – as now the very principles that they constantly talk about and which are an incomprehensible ‘black hole’: what it is – no one knows. But as soon as the benefits of globalization began to be derived not by Western countries, but by other states, and above all, of course, we are talking about the large states of Asia, the West immediately changed or completely canceled many rules. And the so-called sacred principles of free trade, economic openness, equal competition, even the right to property were suddenly forgotten at once, completely. As soon as something becomes profitable for themselves, they change the rules immediately, on the go, in the course of the game.
https://valdaiclub.com/events/own/19th-annual-meeting-of-the-valdai-discussion-club/
https://www.miragenews.com/full-text-of-putin-speech-and-answers-at-valdai-884161/
Yeltsin a reform program that fell in line with the ‘shock therapy,’ a strategy in which a country switches over quickly to a market economy employing price liberalization, budgets stabilization, ending subsidies and privatizing industry. The primary aim of shock therapy is to change the economy as quickly a possible to a market economy. The main cost is that inefficient companies quickly go out of business and large numbers of people become unemployed.
Under the Russian ‘shock therapy’ program, Yeltsin phased out state subsidies, freed prices, reduced government spending and privatized state businesses. shock therapy, relinquished control over the ruble, and freed prices,
met als resultaat dat in hetzelfde jaar nog:
the economy was already in chaos and the changes didn't help matters. There were huge budgets deficits. The harvest was the lowest in years due to breakdowns in the distribution system. Some regions hoarded foodstuffs and declared autonomy and control over their resources. In the end real shock therapy did not take place. The government was unwilling to face the unemployment, bankruptcies and other hardships that would take place if the shock-therapy reforms were taken. Many economist feel that even if shock therapy was fully implemented it wouldn't have succeeded because Russia is too big and fundamentally different from the West for Western strategies to work.
Zelfs westerse deskundigen van naam beseften hoe dit door het Westen afgedwongen beleid catastrofaal was:
One of the biggest critics of ‘shock therapy’ was Joseph Stiglitz, a Nobel Prize winner and the chief economist of the World Bank. He felt controls were necessary and the policy was based too much on ideology and wishful thinking. ‘The standard Western advise,’ he wrote, took ‘an ideological, fundamental and root-and-branch approach to reform-mongering as opposed to an incremental, remedial, piecemeal and adaptive approach.’
Stiglitz wrote: ‘Those who put privatization above all else were wrong… They thought that new owners of private property would demand that this happen. But instead they took their money out,’ door hun miljarden naar westerse banken over te hevelen, waardoor Rusland nog armer werd:
Instead of the free hand of laissez faire economics, Stiglitz said the Russian economy was governed by the ‘grabbing hand theory’ in which the state is ‘irredeemably (onherstelbaar. svh) corrupt’ and players in the system seize and plunder assets and do nothing to create new jobs and promote growth. Stiglitz believes that privatization should have taken place only after sound laws, regulations, property rights, proper banking institutions, and working markets were in place. He held up China as an example of a better approach.
https://factsanddetails.com/russia/Economics_Business_Agriculture/sub9_7b/entry-5168.html
The Yuppies Are Coming! This group of hipsters are among a chosen few who are defying Moscow’s… shortages, downward mobility and a nihilistic outlook. A new breed of Moscow youth like money, want a better life for themselves and are fending off the system which chokes so much of their city...
'I like to make money,' said 25-year-old Sterligov, founder of the Russian Millionaire's Club, who also earns hard currency. 'And money makes money.'
Russia is on the move again. After the collapse of the Soviet Empire it wants to start history once more, and how! Old myths about Russian greatness and the Russian soul are being dusted off. Borders are being redrawn, spheres of influence determined by force — it's as if we're back in the nineteenth century, complete with rigid and short-sighted tsarism. Russians have a sense that the Western world, including Western values and Western ways of thinking, are no longer paramount.
Spirituele waarden worden door de ‘wedergeboren christen’ Geert Mak afgedaan als ‘Old myths about Russian greatness and the Russian soul are being dusted,’ terwijl het westerse materialistische consumentisme wordt verheerlijkt als ‘Western values and Western ways of thinking.’ In al zijn oppervlakkig opportunisme begrijpt de exemplarische mainstream-journalist Mak niet wat de grote Russische schrijvers, wier werk hij niet gelezen heeft, wel begrepen:
Knowing the deep religious basis of the Russian spirit, Dostoevsky, despite all the shortcomings of the people, believed that it stood to the Russians to carry out a great mission in Europe. He saw 'the essence of Russia’s calling' in 'revealing to the world the unknown Russian Christ, Whose principle lies in our native Orthodoxy' (Letter to Strakhov, 1869, No. 325). In view of the breadth of the Russian mind and character, Dostoevsky was confident that the Christian spirit would be expressed in the ability to develop a synthesis of opposing ideas and aspirations that divide the peoples of Europe, whence would be achieved not only theoretical but practical reconciliation of all disputes.
It is remarkable that this ability and passion of the Russian mind for all-encompassing synthesis was noted long before Dostoevsky, as B. Yakovenko shows in his History of Russian Philosophy, by many Russian writers, such as Prince V.F. Odoevsky, Belinsky, Kireevsky, and Shevyrev.
In the 1861 magazine Vremya, Dostoevsky wrote that the basic aspiration of Russians was 'universal, spiritual reconciliation. The Russian idea with time will become the synthesis of all those ideas that Europe for so long and with such persistence produced in its individual nationalities.' Western peoples seek to 'find a universal human ideal in themselves and by their own powers, and therefore they altogether harm themselves and their cause.'
https://souloftheeast.org/2015/02/27/dostoevsky-russias-mission/
Dit laatste is inderdaad het geval bij zowel Geert als zijn vader Catrinus Mak, die in 1936 publiekelijk bekend maakte dat hij de antisemitische Neurenberger rassenwetten, die joodse Duitsers uit de samenleving verbanden, ‘op staatsterrein tolerabel’ achtte, daarbij ‘het uitverkoren volk’ van zijn gereformeerde God verradend, en daarmee zichzelf, net zoals zijn zoon als voormalig pacifist nu de geest rijp maakt voor een oorlog tegen de kernmachten Rusland en China. Het is inderdaad juist dat westerse volken ‘op eigen kracht een universeel menselijk ideaal in zichzelf zoeken, en daarom zichzelf en de zaak waarvoor zij staan ernstige schade toebrengen.’ Met als gevolg dat:
‘The idea of universal humanity ever more wears away between them. Among each of them it takes a different type, dulls, and assumes in consciousness a new form. The Christian bond that up to this time united them loses strength with every day.' To the contrary, in the Russian character, 'the capability for high synthesis, a gift for universal reconcilability and humanity is predominant.' 'He gets along with everyone and is accustomed to all. He sympathizes with all that is human regardless of nationality, blood, and soil. He finds and immediately allows for reasonableness in all, if only there is to be some universal human interest.' 'This is why Europeans completely do not understand Russians, and the greatest feature of their character they have called impersonality.' In the work of Russia’s greatest poet, Pushkin, this 'Russian ideal — integrality, universal reconcilability, and humanity' was incarnated.
Namely the Russians, thought Dostoevsky, would set the basis for 'the universal reconciliation of peoples' and the 'renewal of men upon Christ’s true principles' (Diary of a Writer, 1876, June). The Eastern ideal, i.e. the ideal of Russian Orthodoxy, is first the spiritual unity of humanity in Christ, and then, by virtue of this spiritual uniting of all in Christ, surely the proper sovereign and social unification (Diary of a Writer, 1877, May-June). Such an ideal is the application of Khomyakov’s formulated principle of catholicity [sobornost] not only to the order of the Church, but also to the sovereign order, the economic system, and even to the international organization of humanity,
aldus de Amerikaanse vertaler Mark Hackard die een universitaire graad bezit ‘in Russian, Eastern European and Eurasian Studies (Stanford University). I study the intersection of political culture, religion and strategic issues, which I approach from a traditionalist-conservative position. Some of my major intellectual influences are Joseph de Maistre, Juan Donoso Cortes, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Rene Guenon and Fr. Seraphim Rose. I translate classic Russian political and religious texts.’
http://souloftheeast.org/2015/02/27/dostoevsky-russias-mission/
Op zijn beurt zette de gelauwerde Indiase auteur Pankaj Mishra op vrijdag 24 juli 2015 uiteen dat de hoofdpersoon:
Rudin in Turgenev’s eponymous (gelijknamige. svh) novel desperately wants to surrender himself ‘completely, greedily, utterly’ to something; he ends up dead on a Parisian barricade in 1848, having sacrificed himself to a cause he doesn’t fully believe in. It was, however, Dostoevsky who saw most acutely how individuals, trained to believe in a lofty notion of personal freedom and sovereignty, and then confronted with a reality that cruelly cancelled it, could break out of paralyzing ambivalence into gratuitous murder and paranoid insurgency.
However, as Dostoevsky saw it, the cost of such splendor and magnificence was a society dominated by the war of all against all, in which most people were condemned to be losers. In Paris, he caustically noted that liberté existed only for the millionaire. The notion of equality before the law was a ‘personal insult’ to the poor exposed to French justice. As for fraternité, it was another hoax in a society driven by the ‘individualist, isolationist instinct’ and the lust for private property.
Dostoevsky diagnosed the new project of human emancipation through the bewilderment and bitterness of people coming late to the modern world, and hoping to use its evidently successful ideas and methods to their advantage. For these naive latecomers, the gap between the noble ends of individual liberation and the poverty of available means in their barbarous social order was the greatest. The self-loathing clerk in Notes from Underground represents the human being who is excruciatingly (ondraaglijk. svh) aware that free moral choice is impossible in a world increasingly regimented by instrumental reason. He dreams constantly and impotently of revenge against his social superiors. Raskolnikov, the deracinated (ontwortelde. svh) former law student in Crime and Punishment, is the psychopath of instrumental rationality, who can work up evidently logical reasons to do anything he desires. After murdering an old woman, he derives philosophical validation from the most celebrated nationalist and imperialist of his time, Napoleon: a ‘true master, to whom everything is permitted.’
Het is deze Keizer Napoleon Bonaparte die door Adolf Hitler werd bewonderd en nog steeds wordt bewonderd door hedendaagse liberalen als mainstream-opiniemaker Ian Buruma, ironisch genoeg hoogleraar democratie, mensenrechten en journalistiek. Dat Napoleon bij volstrekt uiteenlopende witte mannen hoog aangeschreven staat, is symptomatisch voor het falen van de Europese Verlichtingsidealen. Niet alleen hier, maar ook elders. Mishra merkt dan ook op dat:
There is nothing remarkable about the fact that the biggest horde of foreign fighters in Iraq and Syria originated in Tunisia, the most westernized of Arab countries. Mass education, economic crisis and unfeeling government have long constituted a fertile soil for the cults of authoritarianism and violence. Powerlessness and deprivation are exacerbated today by the ability, boosted by digital media, to constantly compare your life with the lives of the fortunate (especially women entering the workforce or prominent in the public sphere: a common source of rage for men with siege mentalities worldwide). The quotient of frustration tends to be highest in countries that have a large population of educated young men who have undergone multiple shocks and displacements in their transition to modernity and yet find themselves unable to fulfill the promise of self-empowerment. For many of them the contradiction Dostoevsky noticed between extravagant promise and meagre means has become intolerable.
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/jul/24/how-to-think-about-islamic-state
Het kan niet vaak genoeg herhaald worden dat de vervreemding, het gevoel nergens bij te horen, het overbodig zijn, opnieuw een doorslaggevend gevoel is bij vele westerse jongeren die zelfs met een academische studie geen vaste baan meer kunnen krijgen. Het interessante is dat al in ‘Rudin, de eerste roman van Ivan Toergenjev, het gevoel overtollig te zijn, niet in staat zijn om te handelen, het belangrijkste thema van zijn hele literaire werk werd,’ en dat ‘de kloof tussen enerzijds de nobele doeleinden van individuele bevrijding en anderzijds het gebrek aan beschikbare middelen in de barbaarse maatschappelijke orde’ niet overbrugd kon worden, zoals nu ook in het Westen het geval is. Die ontworteling leidt tot onder andere de zichzelf hatende klerk in Fjodor Dostojevski’s Aantekeningen uit het ondergrondse (1961). Daarin wordt de moderne mens afgebeeld als iemand ‘die zich er ondraaglijk van bewust is dat een vrije morele keuze onmogelijk is in een wereld die in toenemende mate wordt beheerst door een instrumentele rede,’ of zoals de Amerikaanse socioloog C. Wright Mills een eeuw later het Amerikaanse kapitalisme samenvatte als ‘rationality without reason. Such rationality is not commensurate with freedom but the destroyer of it.’ Maar omdat de opiniemakers van de massamedia zich niet kunnen permitteren hun rijke broodheren tegen voor het hoofd te stoten, worden dit soort onderwerpen collectief genegeerd, terwijl toch een aanzienlijk deel van de jongeren dat zichzelf op de neoliberale markt moet verkopen, beseft dat de door politici zo aangeprezen ‘flexibilisering van de arbeidsmarkt’ een gluiperig eufemisme is voor uitbuiting.
Professor Standing wijst erop:
that more in the precariat, when they look in a mirror in the morning, do not see a failure or a shirker (lijntrekker. svh), but someone who shares a common predicament with many others. This is a necessary change from isolation, self-pity or self-loathing to collective strength, knowing that the economic institutions want a large precariat.
Those in it have lives dominated by insecurity, uncertainty, debt and humiliation. They are becoming denizens (buitenstaanders. svh) rather than citizens, losing cultural, civil, social, political and economic rights built up over generations. The precariat is also the first class in history expected to endure labour and work at a lower level than the schooling it typically acquires. In an ever more unequal society, its relative deprivation is severe.
Pain and anomie (normloosheid. svh) will grow. There will be more 'days of rage.’ But it is not enough to be angry. While some are listening to ugly populist, simplistic voices, others are rediscovering their humanity and desire for society. Across the world, there is an energy building around the precariat. It is organizing, and struggling to define a new forward march.
Other developments since The Precariat was written have served to strengthen the argument that the precariat is emerging as a new mass class with transformative potential. These developments include the continued pursuit of austerity in the industrialized world, which is pushing more and more people into the precariat, and an intensification of what is described in the book as 'the politics of inferno,’ including the growth of commodified and populist politics and Edward Snowdens brave revelations on the extent of the surveillance state.
A second book, A Precariat Charter: From Denizens to Citizens, published alongside this revised edition of The Precariat, attempts to take the debate forward by discussing the impact on the precariat of the austerity era and the disturbing utilitarian thinking that underpins it. A Precariat Charter goes on to set out a series of policies aimed at addressing the precariat’s insecurities and aspirations, proposed not as a manifesto but as a starting point for the construction of a new precariat agenda.
Standing benadrukt dat het ‘precariat’ een ‘class-in-the-making’ is ‘because it is internally divided at present. As a “dangerous class,” it must become a class-for-itself in order to abolish itself. In other words, it must become sufficiently united to have the political strength to pressurize the state into creating the social and economic conditions that would remove its precariousness.’
Ik denk dat Guy Standing te optimistisch is over de mogelijkheden van het precariaat, het hedendaags proletariaat dat in een precaire situstie verkeert. Niet alleen staan de jongeren tegenover de macht van een zwaar bewapende gevestigde orde, maar de hele gevestigde orde heeft geen plaats voor hen, en dan rest er alleen nog het cynisme zoals die ontstond bij de Russische revolutionairen in de tweede helft van de negentiende eeuw. Ze wisten van alles de prijs, maar van niets de waarde. In welke ramp dit uitmondde weten we nu. Tegelijkertijd is het establishment geenszins van plan de uitgestotenen in zich op te nemen. De enige reflex die het establishment kent is ‘het tuig’ te demoniseren, en juridisch te vervolgen. Een recent voorbeeld van dit voornemen is D’66 minister van Financiën Sigrid Kaag die op 15 januari 2023 liet weten ‘de toename van rechts-extremisme in Nederland’ te willen stoppen. Dat moet volgens haar rigoreuzer dan tot nu is gebeurd, aangezien in haar ogen ‘rechts-extremisten en complot-populisten’ de democratie bedreigen. Volgens mevrouw Kaag, die een steeds grotere staatscontrole op de bevolking voorstaat, is de democratie ‘de beste en enige duurzame manier om onze verschillen vreedzaam te overbruggen.’ In Nederland zou de voedingsbodem van extremistisch handelen ‘zorgwekkend vruchtbaar’ zijn. Daarbij verwees ze naar de groeiende groep burgers die niet meer in de gecorrumpeerde politiek gelooft. Opvallend is dat mevrouw Kaag, mede door haar veel te nauwe banden met onder andere het geenszins democratische World Economic Forum, zichzelf politiek verdacht heeft opgesteld, met als gevolg een aanzienlijk zetelverlies als er nu verkiezingen zouden worden gehouden. Het getuigt immers niet van een democratische gezindheid dat zij haar ideologische agenda bepaalt na overleg met neoliberale miljonairs en miljardairs, die zich met privé-jets naar Davos laten vliegen.
Koningin Máxima goed op haar plaats in Davos
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