2 movies and some commemorations - part II

So this was another movie I went to (see yesterday's post) and it is wry humour that does the trick in this one. Although you could argue that most of the characters come out of this all too well, there is no doubt that many remarks in the movie have a kick if you realise what they would have meant in practice. The summary executions now are portrayed as comic rather than beastly, and Malenkow now comes across as an obseqious toad, without his direct and indirect responsibilities for the deaths of hundreds of thousands.

I remember reading parts of the Black Book of Communism (which sounds better in the original French) and being stymied by 100,000 deaths per page (for a 1,000 pages long if you can bear it).

The Mayday celebrations and the commemoration of Karl Marx' 200th birthday of course reopened that old discussion. While right wingers dismissed Marx completely and blamed all 100 million deaths of Communism on him, left wingers at least defended his scientific contributions, even if his predictions were widely off.

The allure of Whataboutism

The temptation of taking the easy way out it great. You can go a long way fending of the challenges to your beliefs by pointing out that crimes committed in the name of another belief were worse. We can try and just argue why imperialism was a worse crime than nazism or communism or slavery. As if determining which crime is worse would actually solve our dilemmas today.

So what if communism should prove to have made more deadly victims than any other ' bad thing', would that mean that inequality is okay and slavery too? Do the Gulags justify the Holocaust, or the other way around? Do the Crusades justify the bombing of the Twin Towers? Why even get close to such a trap?

We are not alone

But my promise to myself this year is that I will no longer stand idly by in these discussions. Not by outshouting others or letting go of the good manners in discussion just to win once. Because civilisation is not built on winning one argument, but on setting the conditions for resolving many arguments. Be it through laws, democratic process, rules for argumentation or  'good behaviour'.

In that way, even if we are not as committed to a cause as some others, by sticking to nuance and understanding, we set an example and show the value of those ideas. And we shall be beacons to those like us, also reluctant to join the fray. We are not alone. In fact, we are the majority. And our values are worth standing up for. So we need to be out there (wherever the discussion takes place) and visible/audible and support each other.

We can leave the floor to those on the extremes, but if any of the above commemorations should teach us anything, it is that if one extreme wins out, not just the other extreme loses out, but we all become limited in our freedoms, accomplices in the crimes of murderous regimes and chance victims of the violence they bring.

Like the mother in In Syria, we can't keep the world out. When it knocks on our door, it will be too late.

2 movies and some commemorations - part I

About a year ago I went to watch In Syria, a very powerful movie about a woman and her extended family trying to make it through a day in war torn Damascus. The camera work is excellent drawing you into the claustrophobia of the appartment, even more powerfully than the tank in Lebanon.

What made it even more powerful to me is that these people are recognisable, westernised and hip, worrying about shaving their legs and the availability of broadband on their phones. It emphasises how much out of place are the bombardments and bouts of gunfire close by. And even though the  door of the appartment is blockaded, the sanctity of the home will be violated.

I cannot recommend this movie strongly enough to you.

Commemorating 'the war'

On May 4th last year, the official day of commemorating the war victims in the Netherlands, I joined the commemoration at Kamp Amersfoort, a concentration camp where the Germans in WWII kept Dutch high profile hostages from political parties and civic organisations to disencourage sabotage as well as people suspected of being part of the resistance. Over half were at some point moved on to camps in Germany, often with fatal results. Several hundred were shot or died from cruel treatment or the bad conditions during the war.

It was cathartic to file past the monument on the execution place in silence, with nothing but the evening sunlight and the spring chatter of birds.

Further on, at eight o' clock we kept the two minutes silence. As always, I thought of my grandfather who fought the German invasion in May 1940 and later survived as a POW in eastern Europe. But thanks to In Syria, I was now also more aware of the plight of those at home trying to keep going as best they could.

Whose commemoration is it anyway?

But the past isn't the past. It's here every day and part of today's struggles. The Dutch commemoration on the 4th of May has become part of the discussion about integration and inclusion. Anticolonial activists demanded that the commemoration also include the victims of the Dutch decolonisation wars, on the grounds that the Dutch soldiers killed in those wars were being commemorated as well.

On the other hand some right wing commentators tried to debunk the narrative that Moroccan soldiers (and other French colonial subjects) were actively involved in the defense of the Netherlands in 1940.

While there is no use in overstating the impact of Moroccan soldiers in this instance, it is good to realise that millions of Moroccans, Algerians, Senegalese and others from French colonies, but also similar amounts of Africans and Indians from British colonies, and Indonesians from Dutch colonies were enrolled in the armies that liberated Europe, Africa and Asia.

Many of them volunteers, many of them motivated by the struggle against nazism, or otherwise to show that by liberating others they were worthy of their own independence. At least, they are as worthy of our thanks as the American, British, Canadian, French and Russian soldiers.

Not to mention the length the colonial powers went to extract resources from these countries, even if it caused famine and poverty. Millions died in famines like that in Bengal, where food was denied the population to feed troops at the front, or working in mines, plantations or field works, or as carriers. It is a side of the war that doesn't always get its fair share.

And if we want immigrants to identfy with their new home, there is no harm in showing that at that point in time we were on the same side, the right side. And that the fruits of that struggle are for them to reap as much as anyone.

Some people disagree with changing anything about the commemorations on the grounds that 'things have always been done like this'. But I was enlightened by a historian pointing out that only from 1966 did the official commemoration in the Netherlands include the victims of the Holocaust. The most important lesson for me is that we should be very critical of the argument that 'this is how we've always done it'. People's memories are very poor and short.


More in tomorrow's post.

Dutch Democracy Is Not In Crisis.

First a note to my English readers: by exception this post is partly in Dutch. A translation is provided below.

Niet vaak dat je zo enthousiast wordt van een boek over politiek. Misschien komt dat vooral omdat het boek nauw aansluit bij wat ik zelf al dacht (goh!?), maar omdat auteur Tom van der Meer ook hoogleraar politicologie is, heeft dat wat meer gewicht.

In Niet De Kiezer Is Gek betoogt hij dat de kiezer sinds zij bevrijd is uit de ketenen van de verzuiling niet wispelturig is geworden, maar wel elke verkiezing kiest uit verschillende partijen die dicht bij haar eigen opvattingen staan. En dat levert een Tweede Kamer op die goed in staat is nieuwe politieke stromingen een platform te geven. De democratie functioneert dus eigenlijk prima.

Waar het probleem zit, is bij het landsbestuur. De politiek heeft zich aan de ene kant niet aangepast aan het veranderende politieke landschap, en weerspiegelt aan de andere kant dat veranderde landschap onvoldoende.

De wens om elke regeerperiode te starten met een uit twee of drie partijen bestaande kamermeerderheid met een dichtgetimmerd regeerakkoord wordt steeds lastiger te vervullen. En het verdelen van banen op basis van regeringsdeelname wordt ondermijnd door dalend partijlidmaatschap en een kleiner aandeel van de bestuurspartijen in het totaal.

Alle voorgestelde alternatieven voor veranderingen voor het kiesstelsel zijn voor Van der Meer dus sowieso al niet echt nodig, maar dreigen in veel gevallen zelfs het probleem te verergeren. Kiesdrempels betekenen minder democratie, niet meer. Loterijen vallen ten prooi aan de groep die nu al het meest politiek geëngageerd is. 

De opdracht is dus vooral aan de politici in Den Haag: profileer jezelf weer op de inhoud en accepteer minderheidsregeringen. Dat laatste is de afgelopen vier jaar in zekere zin al aardig gelukt.

Ben ik dan helemaal gelukkig met dit boek? Nee, toch niet. Voor het door Van der Meer geconstateerde probleem van de banenverdeling langs partijpolitieke lijnen heeft hij zelf geen echte oplossing.

En eerlijk gezegd zie ik partijen dat niet zo snel opgeven aangezien dat een belangrijke reden is voor personen is om lid van een politieke partij te worden/blijven. Zolang partijen geen manier weten te vinden om kiezers weer op andere manieren structureel aan zich te binden zie ik dat niet zo snel veranderen.

Ook denk ik dat de Haagse politiek ook de kans moet krijgen om te veranderen en niet door journalisten en publieke opinie moet worden afgestraft als het weigert de waan van de dag te volgen. Van der Meer had die rol best meer mogen benadrukken.

English version

It’s not often that you get excited by a book about politics. This could perhaps be a result of the book aligning closely with my own views on the subject (surprise!), but also because the author is a professor in Political Studies, which carries a bit more weight than my opinion.

In It’s Not The Voter That Is Mad, Tom van der Meer argues that the voter, since she became unshackeled from pillarisation*, hasn’t become more fickle, but now chooses from a number of political parties to which she feels close. That results in a parliament that is very apt at including new political movements. Democracy, therefore,  is functioning quite well.

The problem on the other hand, lies with government. Dutch governmental politics hasn’t adapted to the changing political landscape and doesn’t reflect those changes enough.

The ideal of starting each cabinet with a parliamentary majority in two or three political parties with a fixed policy programme (called the Regeerakkoord) has become harder to achieve with the shrinking of the main parties. And the division of jobs in strategic positions between the major parties is undermined by falling party membership and the shrinking  share of the old main parties in the total vote.

The suggested alternatives for changes in the electoral system are not really necessary according to Van der Meer, but also run a high risk of only making the problem worse. Electoral barriers make the system less democratic, not more. And systems based on lotteries tend to fall in the hands of those that are already most politically engaged.

So the message of this book is mostly addressed to the national politicians: bring ideology back again. Also accept minority governments, like the Netherlands have effectively had in the last couple of years.

So am I completely happy with this book? No. Van der Meer doesn’t really offer an alternative to the practice of dividing key jobs among members of the ruling parties.

And to be honest, I don’t see that happening too soon. It is a major reason for people to become and remain a member. Certainly won’t happen as long as parties haven’t figured out how to structurally attract people by other means.

Press and public opinion will also have to give politicians the opportunity to break away from the news cycle. As far as I am concerned Van der Meer could have stressed those roles more.

* Pillarisation is the typically 19th/20th century Dutch practice of social, economical and political organisation along religious and ideological lines: ie separate football clubs, unions and parties for Catholics, Protestant sect #1 through #X, Liberals, Social Democrats. This social organisation was broken up in the 1970s and 1980s though some of it remains to this day.