In an old commercial of Old El Paso, a Spanish-speaking family tries to choose between hard and soft tacos. The choice is difficult for them, until a girl comes up with the solution: “Por qué no los dos?”, she asks, after which the family throws her into the air, cheering.
‘Por qué no los dos’ became one meme, also among my friends. You can say it when someone puts forward a choice such as ‘coffee or tea’, but also with false contradictions. Consider the eternal question, popular at debate evenings, whether a certain phenomenon is a threat or an asset. The wolf: threat or enrichment? Islam in Europe: threat or enrichment? Robotization in the hotel industry: threat or enrichment? Exotics in Gelderland: threat or enrichment? (These are just some results from Google.) I almost always think: sometimes a threat, sometimes an enrichment. Or both at the same time. Or a threat to one person, an enrichment to another. In short: why not lose dos?
Last week, a UN rapporteur proclaimed that the Dutch housing shortage was not caused by immigration, but by the government: it has left housing to the market. Left-wingers shared the news with relief, as if their point had finally been proven. It seemed like a no-brainer to me that the ‘por qué no los dos’ rule also applied here: yes, the government has contributed to the housing shortage with its housing policy (or lack thereof), but the high migration balance of the last years also plays a role. After all, status holders, labor migrants and foreign students have to live somewhere. What’s the point of denying that?
We see another false contradiction in the exegesis of the PVV electorate. Academics from all over the world have been debating the motivations of right-wing populist voters for years: are they mainly cultural or economic? That battle is now also raging in the Dutch public debate, again last week with the presentation of the National Voter Survey. According to some experts, this would show that it was not the housing shortage or insecurity, but an aversion to foreigners that had driven voters to the PVV: after all, that is what they said themselves. The idea that things might be connected, and that respondents do not neatly write down the causal connections but only give part of the answer, did not seem to occur to them.
Apart from that, it is strange to want to attribute one motive to a group of 2.5 million people. Perhaps one person actually votes for Wilders because of loneliness, as Arjen van Veelen recently wrote, another because of his wallet, another because all his friends do it too and a fourth because he is a huge racist. Just as you cannot say that PVV members do not care about social security, it is crazy to claim that PVV members “are not racists”, as Johan Remkes did in NRC. I would also never say that GroenLinks are not racists.
People are layered and often have multiple motivations for their actions and beliefs. That realization seems difficult to penetrate. You also see it in the discussion about the motives of climate activists: they are said to be guided by herd behavior and feelings of moral superiority, and are therefore not sincere idealists. But what about no los dos? Perhaps some activists are indeed driven by vanity and conformism (just like many other people, by the way), but also by sincere ideals. These are no less essential because there are other motives involved.
One of my wishes for 2024 is that we do not reduce every group, person or event to one cause or characteristic. I understand the desire for simple explanations, but the world doesn’t become clearer just because you want it to.
But I have no illusions: this will be another difficult year for the ‘por qué no los dos’ adepts. Perhaps it also has to do with identity: people find it more important to remain true to their ideological position than to really understand a situation in all its complexity. If you are someone who welcomes immigration, then immigrants should have nothing to do with the housing shortage. And if you think that PVV members have legitimate concerns, then it is awkward if they also say racist things. No one likes having their worldview clouded.
Still, with the best of luck, I wish everyone an ambiguous 2024.