The left should not be so self-flagellating, said Tim ‘S Jongers, director of the PvdA think tank, recently in Fidelity. The left has “plans that are affordable, and that also benefit people. We as the left should be more proud that we are doing such good work.” On Monday in De Balie he said this again: in the updated Willem Drees lecture, together with GroenLinks colleague Noortje Thijssen, he advocated “proud of our ideals” and “an offensive attitude” for left-wing cooperation. The idea seemed to be that if voters understand what the left has to offer, they will automatically return.
There is something that Tim ‘S Jongers does not mention here. In my opinion, many right-wing voters do not so much dislike left-wing policies or even left-wing politicians (Frans Timmermans aside), it is mainly the left-wing electorate that disgusts them. These are elitist people who feel better than the rest, but are at the same time completely hypocritical. You saw it last week, when social geographer Josse de Voogd said on X that GroenLinks-PvdA “underestimates how the ‘excesses’ are now quite defining for them.” When someone asked what those excesses were, all kinds of hobbyists jumped on it. “Oat milk slippers who go on a yoga retreat in Bali, buy a house in a white neighborhood with jubilation and then accuse others of racism and consumerism,” says a certain Roel. I don’t know who Roel is, but he perfectly summarized the image of the left-wing voter.
This image is partly justified. The supporters of GroenLinks-PvdA are predominantly highly educated, prosperous and post-materialist, and of course there are also insufferable types among them. Only: the voter is not the politician or party ideologue. I don’t know Tim ‘S Jongers either, but I don’t see him going on a yoga retreat in Bali anytime soon.
You see the lumping of politicians and voters together in many analyzes of right-wing discontent. Take the column in which Arjen van Veelen placed the A12 occupiers in the same category as neoliberal policymakers. Take it interview in which Joris Luyendijk explained the PVV vote based on the “contempt porn” of highly educated people. Or take Maxim Februari, according to whom the left “has become entrenched in a lifestyle struggle out of tribalism: having the same lifestyle together and sharing the same things equally.”
Lumping this together is analytically messy, but I think many right-wing voters think exactly the same way. This means that dissatisfaction is not only a political problem, but also a social problem. Many people feel that they are looked down upon by their fellow citizens, and that is partly true. Highly educated affluent people (nowadays summarized as ‘left’) are proud of their houses with bookcases and Creuset pans, and believe that they have more taste than people with tiled floors and kilo-bangers on the barbecue. To make it even more complex: looking down goes just as well the other way, although you might not call it looking down. The less educated and less wealthy resist snobbery, ‘good taste’, and lofty ideals. Then it’s better not to be a ‘Gutmensch’ at all.
This social dynamic is not new. A sense of superiority and resentment are inevitable in an egalitarian society that is nevertheless unequal. It only becomes harmful when those feelings start to overgrow more rational political considerations: when “they drink oat milk” is seen as a fully-fledged political argument. And the latter seems to be happening now.
Why is mutual aversion so great now? I don’t think you can ignore social media for the answer. I read an interesting one recently paper about ‘affective polarization’: the emotionally experienced aversion to ‘the other side’. Social media fuels this aversion, the researchers say. They oppose the idea of the filter bubble, which would only target like-minded people. According to them, on social media people come into more contact with people who think differently and are encouraged to take sides against them. Videos of ‘oat milk slippers’ are shared scornfully and contribute to right-wing identity formation.
I have yet to hear a politician acknowledge this. That is not fun for them to do either, because the problem is outside their own sphere of influence. Tim ‘S Jongers and his colleagues can have so many good and affordable plans, all it takes is one oat milk slipper to act annoyingly in Bali and all efforts are undone.