And the tent that is being demolished

I’m a bit dizzy, don’t know if it’s because of what I read or because of the corona in my body. The virus has finally got me. Fortunately, no serious complaints, except for obligatory sitting on the couch. Meanwhile, the children are dancing to the Snollebollekes. To the left! To the right! One more time! The books I read are also about this: should we turn left or right?

The first is called Covid-19: The Great Reset by Klaus Schwab and Thierry Malleret from 2020. The title is infamous: conspiracy theorists saw in that ‘reset’ a secret plan to seize world power. Nonsense of course, but in the meantime I was curious what it could do.

That makes me dizzy. Die Klaus Schwab – the boss of the World Economic Forum, the club meeting of the super-rich in Davos – turns out to be very left-wing. His book reads like a trendwatcher’s report written by an algorithm, full of buzzwords and with quotes from Oscar Wilde and Friedrich Nietzsche. But the message: hats off. It’s like hearing Sander Schimmelpenninck preach against poverty.

Even before the pandemic, says Schwab, inequality was growing and we had a climate problem. The pandemic will further increase inequality. If we do nothing, there will be riots and politicians will be threatened. Then the tent will be demolished, the Snollebollekes would say.

Ruling by water cannon will not save us. No, says Schwab: the breeding ground of the unrest must be addressed. In other words, capitalism must change. How? Schwab talks about ‘stakeholder capitalism’ more than ten times. A kind of Corporate Social Responsibility. A sweet capitalism.

Now the merciless Amazon is also embracing that ‘stakeholder capitalism’. This is of course the case here. That sweeter capitalism is a great ideal; in practice, the companies ignore it, noted The New York Times. And after two years of pandemic, it turns out that the ten richest men in the world, including Jeff Bezos of Amazon, to have doubled their wealth. That is the real Great Reset: Sywertization on a global scale.

Picked up another book, thinner this time, because the children are revolting. It is called National Socialism as rancor, by Menno Ter Braak, introduced by Bas Heijne. The 1937 pamphlet has been ‘rediscovered’, according to Buitenhof recently. It’s about democracy always organizing its own disappointments. It promises equality for everyone, but in practice it obviously doesn’t work. So there is resentment. And then we can go both ways. Exploit that rancor like the Nazis do. Or see resentment as something that we have to tame (‘stylize’, says Ter Braak). With a free press, open debate, parliament: with our institutions.

His pamphlet is a brilliant analysis of Nazism. But why is it being ‘rediscovered’ right now? First of all, because many are genuinely concerned about Baudet and other threats to democracy. Nazi comparisons are taboo, except to chastise Nazis – fair enough. But I also think: because the pamphlet, in the year 2022, reads as a very comfortable assignment.

Just as Klaus Schwab is the ideal lightning rod for the conspiracy theorist, so are Wappies and Baudet for the right-thinking person. As long as we point to the poisonous mushroom, we are not talking about the rotten tree trunk it grows on. Not about the breeding ground. And we can indeed list Ter Braak as an ally: he too does not want to know much about sociological explanations. He even taunts the socialists, who suggest that „the resentment is a consequence [is] of social injustices and in particular of poverty”.

That’s how our leaders think too. “We are not going to look for deep sociological causes,” Prime Minister Rutte said after the curfew riots. Mayor Aboutaleb called the Coolsingel riots merely an “orgy of violence”. His problem analysis consisted of a plan to equip the police with paintball guns.

Then Klaus Schwab is a better guide. “How could all this pressure not end in an eruption?”, he laments about the growing inequality and lack of freedom. He understands that things have to change. Out of self-interest? Perhaps. Long before the Capitol riots and the Coolsingel storming, the sleepy mountain village of Davos was stormed by angry protesters, as Naomi Klein noted. But our leaders remain stubborn and say to the Dutch who do not find an audience: tut tut, you can be angry, but keep it neat, after all, we have institutions.

John de Mol would say: don’t we have counters?

Arjen van Veelen replaces Floor Rusman this week.