It is a joy to read in newspapers two different reports that are mutually exclusive. The fun is that you as a reader are thrown back on yourself, and have to come up with a judgment. No, no opinion, it’s about the probability of both statements. You are still in pajamas and already the official referee.
I signed up last Friday de Volkskrant an interview with Renze Klamer. He says: “Complaining about talk shows seems to me to be typically Dutch – we are good at whining anyway.” Not unimportant to know: Renze Klamer is ready to present a new talk show himself.
On the same day, this newspaper published an interview with Jürgen Kaube, sociologist and one of the editors-in-chief of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. Kaube: “There are many talk shows that are willing to spread that society is divided like never before, because it is better for the ratings.”
It seems that Kaube is criticizing talk shows and the amount of them, and behold, the man is German. The escape route of the ‘typically Dutch’, through which Klamer can elevate himself from the pettiness of his homeland, is not available to Kaube. Kaube denounces the media, especially the talk shows, because the medium and the genre beg to magnify contradictions: they must ensure viewing figures.
Kaube: “Talk shows often give the impression that we live in a historically unique situation of discord.” The question is indeed whether the crises are spreading rapidly, or whether we have stretched the concept of crisis to infinity. Do we live in a completely divided society? The talk shows seem to suggest it, one gap after another is signaled, and Kaube offers a counterweight. By the way, he is not a ‘positivo’ to put it very Dutch. “Society (…) is terrible.”
But his point: “A conflict is only dangerous for a society if there are not also a hundred other conflicts. It is precisely because we have so many conflicts that we have peace.”
I find this a relativistic yet intelligent point of view, especially since it comes from a German, who knows how his homeland had only one real conflict for more than a decade: between Aryans and Jews. Communists, Roma and the handicapped could also suffer, but the hunt for the Jews was the main thing.
You always know too little. I have just read Geke van der Wal’s poignant biography about Guus Belinfante, the Dutch lawyer and former rector of the UvA. It’s the details that keep burning. 1942: “Shopping: Only between three and five o’clock at non-Jewish shops. Visits to non-Jews were no longer allowed.”
A gorge like a ravine.
Stephen Sanders writes a column here every Monday.
A version of this article also appeared in the newspaper of April 17, 2023.