A reporter from zembla posted Wednesday on social media a fragment of a broadcast about odor nuisance from pig stables in Brabant. We saw how the reporter, walking with a colleague, passed a house, where a man in work clothes asked who they belonged to.
“From Zembla.”
„Walk on quickly [voor]that I’ll take my car and run you over,” said the man.
The post attracted attention, including from a woman with the Twitter handle @dukkie6 (“Duk”), who presents itself as a “proud member of the doubt brigade”. “I tweet as myself,” she also mentions.
Yet she does not mention her real name – nor that she is in the House of Representatives senior employee is part of the BoerBurgerBeweging (BBB).
“One-sided reporting probably has nothing to do with it,” scorned them about the Zembla reporter’s post. She called the “free press (-) completely activist”. And later: “I know how a program like Zembla puts people with their backs against the wall.”
She withheld a word of disapproval about the reporter’s threat that day.
Now you could criticize this, or not, but perhaps more interestingly, the case illustrates very sharply how politics develops. The decline of middle parties creates new parties that often identify with one or a few target groups. They usually strongly reject criticism of such a target group, and they explain the misbehavior in such a group, such as the threat of a journalist, by pointing it at others.
It is politics that imitates social media, in which balanced factual analysis loses out against one-sidedness and intemperance. Parliament as a producer of half-truths.
You see it in almost all parties. Last weekend, VVD MP Daniël Koerhuis heard “terrible stories” from travelers in queues at Schiphol, and pleaded on social media for the opening of Lelystad Airport – but ignored the underpayment and flex contracts of baggage workers.
Geert Wilders (PVV) accused the NCTV on social media of “filthy filthiness” after NRC Tuesday quoted internal documents in which the service determined that his party would “contribute to a breeding ground for radicalization”.
Whether the NCTV is allowed to do this is a legitimate concern. But that his party because of this „secretly in the extreme right corner [was] pushed”, as he complained, was again a half-truth: people, including politicians, have expressed their very public concerns about this for years.
The examples reminded me of a formidable recent piece in The Atlantic from the psychologist Jonathan Haidt: Why the past 10 years in American life have been uniquely stupid. He quotes John Stuart Mill: He who knows only his own side of an issue knows little of the issue itself.
According to Haidt, political and administrative institutions in the US have surrendered to “the Wild West” of social media, especially Twitter, where a small clumsiness can lead to pillory, so that people who make a mistake are quickly turned into bad people.
In this uncertainty, political institutions decided to evade the digital pillory: government services immediately gave in to online attacks, usually with self-censorship. Similar risk-averse behavior emerged in politics. Parties hardly tolerate differing views, debate comes to a standstill – target groups must not be distressed.
These phenomena are less severe in politics in The Hague – but risk-averse behavior is also on the rise there. Many new parties almost always opt for the half-truth over the possible anger in their own target group. Politicians from classical parties praised each other ten years ago when they ‘jumped over their own shadow’. You don’t hear about it anymore.
Even in the most exciting period of the formation last year, Sigrid Kaag (D66) decided to convene his own target groups in the HJ School lecture, as speechwriter for D66 Bob de Ruiter recently said. And Rutte IV’s coalition partners are so concerned with their own profile that some ministers wonder ‘why no one wants to own the cabinet’.
The PvdA discussion about further cooperation with GroenLinks is also under pressure from half-truths and risk aversion. After internal debate, at party congresses in 2020 and 2021, far-reaching forms of merger were already voted on (one national list, one group from The Hague). Now a group of members wants to determine at the PvdA congress in June that a joint list will be drawn up during the elections to the Senate next year.
But last weekend, party chairman Esther-Miriam Sent introduced a new six-month member discussion about working with GroenLinks. For merger advocates, a showy attempt to prevent a quick decision in June. Desire for discussion as half truth.
Institutional Netherlands also regularly does not know what to do with waves of public criticism. Schiphol director Dick Benschop tried this week with impotent apologies. And after the Tax and Customs Administration talked away the Allowances affair for years, frustrated (former) employees now see that the service is barely trying to counter the ongoing criticism.
It is not always clear whether this frustration is justified, but the response pattern of the service is strikingly similar to that of American governments: self-censorship for fear of public opinion.
Next week the cabinet will discuss the Spring Memorandum with the opposition, and it cannot be ignored that the growing intemperance is a complication for the coalition in finding sufficient support in the Senate.
Since the new House of Representatives took office last spring, major policy debates have also often resulted in complaints that almost everything needs to be improved: faster, fairer, more open, more transparent, cheaper, etc. Intemperance that, if not overloaded, then overestimates democracy.
And the danger is the negative spiral: cabinets that, according to the House, are underperforming and as a result avoid more and more risks, weakened middle parties, and a House that is fragmented even further as a result.
Even then, I suspect, you would still find political scientists who believe that this is good for confidence in democracy, because in that case almost all Dutch people can vote for a party that represents their views excellently.
The only drawback is that it would only further encourage politicians to be one-sided and intemperate: to refine the dictatorship of self-interest.
And take a look at the circumstances: war in Ukraine, loss of women’s rights in the US, disappearing tech optimism, shrinking world trade, the emergence of a more closed world and more closed world views.
It’s one long cry for moderation. To weaken one’s own views in order to give space to others. To make politics bigger than just one’s own right. To keep talking to people who think differently.
Not that the latter is easy. Mindful of the pleas for transparency from BBB leader Caroline van der Plas Friday I asked the anonymously twittering BBB employee why she does not mention who she works for on her profile. Because she “tweets as a private person, not on behalf of my employer,” she wrote.
She concluded that I would be “disturbed” – quod non – and also came up with the solution: “I will block you.”
A version of this article also appeared in the newspaper of May 7, 2022