Raisa Blommestijn, the umpteenth defective product of Leiden University, once again displayed her malicious ignorance last week. She first linked the death of a fallen football player to corona vaccinations, only to claim a day later on Ongehoord Nederland that immigrants raise wages and that they displace Dutch people from the labor market. The lack of logic hurts the brain, but the worst was yet to come. Next to Blommestijn was the Belgian agitator Filip de Winter, who was allowed to explain the racist population theory to the sheepish presenters.
That this kind of dredging is taken seriously was shown when an 18-year-old boy in Buffalo on Saturday murdered ten black Americans, invoking exactly the same population theory as the one De Winter sold on our public broadcaster. I’ll say it again: it is an unprecedented scandal that the NPO and Dutch politics, under the guise of pluralism, have given evil people a stage to discuss racist conspiracy theories without contradiction.
In the post-Fortuyn era, the rise of the far right has been excused by both penopausal prostate populists and more serious commentators as a logical response to the increased fragility of the proletariat. As a justified sentiment of an exploited and unheard of group of people, who have a right to claim victimhood. A big mistake, now that it is becoming increasingly clear that the middle class is the main engine of right-wing extremism.
In her new book Own well-being first Roxane van Iperen convincingly describes the rise of extreme right-wing housewives (‘wellness right’) and a wealthy middle class overcome by status anxiety. This increasingly conservative middle class would be afraid that foreigners or people who do not work hard will be pampered by Vadertje Staat. Selfishness and extremism of the affluent middle class as a side effect of meritocracy; we deserved it, they didn’t.
Now the meritocratic belief (because it is) is subject to much haggling, but I wonder whether meritocracy is to blame for the right-wing of the middle class. The fear of the social decline of one’s own children mainly reflects a fear of meritocracy, a latent realization that one has been lucky and has been able to benefit from economic prosperity, without too much effort. The middle class may identify with winners, but it lacks the confidence and compassion of real winners. People do not so much fear being exposed as predators themselves.
Rightly so. The crucial ingredient for a far-right breeding ground seems to me to be social inactivity. The extreme right also knows this, which is why they target all non-working, and therefore easy-to-reach groups, such as housewives and pensioners. So it is not the winners of meritocracy who have status anxiety, but the people who have so far successfully circumvented meritocracy by living on other people’s pockets.
Just as the rise of the far right cannot be justified with alleged victimization, I also think the reference to the meritocracy and tyranny of merit is still too rosy for the far-right and wellness-right wing of the middle class, because it suggests that their prosperity is due to their own merit.
No, I just keep it to spoiling and boredom. In that light, it was perhaps not a mistake for Blommestijn to describe the rise in wages as a problem. After all, if work becomes too attractive, there is no one left to watch Ongehoord Nederland at half past one in the afternoon. Get to know Blommestijn her Pappenheimers.