The night before Russia invades Ukraine, I dream that I run into Thierry Baudet at the caterer. Oh no huh, I think, the time has come. The moment I’ve been dreading for years.
The question is, what do you do when you meet someone you once liked, but now accuse you of undermining democracy? You say, “Hey, how are you?” Or do you say, “Hey, why have you turned out to be an enemy of the people?”
We were nothing more than acquaintances, but our paths crossed regularly. In 2008 I visited his conservative reading club a few times, where he invited interesting speakers. Afterwards he recited German poetry in the pub, standing on a chair. Innocent times, I think now. The credit crisis was yet to come, the euro crisis, the refugee crisis, the pandemic. The Netherlands experimented with its own conservative movement: you had the Edmund Burke Foundation and briefly the magazine Opinionwhich I read as a counterbalance to The Green Amsterdammer† There was little at stake in contact with dissenters. You could disagree, the political did not stand in the way of the personal.
In 2014 I interviewed Baudet for NRC† He had already been promoted NRCcolumnist, now he was searching. For a few hours we talked: about the European Union, sovereignty, the importance of a home. I found him fervent and uninterested in contradiction, but I did believe that he genuinely cared about democracy.
In 2017 I saw for the first time how Baudet lied to people and tried to incite them. At an FVD meeting in Den Helder, where I was as a reporter, he said that the ‘mainstream media’ deliberately distort the truth. I was shocked: this was no longer controlling power, this was propaganda. He did say hello to me, by the way. Was I the enemy or not?
In the following years Baudet continued along this path. Not only did his ideas become more radical, he also seemed to have moved more and more into an alternate universe, where facts are lies and vice versa. No voter is served by this, not even the conservative voter – that’s what makes it so destructive. Baudet betrays the truth, the rule of law, and democracy, which he supposedly considers so important.
Would I say this if I met him? It could happen at any moment, we live near each other. The last time I spoke to him, years ago, was at the till at the Marqt.
In the dream, my subconscious leaves no doubt about it: my conflict-avoiding side takes over. We admire the delicacies in the refrigerator, muse about what we are going to eat that evening. We laugh and exchange tips. It’s fun again. I have the vague realization that I am missing something on principle, but in the end we are just people, I think, including Thierry and I, and even though I blame him for everything as a politician, that does not mean that we can’t talk about pateetjes and such.
The next day, Russia invades Ukraine. Tanks drive across the border, missiles are fired at military targets. A photo of a bloodied Ukrainian woman appears on all front pages. War in Europe: it feels unreal. But not for Baudet. He puts a video online in which he, seated in the back seat of a moving car, explains why Putin has every right to do what he does. “Walking over pride and honour, you don’t make the world a better place, but much more unstable,” he says, in the bored tone of someone who had foreseen it all. “The West caused this, and Russia’s response now was all too predictable.”
It’s not 2008 anymore, as much as I’d like to. With some dissenters, we haven’t even shared a belief in the same basic facts and values for a while. There is no basis for conversation and no excuse to keep the political away from the personal.
My dream felt familiar, but it was about another era. Smalltalk at the cash register is a long way off. It is no longer pleasant.
Floor Rusman ([email protected]) is editor of NRC
A version of this article also appeared in NRC Handelsblad on 26 February 2022
A version of this article also appeared in NRC on the morning of February 26, 2022