In The power of habit shows a fascinating, whimsical graph of how often the expression ‘The common man’ has appeared in the Proceedings of the House of Representatives since 1947. Political scientist Menno Hurenkamp and sociologist Jan Willem Duyvendak investigate in this book with the subtitle Populism in the polder the role of the common man and ordinariness in the Netherlands. And it changed quite a bit.
Menno Hurenkamp is affiliated with the University of Humanistics, Jan Willem Duyvendak is faculty professor of sociology at the Faculty of Social and Behavioral Sciences at the University of Amsterdam and director of the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities and Social Sciences (NIAS-KNAW), where we talk in his office.
‘Just do it’ is actually always about the question of who we grant emancipation, you write. Who knows how to just do it, belongs to it.
Duyvendak: ‘And not just here. In France you had the woman in a burkini who was forced to undress on the beach by police officers: the state ruled that a bikini was normal. Like the Netherlands, France has the idea of being neutral itself. Without realizing that the dominant identity is therefore omnipresent.’
And that is precisely why it is the majority who engage in identity politics, you argue.
Duyvendak: ‘Usually we are not aware of this, because it is so obvious. In the Netherlands you saw this in the Zwarte Piet discussion, when black Dutch people were excluded from the debate because it was about our history. Who then engages in identity politics?’
Sociologists call this kind of polarization based on feeling at home nativism. Geert Wilders, Thierry Baudet, but also Mark Rutte and the mayor of Rotterdam Ahmed Aboutaleb made nativist statements, which all come down to just do it or fuck off.
It is then a matter of ‘showing that you stand up for the common man, that he may remain himself and that he is free from strange stains’, write Hurenkamp and Duyvendak.
Through the common man, politicians suggest that minorities attack the Dutch identity. And ‘the elite’ suffer the same reproach: they prefer to work for migrants and the rest of the world than for ‘the ordinary people here’.
The ‘anywheres’ versus the ‘somewheres’. You are critical of the distinction made by the British writer David Goodhart between highly educated cosmopolitan and less privileged citizens who are bound to their region.
Hurenkamp: ‘If you look at the data in England, the cosmopolitan ones are anywheres also just doing volunteer work in the area. And run the somewheres might as well go to the plane to drink it up in Mallorca. Goodhart’s categories are artificial and absolutely untenable outside his book.’
The social geographer Josse de Voogd draws attention by pointing out similar differences on his Dutch maps.
Duyvendak: ‘There are unmistakable differences here between the city and the countryside. But his suggestion that ‘ordinary people’ drop out seems highly questionable. Yes, socio-economic disparities are once again becoming greater than they have been in a long time. But in terms of political empowerment? Those farmers cannot be avoided from the Randstad. The fact that they are demonstrating just shows that they have not given up at all. And then they are also represented in parliament by the BoerBurgerBeweging.’
Hurenkamp: ‘The turnout in parliamentary elections has also been higher than ever in recent years. It has definitely not decreased.’
Duyvendak: ‘What is at issue is that farmers frame the nitrogen crisis with their inverted flags as ‘we should not belong to the Netherlands’. It becomes an identity issue.’
The average Dutch person as a victim is ‘the force of habit at work’, write Duyvendak and Hurenkamp. And Germany has Otto NormalverbraucherFrance Monsieur Tout-le-mondeAmerica Joe the Plumber. The common man is everywhere in drawers of representatives of the people, administrators and journalists, between words such as ‘globalisation’, ‘individualisation’, ‘migration’ and ‘middle class’.
But when did that start? With the Belgian astronomer Adolphe Quetelet (1796-1874), the authors think, who deduced a probable average from a list of the chest circumferences of Scottish soldiers even before statistics were invented. After that, social science began to study people as natural phenomena, with statistics and categories, with which to govern politics.
Yet in the 19th century, the common man mostly does not do much. Not noble, not military, not meaningful. At the beginning of the 20th century, that changes. Writers such as Menno ter Braak and Albert Verwey pick up on the authenticity of the common man: a self-conscious character, not a poser and anything but pitiful.
Shortly after the war, in the House of Representatives, it is mainly the Social Democrats who start talking about the common man: he deserves justice, a roof over his head, education and elevation to become a civilized person. ‘Listening’ to the common man hardly ever happens, social democrats prefer to think up what is good for them with unabashed paternalism. And nobody contradicts that.
From 1946, the KRO broadcasts the radio program on the radio for twelve years The common man has his say out, but no ordinary man has a say in it – but a narrator who, between Bible quiz and organ music, talks about him. In the meantime, the common man emancipates calmly, see the film everyone (1963) by Bert Haanstra, who cosily portrays the common man with all his achievements. Not much later, the Provos start to dismiss the common man as ‘klootjesvolk’. Like all bourgeois people, he appears to long for a house, a family, a car.
The common man then comes from the far left.
Hurenkamp: ‘Thanks to CPN MP Marcus Bakker, who in the early 1970s began to calculate aloud what the negative effects of cabinet policy are for the common man – he did that well, to harass Joop den Uyl.’
The left thus introduced the common man as a socio-economic victim, while nowadays cultural victimization is mainly exploited by the right. The turnaround began in America, where President Richard Nixon began defending “the silent majority” in the late 1960s. A classic case of polarization. Those who liked to think of themselves as ordinary knew what common enemy Nixon was creating here: the long-haired progressive elite who protested the Vietnam War and wanted to give black Americans equal civil rights.
The then VVD leader Hans Wiegel was the first to realize this, says Menno Hurenkamp. He suddenly began to introduce the road worker and the Jordanian plumber as spokesmen.
Yet in the Netherlands there is first a silence. In the eighties, the common man was hardly discussed in the House anymore.
You blame that on one TV show: Pisa by Henk Spaan and Harry Vermeegen, who also went ‘looking’ for the common man and made fun of it. Did that really have that much of an impact?
Hurenkamp: ‘There were only two TV channels left. Until further notice, they are the explanation and someone else can check it. People who originally spoke with love and care about the common man had also become more ambivalent. Because the common man also turned out to be conservative. That did not go well.’
That shows the arrogance of the left, knowing what is best for the people.
Duyvendak: ‘I also like the way that comes out of the graph. That paternalistic period and then a period of disappointment, then there is not much to say about the ordinary. And then the popularity of the common man re-emerges via the radical right and the concept takes on a completely different meaning.’
With the radical right, the common man becomes ‘a foot soldier of nativism’, you write, in the most extreme variant, afraid of ‘repopulation’.
Duyvendak: ‘The Netherlands is not original in this, you can see that in the American debate. Nativism is always strong in countries where migrants arrive in large numbers. In France you have ‘replacement’. While people eventually mix again in all kinds of ways to form a single society. Considering this as ‘taking over’ or ‘repopulating’ is only possible if you assume that black Dutch are and will remain completely different from white people.’
Population is a racist concept.
Duyvendak: ‘Certainly, that’s why it was taboo for a long time. But that seems to have completely disappeared now.’
The opposite is embracing ‘superdiversity’. You don’t approve of that either.
Duyvendak: ‘Because there is a huge appreciation for difference, but also a misjudgment of the fact that many groups are becoming part of the mainstream again and again. The figures show that the mainstream in the Netherlands is quite open to migrants. And migrants are also becoming more and more like the mainstream. Every survey by the Social and Cultural Planning Office shows that integration is going surprisingly well, and immigrant girls are already doing almost better at school than native girls. That is the broad and often slow sociological process of mainstreaming. Radical political parties are not at all open to this and are angry that remaining differences between groups will not disappear immediately tomorrow. Because of their haste, they fail to see how effective institutions in the Netherlands are helping minorities up. ‘
How? Just for the people who don’t see it that way since the allowance affair?
Duyvendak: ‘The Dutch welfare state still works very well: most Dutch people receive support from the state, whether they are students, tenants, homeowners or pensioners. The Netherlands is still one big redistribution machine. It could be fairer, but our bureaucracy generally functions well. Very good to make us angry about the allowance affair, because there is discrimination there. But that anger is also grounded in a shared value: that we want equality.’
Paul Scheffer and his essay The multicultural drama from more than twenty years ago are having a hard time with you.
Duyvendak: ‘Scheffer was not sufficiently aware of this mainstreaming, he admitted that himself later. He said: the differences between people are increasing due to multiculturalism and that has primarily to do with religion. He has culturalized the citizenship debate enormously and misjudged that things were going very well in the Netherlands at the time: the percentage of unemployed among migrants had fallen by 40 percent in four years! Scheffer had no idea in which socio-economic context he was describing his problem: the steady integration of migrants.’
You write that the ordinary has been culturalized, while it is better to do ‘socio-economic normal’ again. How?
Hurenkamp: ‘Culturalised, the king is clapping for care. While he could also have said: anyone who has to lift suitcases at Schiphol will also receive a permanent job and a hazard allowance. That is normal from a socio-economic point of view.’
