A razor-sharp analysis of science, politics, power and conspiracies

Very occasionally you come across ideas that are so taken from your heart that you have to do something with them. This is also the case with this 'car ride' on YouTube in which Jelle van Baardewijk lets his thoughts go about politics, science, power, policy and criticism thereof, anno 2022. Especially in view of the current discussion about the democratic banning of political parties. For people who do not like to watch videos or simply do not value them (important target group!) I have a transcription (also downloadable as PDF) of his arguments:

Of course, I have also noticed that nowadays there is a lot of talk about alternative facts, fake news, conspiracies... This week, because of a report from the NVTC about the threat of jihadism and conspiracies – on the one hand I think: of course, yes, that is a good thing such a report, but when you see how that is picked up than in the news and how such a category of conspiracies is magnified, yes, I would like to make some comments about that.

That has to do with the following. In the Netherlands, we have ended up in a system where criticism is difficult. There are people everywhere who supposedly 'think critically' but if you really have criticism, for example on gender, on diversity, on sustainability, so criticism of the liberal and woke worldview, so if you have some more socially conservative criticism, then yes, there doesn't really seem to be an ear for that. That criticism is downplayed, even ridiculed.

I read a booklet by Kim Putters, a professor and chairman of the SER, one of the most powerful men in the Netherlands. In a review column by Martin Sommer I even read: "Actually, you have to read Kim Putters to know how the driver in the Netherlands will think on average in the coming years". Well, that is of course a compliment and a criticism if that is said about your book. But in that book about the Bv Nederland and the need to tell a bigger story about our country, Kim Putters says all important things. For example: governance problems in the Netherlands that we want to solve by throwing a bag of money and then we think: 'well, money will solve it' and of course we know that that is too simple.

For example, he mentions a number of things, for example robbert Dijkgraaf's point: 'we have to go to a revaluation of MBO students'. But the book ends with a very unexpected point for me. The scales fell from my eyes. Kim Putters says 'Yes, criticism, criticism... as a driver, you shouldn't read too much criticism at all. The opinion pages, the YouTube programs, the discussion tables on TV: you better ignore them. Because (says Putters) it is about the silent majority in the Netherlands. As a director, you actually have to think about the data generated by the Social Cultural Planning Bureau and, for example, by the RIVM about how people perceive problems, about problems are related and in response to those 'facts' you have to stay the course as a director. Those critics on opinion pages, yes, they only polarize. They have criticism, they don't think along, so you have to go back to the factual basis of those government research agencies.'

If you know those research agencies a little bit, you also know very well that there are often all kinds of studies that are not really interpreted, put in a larger story, in the key of a larger story. That's where the problem of conspiracies actually arises. The truth claim of our public institutions is intolerant, is exclusive. So what happens to critics? They radicalize. They say: 'Yes, but how come you don't listen to us?'

I myself have been trying for years, together with Ad, to explain why the Anglicisation of universities is a major problem. However, that also partly causes people to be receptive to alternative facts because there are very few scientists who can still make contact with citizens about real existing problems.

Of course I am in favour of multilingualism, but I am against the dominance of English – but in the Netherlands you can only introduce such a discussion paper via the opinion pages. Directors do not listen, they think: 'Yes, those critics, who exaggerate, it will not run such a speed'.

So you see those labels: populism, alternative facts, fake news, those are disqualifications of people who bring in arguments. And then I also know that some people fabulize a bit and are not so faithful to the truth and we try that with the new world. I'm definitely trying to do it. I am truly true to the truth. I study my way around and I like that and I'm also happy that I get paid for it - not for The New World but for my work at the university and the college so I'm truthful and I stand up for that.

But of course you see that sometimes there is really truth value in more speculative interpretations of facts. You can't really say that anymore within the regions of higher education. But also not within the media. For example. what is hidden behind von der Leyen's apps. What is the importance between the EU and big Pharma, what are the model truths and variables behind the Corona admission ticket. Why are they not transparent? Isn't it just openness; the openness, isn't that the core value of science, isn't that what Karl Popper says is falsifiability? Enable the rebuttableability of your own models.

Yes, the answer is: yes, that is scientificity. So you can see that in our knowledge institutions up to and including deep in the RIVM there is a certain intransparency. That is at odds with the truth. So I actually think that a lot of those knowledge institutions themselves take a run with science, I turn it around! The critical position that we very often take at The New World is actually an attack on their scientificity! That's no small criticism...

Well, it's true: you can also fabulize and go too far with facts that you're going to read in the lens of an inflated hyperbolic theory. Then you come to themes such as a small elite secretly gripping this country, to a real conspiracy. But there too I think that an intellectual's task is to weigh up and weigh up what the facts and interpretations are and what certain apparently fake news still surfaces, about people's fears and desires. And in that way should also help people to understand the world better. But the opposite is going on: you now see very quickly that when you criticize, let alone radical criticism, that you are actually disqualified, ridiculed because the real knowledge, yes that is the knowledge of the policymakers and the academics.

It is clear what is true and what is false, what is right and wrong. But that's actually a politicization by the highly educated of the low-educated — it's just class hit. It's just really class hit. The fact is that if someone is not really true to the factual basis and indeed somewhat imaginative in the interpretations, then someone will just engage in conspiracies. Then you can either respond wisely and conscientiously, from the combination of genuine concern about the world and how people interpret that world, or you can react strictly to it: dismissively. Why wouldn't the first be much better than the second? I mean it.

In my opinion, science itself is organized skepticism at its core and the escalation to cynical criticism, to existential despair, ultimately also to conspiracies- that escalation is just imitable, you can just follow it. You can understand that, as an academic.

At The New World, that's why I try to take people really seriously, no matter what they say, and you can check how people draw conclusions. It's far too easy to reject.

I therefore find it really a mystery why certain things remain unexplained in media and politics. For example, those Nordstream pipelines, what do we know about them? There are just research reports on that. I also think that the WEF tensions, the World Economic Forum stories are so great now, among people, who are really afraid about the grip of big capitalists on the backs of our farmers, that you have to take those stories seriously. You have to weigh them, you have to think about what's here, what's going on here. But what happens if you take such a story seriously? That's "ridiculous," you know. That's... yes then you don't think 'methodical'. 'What are you doing? You don't stick to the facts!'

That's how highly educated people think nowadays.

Let it sink in how sad that actually is, what a grandiose narrowing of our view our culture has ended up in. In the end, it has to do with that point that I just connected to my reading experience at that BV Nederland book by Kim Putters. Really an interesting book but that ending - again, the scales fell off my eyes - that the driver actually thinks (at least through Kim Putters): "Yes, if you really criticize and polarize, yes, that's not what it's about, that's but the media you shouldn't think too much about that". That is actually a depoliticization of public space, a proposal to depoliticize public space.

It is precisely by discussing this and interpreting what the facts are in a certain file that you get further: what exactly is nitrogen? How do these Natura 2000 sites come about? If you are no longer allowed to have such discussions because they quickly also touch on major issues: system coherence, interests of universities, Wageningen University, which is also partly financed by Campina... Those kinds of issues, such an integral analysis in which you also have to consider what the role of power is and of capital in this, you cannot make such analyses if you stick to the so-called 'facts'.

It is not bad at all to pursue such an integral politicizing interpretation. You shouldn't become a supporter of conspiracies, I think, that's a step too far, but you should study them.

Conspiracies are just hyperbolic theories, they are radical hypotheses. You don't debunk them by rejecting them, you debunk them by studying, looking, pondering and weighing them: what's in this why people find that attractive? Is this wappie or is a conclusion being drawn here that is intuitively not that stupid at all?

Jelle van Baardewijk

People outside the universities are not stupid. That's kind of a very weird image, that you can only be smart within the models. Models are just methods, there are choices for variables, for starting points. People in the world who don't understand those models, they understand other things. There are several forms of knowledge, which you have to take with you. For that reason alone, you have to study skepticism, criticism, even conspiracies: what's in them? What are people's concerns?

But yes, that is not possible in the Netherlands. You have a kind of board/VVD framework in the Netherlands that just goes one way. And if you get criticism from the woke angle, that something is not diverse enough or how the sustainability apocalypse can still be registered a little better – yes, then people do listen. But other kinds of criticism, the power/knowledge complex in the Netherlands seems to be immune to that. Extremely worrying.

It also testifies to epistemic uncertainty [epistemic: taking into account the justification of claims]. It is precisely in the policy framework of the Netherlands that there is a deep uncertainty about what knowledge is because they would be very attached to those models because they themselves do not see it well. And then you get convulsive criticism of others who criticize it. We really live in that sense in a remarkably uncritical time.

There is a crisis of truth. You can speak one more truth and if you doubt it, you are already escalating. Then you are already escalating! Well, if you then include the history of philosophy and you read, for example, Aristotle or Hegel, Nietzsche, then you already notice such a, such a different perspective on what life is. Such a different perspective also on what – even what is contradiction. What does it mean to deal with power and to contradict power.

There is not just one way of doing politics and organizing knowledge and research. There are just multiple ways, the whole history testifies to it. But for us, that's kind of a finished past tense. Plato? Nice for the library...

Yes, sorry. I think it is precisely in that tradition that you can learn very well that our current interpretation of capitalism and democracy and the public sphere, that that is only an interpretation. That this interpretation in his knowledge space is actually quite intolerant and has difficulty with other perspectives.

That is why The New World is so important to me, because you can find depth there, can talk things out with each other. You can listen to someone who just looks very differently at what motherhood is, what gender is, what transsexuality is, what nitrogen is. Follow your intuitions and listen to people what their intuitions are and how they express them and how they do that: with books or with art or with films. That's just mind-enriching, for myself to do as well. I notice that it also makes me more tolerant in a certain way, that I understand better why other people can sometimes really look at things very differently. That's great too. It's a pluriform world.

It is sad to note that so much policy has been born out of the spirit of 'there is no alternative'. It all has to be done in one way.

We are on a chosen path...

Jelle is the founder of The New World, a YouTube channel for in-depth conversations in a time of change. Donating to DNW can here, including the text of this article, also as a Dutch version.