CONTEMPLATION – After once again descending into the tweets of the internet - why, I always attract the wrong friends there - I am healed for a while. Not only from corona, which has shut me down quite a bit in recent weeks, but also from Twitter. People wish each other dead there. They try to settle their case by defamation, insulting, saying that the other is stupid, calling each other names for 'stupid wappen', 'stupid sheep', 'retarded wappies', 'dirty schwabists', they evade raised bottlenecks, repeat beliefs without refuting counterarguments and use all fallacy techniques that make a sensible exchange of ideas impossible.
They hate each other from the bottom of their hearts, the people who disagree about vaccination. As a skeptic, I mainly experience the 'grab-the-wappies' approach, but I see the same furious uninformedness in my own camp. Do I know better? I can reassure you: absolutely. So I know what I'm talking about.
Everyone is sure of their business
These certainties from both sides remind me of what the atmosphere must be like in totalitarian states, where there are of course also supporters and opponents of a regime, and what it must have been like in the thirties. Even then, there were diametrically opposed visions of a better world with all the promises that entailed, standing up for an ideology, biting the bullet together, making sacrifices for a stronger future, coming out of a crisis. Resistance to innovation versus investing in technological innovation, being open to better structures, making sacrifices for innovation. Strengthening society, together we can get it done. And at the same time people who didn't want all that and saw society going in the wrong direction. Chaos of opinions. Who was right and who was wrong then? Nobody knew that yet, everyone thought he was right. That is no different now than it was then.
Mind you, and I cannot emphasize this enough: it is not about oppressed population groups that are compared, it is about "the others" who accuse a certain group. It is also about pre-1940; The later unimaginable atrocities can of course not be justified by anything or anyone, but they were nowhere to be seen at the time. In the 1930s, the well-intentioned population of our 'neutral' polder country had no idea that they were in the prelude to the horrors that would follow. Nobody saw that, neither did the early opponents (was it already called Resistance?), they must have been concerned about other things they saw happening in society, not about genocide and millions of deaths. Intellectuals only came up with the Endlösung later. No sensible person will now rally behind ... Although: if you have such a Gerard Spong hears About what he has just read in the newspaper, he would also like to go far and easily step over certain boundaries, on his way to the full-vax Valhalla. You don't have to be Aryan (lucky for Spong) nor non-Jewish for that, but simply: vaccinated, that's enough. Then it's all allowed, including what they did then: pointing the finger at the culprits, pushing for exclusion, demonizing, breaking into physical integrity, making debate impossible, it's moral panic (Ewald Engelen puts it at De Balie great).
1+1=2
This sentiment is not new. It was already apparent in April 2021, when the Volkskrant published a cartoon of Maurice de Hond. Soon after, they expressed regret: it was explicit not intended as a reference to the cartoons about manipulative Jews from the 30s and 40s. They hadn't even thought about that at all. OK, but does that make it right? Or can you depict any opponent in a false, manipulative way, as long as it is not directed against Jews or refers to WWII because we have an active memory of that? But perhaps against Palestinians? Or against scientific dissidents? If all that is allowed, what was so terribly wrong with that print against Jews from the perspective of the 1930s? They didn't know anything about a genocide at the time, so "you can't compare that to that at all".
Maybe it only counts in hindsight, if you know who won the battle. If the war had not taken place, it would have been fine, according to the Volkskrant, to support the government narrative in this way. That state of affairs should make you think about what goes on in such an editorial office.
Actually, it is even more disturbing now: the thinking patterns show similarities, the character assassination and demonization is no less. They are the same propaganda techniques, unintentionally leading to identical expressions. Everything is allowed, except referring to WWII because that leads to indignant horror. People think just as exclusively as in the 1930s, are just as full of their own right, and that is why the same propaganda rubbish comes out that fills the newspapers, from frontline soldiers to anti-Semitic cartoons. Even without any prior knowledge or deliberate reference, it is pure spontaneous creativity, with the best intentions. 1+1=2.
The future will have to show who is wrong and who is right, in this controversy. That was not clear in the 30s either, although it is almost impossible to comprehend with today's knowledge. It was not good against evil even then, they were different visions of what was best for society. Mass psychologists, logicians, argumentation theorists and statisticians should look for characteristics to recognize Right and Wrong, even before the outcome of the battle is known. I wonder if anyone could carry out such a study without prejudice.
The utopia of the Third Reich will have been promised and therefore convincing for large parts of the population. You can now see how that goes. People blindly support something if it suits their stall, just look at the large groups of people who blindly follow anti-vax fake news and come up with their own narrative. That's not OK, but fortunately there is not the power behind it of respected quality media that, like the trusted vaccines, stand on the shoulders of a reputation that was carefully built up in the past but has now been completely demolished.
NSB member or resistance fighter?
I wonder if I will turn out to be one of those who tried to push through dangerous ideas. Maybe I will soon be driven around in a cage with wappies (so to speak) and I will have worked against the full-vax utopia so that we can continue to live in peace and without disease because we all take a harmless six-monthly shot. But when I see how unvaccinated people are dismissed as antisocial culprits of the main bottlenecks, the murderers of people for whom no ICU place is available, I fear that I will be in the wrong corner. If that full-vax utopia ever comes, the question becomes: how do you deal with idiots like me? You lock him up I think, you condemn him. Virusvaria offers sufficient incriminating evidence. You give such a person an injection – or maybe the medics will find a more efficient solution that puts an end to the opposition.
Can we at least keep some dignity, a little respect? I immediately admit that I have not always succeeded on my insignificant blog. But when it really comes down to it. What about our opponents if they turn out to be wrong, how do we give them a dignified existence within our own vision? Would the other side think about that too, please? Try to understand where your opponents are coming from. Do not hold a personal grudge against befriended doctors who (still) want to vaccinate everyone. Open your ears to dissident scientists. They may not know any better, but should you blame them personally? Can you abstract yourself as you expect from your opponent? The moment your approach becomes disrespectful or you infringe on other people's fundamental rights, then you are Wrong. But yes, that's how I see it. Spong, for example, sees it differently. Time will tell...
Enfin, genoeg gemijmerd. Later vandaag weer een artikel met een statistische grondslag. Dat is dan mijn eigen 1+1=2.
