'Fifteen million people, you don't lay down laws for them, you leave them alone'. The zeitgeist of 1996 is perfectly captured in this song written for a Postbank commercial and becoming a real hit. It was the time of the 'Derde Weg' and of the 'paarse kabinet'. Economic prosperity and technological development seemed to subordinate political antagonisms to a social-liberal individualism that 'let everyone have their due'.
Now, a quarter of a century later, we still demand that everyone be left in their rightful place, but the happy notes of the song have turned into a sharp and irreconcilable 'J'accuse' echoing from many a throat. Yellow shirts, populists, social justice warriors but also many mainstream commentators are interpreting this new song, in a country that now seems to consist of some 18 million accusers.
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What is striking here is the tone, the changed attitude, the perception of what it means to 'leave something or someone alone'. This seems almost structurally impossible, nowadays. This is interpreted as failure and attributed above all to the impotence or unwillingness of another person, or their privileged position. That other person is not only held responsible, but also charged: indicted - individually or collectively. Sometimes formally, in court, like the state in the case of Srebrenica or Urgenda. But often also informally. Especially through (social) media, people can be sued, and immediately condemned or cancelled. As I say in my book Culturele veldslagen: cancelling is the contemporary secular version of the Christian excommunication and of the Islamic fatwa.
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Interested to read the complete text? This opinion piece originally appeared in the NRC (Dutch newspaper) of November 25th.