Eurovisie December 2017

eurovisie a publication of the study association for european studies

Also in this issue: Coudenhove-Calergi and the alt-right An ode to the storyteller Gentrification: A Social Sieve Humanomics and Bukowski Gall & Gall

Encounters with an unwanted man December 2017 / www.ses-uva.nl / eurovisie@ses-uva.nl

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volume 13, issue 2 - Dec. 2017

editorial

mats licht

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Encounters with an Unwanted Man Nikolai Markov

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Ode to the Storyteller Joana Voss

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Gentrification Anna Boyce

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Marginalized People and Language Hanna Blom

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The European Utopia Job Knobbout

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Property and Propriety Joep Leerssen

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Lobbying in the EU Clara Iszezuk

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Bukowski and Humanomics Sjors Roeters

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Gall & Gall Levente Vervoort

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Alt-right Conspiracies Robin de Bruin Cover image: ??????????????

have to admit to something that will finalise my disqualification from Dutchification: I curse my ancestors every year for settling in this inhospitable icebox of a landscape, where winter is given an undeserving cherry on top by a war­-motivated change of clocks that confines us to darkness 18 hours out of the day. At least this year I won’t dream of skiing or surfing or swimming in the warm embrace of the Mediterranean, because I added chocolate sprinkles to the season’s shit sundae by breaking my collarbone in three places. Hence you will be spared my ramblings this edition.

One of the simple pleasures remaining in the face of that overwhelming adversity are good conversations, preferably over beer and heavy foods. In this edition, you will find all sorts of articles inspired by the simple idea of the conversation, but also some entirely different ones in case you find that boring. For my part, I relish the fact that this here magazine brings so much conversation to my very bedroom for me. That way I don’t actually have to leave the house and be social. Phew! Instead, I will be reading about G&G’s drink­profiling, conversations with a refugee mental patient, the Inuit and so much more, so join me in perusing these pages! Preferably in spirit only, though, far away from my fortress of solitude.

"Just because you’re trash doesn’t mean you can’t do great things. It’s ‘garbage can’, not ‘garbage cannot’!” ­- Oscar the Grouch

imprint Editorial office: Kloveniersburgwal 48, room E2.04/2.05, 1012 CX Amsterdam Editor-in-chief: Mats Licht Editors: Hanna Blom, Nikolai Markov, Sjors Roeters, Levente Vervoort, Joana Voss Final editing: Daniël Adam, Levente Vervoort Design: Emiel Janssens With contributions by: Anna Boyce, Robin de Bruin, Clara Iszezuk, Job Knobbout, Joep Leerssen 3

Encounters with an unwanted man Nikolai Markov

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onflicts and violence are beyond our comprehension.

As though it links all of us together, we feel a deep shock when encountering violence in its utmost brutality. Thankfully we get to play the role of voyeurs. The violence rarely touches us here in the West; we get to watch. Get a kick out of seeing these things from a distance. As provocative or cruel as this might sound, the fact remains, all of us have experienced it. Be it videos shown in lectures to illustrate a conflict, smartphonerecorded political gore by conflicting parties; even just news from around the world, telling us that the world is burning a little more every day.

Voyeurism is common practice.

It is a very different experience when these images come to life, and that can happen in various forms. People working with and for the international community to establish peace, to meet the needs of the people suffering; professionals trying to step in from various disciplines for the one cause of driving this violence out; academic and diplomatic work to foster understanding. And then there is the rare possibility for each and every one of us to meet someone who has made it through that suffering. Having had the chance for such an encounter, here is a story of an unwanted man.

The day before, at the psychiatry of the University Clinic Münster, a young bearded man had asked me for a lighter after he recognized that my mother and I were speaking Bulgarian, calling me his brate from the second we met. The next day we had come too early to visit, so we waited in the courtyard. There I saw him again, this time sitting under a canopy and we joined him.

Again a firm handshake followed by an 'Eh brate, kako si?' (Serbian for 'Ey brother, how you doing?'). Me and

him got into a conversation and I asked him what his story was, why he was here.

'I’m an asylum seeker but I got to go back. The war in Serbia is over and now they declared peace. That means that I cannot stay here man.

It’s fucked up. Our president has the guts to stand in front of the people and declare us safe, while most are starving on the street. No food, no nothing! My dad is earning €380 a month working on the railwaysystem, while I, as an asylum seeker,

“You call it home but then again it cannot be”

get €370 for doing nothing! Can you even imagine?' I could imagine.

I had a feeling that he was trying to give me a taste of how things generally are in the Balkan states compared to here. I had seen that type of misery myself from very early on, as we travelled to Bulgaria since my early childhood whenever possible. The two things that had always distinguished Bulgaria from Germany for me were the broken houses and the people looking for food in the trash. It is a deep sense of confrontation that one cannot rid themselves of. You know what it can be like. You know that this is the life your relatives face. These are the circumstances of your origin, within

which you would never be able to function. You call it home but then again it cannot be. You go where it just might be better. And with that in mind I kept listening.

'This guy of ours, Vučić, the president, you know him? Yeah?

He’s a nutcase man. I’m telling you he’s Illuminati. The way he holds his hands every time when he speaks he’s part of them. And now he even says that NATO is good! How can he say that when we were bombed the sense out of under them?!' I asked him: 'Were you in Serbia when it happened?' He nodded and continued. 'I was 5 years old when I was hiding in that bunker. We were all scared shitless.'

At first instance this might seem like ordinary political back-savagery.

Believing in the Illuminati, political conspiracy, “those up there vs. us down here”, the evil West etcetera.

It would be way too easy to discredit him for his political beliefs; a pity, if we actually did. How little ground conspiracy holds is common knowledge but try to regard this as a sign of yet something different: collective identity trauma. The Serb national identity has been politically abused for power politics that lead to war and unbelievable atrocities. Attempts to alleviate the conflict by various fruitless forms of intervention have had the situation come to worse. Names have changed, stances changed between nationalism, Russophilia and Western orientation, while the people bear the cost of war and conflict. Collective disillusionment becomes the logical consequence: a deep belief that the world is going against you. That is what I saw him suffer under now.

I asked him whether he would be comfortable with me asking about the war and he said: 'Yes man, you can ask me anything.' I wanted to know about his father. At this point I was sure that he must have fought

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in the war. 'Yes, my father did fight.

He was in Vukovar.' A deep shock hit me. He read it off my face and said to me: 'Yeah man, that was genocide. Total genocide, I tell you.'

Vukovar was the site of one of the heaviest battles fought out during the disintegration of the Former Yugoslavia. In 1990, an irredentist, Croatian Serb insurrection had started to expand Serbian territory and political power under the premise of allegedly maintaining the Federal State of Yugoslavia. De jure it was the federal state-body of Yugoslavia that was supposed to be maintained but de facto Milosevic’s Yugoslavia had very little to do with the federal state from before. His plan was to establish a Serb-dominated Yugoslavia, within which large parts of Bosnia and Croatia, populated by ethnic Serbs, would become Serb federal state territory. Yugoslavia was to be an extension of Serbia’s power.

With the convenience of having the Serb dominated JNA (Yugoslav People’s Army) under his control Milosevic went on to support Serb irredentist insurrections in Bosnia and Croatia with the military power of the Federal State of Yugoslavia.

In the case of Vukovar, the city was besieged for around 3 months until the point of total destruction. After Yugoslav/Serb victory, the siege ended with the ethnic cleansing of all non-Serb minorities.

The asymmetry is stunning and its effective brutality shocking.

The images of the conflict in the former Yugoslavia have left the world in dismay and continue to mark a dark point of realization for postmodern Europe: we knew what was happening. We saw what was happening. We watched it all happen. Even after WWII, something like this could happen again. And just like that, it seems that we were not able to do anything about it.

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First celebrated in awe, with open arms to return to Europe, the East was redefined into periphery where the velvet caught fire. Bullets, bombshells, screams and hatred filled the air. The Balkans were still in Europe but Europe had left the Balkans, for at the time it was too clear: They would always smell of blood.

'I will not go back there, Niko', he said to me. 'You know why I managed to stay here? Because I showed them a document, proving that I tried to kill myself at the age of 17. I tried but I did not die ‘cause

“The Balkans were still in Europe but Europe had left the Balkans, for at the time it was too clear: They would always smell of blood”

thank God, he saved me. I was taken to the psychiatry when I was supposed to be put on a plane to Serbia and I told the doctors: ‘If you guys will let them take me to Serbia I will commit suicide. Right in front of you. I’ll take any knife I can find and cut myself open, in the middle of the street – I don’t care! So everyone can see, it will be in the newspapers and everything.’ The doctors calmed me down and said that they will help me. Niko, you don’t understand!

Back in Serbia I have a jail sentence of 6 years waiting for me. My friends

spit on me because I have Bosnian friends, Albanian friends, Croatian friends. Life is going to be hell there!

Next thing, once I cannot stay here anymore, I’ll go to Africa, live there.

I don’t care. I will not go back.' His bow was bent to the breaking point.

He would not go home because he could not go home. I asked him to promise me that he would not kill himself like he told those doctors.

He replied 'Hvala brate, don’t worry.

I won’t!' I interrupted him and said: 'People like you make the world go round.' He hit his fist against his chest twice and nodded towards me. 'Hvala brate. God be with you.'

'God be with all of us.'

The God we appealed to seemed to be a God we all know: the one, who grows stronger the more he discredits himself. The question posing itself mercilessly is how such living horror can coexist with divinity. The answer for our Serbian friend is: it doesn’t. Or even better put, it cannott; it would mean an end to him, strip hope of all reason to exist. His god is one of hope that somehow, some way it will all make sense and work out in the end. The kind of hope that just lives on because it needs to.

It makes one thing very clear: this man is in despair. His act of fighting against all these odds justifies his reluctance to go back. Declarations of peace and safety matter very little when the reality of trauma begs for asylum. At least it will stay as a reminder that the story is never over when it has left the news. Our responsibility does not end with political comfort. What is political and conceptual debate in the West has become life and death in the East. The periphery of the Balkans, the messiness and the aphasia – all of this is lived out somewhere.

Being confronted like that is a shock but it is necessary not to forget that it is all real. The pain is real.

Refugees in the Serbian capital of Belgrade 7

Ode to the storyteller Joana Voss

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ome stories need to be told,’ Marijn tells me before gently stepping into the spotlight.

Just now he had made a rather timid impression on me. A big guy in his mid-50s with a grey beard and dark eyes whom time has left completely bald except for one perfectly arranged curl that lays flat on his forehead, looking as if he cared for it meticulously. But when he starts telling his story about a visit to a small Brazilian village where his hosts got him to try dolphin meat which unexpectedly became the greatest culinary revelation of his life, his visible joy shapes a stage presence that carries one away with fascination.

My encounter with Marijn is part of an inquiry into an art that seemed to have disappeared from the public

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cultural landscape for a while after the famous German literary critic Walter Benjamin had proclaimed its death in 1936. The wisdom of storytelling, he prophesied, is such a rare and delicate gift that it would surely lose its place in a world caught up in a cycle of interminable processes of rationalization. It is this gift that I am interested in. And against all odds, it seems to be in the midst of a revival. Storytelling events are popping up all over the city. Perhaps disenchanted with their daily working life, people seem to long for the comfort of something timeless. As Marijn puts it: ‘Stories are like a coat that warms people.’

To me, it is still somewhat counterintuitive that a couple of hundred strangers sit down

together on the admittedly uncomfortable floor of this cultural centre to listen to such an intimate performance. Storytelling we intuitively associate with a mystic atmosphere, a campfire illuminating the face of a wise old woman who tells tales about princes and dragons. The storyteller here is someone who has seen the world and brings back stories of adventures, magnificence and astonishment, coupled with a peculiar talent for transmitting subjective experiences. The audience respectively, is the company of the storyteller, whose act is not a solitary one, like writing, but one that revolves around an atmosphere of companionship.

Now, the fact that the audience tonight is sitting in a jungle of

pillows and colourful carpets sipping homemade soup and fresh mint tea cannot belie the fact that we are all strangers during the day who came here for a little bit of evening magic. How can such a big group of people provide the comforting companionship that fuels the storytellers’ affectionate performance? To Marijn, the audience is the greatest thing about these nights because the very fact that they are all strangers makes the connection so special. ‘It’s kind of great to know that no one really cares.’ And of course, he would not just tell any story here, he selects according to his audience: ‘Some stories are for the family, some are for strangers.’ During the day, Marijn is an improv teacher.

Because he only tells true stories, all he needs is his memory, although he does usually take ten minutes to rehearse on the bike ride from Central Station to the event. To him, storytelling is something everyone can do, we just need to be brave enough to start trying. ‘Stories construct the world around us […] once you start telling them, they all slowly come back to you,’ he tells me. Stories, then, have a life of their own, they linger in the back of our heads, all we need to do is let them out. Freeing them, he whispers to me wide-eyed, is absolutely necessary, because if we don’t tell our stories, ‘they’ll eventually come back to us and take revenge’.

As Walter Benjamin describes: ‘The storyteller: he is the man who could let the wick of his life be consumed completely by the gentle flame of his story.’ Now, I do not want to paint a naively romantic picture of the event, not all the storytellers of tonight bubble with inspiration like Marijn and you do get disappointed by some. A Scottish guy’s story of his genuine relation with a Ukranian sex worker he met through the video chat of a porn site, and

how his pity for her brought them together in real life where he eventually did succeed in seducing her, borrows every imaginable sexist cliché out there and seems more like a stand-up comedy act.

Still, the audience laughs, some cannot contain their enthusiasm anymore and clap uncontrollably.

But when the evening is slowly coming to an end, and I am already

“Stories have a life of their own, they linger in the back of our heads, all we need to do is let them out”

doubting the amount of material for this story, hope steps onto the stage in the form of a fluffy head of red tresses.

Zouzou is a curious character.

The deep neckline of his poet shirt surrounds an opulent golden necklace that mirrors the smiling eyes of this tall middle-aged man and makes him look like an odd hybrid between a clown and a pirate troubadour. The guitar around his neck seems disproportionately small on a man of an appearance so exceptional that it leaves the audience in absolute silence. When his soft voice starts singing Louis Armstrong’s What a wonderful World, the audience carefully joins in and the sense of magic that they longed for seems tangible and even genuine. Even though

his way of wrapping stories into parts of self-written songs does not quite conform with conventional storytelling, Zouzou arises as the ultimate personification of the peculiar performance gift that brought me here. He used to be a school teacher in the United States, he tells me, but then met a juggler and realised that juggling was his true calling. He quit his job and moved to the countryside, from where he travelled around with several circus ensembles. Decades later, he is now an active member of Amsterdam’s storytelling scene, where he says: ‘Telling stories is such a treat because the audience is so attentive; when I used to play in cafés, people would only glance at you passing by.’ In a congenial way, the only thing that annoys him from time to time is the stand-up comedy vibe, because he can by no means believe that it touches people in the way that a storyteller should. His first story tonight is an encouragement not to bow your head on a day where everything seems to be going wrong and instead to focus on ‘enjoying the small surprises of the day,’ which seems to be a metaphorical hint at what is to come. All of a sudden, he turns around to grab a bright yellow cap (slipping it over his splendid hair does not go quite so smoothly), and starts putting on a spiritual rap about mindfulness and the need to pause for a moment from time to time and just ‘yo breathe in, breath out, yo’, that is so profoundly bizarre that it leaves the audience positively confused. To borrow from Leonard Cohen, you get the feeling he’s half-crazy but that’s why you want to be there. Before he steps off the stage, he charmingly promotes his one-man show on ‘time and timelessness’ scheduled for the next day, in which he promises to meet the goddess of time. Some stories are simply too good to be left untold.

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Gentrification: A Social Sieve Anna Boyce

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entrification is a modern phenomenon felt throughout the world, from New York to Bangkok to London.

From an economic standpoint, its benefits are numerous. The influx of new investment and capital into neighbourhoods means new businesses can thrive. But from a moral stance, mass displacement of the original inhabitants of these areas, often generations of families who have lived there and built a real community, is questionable. We must challenge the morality of the rising costs and housing prices that follow the gentrification of urban neighbourhoods.

Recently, gentrification has

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rendered entire neighbourhoods unrecognisable. As corporations have taken over and prices have shot up, class divides have become aggravated, creating conflict and social unrest, leading to questions about the sustainability of this system. If allowed to continue, gentrification will lead to the displacement of whole communities, and with them their values and traditions. Inevitably, the involvement of big corporations will put an end to the individuality and variety of the urban cities we know and love.

An extreme example of gentrification can be found in the Prenzlauerberg district of

Berlin. Now known for its colourful nightlife, variety of international restaurants and walls peppered with street art, Prenzlauerberg is now one of the most notable neighbourhoods of the German capital. However, since the 1990s, the area has undergone a period of rapid change. This has not only rendered the neighbourhood almost unrecognisable, but completely altered its social and cultural makeup.

Post-1989 the quarter went through a rapid transition from socialism to capitalism, leading to a new program of urban renewal.

This aimed at physically renovating the area, in congruence with the

West of the city, it comprised the privatisation and refurbishment of formerly state-owned buildings.

Whilst all this was done under a strict policy of rent control, loopholes in said policy meant that by the mid-1990s rent prices shot up. All too often this saw the neighbourhood’s original inhabitants, typically those of the poorer working class, forced to leave the area.

at large in the art community. These "bohemian" artists began to idolise and romanticise working class industrial culture. For them, the industrial urban landscape became the new arcadia. By revering this new “arcadian” landscape, these artists, many of whom considered themselves working class, paved the way for an influx of the new middle class, and the redefinition of the community.

inhabitants and the arrival of middle class hipsters. These hipsters come to these areas romanticising the idea of the working class neighbourhood. In reality, they want nothing to do with Hackney’s community. Setting up new restaurants and bars whilst living in newly renovated apartments at extortionate prices, they want east London’s aesthetic, but not its reality.

By 2000, the process of gentrification had rapidly sped up, Prenzlauer Berg found itself with a new cultural infrastructure.

The structural upgrading and investment in the area attracted the attention of a new middle class, typically younger creative types, drawn not only to new housing opportunities but the area’s newly romanticised "rough around the edges"-aesthetic. This new influx of "conspicuous consumers" lead to the establishment of new businesses, galleries and a plethora of new restaurants boasting cuisines from all around the world.

Soon Prenzlauer Berg became one of the most sought-after areas of the city.

Almost always following the same pattern, art galleries and cafés pop up on every other corner, old industrial buildings and council houses are renovated into spacious loft apartments. Rent shoots up and

The epitome of this struggle can be found in the tale of the Cereal Killer Cafe. Opening up in Shoreditch, London, the cafe sold cereal for £5.50 a bowl. The business was targeted by a local anarchist group who saw the cafe as a symbol of the gentrification of their community.

They threw smoke grenades through the cafe’s windows and daubed red paint all over the building.

Although on paper much of this new development and investment sounds positive, we must consider that the Prenzlauer Berg of the 1980s was completely unrecognisable by the late 2000s, not only physically but socially. It is a prime example of how the physical renovation of an area can lead to social upgrading, and complete cultural redefinition.

In addition to the physical renovation of an area, the movement and influence of artists and creative types plays a huge role in the process of gentrification.

In the late 1980s, the eve of gentrification, the concepts of bohemianism and eccentricity were

“For the bohemian artists, the industrial landscape became the new arcadia”

soon the poorer population, nearly always those who have been living there the longest, cannot afford to live there: they are displaced. As they are forced to leave, the new middle class begin to dominate, gentrification acts as a social sieve.

Another stark example of this growing issue is the case of East London. Areas such as Hackney, a definitively working class area known for its multiculturalism, have recently been faced with a new divide, between its original

Unrest such as this highlights the issues at large in these recently gentrified areas, and the new social divides being created by the influx of the wealthy and the displacement of the poor. Middle class migration to working class areas not only causes the lower classes to leave in search of affordable housing, but additionally aggravates class conflict within these previously peaceful communities.

Gentrification has already gone too far. The problem is that half the time people are not even aware that they are a part of the process.

In the UK at least, it is notoriously difficult for young people, even the scions of the middle class, to get on the property ladder. People just want to buy a home in an area they can afford and, when they get there, want the conveniences and atmosphere of the area they grew up in. Silently, almost without notice, the process of gentrification begins.

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The Destructive Consequences of Listening to the Needs of Minorities

Hanna Blom There is an old Inuit saying that roughly translates to “if a marginalized group tells you that a word or a phrase is harmful or toxic towards them and they wish you would stop using it, it is not an opportunity for you to flex your debating skills.� This article takes a look at the man who still did. Extensively.

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A

rjen Versloot, a teacher from Scandinavian Studies at the University of Amsterdam, received his course evaluations after teaching a course on Nordic languages. One of his students asked him to stop using the terms ‘Eskimo’ and ‘Lap’ in his lectures, since the preferred terms are Inuit and Samen. His response was to write a three page essay over the summer, explaining his choice of words and why he will continue as he was doing, backing himself up with examples from other insensitive names we frequently use and what would happen if we started using the Eskimo/Inuit case as a rule of thumb. One of those was the example of the name for Germany being Niemcy in Polish, and of the language niemiecki, which according to him meant 'the mute, those who do not speak' and was therefore potentially offensive to Germans. Deeming one term as appropriate and the other as the opposite was seen by him as an 'over-signification of the facts', and a slippery slope in academia. Having come across his essay, I invited him to an interview, which turned into a conversation.

A central theme in our conversation was whether the past innocence that coated insensitive statements protects us from scrutiny by the time we realize the connotations of our comments and the people we hurt. Versloot has issues with the occurrence of words becoming banned from our lexicon willynilly, with phrases seeming to be perfectly fine the one day, and completely inappropriate the next. '(We talk about) words that on my account do not have any added significance or negative intentions, but do get it because of discussions like these. It is unfortunate and it makes me feel quite uncomfortable.'

Discomfort is common to experience when being made aware

of racist tendencies. However, actual oppression should not be compared to being made aware of oppression. Versloot has experienced a free pass to say whatever about whomever for a long time. Adjustment takes time.

Versloot offered a scenario in which person A and B talk about person C, using a word that if heard by C, would be considered offensive, but neither A nor B knew this, and C would never find out, no harm is done to C. The claim that can be deducted from this hypothetical is that a lack of intent makes you blameless. But it still happened.

Even if nobody was there to hear

“Experiencing actual oppression should not be compared to being made aware of oppressive conventions” the tree, it still fell. This isolated ABC example also becomes difficult to apply to our situation when we remember Versloot teaching at one of the largest universities of the country.

Versloot expressed his concern with the reasoning behind the feedback, finding it flawed and destructive.

“It does not have to be a sensitive issue, it is made sensitive. When this reasoning becomes a quota to which we measure all names, it has huge consequences which we would have to apply to all names.”

He believes that the train of thought followed with the Eskimo/Inuit

debate would be detrimental to European names and the the world map would need a make-over, if we legitimize the changing of hurtful names. In his letter he named many examples in Europe where the names we give or have given each other can be seen as insensitive, when you think about it. So let us think about it.

People from Greenland sometimes call people from Denmark qallunaaq, which also refers to white man or white woman. Even though it is a Nordic country, not every single Dane is white. Versloot questions the racism behind this name-calling, playing the ‘if they can be racist I should be able to as well’ card. Except that calling a group of people white is not really racist.

Inaccurate, maybe, but do they express superiority over the Danes with this name? Danish people do not see the name as an issue, which is probably because most of them like that it is acknowledged that Denmark is overwhelmingly white, but the receivement of the name is important. Also, the majority of the world calls them Danes, a name they picked for themselves.

“Right now, it seems that smaller nations are reserved the privilege to decide on a pity clause.”

Versloot speaks of a mirrored feeling of superiority, which would have us carry out our dominance over smaller communities by recognizing their struggle, if they are pitiful enough. Recognizing the name a group wants to be called by others is a very basic form of assigning them agency over their own existence. Inuit and Samen have suffered from colonial interference for a long time and still see consequences to this day. The name with which they are referred to has always been a sensitive issue and denying their needs does not make them feel like an equal.

Throughout our conversation and

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in his letter he stresses his sorrow about this being brought to his attention after the course was over, because he and the students missed out on a class discussion on the subject. However, he made it clear that pointing out the tumult around the use of the derogatory terms was not sufficient reason for him to change his way of teaching.

The tactic of suggesting a discussion on a polarizing subject, when you have no real intention to follow it up with change but merely for the sake of having had analyzed both sides, does not help people. One might wonder which other arguments have to be brought up other than “they do not want you to do it.”

Especially having such a discussion in an infamously white university, which has significantly struggled with topics like diversity and inclusion, leading the conversation as a white, Dutch scholar, something has to feel wrong.

When does one, as a teacher, start doubting the space they occupy and what they did to occupy it?

We ended our discussion with a firm disagreement, namely the choice in how we react when finding out a term we used was derogatory and hurtful. I offered that you can choose to rush to claim your ignorance, denying any liability, or you can take a moment to realize the pain you have caused and take responsibility for your negligence.

He did not agree. Before being politically correct became the norm in public debate, racial slurs, jokes and names were still offensive, the group being offended was just not given a platform or felt they were in the position to react. Racism and oppression are not just realized in the words we use. It is a construct that hurts marginalized groups to a certain extent in every aspect of their life, and these microagressions fuel the institutionalized racism.

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The Euro

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ontemporary Europe is often associated with concepts such as diversity, respect and tolerance. But to what extend do these concepts still apply to the European continent?

Europe is a continent where the nation-state, nationalism and patriotism have been decisive in foreign politics for two centuries now. Geert Wilders has obtained 20 seats in the Dutch House of Representatives and Marie Le Pen got a third of the French votes.

Are figures like Wilders and Le Pen examples of our ‘tolerant’ culture and society? Or are the European citizens presenting Europe as a Utopia, even though they do not believe in this tolerant society themselves anymore? With the rise of parties such as the PVV, Front National and AfD, people have started to realize that the idea of a multicultural, tolerant and

opean Utopia

Job Knobbout studies European Studies at UvA and is a guest contributor to Eurovisie. diverse Europe is a faรงade. Europe has started to view itself as the guardian angel of "human rights" through which it legitimizes wars in, for example, Iraq and Libya. In most cases, however, it has become clear that the "righteous" European intervention merely exacerbated the situation. The wars in Iraq and Libya are just a small example to show that Europe has become a guardian of rights in which it has lost faith itself. It is for this reason that Europe will not be able to implement these rights abroad. If Europe really wants to become a home for the world, it will have to allow changes to be made to its traditions and follow through with these changes.

Everyone knows that the modernday Greeks are not the same as the Greeks of antiquity; we know that neither the English nor the French are the same as they were.

In these identities, but also in other European identities, you can see some form of cultural success.

There are traditions, both positive and negative, that are associated with the habits and customs of a certain culture. The problem does not lie in accepting changes in these traditions, but that if these changes are too fast and too extensive they can become something different than one wants. It is this sentiment that can explain the success of right-wing extremist parties.

It is often assumed that it is easy for an individual to integrate herself into a particular culture. Europeans, however, know that regardless of differences in colour or race, it would be difficult for them to adopt a different culture. A European cannot just become Indian or Chinese. Yet the expectation is that people who move to Europe will adapt and adopt the "European

identity". If being "European" has nothing to do with a certain race or skin colour, this means, thus, that being European is directly related to "norms and values". But what are these "European values", then? Are these, for example, "Christian values"? This discussion arose at the beginning of the 21st century during the debate about the European constitution. Pope John Paul II and his successor made a case for the recognition of the Christian tradition and Christian heritage in the European constitution.

The judiciary system and institutions that form the European Union have developed so much, however, that they no longer need this source that gave them life: the Christian values and heritage.The hypocrisy that unfortunately prevails is the fact that Europeans, armed with values such as diversity, tolerance

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and respect, expect that refugees and immigrants have fully adapted to the "European identity" within one, at most a few generations; the same identity that simultaneously stands for diversity and tolerance and which is based on a tradition that it seems to have outgrown.

In addition to the discussion on what the "European identity" entails and whether everyone should adapt to it, it is important to look at the nature of the immigration flow and why it is under so much pressure just now. The immigration flow to Europe is nothing new and started with a shortage of workers after the Second World War. Everyone was under the impression that these workers would return to their native country after the work was done.

This was not the case, however, and some workers decided to stay in Europe and sometimes even brought their family over. These workers formed the first, relatively small groups of immigrants.

In 2001, the phenomenon that is nowadays called "mass migration" started. In the United Kingdom alone, the number of Muslims grew

from 1.5 to 2.7 million and in 2011 only 44,9% of London’s residents were ‘White English’.

Simultaneously with this immigration flow the resistance that opposed it arose as well.

The identities that are introduced earlier on, namely the European traditions including the "values and norms" can form the basis of this resistance. It seems that people in Europe have no trouble with immigrants and that they are willing to allow changes to be made within their traditions, but they are afraid that these changes will be too big and will happen too fast. Because of this, they are afraid that their identities will change into something which they simply cannot or will not identify themselves with anymore.

Pim Fortuijn , a Dutch politician, civil servant, sociologist, author and professor, who was often regarded as controversial due to his outspoken views about multiculturalism, immigration and Islam in the Netherlands, once said: 'We Dutch are not interested in our cultural heritage and our ancestors.

We barely know our history and

“While fully respecting the secular nature of the institutions, it is the European constitutional treaty, that will include the Christian heritage of Europe.

(Pope John Paul II, Ecclesia in Europe, June 28, 2003.) ”

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therefore are ignorant towards our own cultural identity and it’s many achievements, including democracy'. But maybe he was wrong, maybe we are so aware that we, out of fear, cling to this identity, and therefore shatter the very core values of that identity, such as diversity and tolerance.

In short, is the immigration flow provoking resistance because Europeans no longer believe in tolerance or diversity, or because we cling convulsively to a European identity that at the same time forms the basis for concepts such as tolerance and diversity?

With the election of the Christian Democrat Sebastian Kurz of the Austrian ÖVP Mathieu Segers, professor of European history and integration, thinks that decesive times are awaiting us. 'Austria always has been the trailblazer of a radical right-wing agenda, since the end of the 90’s, when the populist leader Jörg Haider achieved his successes.' Awaiting for Europe to admit to a political shift to the right, or if Left-Wing parties will become aware that there is a problem and also start naming the "problem", in an attempt to point the citizens on an identity that they think they are defending. That is the question, but it is a question which is decisive for the future of the European continent.

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Property and Propriety Joep Leerssen

I

occasionally visit Scotland, more frequently recently since my daughter has settled in Glasgow.

Each time I find myself envious of Scotsmen wearing kilts. Excellent garments, very flattering, and I am sure I would look absolutely deadly in one, sexy and dignified at the same time. I confess, in all modesty (hah!), to a well-turned ankle and shapely calves; imagine me swagger along the Royal Mile or the heathery slopes of Glencoe...This is, of course a no-go zone: some fantasies are never meant to be carried into practice. Male vanity is a dangerous beast that ought to be kept on a tight leash, and in addition there is the lurking awareness that I would look like an idiot, showing off borrowed plumes, almost like wearing an unearned medal or claiming a bogus title (McLeerssen, Laird of Clanbollock). So alongside the fantasy (how would I look in one?) there is the reticence (don’t go that way). Recently that reticence has become the object of a debate in cultural theory on “cultural appropriation”. The argument goes that certain cultural manifestations are the product of a social group which is direspected if an outsider just claims it for his own use: like a Native-American feather headdress, or a Mexican sombrero, or a Jewish prayer mantle, worn by a tourist. I am a bit bothered by appropriation theory.

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On the one hand I understand the problem: it is the very reason why I instinctively repress the nagging temptation to try wearing a kilt. On the other hand, it seems part of the stultifying, prudish denunciation of the “inappropriate”, which is one of the great ideological diseases of our time, preventing progressive liberals

“There is much truth in that: tourism is deeply bound up with exploitation and disrespect” from formulating a meaningful political agenda rather than a posture of moral disapproval.

What is more, I cannot accept that culture is a “property” that can be ap-priopriated (and that seems to imply, for its counterpart, ex-propriated). Like information, culture is in endless supply, and if we share it among more people its stock is not diminished. If I share my money, I get poorer. If I share my knowledge, I don’t. And if Scotsmen share their kilt-fashion? How is America impoverished by the fact

that everyone, from Portugal to Japan, wears jeans and baseball caps? Has India been impoverished

by European curry restaurants?

Has Scotland been impoverished by the worldwide “appropriation” of the game of golf? What seems to irk people denouncing “appropriation” is a sense of power imbalance and cultural cherry-picking: certain rare items are selected for outside consumption from the total cultural palette of a society which as a whole is subject to disrespect and lack of positive interest or engagement.

There is much truth in that: tourism is deeply bound up with exploitation and disrespect. Still, does that mean I can no longer eat a burrito, or hang a dreamcatcher over a child’s cradle? It doesn’t get easier.

And soon, in my home region, the carnaval festivities will break loose.

A free-for-all mass-participation fancy-dress party. I may dress up like a Scottish clan chief, a clown, a maharaja, a Venetian patrician, or Donald Trump in a prison suit... and have no bad conscience about it at all. Because all I do is poke fun at my own vanity, my silly desire to be somebody altogether different.

But then again... stay away, ye non-Limburgers, carnaval tourists and outsiders, ignorant of our local dialect! And don’t you spoil our fun with your incomprehension and appropriation!

Are lobbying activities within the EU democratic?

Clara Iszezuk

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he current rise of populism and nationalist political parties within the member states of the European Union points out a growing mistrust of the EU and its institutions among the European population. The European Union is supposed to be a supranational organisation representing its

democratic member states and the public common interest of all the European citizens. Lobbying activities within the EU institutions are, thus, often denounced by the media as being undemocratic and scandalous, but are they really?

The democratic nature of the

EU and its institutions is often criticised by the media and the public opinion. This fall of public support for the EU project can be traced back to the 1990s and the emergence of Euroscepticism.

In his book What’s wrong with the EU and how to fix it?, Simon Hix underlines the lack of legitimacy

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and democratic deficit as the major issues facing the European Union.

Democratic deficit and lack of legitimacy feed into the criticism of the EU as being elitist. Sceptics argue that under the pretence of democracy, decisions are taken by bureaucrats without considering the public opinion enough.

Meanwhile, the pro-Europeans will claim that the democratic deficit is not a relevant problem because the EU is a confederation where states are negotiating together. In this system, citizens are directly represented within the European Parliament and indirectly within the other institutions elected by the leaders of the member states, who have been directly elected. This led to a debate on the representation of the EU citizens within the decision-making process and the role of elitism which can be dangerous as it creates less popular involvement with the European political activities.

In theory, lobbying is a democratic practice aimed to give advice and ideas about law proposals whilst representing specific interest, supposed to represent the common interest and to help legislators to consider the potential consequences of the proposal.

Lobbying activities are carried out by interest groups: a range of organisations outside the formal institutions seeking to influence the decision-making process while providing a link between decisionmakers and the rest of society. It is hard to classify pressure groups due to the large variety of interests being represented. However, we can distinguish the business orientated ones from the nonbusiness lobbies such as NGOs. Interest groups, also called pressure groups or lobbyists, are a necessary and healthy feature

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of democratic decision-making.

Necessary because the bureaucrats and legislators need to be aware of the possible effects of their law proposals; healthy because the main goal is to keep the lawmaker well-informed in the context of representative democracy, where the interests of all the represented members need to be taken into account.

Pressure groups can exert their influence at a European level, which is also called the "Brussels route" or on a national level on actors focusing on European matters, also called the "national

“Politicians are humans and the influence of money on politics is one of the key corruption risks in developed economies” route". Since the co-decision procedure between the European Parliament and the Commission instigated by the Maastricht Treaty, lobbyists focus their influence on the Commission as it proposes the laws, and the Parliament who then votes them into law. There are three definitive methods of lobbying the European parliament: directly through the members (MEPs) or their assistants, approaching officials of a specific EP Committee or via political groups within the EU. The democratic nature of lobbying is not questionable in theory but can be in practice. If a priori all the elements of democracy

(representative institutions, free and fair elections, check and balances of power) are supposed to be present within the lobbying activities. Simon Hix argues that this is still not enough to guarantee a democratic system and that the EU institutions are missing a ‘battle for control of political power’.

Without this democratic contest of real oppositions in the decisionmaking process, the EU cannot guarantee that its policies are really reflecting the general interest and preferences of its EU citizens.

The rise of Euroscepticism, the role of the domestic political parties and of the media are giving the public a false picture of the essence of EU lobbying activity. It is important not to confuse lobbying and corruption.

In theory, lobbying seeks to persuade and convince while corruption gains its end through illegitimate means. Politicians are humans and the influence of money on politics is one of the key corruption risks in developed economies. This is why it seems essential to regulate lobbying activities to ensure transparency of EU institutions.

Lobbying finds is legal basis in the Treaty of Amsterdam, which states that the Commission has to consult widely during the decisionmaking process. It also mentions that lobbying is legal only when it is transparent, analytical and providing informations about the future possible effects of a decision.

The expansion of pressure groups in Brussels and the complex nature of European public policy raises questions regarding the regulation of lobbying activities and the need to increase transparency at the European level. The system can be abused when information is obtained dishonestly or even when officials or politicians are bribed. Politicians are humans and

even if impartiality, independence and objectivity of their judgment are essential qualifications, these practices still happen. Scandals of this nature can often be found in the media.

For instance, the former president of the Commission, José Manuel Barroso, left his function in 2014 to join the investment bank Goldman Sachs. Even if the European Ethics Committee had judged that this was not an infringement on the integrity of his function, this raises questions regarding the privileged relationship between the leader of a European institution and a private company.

In 2011 another scandal about lobbying was exposed: the "cash for laws". A journalist from the Sunday Times denounced MEPs who received money in exchange for their votes in favour of certain lobbyists' interests. This example of pure corruption was deemed as unacceptable as the MEPs are elected by the people in order to protect public interest.

A last example could be the case of John Dalli, a Maltese Commissioner for Health and Consumer Protection who was exposed having “improper” relations with the tobacco industry, affecting his impartiality, independence and honesty. This scandal also questions the ability of the EU to protect its citizens regarding health issues.

Different solutions exist to deal with issues concerning the abuse of lobbying practices, which are not the nature of lobbying but simply abuses of legal loopholes. Some organisations such as ALTER are working for more transparency in lobbying activities, to limit its abuses and the domination of business interests over other, equally important causes. In

2014 the Code of Conduct was created by the Commission for its Commissioners, as a register establishing the transparency and expected behaviour of lobbyists within the EU institutions. All lobbyists are featured by name, specifying the clients they represent. Since 2001 and the White Paper on Governance, the Commission is obliged to register lobbyists. Moreover, Commissioners and the members of their cabinets, being part of the Commission which is committed to transparency, have to be open and publish the information of those they conducted meetings with and for which purpose.

In 2011, a transparency register has been elaborated by the Commission and the European Parliament itself for the MEP’s and their assistants, event though this register is not mandatory and does not oblige them to account for their meetings with lobbyists.

Because MEPs are directly elected

by EU citizens, the Parliament should be then as transparent as the Commission, which is indirectly elected. The Council of the EU also has to keep a register, but lobbying abuses are less common in this institution as they do not directly interfere with the legislative procedure.

The elaboration of the Codes of Conduct helped in opening up lobbying practices and in bringing more transparency to the public.

However, these improvements are still not enough. Lobbying practices should become binding and the European Parliament should be also legally obliged to keep a register publishing information about its members' meetings. This would lead to a transparent and democratic European Parliament, really representing the interests of the EU citizens.

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Humanomics and Bukowski's Defiant Guts

Sjors Roeters

“I can

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‘W

hat are we doing here?’ asks Marilynne Robinson. In an essay in the New York Review of Books of November 9 she ponders the question why the humanities should be taught, should be studied. She is responding to the reality of declining student numbers and budget cuts in the humanities worldwide. These developments are the result, according to Robinson, of the dominant discourse of competition and efficiency. Today’s society exhibits an obsession with reducing all matters to their economic aspect. ‘Workers, a category that seems to subsume us all except the idlest rich, should learn what they need to be competitive in the new economy. All the rest is waste and distraction.’

In Cents and Sensibility (2017) Morson and Schapiro, instead of saving the humanities by ‘dehumanizing’ them – e.g. theorizing them "to death", completely taking the "humaneness"

Mars orbits the sun. Contingency, idiosyncrasy, and choices – all of which allow for alternatives – play an indispensable role.’ Morson and Schapiro therefore posit that ‘in a world of contingency and narrativeness, stories are essential.’

We as individuals are confined to our culture and time of which we are the product. Literature provides the possibility of living another person’s perspective, liberating us from the prison houses of self.

This is the crucial strength and benefit of literature, particularly concerning economic science, because ‘the neatness of models is neither proof of nor substitute for truth’ and so ‘we easily miss all those nuances, particularities, psychological idiosyncrasies, and cultural contingencies that make people what they are.’

And yet there is a problem. The scholars only speak of the Great Novels. Morson and Schapiro only mention canonical, mostly nineteenth-century literature

to use in economics where we would also prefer to see more democratization? Let us then take a look at the other end of the literary spectrum, at the hero of pulp-fiction and laureate of American lowlife: Charles Bukowski.

South of no North (1973) is a short story collection perhaps best described as dirty raw realism, with stories such as Stop Staring at My Tits, Mister and All the Assholes in the World and Mine. The story Guts is especially pertinent in light of Morton and Schapiro’s proposition of humanomics. Henri Chinaski, Bukowski’s literary alter ego, was drinking with Marty. Just like Chinaski, Marty is a mean ol’ alcoholic and proposes to have a fight. They do, and then the landlady walks into the room.

Marty is sent away while Chinaski is trying to remember if the landlady’s accusation that he pissed in the parking lot and the elevator is true. Marty comes back and tells

relax with bums because I am a bum. I don't like laws, morals, religion, rules. I don't like to be shaped by society”

out of the humanities – they have endeavoured to find out what the humanities genuinely have to offer other disciplines, focussing on the most ‘imperial of sciences’, economics. They argue that ‘economics could benefit from understanding people better’ through great literature, proposing to call this symbiotic dialogue ‘humanomics’. Economic science can improve greatly because ‘human lives do not just unfold in a purely predictable fashion the way

– Literature with a capital L. They argue the relevance for economics of Tolstoy, Balzac, Dickens, Dante and, of course, Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility.

They use Dostoyevsky’s stories as complex and valuable insights into human psychology. True as that may be, why reproduce the high brow-low brow dichotomy?

What about pursuing further the democratization of literature that has already taken place – especially when putting literature

about the love of his life, a beautiful blonde. He will quit drinking and start working just for her. He gives his glass of port to Chinaski and leaves, and Chinaski goes down the elevator with a stolen bottle of whisky and knocks on a door. He barges into the room of a beautiful blonde, Jeanie. They start drinking and talking and then fucking. A week later Marty and Chinaski talk again. Marty tells Chinaski that the love of his life Jeanie got kicked out of her room downstairs because

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she couldn’t pay the rent and now Marty is really sick because he misses her and worries about her. A week later Marty gets kicked out of his room for not being able to pay the rent. Chinaski now works at a meat packing plant and feels better when he notices that people on the bus think he smells really bad.

It is a straight-forward short story, with the first paragraph being the only part transcending the story’s actions and is relevant to the humanomics interpretation: ‘I don’t like the clean-shaven boy with the necktie and the good job.

I like desperate men, men with broken teeth and broken minds and broken ways. They interest me. They are full of surprises and explosions.

I also like vile women, drunk cursing bitches with loose stockings and sloppy mascara faces. I’m more interested in perverts than saints.

I can relax with bums because I am a bum. I don’t like laws, morals, religion, rules. I don’t like to be shaped by society.’

So how does this fit in with econometric models of government policy? How would a behavioural economist deal with Henri Chinaski?

In what way could this story instruct economic science? Indeed, it is, as Morson and Schapiro in a similar vein argue, a story which lays bare the psychological idiosyncrasies and particularities of humans.

A crucial foundation of the American economy is its grand narrative: The American Dream.

Government policy is very much instructed by this, sometimes implicitly, but also explicitly – Henry Kissinger, Hilary Clinton and Barack Obama, for instance, were all explicitly inspired and driven by it.

It is an ethos, a set of ideals aimed primarily at freedom, of which the right to prosperity and success, to

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upward social mobility, the pursuit of happiness, is a pivotal part and has become more and more so since the advent of neoliberalism in the 1980s. Economic life, by the narrative of the American Dream, has enormous influence on US society.

Bukowski’s story then, is quite problematic but therefore all the more interesting, perhaps because it is an anomaly to the grand narrative of the American Dream.

Although Henri Chinaski, on the one hand, is the embodiment of the larger-than-life persona with personal freedom being by far the greatest good, it does not fit in with the other part of the narrative of the industrious and entrepreneurial, e.g. economic side of the American Dream. Bum life has not befallen him. He did not try, but fail to pursue happiness through economically prospering, moving upwards on the social ladder. He simply chose to be a bum. The lowlife, "the economic failure", is Chinaski’s highest degree of freedom possible. The story is valuable as a counterweight to the still dominant Enlightenment idea of the malleability of society, and therefore of the individuals of which it is constituted. Chinaski defies to be moulded, precisely, and thus ironically, in the spirit and defence of the American Dream.

No governmental economic policy will change anything about that, no matter how complex economists make their econometric formulas. It is exactly in this spirit that Bukowski is a defiant of neoliberalism avant-la-lettre. The humanomics interpretation of the story exclaims: There’s way more to life than just the economy, stupid!

Piraten, communisten en levende wijn Levente Vervoort werkt bij Gall en Gall en hij verbaast zich over de manier waarop drank wordt geslijt.

D

it najaar ben ik in dienst getreden bij de Gall en Gall.

Ik verkoop vooral sterke drank en wijn. Bier koopt men meestal bij onze buren van de supermarkt. Met de Albert Heijn en Etos naast ons vormt de Gall en Gall het Ahold Delhaize-triumviraat dat de dagelijkse boodschappen in Amsterdam zowat gemonopoliseerd heeft.

De Gall en Gall is veel veranderd door de jaren heen, vertelt mijn collega die al 23 jaar bij de slijterij werkt mij. Het is Ahold gelukt alle tegenstrevers kapot te concurreren door niets aan het

toeval over te laten. 594 winkels in heel Nederland worden nu gecentraliseerd bestuurd met één doel: winstmaximalisatie.

Zo wordt mij ook voorgeschreven hoe ik moet verkopen. Natuurlijk zijn er veel klanten wier fles drank ik enkel scan aan de kassa, maar genoeg anderen twijfelen over het product dat zij willen kiezen en krijgen dus - desnoods ongevraagd - informatie. Zo wil Gall de klanten sturen in hun productkeuze. Het bedrijf wil zoveel mogelijk van de duurste producten verkopen. De winstmarges op het dure segment van dranken en wijn zijn enorm, als

je bedenkt dat ze niet zelden in de aanbieding zijn voor de helft van de prijs. Sommige flessen whisky, van 50 euro of duurder, worden maar ééns per week verkocht in ons filiaal.

Maar hoe zorg je ervoor dat een klant een duur product koopt als er veel goedkopere alternatieven zijn? Ahold heeft verschillende marketingstrategieën, maar hun werknemers onderwijzen in productkennis is misschien wel de belangrijkste. Dus moet ik inloggen op het Ahold-net en dozijnen aan toetsjes afleggen met 'vakkennis' over de dranken in het assortiment.

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Hier beginnen de problemen: Neem nu de sterkedranken (de wijn kom ik dadelijk bij). Sommige alcoholproducenten zijn zo machtig dat er een soort merkverwatering heeft plaatsgevonden: de merknamen zijn zo bekend dat we ze ook gaan gebruiken voor producten van een ander merk uit dezelfde categorie. Een Cuba libre is een cocktail van rum, cola en limoen, maar toch noemen veel mensen het een baco, of er nou Bacardi in zit of niet.

Toch zijn de grote merknamen niet de duurste producten; Bacardi, Johnny Walker, Jim Beam, Finlandia, Jägermeister - ze sponsoren elite- en massasport, ze worden gedronken in films, op TV en door mensen zoals jij en ik. Het zijn de Coca Cola's en Redbulls van de sterke drank; hun onbetwistbare merknaam en populariteit zijn op zichzelf genoeg om het product aan te prijzen.

Maar de kleinere producten moeten het van iets anders hebben: hun verhaal. En ook in deze verhalen is het vormen, vertalen en reproduceren van culturele stereotypen onmiskenbaar aanwezig als narratief instrument.

Het beeld 'rum', bijvoorbeeld, is volledig gekolonialiseerd. Op talloze flessen rum, zoals die van Captain Morgan, zien we bebaarde witte mannen, piraten, die herinneren aan tropische avonturen zoals opgetekend in Pirates of the Carribbean. Maar deze avonturiers zijn in wezen niets meer dan imperialisten uit Spanje en de Verenigde Staten, die de rietsuikerdistillaten van native Cubanen commodificeerden. De van oorsprong Spaanse familie Bacardi opereert sinds Castro's Revolutie vanuit Amerika, maar al in 1899 werd het familiehoofd tot bestuurder benoemd door

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het Amerikaanse leger voor hun verdiensten in de bezetting van Cuba. Zelfs Havana Club, de staatsrum van Castro is voor de helft in handen van gigabedrijf Pernod Ricard (maker van Absolut, Jameson en vele andere grote merken). Bacodrinkers zijn misschien dus wel de enige mensen die een megakapitalistische multinational en een communistische regering tegelijkertijd sponsoren.

Gall zwarte jongeren Hennessy moeten 'adviseren' en OostAziatische vrouwen bubbeltjeswijn: alledaags rassenessentialisme in de drankwinkel.

Ook wodka dankt veel van haar populariteit aan othering, maar dan van het Oosten. De rode sterren, hamers, sikkels, nep-Cyrillische letters, beren, wolven, geweren schreeuwen de winkel in vanaf

Complex, krachtig, intens, gelaagd, subtiel, verleidelijk, harmonieus, onthullend, gul en levendig. Dit is niet je ideale partner, maar een selectie van woorden die gebruikt worden om de smaak van wijn te beschrijven. Maar het is geen toeval dat de wijn gepersonifieerd wordt; ze doen klanten geloven dat de karaktereigenschappen van de drank iets zegt over hun identiteit.

“De rode sterren, hamers, sikkels nepCyrillische letters, geweren schreeuwen de winkel in vanaf de wodkaflessen” de wodkaflessen. Maar, of het nu Puschkin wodka of Gorlovka is, bijna alles flessen worden 'gewoon' geproduceerd door EU-TTIP multinationals. Eristoff bijvoorbeeld is een dochtermerk van Bacardi en beslist niet Russisch of anderszins uit de Wodka Belt.

Toch zijn het niet alleen de stereotypen op de fles die van belang zijn voor Gall en Gall.

Ook de klant wordt op zo een schokkende manier benaderd: binnen de organisatie is het publiek geheim dat verkopers bij Gall en

Binnen deze apenparade van stereotypes vormt wijn een probleem. Bijna de helft van alle flessen winkel is wijn, maar hoe moeten de klanten differentiëren tussen de producten als hun merknaam nietszeggend is?

Zo kan je bij Gall en Gall je smaakprofiel aanmaken. Aan de hand van tien of-of-vragen ('hou je van bloemengeur of leergeur?') bepaalt een algoritme welke soort wijn jij lekker vindt. En zie hier, wie van smaken en geuren houdt die we met dure producten associëren, zoals leer, pure chocola of 'culinair eten' krijgt dure wijnen geadviseerd.

En deze mensen mogen trots zijn op zichzelf, want die wijnen smaken op hun beurt weer intelligent, uitgesproken, met diepgang en authentiek. Hou je van frietjes?

Geeft niet, dan ben je simpel, makkelijk en toegankelijk en moet je maar veel zoete witte wijn drinken.

De strategie is drieledig. Ten eerste geeft de strategie mensen een geveinsde houvast binnen de grote keuze aan wijnproducten. Verder voorziet ze de klanten van epitheta die altijd vleiend geformuleerd zijn, wie zou dat niet met zijn sociale kringen delen? Ten derde stuurt ze klanten in de richting

van het duurste prijssegment. Met hun wijnprofilering is het Ahold gelukt om een enorme doelgroep de winkel in te lokken, waar de slijterijwijn tot niet heel lang geleden de alleenheerschappij van de bourgeois-witte Nederlander heerste.

Natuurlijk probeert Gall alleen de adviezen van hun marketingdeskundigen te volgen en zij hebben terecht gezien: iedereen wil bijzonder en uniek zijn en dat vooral ook aan anderen kunnen laten zien. De smaakprofielen zijn wat dat betreft niets meer dan een volgende voorbeeld van de doorgeslagen commodificatie van onze persoonlijkheden en eigenschappen.

Helaas is het goede gevoel waarmee de makers van de test het winkelfiliaal verlaten een schijnwerkelijkheid: de zes profielen (drie witte en drie rode wijn) zijn een versimpelde weergave van de werkelijkheid. Onze smaken veranderen voortdurend door de tijd heen en zijn onderhevig aan allerlei meetbare en moeilijker meetbare sociale omgevingsfactoren, zoals de atmosfeer, mode en het gezelschap waarin we verkeren.

Dit maakt het des te pijnlijker dat de test eigenlijk makkelijk te ontmaskeren is. Van mijn vrienden wist ik precies welke antwoorden ik moest invullen om hun gewenste smaakprofiel te krijgen. En dat is niet omdat ik weet of ze liever aan bloemetjes of leer ruiken, maar omdat ik weet welke antwoorden ze zouden kiezen, als er iemand over hun schouder meekijkt. En dat is precies wat Gall en Gall wil: meekijken met al onze productkeuzes, zodat ze hun assortiment precies kunnen aanpassen op de doelgroep.

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Alt-right Claims that would put the Soviets to shame The alleged conspiracies of conservative reformers like count CoudenhoveKalergi and the Bilderberg Group.

T

Robin de Bruin lectures Modern European History at the European Studies Department of the University of Amsterdam. He has published on European integration history, Europeanisation and domestic change, decolonisation and European integration, the history of technocratic governance, and Nazi rule in Europe.

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Robin de Bruin

he mother of all modern European conspiracy theories was the idea, propagated by the Nazi leaders during the Second World War, that Nazi Germany was at war with “the Jews” in both the United States and the Soviet Union. The answer to the pressing question why American “capitalist plutocracy” and Soviet communism, by their very nature antagonistic, had allied against Germany was obvious, according to Nazi propagandists. Hitler did not acknowledge the class struggle between the propertied class and the workers. The emergence of “capitalist plutocracy” and the reaction to it, in the form of Soviet communism, were linked to “pernicious Jewish materialism”.

In this line of reasoning the omnipotent Jewish foe (supported by the “artificial division” of “the people” under the parliamentary system of the Weimar Republic) tried to break the natural ethnic solidarity between people of the same German “race”. According to the Nazis, the Third Reich had overcome class society, and therefore global Jewry wanted

to annihilate it. The antagonism between liberal capitalism and communism was their tool to “divide and rule”. Global free trade, the gold standard and communism were seen as part of the same Jewish conspiracy for world domination.

Similar conspiracy theories, including a secret hierarchy of controlling Jewish influences, still endure - today as part of a revolt of “angry white men” against contemporary, post-1960s elites.

The response to these angry theories that circulate online, show a naïve confidence in the power of politicians, namely the conviction that society could be changed overnight if only sitting politicians would want to do so. This leads to disappointment in these politicians – who apparently do not care too much for change - and to hopes for a messianic saviour.

Many of today’s conspiracy theories on Twitter and Facebook accuse “cosmopolitan elites” of, for example, secretly orchestrating economic crises for political purposes. According to conspiracy theorists linked to the Alternative Right (Alt-Right) movement, political elites in the West have had a secret “cultural Marxist” agenda for more than fifty years. These elites are assumed to be subordinate to secret puppet masters who are the enemy from within in the global clash of civilisations. They would not only replace “honest capitalism” with socio-economic serfdom, but would do away with traditional values as well. Some followers of these theories argue that mass immigration to “the West”, the subsequent multi-racial integration and “gender neutralism” are being promoted in predominantly “white” countries. This is intended to replace the strong, self-conscious populations of these countries with passive subjects that have been

manipulated into submission.

planned economy across the globe.

For me as a historian, it is striking that many of today’s conspiracy theories under the umbrella of “cultural Marxism” attribute imagined conspiracy theories retroactively to conservative or even reactionary organisations, groups and individuals of the past. People that actually strived for reform

However, in fact the Bilderberg Conferences started in 1954 as informal meetings of West European and American noncommunist politicians, business leaders and trade union officials called together with the purpose of removing sources of friction between the United States of America and its West European military allies in the Cold War against global communism. The first Bilderberg Conference was held in hotel De Bilderberg in the small Dutch town of Oosterbeek and was organised by Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands. He would be the organiser of many more Bilderberg Conferences to come. This is why the archives of the Bilderberg Group are kept at the Dutch National Archives in The Hague.

Everyone has free access to these archives.

“Global free trade, the gold standard and communism were seen as part of the same Jewish conspiracy for world domination”

in order to preserve: preserve the market economy, preserve European colonial domination, preserve Christianity, preserve family values, preserve the rural areas, etc. At first sight, many of these “conservative reformers” could be regarded as kindred spirits to the sympathisers of the Alt-Right movement.

One example is the Bilderberg Group. It is accused on social media of trying to form a New World Order, made up of the leaders of banks and multi-national corporations. Some Alt-Right propagandists have accused this Bilderberg Group of trying to impose a world government and a

The very first question that was raised at this first Bilderberg Conference of 1954 was how to guard against developing a system of social security in western countries which eventually would destroy free enterprise.

After the Second World War, Western European democracies were under pressure to provide higher levels of prosperity and social security for their citizens.

States wanted to prevent their own citizens from becoming receptive to communism due to material poverty. However, most political elites despised the idea of economic planning that perhaps would bring in the totalitarian communist state power through the back door. The main question for the Bilderberg Conference was, in other words: how to maintain “economic freedom” in times of state-guaranteed social security?

The accusation that the Bilderberg Group itself tried to impose a

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planned economy is based on blatant misinformation.

An even more bizarre conspiracy claim that would probably even put the Soviets to shame is the theory that today’s political elites in Europe, like the German right-wing Christian Democrat Wolfgang Schäuble, supported by the European Union, would encourage and welcome an “invasion” of “refugees” and “migrants” from Africa and the Middle East in order to cause a “white genocide”.

Many conspiracy theorists see this alleged conspiracy as the spiritual successor of what they call the “Kalergi Plan”. After the First World War, the Austro-Japanese count Richard Nicolaus CoudenhoveKalergi, a fervent anti-communist, published his famous book PanEuropa (1923, translated into English as Pan-Europe in 1926), which contained a plan for the political and economic unification of Europe. In Coudenhove-Kalergi’s eyes the European continent, together with its overseas colonies, would have to form one large economic entity. Pan-European agriculture and industry had to be protected from cheap imported products. This European economic unity would lead to rationalisation, increased production and lower prices, whereby prosperity would become greater and more widespread. The “class struggle” would be prevented by European unity, and as a result communism would lose its appeal. Poverty, after all, was the breeding ground for communism.

According to the historian Marco Duranti, conservative elitist 'romantic internationalists' like Coudenhove looked back nostalgically to an idealised past as a basis for a new Europe that would overcome the drawbacks of

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modernity. In his recently published book, The Conservative Human Rights Revolution (2017), Duranti, for instance, reinterprets the origins of the Council of Europe’s European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) of 1950, arguing that its conservative inventors envisioned it as a means to halt the expansion of the bureaucratic authority of the British Labour government over Britain's economy, or to safeguard the autonomy of Catholic institutions in France.

In his book on Pan-Europa, Coudenhove had written that Europe’s culture was that of the 'White Race, which sprang from the soil of Antiquity and Christianity'.

The reformist nature of his plan for a Pan-Europe went hand-in-hand with the maintenance of European colonial dominance around the globe. However, as the son of a Japanese mother and an AustroHungarian father, Coudenhove was certainly not a white supremacist.

In his 1925 book Praktischer Idealismus, he wrote that racial groups, like the Jews, and social classes would gradually disappear in the future and that personalities would remain. Moreover, the mixing of different racial groups would replace the diversity of peoples with a variety of personalities who would look outwardly similar to the ancient Egyptian.

Today, phrases about these expectations for the future are being mixed up by representatives of the Alt-Right movement in an attempt to prove that Coudenhove, of course with the help of a Jewish banker (no effective conspiracy theory can do without antisemitism), had developed a plan for a socalled White Genocide. Earlier this year, even a former member of the Dutch Lower House for the VVD, now an adviser to Thierry Baudet’s Forum for Democracy, stated on

twitter that the European political response to today’s refugee crisis apparently was meant to bring the aims of this “Kalergi Plan” to fruition.

The real target of conspiracy theorists is, of course, today’s European Union. Federica Mogherini, the EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, has been called the 'EU minister for White Genocide' in an article on the website altright.com. The EU’s predecessors, like the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) and the European Economic Community (EEC), are depicted as

“In CoudenhoveKalergi’s eyes the European continent, together with its overseas colonies, would have to form one large economic entity.” instruments in the hands of sinister left-wing elites who would want to establish a planned economy. If one repeats this nonsense a thousand times, one probably starts to believe it. However, the ECSC and the EEC were basically attempts for a conservative reform of Western Europe in order to restore the West European market economy after the economic beggar-thy-neighbour policies of the European states in the 1930s and the war that followed

it. Another goal was to maintain as much influence as possible over Europe’s colonies.

The supporters of the AltRight movement see European integration as a catalyst for, not as a response to, processes of neoliberal globalisation, which they think of as a cultural and socioeconomic threat. However, this does not explain why the Alt-Right movement directs its arrows to the aforementioned conservative reformers of the past. A Dutch historian, Han van der Horst, has argued that this is not despite the fact that there are some similarities, but because of it. According to Van der Horst, the New Right cannot live with the fact that outspoken conservatives like Coudenhove drew the conclusion that Europeanisation was a good idea.

I think the roots may run deeper.

In many ways, today’s Alt-Right, with opinion leaders like Milo Yiannopoulos, can be regarded as the mirror image of the 1960s provocative counter-culture. Partly as a result of the discontent of the 1960s, the paternalistic state that made decisions for groups of people was replaced in the 1980s and 1990s, not by direct democracy as the New Left had wanted, but by market mechanisms as conditions for individual free choice. The fact that today’s neoliberal society is not as meritocratic, as we often like to think, causes resentment that has to be redirected. Lower-educated people in particular feel orphaned.

At the same time, any sign of “left-wing” political paternalism is regarded as an obnoxious form of hypocrisy. Facts cannot be trusted and every claim to authority is suspect. Undermining all authority, even the authority of the New Right's kindred spirits of the past, is the heart of today’s New Right revolution.

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SES Calendar 22 December – Christmas Gala We will end 2017 on a high, with the Christmas Gala. Get your suit or dress out of the closet and put on your fanciest shoes or heels: this will be a fancy night! Perhaps you will even end the night under the mistletoe? SES has teamed up with other Humanities associations, together we will celebrate the end of university year 2017 in the WesterUnie from 22:00 – 05:00. See you there!

22 January – Career Dinner In January the SES will organise the annual Career Dinner.

This event is perfect if you want to meet specialists from different working fields. Guests will be invited from all the different European Studies career paths, and we can dine with them! Keep an eye on our website and Facebook page for more information.

9 February – Family Day On the 9th of February, the SES invites all it’s members to bring their family to the university. Is your mother, father, sister, brother or dog curious as to how you spend your days? Join the SES Family Day and show them around in Amsterdam!

25 April to 6 May – SES Study Trip 2018 This year’s Study Trip will visit Helsinki, St. Petersburg, Tallinn and Riga. 35 SES members, the Travel Committee and the Board will be leaving the Netherlands behind for a cultural and alcoholic excursion. We are looking forward to this amazing experience, it might just become a SES highlight of the year!

(c) studievereniging europese studies 2017