The ‘we’ feeling is a winged concept in the Dutch media. We are good, we are tolerant, we win at sports, altogether we are seventeen million people. But who are ‘we’ when with the greatest of ease we can declare some of us to be ‘them’ and, as the epitome of this disloyal deed, accuse not us but them of lacking in loyalty?
With the rise of the ‘Pim Fortuyn movement’ in Dutch politics and following the attack on the Twin Towers, the relationship between the individual citizen and politics has been put explicitly on the Dutch agenda. This tension has, however, not led to emancipating discussions among the public about economic and social conditions, but has primarily crystallized in specific themes, including migration, refugees and the cultural and religious differences between the Muslim community and the rest of the Netherlands. An atmosphere evolved in which the murder of Theo van Gogh became an incentive for questioning the entire Muslim community. A few years before that, when Pim Fortuyn was killed, that in no way had led to doubting the loyalty of large groups of indigenous Dutch. The suspicion of disloyalty seems to have further expanded into the simplistic concept of the Other, so that such diverse groups as Antilleans and refugees who escaped Islamic regimes because of their own religious secularism are also under suspicion. Due to criticism of dual citizenships in the Turkish and Moroccan communities, the campaign against Muslims has, for example, also led to criticism of atheist Iranian refugees who, entirely against their will, are likewise blessed with dual nationalities.
While the fear of terrorism and radicalization raises real questions, the demonizing of an entire community by some Dutch citizens has led to concern about associations with the Second World War. According to Nazi doctrine, the Jewish community, identifiable by both race and religion, posed a threat to Western society. It formed a danger to the future, a danger that had to be resisted. An analysis of Hannah Arendt’s The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951) can cast some light on the real fear that this history could, in one way or another, repeat itself. I refer here primarily to Arendt’s account of the ‘objective enemy’, which she distinguishes from the suspect. Guilt is attributed to a suspect on the basis of evidence and a confession. In extreme cases, the accuser forces a confession not based on truth. In any case, legally and morally, a confession of guilt is required. The ‘objective enemy’ is potentially present as a harbinger of future catastrophe. This enemy is not so much guilty as dangerous, in the sense that a carrier of a contagious disease is dangerous. In public space, these suspected carriers, regardless of their behaviour, are avoided or systematically subjected to control: it is up to them to prove that they are not contagious. In time, this aggression becomes socially habituated. Society is then convinced of its own assessments. Nothing whatsoever that is intended to eliminate the ‘objective enemy’ meets with any criticism.
In Arendt’s time, these enemies were Jews, homosexuals, communists and Gypsies. Now, it is apparently ‘the Muslim’ who is the objective enemy. Purely through his supposed external characteristics, he is a danger to society. The criticism is not exclusively directed to those who misbehave and also happen to be Muslim, but to the faith itself. Hate, terrorism and the repression of women are not attributed to individuals in circumstances with variable characteristics and widely divergent histories, but to the religion as such, with the result that the right to freedom of expression implies a double moral standard. Statements made by Theo van Gogh and Pim Fortuyn did fall under freedom of expression and did not incite extreme and violent behaviour. Some statements by imams, however, apparently do.
The ‘We’ Feeling
This inherently contradictory morality is justified with such terms as disloyalty and disrespect (for Dutch society and democratic values and norms). How is someone to be respected if they are not completely loyal? This question presumes a given perception of loyalty. Is loyalty unconditional? Are there then no more critical questions to be asked, as is the case for military personnel, who must blindly follow orders, or for obedient subjects? Here, there is no question of reciprocity, just mindless allegiance. This form of loyalty is exclusive. It shuts out other forms of loyalty. Or does allegiance to loyalty implicitly mean trust, of the kind that is present between two friends? Here, by definition, loyalty cannot be forced on demand. It is achieved by mutual respect, and always at varying levels. Do immigrants, the children of immigrants and refugees suffer from their double loyalties, or do they enjoy them? Loyalties are not bound to passports. They are supported by given bodies of thought. Consequently, one can be loyal to a specific background, with its tradition of hospitality, and also fight for freedom of expression, doing everything possible to uphold antidiscrimination laws. These loyalties are not contradictory. They bear witness to a multiplicity of trust.
Only exclusive thinking claims that different loyalties – by definition – must pose obstacles to one another. History shows us that almost every body of thought runs the risk of becoming literally exclusive. Indeed, any group that, because of an absolute conviction of being utterly right, no longer tolerates any other political or religious truths, is not only fundamentalist, but also leans toward militant extremism, of the kind, for example, demonstrated by Guantánamo Bay or the car bombings in Baghdad. To justify this exclusivity, an image of an enemy is required in order to have an object onto which to graft an illusory, immovable we, an identity of one's own. The objective enemy is of vital importance for this sense of we. It is created by construing fixed identities, which as a rule are based on ethnicity, religious conviction, sex and political or sexual preference.
This, however, does not mean that the minorities referred to do not have a ‘we’ feeling of their own. Every individual experiences the concept of we, based on different foundations and arrived at by way of different stories or histories. For many articulate third-generation newcomers, this sense of community generally seems to be a mix of right-minded autonomy and unconditional loyalty, even towards those inclined to condemn them. Perhaps this is more a question of integrity than of loyalty. There is a lack of understanding in reactions that literally exclude a community that shares the same roots. Active and involved, these young people engage in debate after debate in order to vent their communal disappointment and to shore up and reinforce that self-evident loyalty.
Being In Between
Another, more ‘fleeting’ loyalty is one I recognize in the work of the Rotterdam artist, Jorge Kata Núñez. The proposal sketch he submitted for a mural painting, made on the invitation of the Centrum Beeldende Kunst in Rotterdam, shows a trotting trotamundo, a world-travelling horse whose markings are a map of the globe. Time after time, this ever-in-motion creature escapes being closed in to join up with yet another ‘we’ that opens its arms to him. In response to a society at odds with itself, one individual demands reciprocity that has been lost as a basic right, while the other abandons that dubious space the moment that the reciprocity of loyalty no longer exists. The Iraqi writer, Al Galidi, lost his loyalty to the Netherlands when he was forced to choose between his dying father and a residence permit. In order not to forfeit his right to the permit, he needed permission to leave the Netherlands to visit his dying father in Jordan, one last time. Repeated visits to the Dutch Immigration and Naturalization Service (IND) proved fruitless. In the end, Al Galidi put his rights at risk by seeking a false passport. Alas, the damage was already done. His father died in a strange country without seeing his son. Now, following a general pardon, Al Galidi has his residence permit, but for him, it is nothing more than a ‘massage for a dead body’.
This description of the ‘we’ feeling certainly highlights the problem of the multicultural society. How do we define it today? Is the multicultural society one in which ethnic and religious groups are isolated and distinguished, in order that one be able to force these groups to assimilate? That would mean that the different characteristics of that society must be sacrificed on behalf of a-one-and-the-same identity. In The Human Condition (1958), Arendt offers another political option. To her way of thinking, differences are not bound to fixed identities, but are unique to each individual. The plurality that every individual already happens to be is precisely that which must be preserved in the political arena. Arendt’s political concept rejects thinking in terms of identities and refers to the relationships and interrelationships that each individual has with others, and they are constantly shifting and reforming themselves. It is a demonstration of interest, of being literally in between. This is no longer a multiculturalism in which monolithic cultures end up standing eye to eye, facing one another off, but an intercultural space of relational plurality. This different intercultural focus shifts the perspective of groups with specific identities towards networks that can move through those identities. If there are then still autonomous individuals in this network, they are junctions, points of intersection.
How, in the light of this analysis, should we respond to commentary in which homosexuals, women, Muslims and other minorities are rejected and excluded? Are such remarks justified by freedom of expression, or do they more resemble the behaviour of the biggest brat in school, who bullies the smaller children? Does not freedom in fact signify the furtherance of spontaneous interest, a kind of interculturalism? When critical thinking turns into humiliation instead of providing encouragement to the awakening of interest that must precede judgment, then freedom is far beyond the horizon. Political space, as Arendt argues, is the open space of respect, in which one does not condemn on grounds of racial and religious characteristics, but where sincere discussion can genuinely take place.
Opening
