[P2P-F] Fwd: <nettime> Are we in 1935 Germany or 21st Century Netherlands?

Sun Jul 3 11:10:58 CEST 2011

important dutch public debate after the slashing of cultural subsidies,

Michel

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Dante-Gabryell Monson <dante.monson at gmail.com>
Date: Sun, Jul 3, 2011 at 3:52 PM
Subject: Fwd: <nettime> Are we in 1935 Germany or 21st Century Netherlands?
To: econowmix at googlegroups.com

Forwarded conversation
Subject: <nettime> Are we in 1935 Germany or 21st Century Netherlands?
------------------------

From: *Ibrahim Quraishi* <ibbuqu at gmail.com>
Date: Sun, Jun 26, 2011 at 5:28 PM
To: nettime-l at kein.org

Dear Friend and Colleagues :

How to stop the tidal wave of political extremism in the Netherlands
today? The extreme right PVV and its leader Geert Wilders in
particular have hijacked virtually all the debates on culture,
education, minority rights and freedom of speech, but their
neo-liberal agenda smacks of a particular brand of fascism of by gone
days, as they have co-opted virtually the entire Dutch Political
establishment into this horrific misadventure.

What has become of the Dutch historical tolerance? What are we going
to do to make sure that this country does not fall into the abyss of
irrational right wing fanatics in the name of preserving their own
brand of European-ness. The enemy is NOT Islam. It is NOT struggling
artists, It is NOT the intellectuals, university students, hospital
workers nor even ordinary citizen from all walks of life. The enemy
is really the clique of neo-liberal capitalists who refuse to let go
of their power and their jingoistic fear mongering in the name of
national preservation, for their personal power aggrandizement and
ultimate idealogical control.

I urge you all to please take a moment and look for possibilities of
finding a pro-active way to protest the proposed actions of the Dutch
Government.

We must stand against this tyranny of oppression of using public
funding to silence the public itself!!!

We cannot allow the fundamental destruction of our civil-society for
political expediency that services the right wing agenda here in the
Netherlands or anywhere else!!! This has happened before in the United
States under consecutive presidencies, beginning with Ronald Regan
(1980-1988) and the US have never recovered from its own national
demise. As a matter of public record, education, culture, scientific
research, social services, infrastructure, and all walk of life have
been terribly effected by the American model : unbridled capitalism
without responsibility!

Do we really wish this neo-liberal nightmare to permanently destroy
the foundations of our socio-political, cultural multiplicity?

If all culture stopped for one day, all newspapers stop printing,
all schools stop functioning, all hospitals closed their doors, all
television stations and all other forms of digital media stopped
broadcasting, what would happen???

This may be naive, but there must be a creative way to show resistance
against political tyranny. If change is happening in the Middle East
after 30 years of systematic oppression, we can also find ways to
change our direction before its too late!

Please join me and thousands of others to voice their dismay at the
current demise of culture, civil society and ultimate diversity here.

Monday 27 June
13.00-16.00
Plein & The Malieveld
The Hague
A

Also please go to other websites like : http://www.schadekaart.nl and
http://www.marsderbeschaving.nl/index_en.php to find out how you can
contribute and get involved in this moment of extreme urgency.

ibrahim quraishi www.ibrahimquraishi.org

ps. as always to be removed from this mailing list, please click -->: [
take_me_off_list at ibrahimquraishi.org]

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----------
From: *Heiko Recktenwald* <heikorecktenwald at googlemail.com>
Date: Mon, Jun 27, 2011 at 5:20 AM
To: nettime-l at kein.org

I am sorry, you are mixing two buzzwords, neoliberalism and fashism, that
say more or less nothing. Please accept the fact that there are still
differences to Berlin 1935. You will need better arguments to fill the
vacuum in Dutch society that seems to play for Wilders. Maybe something like
"an intolerant society is a dead society". What are the arguments of
Wilders?

Best, H.

Am 26.06.2011 17:28, schrieb Ibrahim Quraishi:

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From: *Jernej Prodnik* <jernej.prodnik at gmail.com>
Date: Mon, Jun 27, 2011 at 4:53 PM
To: nettime-l at kein.org

Just because neoliberalism and fascism are perhaps buzzwords that doesn't
mean they are irelevant, distinguishable and possibly very much correlated
concepts, especially in case of Geert Wilders.

Best,
Jernej

-----Original Message-----
From: nettime-l-bounces at mail.kein.org
[mailto:nettime-l-bounces at mail.kein.org] On Behalf Of Heiko Recktenwald
Sent: Monday, June 27, 2011 5:21 AM
To: nettime-l at kein.org
Subject: Re: <nettime> Are we in 1935 Germany or 21st Century Netherlands?

----------
From: *Florian Cramer* <flrncrmr at gmail.com>
Date: Mon, Jun 27, 2011 at 5:57 PM
To: nettime-l at kein.org

I would put it differently: It's a politics of conservative resentment
mixed with politbureau capitalism.

The conservative resentment of the Dutch government is rather
old-fashioned. What is new is only its outspokenness: the break with a
postwar consensus, or political correctness, of not attacking modern
art for being modern art. For Zijlstra, the secretary of culture and
education, the arts have been dominated by a small elite - read: art
councils, critics, intellectuals - that superimposed its minority
taste on society, making it the majority agenda. And indeed, it is
difficult to argue with this unless one thinks that funding should
just go to those kind of places and projects that wouldn't be able to
sustain themselves on the free market. (Which _is_ an elitist stance.)
Yes, one could consider it unfair that a ticket for an experimental
music concert is subsidized while the musical isn't. However, the
Dutch government's agenda is not at all consistent in this respect. It
wants to keep the subsidies of operas and the big museums untouched
because they represent "the cultural heritage of the Netherlands".
Zijlstra even adds the flags of Dutch colonial ships to his heritage
list (which strongly reminds of the uproar in Hamburg when the city
subsidized the ship museum of a right-wing militaria collector with
millions while cutting heavily into contemporary arts).

Another problem for people in the arts is that they are now forced
into the same boat as those contemporary art institutions whose
funding should be scrutinized because their curators put the same
artists on publicly subsidized shows whom they also recommend, in
their second jobs as private consultants, to art collectors. Or you
are in the same boat with people paid a top salary as directors of
communal cinemas that run the same boring mainstream Hollywood
'arthouse' films as the other, non-subsidized movie theater in town.
In other words, you're pressured to protest in the streets
hand-in-hand with people you'd rather demonstrate against. The problem
is not necessarily that the arts are cut. The problem is how they're
being cut, with almost everything not fitting an utterly uneducated
notion of "cultural heritage" and completely deluded perceptions of
"top art institutes" being forced into the creative industries.

Why is this not neoliberalism?

If this were classical neoliberal politics, there would be just a
general cut of public funding, leaving things to the free market and
cutting taxes. But this is not what is happening. Instead, taxpayer's
art subsidies are repurposed into taxpayer's business subsidies. The
advice of the "Top Team Creative Industries" (lead by the business
manager of Rem Koolhaas' bureau OMA) to the Dutch government boils
down to subsidizing economically promising Dutch creative industries
businesses, for example service design companies.

Of course, this is just a small part of a larger development. The
bigger picture is that Europe, and the Western World, is rapidly
moving towards the model of Chinese politbureau capitalism where
governments act as supreme CEO boards, and public budgets are business
investment money. Only that for the Western economies, its not
investment into growth, but into preventing the ship from sinking.
What started with the bail-outs and nationalization of the financial
sector is now growing like virus into the rest of the economy. Instead
of mobilizing all production means for a military war, it's the total
mobilization for the global economic war.

It seems to be the perfect fulfillment of what Rudolf Hilferding
described in his 1910 book "Das Finanzkapital" ("The Financial
Capital") as "state monopoly capitalism".

-F

--
blog: http://en.pleintekst.nl

----------
From: *Dr. Peter Troxler* <peter.troxler at ps-culture.net>
Date: Mon, Jun 27, 2011 at 7:29 PM
To: Heiko Recktenwald <heikorecktenwald at googlemail.com>
Cc: nettime-l at kein.org

hm -- main difference to me seems to be today's focus on individualism while
AH-193x was removing the individual for the sake of the party/nation/state

any comments on that?

/ pt

----------
From: *Heiko Recktenwald* <heikorecktenwald at googlemail.com>
Date: Mon, Jun 27, 2011 at 8:15 PM
To: nettime-l at kein.org

Well, the main difference seems to be that people were insulted etc less by
a climate of hate or by opinions, but by the state and its law. You were not
allowed to marry etc. And later people were actually killed. Again not by
citizens, but by an industry run by the state. This is completely different,
the Holocaust is different anyway.....

In the Netherlands we have not more than a slight change in attitude, hardly
noticable, more on a philosophical level, and IMHO that Wilders is not in
prison now is a very good sign because such things must be discussed in a
free athmosphere. A free society needs such discussions as well.

The  big example for the success of openness is England and the Dutch were
very similar. The Romans come to mind as well. But I dont know the arguments
of Wilders..

Best, H.

Am 27.06.2011 19:29, schrieb Dr. Peter Troxler:

----------
From: ** <lennaart at hofilms.co.uk>
Date: Tue, Jun 28, 2011 at 7:35 PM
To: Florian Cramer <flrncrmr at gmail.com>, nettime-l at kein.org

On Mon 27/06/11 16:57 , Florian Cramer  wrote::
Ramsey Nasr put it actually quite nicely in his speech on Monday -
loosely translated: "Combine the market with resentment and you get
the recipe for the policy of the current Dutch government" Dutch text:
http://www.volkskrant.nl/vk/nl/2676/Cultuur/article/detail/2458831/201
1/06/28/Oproep-van-Ramsey-Nasr-aan-Mark-Rutte.dhtml<http://www.volkskrant.nl/vk/nl/2676/Cultuur/article/detail/2458831/2011/06/28/Oproep-van-Ramsey-Nasr-aan-Mark-Rutte.dhtml>

Except that this market is indeed far from a free market. Fernand
Braudel's idea that the accumulation of capital inevitably distorts
so-called free markets chimes nicely with the contemporary idea that
certain - mostly financial - institutions are now "too big to fail",
all in the name of "maintaining confidence" (of ratings agencies and
other big financial institutions of course).

I think what's happening in the Netherlands is that the language of
resentment is deployed in the interest of indeed a kind of monopoly
capitalism, but a monopoly capitalism in which the state plays only a
subsidiary role: to extract value from the general population in order
to keep those ships afloat that are "too big to fail". Everyone else
can get eff'ed.

Len

----------
From: *Brian Holmes* <bhcontinentaldrift at gmail.com>
Date: Tue, Jun 28, 2011 at 8:16 PM
To: nettime-l at mail.kein.org

That's extremely well put, I agree. Neoliberalism is over, there is
nothing "liberal" in Dutch policy anymore, neither the appeal to a
free market nor the attempt to integrate a libertarian counterculture
to the informational economy. We have a moved to a command phase in
the relation between government and the economy, and China is setting
the standard. By now everyone has probably read Wen Jiabao's recent
declaration, "How China will reinforce the global recovery":

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/**e3fe038a-9dc9-11e0-b30c-**00144feabdc0.html<http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/e3fe038a-9dc9-11e0-b30c-00144feabdc0.html>

However the point that Ibrahim makes is all the more serious. In the
US, neoliberalism shifted to its command phase at the end of the
dot-com bubble in 2001. Bush simultaneously militarized the budget and
nationalized the discourse, while at the same time engineering a new
bubble that lasted precisely the length of his mandate. The results
are extremely negative across the board. There is no "recovery" in
the US and more global financial chaos is on the horizon. Therefore
Chinese methods become even more attractive. This is not 1935 Germany,
it's the 21st century. But the fate of Weimar democracy has a lot to
say to the 21st century.

best, BH

----------
From: *Matze Schmidt* <matze.schmidt at n0name.de>
Date: Wed, Jun 29, 2011 at 9:28 AM
To: nettime-l at kein.org

Hello,
It is, but only in the heads of the dependent working population who
regard themselves as independent. The term neoliberalism -- this old
old hat -- matches, as you say, perfectly with the theories of

> Rudolf Hilferding

who was in company with Otto Neurath (beloved by all stats-artists
since Gerd Arntz) criticised by the dutch (!) international communists
in the 1920s+ as the states-communist wo differentiates capital into
"good capital" (subsidies, taxes, trade) and "bad capital" (fictitious
capital, investment, banks).

Matze Schmidt

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