[Essay] Waarom ik weinig verwacht van de verkiezingen (en ik desondanks hoopvol ben)

Just before we start, we have added extra game data from my new show, Unbecoming. This presentation is now in premiere. And I am very pleased with the reception. If I may make an indescribable comment out of the reviews. I thought we would call it one of the most beautiful cabaret presentations of the last few years. The NSC wrote in a five ball review. Cabaretier Tim Fronso makes his best presentation so far. Five balls. Every man knows, that is unnecessary many balls. But I hear in the complaints. And I would really like to see you come. This show is my attempt to say something about the embarrassing time I live in. You can find the full playlist on my website timfronso.nl And then we will hopefully see each other in the theater. [Music] Hello dear people, I hope you are doing well. Everything is ok here. I was sick last week. Love that you ask. But hey, the show must go on, they say. Well, the show went completely wrong. I had to learn two shows. My apologies to the people in Zwolle and Almere. But hey, I am coming back. Stronger than ever before. Without a knot too. Fortunately I am almost completely above Jan. Maybe my voice sounds a little bit like Saler/ Zwoller. I have in any case a piece for you in the lyrics. What is wisdom? This time the selection edition was titled. Why I don't expect much from the elections. And I am hopeful. I imagine that we will start right away. Have fun. What is wisdom? [Music] Do you remember what you were when on June 3, 2025, the cabinet was closed? I remember it as the day of yesterday. I read the news report via the NOS app while I was sitting quietly on the toilet. What I felt at the news? About the same as what I felt when I was going through it afterwards. A feeling of revelation. A feeling of "go away with that dirty cacsoe". Where we speak of it then. Because I had to do it myself. What did you think? I am not a barbarian. Still, the fall of the cabinet also brought a great sense of euphoria with me. Not even a slap for the good words. The feeling of victory in my own sense has been erased away with the years. Why at the end of a step one not to lead to great pride? That question has a simple and broad answer. The simple answer is that I do not have the chance to make the big difference that the next elections will suddenly make the big difference. Even not with the best possible election result. Why not? That actually brings us to the broad answer right away. According to me there is a wide broad misconception about how democratic politics works. Roughly said, that misconception sounds like politics is something we pay tribute to profession politics. By asking a four-year old multi-choice question, we need to show citizens only the people who have to solve our social problems so that we can continue to address ourselves without worries on the latest season of The White Lotus. First of all, it is a tortuous and dysfunctional perception of politics. As I have often said. Yes, Tim, now we know. But relevant for today, this perception gives us above all a wrong image of how decisive political change is coming to a standstill. By fixing our view on the above control in The Hague, we see something essential about the head. Namely a power field that is quite invisible, but that is due to the influence of profession politics. This is the power field of ideological persuasion. A thought that has brought this influence to a sharp end, is the unorthodox Marxist Antonio Gramsci. He lived from 1891 to 1937. The Italian Gramsci was a wrinkled and coagulated man of 1.5 meters away from Sardinia. Not only did he live in a time of graspable events such as the First World War and the Great Depression, he lived above all in a time in which modern ideologies collided with each other. Capitalism, communism and fascism. In this ideological struggle, Gramsci did not go beyond the coastline, but he got himself in the middle of a war tunnel. As a prominent member of the parliamentary opposition, he opposed the fascist government of Benito Mussolini. Until Mussolini took all the power. From that moment on, the Gramsci's insistence was the first thing he had to do in 1928. In 1928, he was arrested and sentenced to 20 years in prison. The prosecutor would have said in his process, "We must ensure that this can not work for 20 years." That did not work at all. Because in the prison he wrote his most important work, while his already angry health was further deteriorated. His sleep amperage had constant headache, lost all teeth, turned his brain on full tour. In a manly spirit drift, he wrote in notation books again. These so-called "Quaderni del Cartiere" or prison letters, he knew in a sort of political-philosophical version of the Charles Shank Redemption to smuggle the outside world. Gramsci had to be on his feet for the political censorship. Fortunately, it was good for the change that philosophers often had the habit of writing in incomprehensible language. When the security inspector came to take a look at himself, to see if Gramsci was still in danger, his conclusion was, "No, those notation books were full of vagueness, unconnected concepts and regular non-sense." In reality, those unconnected concepts seemed a bit sinister as influential analysts of the question, "How can I work in the modern age?" The crucial insight of Gramsci is that power not only works based on force or oppression, but also on the other hand. Such forms of force are precisely a sign that the power has lost its legitimacy. Real power, according to him, calms him down in terms of ideas and persuasions that are shared within a society. In other words, power works through ideological persuasions. The word "ideology" has a negative impact on us. But every society has certain ideological ideas. For example, those ideas about what a fair society is, what a valuable life holds, and even about how we truly understand reality. Most of us are aware of these assumptions. The irony is that, as soon as ideology becomes dominant, we no longer recognize it as ideology, but simply see it as common sense. Common sense is a central concept in Gramsci. He meant, I quote, "the diffusive and snipping characteristics of the general thinking, or the chaotic collection of ideas that most people perceive in society as true." These ideas and assumptions raise the sphere of party politics. Examples of common sense can be "Everyone can be successful if you work hard enough." Or "Women are more responsible and therefore more suitable for employment." For progress, it is not through behavioural change, but through technological development. Or "Capitalism is one of the only livable economic system." Or "Most asylum seekers are parasitic lucky seekers." Or "Johan Derksen is a total randabil." That is not common sense yet, but who knows? These examples make it clear that what we regard as self-sacrificing or as common sense, is truly based on ideological assumptions. The fight for the dominant ideology has also been a fight on what is accepted as common sense. That fight is not only played in the second room, but also in talk shows, in football cantonies, in opinion pieces, in education cantonies, in the culture as a whole. The last winner of this ideological culture fight is Gromsky then also "Cultural hegemony" led by Hegemonia, the ancient Greek word for "sacrifice". It is worth the effort to see how we can use cultural hegemony in our time, but to get a better understanding of it, it is interesting to look at the first large ideological shifts of the previous century through this lens. This provides a number of remarkable and round-out erotic insights. One of the biggest political changes of the 20th century, perhaps one of the biggest changes ever, is the arrival of European healthcare. As you have seen, the healthcare system has all the framework of left-wing politics. A government that uses it to reduce inequality, to have others because of progressive taxes, and a government that guarantees care, education and social security for all citizens. Exactly the things that the right-wing conservative elites had against each other for a long time. Not long before, even universal voice rights had been asked too much. Let's stand for the women. That is why it is quite surprising what happened after the Second World War and many European countries. It was not left-wing, but many central-right-wing parties that encouraged care. Like historical Tony Judd writing in his monumental "After the War" in 2006, I quote, "In the general post-war European consensus, there was a clear description of the social democrat." End of quote. But like Judd said, the consensus was not related to a specific political party. In many countries, it was not even a social-democratic party of importance. Earlier, he spoke of a social-democratic spirit, which was above the party borders. How did this happen? After the crisis of the 1930s and the spread of the war, there was simply a new common sense. That common sense lead the state to take care of its citizens. And so it came, that a bond of Christian-democrats, conservatives and liberals, convinced the social-democratic state of care. A cultural hegemony where the left-wing chose to cut off their fingers. At the end of the 1970s, the days of social democracy were over. Especially after the economic crisis of 1973, neoliberalism took over the ideological pillar at a rapid pace. From the Gramsci perspective, the neo-liberal transformation is even more noticeable. Because the neo-liberal pre-war is very conscious, a strategy of cultural hegemony. So the neo-liberal doctors like Milton Friedman and Friedrich Hayek had little to do with the so-called "oppheflakke" and "modious" party politics. Instead, they considered a visionary idea of politics, with which they long-established influence hopes. Through an international network of neo-liberal enthusiasticals, they hoped to make cultural undercurrents. That network also leads to the ground in the Netherlands. Like Bram Melink and Marine Auldernamse wrote in their book "Neoliberalism and Dutch history" in 2022. Even Dutch neo-liberalists wanted to put undercurrents in politics and believed that not parties, but ideas on the way to them. They spoke highly of the influence of Hayek's politics and hoped for structural change not only by professional politics, but also by opinion makers, scientists and entrepreneurs to convince. End of quote. This strategy turned out to be effective. Initially, right-wing parties were influenced by these ideas, but soon left-wing progressive politicians also felt the neo-liberal agenda. In the Netherlands, ideologies were spread from Hans Wiegel's VVD via the CDA of Ruth Lubbers to Wim Koch's "P" of the A. to eventually force the entire political landscape. Internationally, a comparable development was introduced. In advance, like Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan, left-wing leaders such as Tony Blair, Lionel Jospin, Gerard Schröder and Bill Clinton thought the neo-liberal well. Left-wing parties saw this of course differently. Privatising government companies, lowering profits or cutting down on social security, had nothing to do with ideology. Our Wim Koch had just cut off his ideological ideas. This was simply a question of pragmatism, of common sense. In fact, the expression of Wim Koch about his ideological ideas was similar to that of Kramski. When an ideology becomes dominant, people often don't recognize it as ideology. And then it can happen that you simply mislead the ideology of the opposition party. Woopsie de poopsie. A nice historical analysis. But we also have some of Kramski's views in our own time. The parallels between Kramski's time and those of ours are striking. After the Great Depression, the liberal capitalist society was in crisis. It turned out to be a profitable source of income for extreme politicians. In this context, fascism, massacres on each other and in the air also appear. In a similar way, we are now faced with a political-economic system that is in all kinds of views failure. After the fall of the Balinese wall, the democratic capitalism was presented as the best of all possible worlds. In the past decade, we have transformed this system into a true dystopia. Into a globalized structure that is growing in inequality, bringing democratic institutions forward and making the earth useless. That's why you can safely say that we, just like Kramski, live in what he was called an interregnum. In the meantime, in which the old order no longer works, a new order has not yet been created. In perhaps his most quoted words, Kramski writes, "The old world is dying, the new era is about to be born. Now is the time of the monsters." Even in our time, the monsters were dying. And then I'm not only talking about the rage of Labubus. We are convinced that a monster connected with Big Tech, right-wing populists and a strengthening oligarchy, the public debate is polluted with disinformation, the climate crisis is recognized and political power is centralized in the hands of the super rich. But precisely because we are in an interregnum, such a turbulent time, is this also the moment to give new ideas and practices? The good news is that the ideas, I think, are also full of them. This is not the place to go too far. I have already done that in other places, for example in my most recent book in our time. What I am especially interested in now is how can such ideas make up for a change? If we take the insights of Kramski seriously, we would not let our hope depend on the four-year multi-choice question that we can also fill in on 29 October. Instead of that, it comes to, in the words of Kramski, "a cultural movement that will replace the common sense of the old world." With this, the black spot of the high gentlemen and ladies in Den Haag will shift to the civil society, to the civil society. And that should be the money, if there is hope. All of a sudden, in such a long time, the red colors and, following the guidelines, what the politicians are going to do with it, the feeling of helplessness only works in hand. The civil society is against it. It is a domain that we are all on a daily basis. It is a domain of education, artists, scientists, activists, journalists, and above all, certain citizens who form new social practices. That will feel a bit awkward for some, but just that awkwardness is a problem. Because I make sure that, just like during the neo-liberal victory, Kramski's lessons are always understood better by radical rights. As explained by the right-wing extremist knight of Marie Le Pen in 2018, I quote, "It is time to adjust Kramski's lessons." And the current Italian minister of culture, Alessandro Giulli, who just as Prime Minister Giorgio Amelloni is a former member of the neo-fascist Italian social movement. He published a book with the title "Kramski è vivo" last year, while Kramski lives. Even the right-wing figures, who probably have never heard of Kramski, implement his strategy quite effectively in practice. I think of the podcasting comedians, such as Joe Rogan, Theo Vaughan and Andrew Schultz, who, through their millions of audience, help Trump in the fight for the White House. Or I think of the Muff Kettles, who folk the monosphere, with types like Andrew Tate, who portrays the ideas of the middle-class people as an example of emancipation. These figures normalize extremely thought-provoking with large groups of people to common sense. On the opposite side of the political spectrum, the people who are set up for the democratic rule, people who still give something about facts and science, who think that a livable planet is not a luxurious luxury, on that side I look at them with discontent how these kinds of ideas take over. But there it often seems to stay. With discontent to look. They set up a hope in a future premiere Bond to Ball or a coalition with P van de A GroenLinks, who will pull the ball to the right for us, as if it is the road to shift, that should lead along with politics. And in my eyes this is, ironically enough, still a resistance of the neoliberal society. It proves how deep the neoliberal common sense is. People see themselves, especially as voters and consumers, not as active citizens. Politics and moral issues are considered private issues that we must decide for ourselves. And politicians are appointed as a sort of managers to solve our problems. But if we want to maintain that shift, we will have to learn again to make our hands dirty. Because whether we want it or not, we are always part of a cultural struggle. If we think that it is not the case, it means most that we keep the status quo, the current common sense, in mind. Or that our opponents and with the ideological victory continue. And maybe you are now starting to worry that from now on, at every birthday party, everyone has to be convinced of a power platform for the super rich. No worries. You can win ideas through thinking or persuading, but just as well as by doing it. This is one of the most beautiful aspects of Gromsky's thoughts. The unity of theory and practice. The philosophy of the practice, he called it. Not only was thinking of Gromsky a form of action on his own. Everything he does is an activity, and thinking does it. And sometimes we think of certain ideas. What I think is an inspiring example is the countless cooperatives that now shoot paddles out of the ground. Here, the rich do not keep a share, but take out citizens or workers themselves. And now the Netherlands is counting many hundreds of these cooperatives more on the field of care, housing, food and energy. Together, they show how an alternative economy would look like. Here, a beautiful joint place of theory and practice. Because for a long time, thinkers have been thinking in various ways to get more economic power under democratic control. The parapluetheum used here is economic democracy. The successful mass of cooperatives can get rid of more ambitious forms of such economic democracy. At the end of the day, there is also political policy required. But it always starts with us, with the citizens. Together, we form the cultural undercurrents where everything else comes forward. This proves a much longer history than Gromsky's. From the creation of slavery in 1873 to the prohibition of animal abuse in 1875 to the introduction of women's rights in 1919 to the right to "weekend" in 1919 and yes, it has been taken well. From the same rights for homos in 1971 to the prohibition of the dump of nuclear waste in 1993. All these allegations did not start in politics, but with organised citizens who just as long as their attention was applied to the political opinion, started. So whether you start a philosophical reading club or join a cooperation, it is the highest time that we claim Gromsky's views on the fascist clots that he himself fought against. Yes, that was him. If you want to receive this kind of piece in your mail, you can write for the What is Ways News Brief and receive the email version every time. Read, watch and listen tips. For example, this time a very cool documentary about neo-liberalism, with a lot of alternatives. Link for the news brief you will find in the show notes. OK, dear people, see you next time. Take care. [Music] One last thing. As you may have already known, My new book will be back in a while. It will be titled "In Our Time, Life in the Calamity Park". A book about the pre-war times we live in and what we have to do with them all. And this month the cheerful news came that the book is sponsored by the Socrates Baker. That's the price for the best Dutch-speaking philosophy book. A great honor. And I hope that the idea in the book will lead to our society. If you also want to read the book, in the show notes you will find a link to bookwerld.nl. If you order through this link, half of the delivery will go to Stichting Protect Ukraine. That is a Stichting run by Dutch volunteers who help the delivery to Oekker in the war zone. And otherwise, of course, the book is also available in the shop. And let's be honest. And the maintenance of the book handles seems to me a good goal in itself. Okay, that was it. Doenle doki.