In a historic decision of the US Supreme Court, Roe v. Wade was overruled on Friday 24th June 2022 by the new precedent of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organisation. Dobbs was the Mississippi state health officer who was sued by the state’s only abortion clinic to challenge the constitutionality of a law which banned abortion after 15 weeks. Prior to Friday, the enforcement of this law had been halted by lower court injunctions which prevented states from banning abortion before foetal viability at around 24 weeks, based on the 14th Amendment granting the right to privacy. Roe v Wade never legalised abortion across the board, it only prevented states from enforcing laws which banned abortion prior to 24 weeks, and was thus interpreted as a constitutional right to abortion until that period.
As was to be expected, delegating law-making around abortion back to the states was interpreted with the greatest hysteria and hyperbole imaginable. Despite the explicit constitutionality of delegating the greatest possible powers to the state level, it should be of no surprise that the same people who ascribe more power to feeling than to the first amendment had no consideration at all for the rights of states to form their own laws on sensitive issues.
Instead of rejoicing at the approximately 300,000 female lives saved as a result of a so-called ban on abortion (which this is not), feminists were quick to scream that this violates their bodily autonomy and is the result of male overrepresentations in positions of power. This is despite the fact that the judge who made this possible was Amy Coney Barrett, a Catholic mother of seven and one of three women who are currently serving on the Supreme Court of the United States.
They simultaneously claim that the decision to have an abortion is that of the woman concerned, and that no man (including the father) should have any say, while maintaining that parental responsibilities should be split evenly between both parents (and in many cases other parties such as nannies, nurseries, and the state through the education system). Furthermore, not only should parental responsibilities be split evenly, but the woman concerned has a permanent claim on the financial resources of the man.
This claim begs the obvious question of how it is in any way feminist to allow men to abscond from their parental responsibilities by allowing abortion, in which both mother and child are gravely affected, but the father can walk away scot-free? Given that a study which interviewed women who considered abortion and decided against it found that in five out of six cases, they did not regret their choice, it seems likely that in many cases the women concerned face significant pressure to end the pregnancy.
Looking in the abstract, this raises questions about who the culture of no-consequences sex really benefits. Despite increasingly reliable contraception, rates of abortion are increasing, which demonstrates that there will always be greater ‘risk’ of sex for women. Additionally, a culture which praises hedonistic sexual lifestyles inherently delegitimises the mature, committed lifestyle which most women want, leading to women adopting more and more masculine ways of being. Given how early feminists stressed the equal value of women, this delegitimisation of femininity seems a far cry from their initial intentions.
However, despite the inevitable reaction of hysteria, there may yet be a positive outcome for those on the opposite side of the fence. The calls for a sex strike will not just reduce the hedonistic sexual behaviour of much of the population and all its negative consequences (including unwanted pregnancy), but in doing so may encourage them to develop a more nuanced outlook on sexual behaviour and morality than ‘put whatever you want into whatever you want as long as there is consent’.
Spending less time on Tinder may also have economic benefits, as well as tanking the share price and punishing the individuals who have endorsed and profited from a company which aims to take all moral value out of sexual behaviour. In the longer term, the sex strike among liberal women may force on-the-fence men into the arms of more conservative women, thus leading to the creation of a far more conservative next generation. And yet it makes sense that those so committed to the principle that killing babies is acceptable would allow their entire ideology to die out just for the sake of proving said point.
To sum up, there is no feminist case for abortion. In this way as with so many others, ‘equality’ has been a trojan horse with which to tarnish traditional, feminine, childbearing women in order to create more wage workers. This ultimately benefits those at the top of the capitalist system (men), while making the women concerned insecure and miserable. In encouraging women to deny their reproductive capacity, abortion not only kills children but also kills part of the women concerned. The way to be a good woman is not to bend to the will of a modern man.
-
The Dishonorable Victoria Nuland
As the Russia-Ukraine Crisis crawls into the second month of conflict, humanitarian disaster, and media sensationalism, many passive observers of the situation have been wondering who is to blame for the biggest military conflict in Europe since 1990’s Yugoslavia.
Mainstream media, OSNIT Twitter experts, and heads of state all make substantial claims about the culprits, the causes, a variety of predictions for the outcomes, and “solutions” that do nothing to actually solve the issue other than to speculate needlessly and obfuscate the reality on the ground in order to garner as much engagement as possible from the online community, and inflame hatred on both sides – dumbing down the debate to kindergarten levels of maturity, driveling the issue down to just another “Kony 2012” bandwagon for everyone to jump on.
In the West – particularly NATO member nations such as the United States and the United Kingdom – there has been a certain disregard for introspection and self-criticism in regards to the lead up to the current conflict. While the reality may not be as clean or as pleasant as we want, the current crisis in Ukraine is hardly a new development, nor had the invasion of Ukraine been completely out-of-the-blue as many pundits make it out to be.
This conflict has been ongoing for the last decade – it seems that most discussing the current escalation are willfully ignorant of that fact.
The people of Donbass, Luhansk and other Eastern oblasts of Ukraine have suffered under similar war-like conditions and humanitarian crisis since the beginning of the Ukrainian Civil War in 2014. No one in the West has cared about it, nor paid any thought, hashtags, or great displays of solidarity for those who have suffered since then – only now paying attention as the conflict escalated from a local regional conflict to a nation-wide one as soon as the Russians directly became involved – all with the help of actually being televised, of course.
Framing the issue as an “attack on the territorial sovereignty”, “democracy”, or “self-determination” of Ukraine is not only blatantly dishonest – it’s entirely hypocritical. Where were the calls to recognize the territorial sovereignty or democratic will of the separatist regions who no longer felt that their interests were represented in Kiev?
Nowhere, of course. Because it wasn’t “our side”.
For most, the finger of blame for the escalation of tensions to all-out war in Ukraine has been pointed directly at Russian President Vladimir Putin for activating the “special military operation” and invading Ukraine. For others the responsibility lies with Ukrainian leadership not compromising on territory claims and security concerns the Russian government has had, and the failure to follow the standards set by the Minsk II protocol signed in 2015. Many others lay the blame with NATO for encroachment and not taking Russia seriously or engaging in any sort of constructive dialogue with Moscow.
As the issue has been brushed aside, ignored, and unaddressed by Western powers who could’ve negotiated a peaceful resolution that would’ve put an end to the bloodshed years ago, the cock has truly come home to roost – metaphorically speaking. By not seriously engaging with any sort of dialogue with the Putin regime, attempting to make a buffer of any sort that addressed the security concerns of both sides, and by not prioritizing the safety of civilians on the ground but rather their own expansion, NATO has done nothing but help fan the flames of this conflict.
NATO, of course, cannot be “blamed” necessarily for the conflict at large. For what it’s worth, as a security organization it has been rather beneficial in creating a level of stability and bipolarity in European politics. It wasn’t always ideal, nor fair, but as a product of its time – the Cold War – it did a lot more good than harm in balancing power and security in the 20th century.
It may have acted as a bulwark against the threat of Soviet Communism back then, but as the Cold War ended it has changed with the unipolarity of the late 1990’s and early 2000’s.
Today, NATO is merely an extension of American security and political power. It has shaped the Western world and its response to threats from an American perspective, prioritizing Washington’s concerns above all others. It is entirely a fabrication that the responsibility and configuration of NATO is somehow shared between its member nations; that’s symbolic rather than the actuality. This has been observable in the past couple of years as the projected power of NATO has been growing weaker without an immediate perceived threat, and European member states skimping out on funding the organization or actively seeking alternate security solutions – such as the push for a militarized European Union separate from NATO.
How coincidental that as the crisis in Ukraine has developed, the re-emphasis of NATO power has occurred as it was staring at its dissolution after American security failures in Afghanistan and the rest of the Middle East?
NATO, of course, is composed of all sorts of characters and figureheads – both military and political – who maintain and grow the institution the way Washington needs it to. In the last two decades one of the largest forces in shaping how NATO (i.e. Washington D.C.) operates in Eastern Europe and in regards to Russia has been Victoria Nuland, who is currently serving as the Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs in the Joe Biden administration.
If anyone can be sourced as holding key responsibility for laying out the foundations for the current crisis unfolding between Ukraine and Russia, it is her.
–
Victoria Nuland has been described as “brash” “blunt” and “crude” by many who have worked with her, either through the State Department or as her counterparts across Eurasia. The Washington careerist Nuland has spent most of her life entrenched firmly in the circus of the US State Department, climbing the ladder of power with a ferocious tenacity and iron-set will to shape Washington’s policies across the world.
It would be commendable, if her efforts weren’t completely driven by neoliberal globalist ideology that props up the status quo powers and elite D.C. political class. We can see how close she is to the establishment elites, after all she’s married to the co-founder of the Project for the New American Century and Council on Foreign Relations member, Robert Kagan.
Nuland has found herself in a variety of powerful positions throughout her tenure in Washington – from deputy director of Soviet Union Affairs under Clinton, to being the US Ambassador to NATO during the Bush administration, to Assistant Secretary of State under Obama’s 8 year reign. The Under Secretary has previously worked closely with some of the most hawkish characters in Washington, having directly answered to Dick Cheney as his deputy national security advisor, and with Hillary Clinton as the spokeswoman for the State Department.
With mentors and colleagues like these, it is no wonder that Nuland has been able to entrench herself into the new administration rather safely. She doesn’t pull her punches, even if it would be the smart thing to do – preferring to ideologically shoot from the hip with her diplomacy and think later about the consequences of her actions – if at all.
Her attitude and approach to diplomacy may have allowed her to gain many fans in Washington, as brazen approaches are often applauded in the D.C. swamp – but it hasn’t gained her much of a fanbase among European diplomats. Her policy of ignoring the efforts of EU leadership to try and fix diplomatic relations with Russia, and by shipping weapons to Ukraine during the Obama years directly acted against the advice and fears of many EU nations who worried it would escalate tensions with Moscow.
Rather than her actions being a product of her career, Nuland seems to be a true believer in the diplomacy she practices, almost delusionally so. In 1997, along with former Senator Richard Lugar, Nuland published Russia, Its Neighbors, and an Enlarging NATO: An Independent Task Force Report; in which it was “concluded” that NATO should be able to expand into Europe, and that Russian concerns or perceived security threats were unjustified – any attempt to negotiate or compromise should be disregarded. The report is rather short, but statements and conclusions are entirely delusional and a product of liberal elitist thought – the only way for Russia to participate in this changing world would be to cede its own sovereignty and self-determination in order to join the “New Europe” and the authority of NATO (ie. Washington).
I imagine that any Russian authority who were in the effort of trying to rebuild a nation after almost a century of communism and centralized bureaucracy would see the terms laid out in the Nuland report and laugh in disbelief. Trading one bureaucracy for another, but this time with less sovereignty and being subjected to the whims of a former rival.
In the very same report, the issue of Ukraine is emphasized. The task force agreed that NATO’s “doors shall remain open” for Ukrainian membership. Of course we know today this has been one of the driving motivations for Russian engagement in Ukraine, has been the threat of NATO expansion towards Russia’s border with Eastern Europe and one of Russia’s vulnerable corridors for invasion.
Nuland has been wanting, and working hard to ensure that Ukraine joins the American sphere of influence. Whether this is a personal mission, given her Jewish-Ukrainian ancestry, or whether this is completely career-driven doesn’t matter. It has led to disastrous consequences regardless of the motives.
One only needs to look at the Maidan protests and 2014 coup d’etat that Nuland was a key figurehead in orchestrating – a leaked phone call with the then US Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt shows how instrumental Nuland was in hand picking the pro-West Ukrainian Arseniy Yatsenyuk administration that took over after the expulsion of Viktor Yanukovych’s Moscow-friendly government during the “Revolution of Dignity”. Whether or not the previous government was a “Moscow puppet” matters little, when the United States and NATO conduct the same actions that they accuse Russia of – infringing Ukrainian democracy and self-determination – even if it is through more covert means.
While the massive shake-up of the government took place, NATO also funded and armed the infamous neo-nazi “Azov Battalion” to conduct operations in the Eastern Ukranian separatist regions, with disastrous humanitarian consequences for civilians in those regions. Everything from wanton destruction to residential areas, kidnappings, and even crucifixions – Azov Battalions have not only been blamed for this, they take pride in their cruelty.
It seems that the US State Department made it a policy during the 2000’s and 2010’s to arm and aid the most depraved groups of people, whether it has been Islamsist militias in the Syria or neo-nazi paramilitaries in Ukraine in order to fulfill their policy goals without getting their own hands dirty – with innocent civilians suffering the most due to this short-sighted, or willfully ignorant decisions.
–
Of course in the mind of someone like Victoria Nuland, the ends justify the means. But what exactly are the ends?
Is it to “stabilize” Ukrainian democracy?
As Zelensky has purged opposition parties and political rivals have been arrested and tortured, we can see by the lack of condemnation that that’s hardly the priority.
Is it to “secure the sovereignty” of Ukraine?
The whole reason this mess has occurred is because Nuland ignored Ukraine’s sovereignty in order to place her own political pawns into positions of power – so claiming that they’re trying to do this is laughable.
Is it to “prevent the humanitarian crisis and deaths of civilians”?
This conflict has been ongoing for a decade, with tens of thousand already dead or displaced before Russia stepped foot into the region. Where were the actions to prevent the humanitarian crisis that has existed for the past decade?
So what are the ends? Because the narrative that Washington and the mainstream media are pumping out are hardly grounded in reality.
If I was a gambling man, I would wager that the end goal of this crisis that has been created is multifaceted; waging the media war against the Russian Federation has been ongoing for the past decade – many Americans, particularly those in red states and from working class backgrounds see the more conservative culture of Russia and the strongman figure embodied by a leader such as Putin as a viable alternative to the current American society that empowers the elite Washington D.C. political class and desecrates the rest of the country. Many saw Trump as a leader like that, after all.
Regime change in Russia to bring it into the “global society” and the confines of internationalism is also a possibility. Nations can’t be seen as breaking away from the “rules-based order”, as that would not benefit Washington D.C. or global institutions like the United Nations or World Economic Forum that have infiltrated the top levels of government and society in order to push their own agendas under the guise of “democratic will”. However, I think this is far stretched and I think the horse has bolted in regards to this scenario – Russia has been cut-off, and I don’t think anyone at the Pentagon or the State Department wants to get involved with what would be a severely messy operation to pull off in trying to oust Putin and his loyalists from power.
What I think is the most plausible situation is actually rather outside the box. As the United States recedes as a global superpower under the weight of its recent failures and crumbling domestic situation, the best way to prevent any other rising power from gaining a foothold at the top is to make a chaotic situation that is so out of control that no-one could possibly control it.
Ukraine has so far proven to be far from a “clean” operation on the ground for the Russians. Victoria Nuland has done a rather outstanding job of shaping Ukraine to be so emboldened by their own ideas of fighting for their “sovereignty” and crafted such a unique identity separate from Russia that they will likely continue to be a rather large thorn in the side of Russia for decades to come, regardless of the outcome of this current war. Russia will be exhausting itself and its resources trying to control the situation.
So while the United States may not be “directly” involved with securing the situation on the ground, at least Washington can be guaranteed that Russia won’t be able to do it either despite their close proximity. All the Americans have to do is keep pumping weapons and resources to keep ground-forces fighting or causing a logistical headache, and in the meantime they can refocus their priorities to other, more pressing situations – namely domestic security.
But if those are indeed the “ends”, are they justified?
To any rational, morally sound and peace-loving person, of course not.
But as we have seen time and time again, Washington D.C. and the elitists that occupy the highest seats of government will create their own justifications, even if completely false or out-of-touch, in order to fulfill their own goals of self-preservation and holding on to power.
This reason, above all, is why Victoria Nuland has been perfectly fit for the job that she has undertaken for the past two decades. Because she embodies those very same insane values.
And Washington D.C. loves her for it.
-
Populism and a Sense of Betrayal (Magazine Excerpt)
Leading up to December 2022, when I was preparing for my PhD viva, I was told by colleagues – quite consistently – that populism was back on the academic agenda. Clearly, I had timed my PhD well, the covid pandemic aside.
Now, at the conclusion of the process, I have people ask me what my core conclusions are. The truth is, I say, populism is going to remain a permanent feature of our political system for a long time, to such an extent that I think, for all his mistakes and poor insights, Cas Mudde was right to describe our era as the ‘populist zeitgeist.’ I am not alone in making this prediction: in his farewell speech to the European Parliament, Nigel Farage said populism ‘was very popular’; and there abound many different academic attempts at explaining the likely enduring appeal of populism.
Among them I find particular value in Nadia Urbinati’s Democracy Disfigured (2014) and Me, The People (2019): the former is particularly focused on how democracy can be transformed, though populism is only part of that story. In that book, Urbinati attempts to analyse the role of what she calls the doxa in democracy, emphasising the linguistic and dialogical elements of democracy as methods of identifying conflict and resolving them; in response to this, says Urbinati, populism attempts to ‘fix’ the inevitability of conflict. It can do this because democracy (and politics in general) is actually about never attempting to remove conflict, merely attempting to ‘win’ the immediate conflict, whilst accepting that you may ‘lose’ the next one. The underlying unity is, as a result, quite thin, and little more than a general agreement on the process of conflict and resolution, rather than an agreement on the resolution of conflict specifically.
Populism, says Urbinati, works from within the logic of democracy to recognise the inherently conflictual nature of politics and democracy, and then seeks to deny it. Instead of attempting to win now, and accept the possibility of losing in the future, populism attempts to win forever, and deny the possibility of future conflict. In doing so, populism becomes anti-politics.
In the latter book, Urbinati delves deeper into populism specifically, and considers the internal mechanisms of populism, rather than just the impact it has on democracy. In doing so, Urbinati looks at the role of ‘antiestablishmentarianism,’ ‘antielitism’ and, crucially, the messianic leader, in the emergence of populism.
This is an excerpt from “Ides”. To continue reading, visit The Mallard’s Shopify.
-
An Interview with the JFvD
In late September, a few members of the Mallard team were fortunate to get the opportunity to sit down with representatives of the JFvD, the youth wing of the Dutch ‘Forum for Democracy’ (FvD) party. We discussed the incredible success of their political and cultural youth movement; the founding and future of their party; and their views on what the future of the Netherlands and Europe should be.
The Mallard (TM): We want to get a sense of what the FvD is; what it stands for; and what the JFvD does within that.
Massimo Etalle (ME): So the FvD was founded in 2015 as a think tank. Our party leader (Thierry Baudet) was a journalist, and he had a critique on the world around him but did not believe that these problems could be solved through politics. So, he founded this think tank to influence the ideas in our society. Politics is downstream from culture, so to influence politics you have to influence culture. We had a unique opportunity at the time due to the referendum with Ukraine [the 2016 Dutch advisory referendum on the proposed Ukraine – European Union Association Agreement]. The FvD has always been a very Eurosceptic organisation, so when the association agreement was proposed in a referendum, we campaigned against it. When the referendum was held, it was overwhelmingly opposed by 62% of the Dutch people. In response, the government ignored it and signed the agreement anyway. At this moment we realised we needed to do more than just influence ideas. You have to get closer to power to influence society. So we started a political party and we won 2 seats out of 150 in parliament. The energy was unmatched and, as soon as we started, we flew through the polls. The youth movement (JFvD) was founded in March 2017. Due to the lateness of its founding, we had to have 100 members before midnight to secure subsidies and funding. Before midnight we had over 1000 members and by the next day we had 2000 members. We were the fastest growing youth movement ever in the history of the Netherlands.
Iem Al Biyati (IAB): So we (The JFvD) know we are a youth political movement but we don’t see politics as the number one way to change stuff. It’s a part of it but not the most important thing. We believe in transforming peoples mentality and influencing culture from bottom-to-top instead of top-to-bottom. We want to bind them to history and culture; identity and family instead of the modern view of the Dutch people which is to hate themselves and their culture – we want to oppose that. We think a lot of young people are aimless with no sense of identity anymore, and we are trying to make them see this and give them an opportunity to evolve this feeling and better themselves. We have a culture of losers who are afraid of risks and not being part of ‘the group’. We embrace these things, and we are proud of it. We stand totally against the modern degenerate culture.
ME: Exactly. I wouldn’t describe us as a counter-movement. The modern world is the counter-movement. Ugly buildings are the counter-movement. They are anti-European. We embrace who we are, and all we see around us is opposition to who we are. This starts at the first day of school when we are taught things like participation being more important than winning. This is a total inversion of truth. There is no point in human history when this was true. It breeds a country of losers who don’t want to excel, instead they want to be equal. We want to return to this truth and to who we are. We want to go back to what we have always been and to what is our ‘eternal fate’. That is what we do. We want to mentally and physically challenge our members to become who they truly are.
TM: Do you think that young people in the Netherlands are becoming more radical?
IAB: I think that the youth are becoming more radical, but it goes two ways. I see that there are less centrist people and they go towards the ends. We have more communists and left-wingers and more radical right-wingers. Maybe this is a good thing or not, I’m not sure. But it’s because everyone feels that there is something not right. We no longer live in harmony, and I feel that that is the similarity between the radical left and radical right. We both feel something is off but the left have a different solution and cause. They think that lack of equality is a problem and want to form the world to eliminate stress and struggle. We believe in embracing struggle and accepting that life is this way instead of complaining and whining.
TM: Would you say that you prioritise changing the way people think over advocating for certain political policies?
IAB: Yeah. Policy changes aren’t even possible in our party’s current position. Maybe we never will be. We see it more as a metaphysical and philosophical struggle.
ME: Whilst you cannot change a policy, you can change your resilience to a bad policy. You can become more immune to things that the government does to hurt you.
TM: It’s interesting you say that because, in the UK, a lot of right-wing movements focus entirely on policy. Maybe it’s due to the homogenous nature of our politics. We don’t really have a movement that tries to affect culture instead of specific policies.
ME: The failure of Brexit proved the irrelevance of policy. Whilst you left the European Union, your politicians are now proud to say that your immigrants don’t come from Poland any more, instead they come from Pakistan. The problem you had wasn’t just the European Union, it was that your mentality was wrong. If you could change that mentality even a slight amount, the influence would be bigger in every new policy. Whilst if you change one policy, everything that will be built around it will still be rooted in perverse thought.
IAB: The most important thing to do is to implant those ideas in people to make them feel as though they are good and true because they are. That is what the JFvD and FvD is trying to do. We still participate in politics of course and try our best but the ideas are what is important. We had the state opening of parliament a few days ago when all the politicians came and met up. This is quite rare in the Netherlands. Two days of debate and all they talk about are the same boring stories: rising energy prices and cost of living. They are too afraid to tell a different story. We got our opportunity to speak for about 15 minutes, but after about 10 minutes our party leader made a criticism of one of the other members of parliament, and our speaker of the house turned his microphone off after members of the government signalled her to do so. The entire government stood up and walked out to avoid listening to him. After this stunt the Prime Minister came back to act upset about it and, when Thierry came back to speak he was only allowed to do so if he apologised. He refused to apologise and his right to speak was taken away. He had to leave.TM: Yes that happens in this country as well. A lot of politicians have cottoned on to the fact that, if you get kicked out, it makes headlines. So, people will say things that they want in the newspapers and then they will accuse someone of lying which will result in them being kicked out. This gets them in the papers and videos of it go online.
IAB: That’s actually pretty funny but of course it goes to show that it’s a theatre. It’s all a show.
ME: Just to be clear, our youth movement doesn’t focus on policy, but the main party does. We have ideas on how to solve the energy crisis, for example. We have the largest gas reserve in Europe and we give it away to the Belgians. We do propose and fight for policies but, especially as a youth movement, we have a very cultural and ideological task. Everyone is in the process of becoming an adult.
TM: So what do you do to promote cultural things?
ME: So we have a few things that we do. We have a summer camp and some other events which Iem will talk about and then we also have a magazine ‘The Dissident’ which I will talk about.IAB: So we have so many young members, and it’s very uncommon to be a member of a political party as a young person in the Netherlands. So, the first step was to attract the members and then we had to do something with them. We can’t just take 5 Euros from them a year and then not do anything with them. We want to select and train people how to be potential members of the future party as a nurturing role. We have a summer camp which takes about 80 people. It’s a shame because hundreds apply but we don’t have the space to take any more than 80. But we also want to connect with people on an individual level which is hard to do as a massive group. We engage in sport and physical activity and also lectures. We try to attract a different range of people.
ME: We don’t want to do just lectures. We believe in the unity of mind and body. It’s not just who is the smartest or the strongest. It’s the person who is expressing his desire to fight on all fronts.
IAB: Someone who can write stuff should also be able to express things physically in their lifestyle and not just academically. We look for these people and try to give them ideas in the lectures about politics, philosophy, health etc. We even do singing lessons and things. We try to challenge individuals and the group to create the ‘aristocrat’. We scout talents and we invite them to more exclusive academic training weekends. We obviously have other events but those are smaller and more specific. That’s how we try to make our ideas true.
TM: And the magazine?
ME: So, people can have a certain feeling about ideas but struggle to express them. They know the FvD is what they want, but the ideas are a struggle. Everything is so fast and changes all the time and your brain can get completely overloaded with information. To do something about that we started our magazine. It talks about all aspects of who we are. Our ideals, our actions, our history. You name it, we do it. It’s a very open platform which we allow people to pitch to. It’s our testament of who we are as a permanent record. Hopefully it will inspire people for a long time. It declines the chaos of every moment; we have no articles about quick news. Everything we talk about is timeless and we strive to keep it eternal.IAB: We didn’t have this before and we don’t want to lose the ideas that we have. We believe in action. We should try to make these ideas physical and then do things about these ideas. Putting the ideas into a physical record helps this. What I see a lot on the internet are people who have ideas that are similar to ours. They really believe in the traditional idea but they are a bit stuffy and get upset about more modern things. They make things like magazines, but their covers are old school. They are trying to hold on to ash.
TM: Like LARPing?
IAB: Yeah, just like LARPing. It’s not real. It needs to be more real. They like to pretend it’s the 1950’s.
ME: We went to Trafalgar square earlier and it felt a lot like being in a very very big museum. We were surrounded by all this beautiful art, but it felt like being in-between a museum and Pompeii. The volcano is erupting but the guard is still standing on duty. The monuments in Trafalgar square are still being cleaned but they are monuments to an idea, a people, and an empire that aren’t there anymore. That feels a lot like a museum. It was the main impression we got from Trafalgar Square.
TM: To focus more on the Netherlands in particular. How do you feel about the farmers’ strikes? What do you think is going to happen with that?
IAB: They have obviously been angry for a long time now and with the visits to ministers houses it’s getting more radical. I’m not really sure what will come out of it.ME: I think the government has a trick up its sleeve, honestly. Obviously, I fully understand and support the farmers. The big problem that caused this is the nitrogen storage and emissions laws. It’s a rule that they only apply when they want to hurt someone. The land the farmers have is valuable and it’s worth only a tenth as much as a farm when compared to housing. There is a very strong economic impulse to build on it and move the farmers elsewhere. Our land is too valuable. The farmers obviously don’t want to leave but the government is trying to use these economic sanctions to get them to leave. I don’t know what tricks they have up their sleeves. This will escalate and the rules will become more stringent. So, they have our full support and I hope they manage to resist this.
TM: I’ve been reading the FvD’s views on the Netherlands’ future in Europe. What do you think the future will be like for Dutch people and the Dutch nation in Europe at the moment if nothing changes, and what would you like the future to be?
ME: I think at the moment we are on the way to becoming a big metropole. There is a plan called the ‘Three State City’ which seeks to unite most of the big cities in the Netherlands with some cities in the Ruhr in Germany and the port of Antwerp in north Belgium. It would be a massive 50 million population city. That’s why they want to hurt the farmers to take their land.
IAB: I hope that our party will have a leading role in Europe to try and stop this. We have seen what has happened in Sweden and the trends in Italy and France. Maybe soon there will be a topple. Hopefully this will happen in the Netherlands, but our government has always been the leader of liberalism. I think this is the opposite of the Dutch soul. I hope that we can change this and become a leader in Europe in a more traditionalist way.
TM: So earlier you said that you think Brexit has been a failure. Does that imply that you want the Netherlands to stay in the European Union?
ME: I totally oppose the so-called ‘European Union’. It is very anti-European. It is built to castrate Europe and to keep it small and weak. It blocks everything Europe is good at. They promote the idea that participation is worth more than winning. This keeps everyone down and from excelling. Our ideal is a country where the people on every scale from individual to collective can express their fate and the European Union crushed it.
TM: It feels as though your opinion is that the wrong people carried out Brexit. Would you agree with that?
ME: Yes, definitely. After Brexit they built a structure around it that was done by the wrong people.IAB: This is why changing policy doesn’t change anything. Our countries are run by managers, they are not leaders. They are people who were bullied at school and now that they have the taste of power, they use it to bully successful people. They have no idea how to run a country and should be managing a Tesco instead.
ME: The civil servants are the ones who actually tell politicians what to do. The politicians come up with general policy ideas and then the civil servants are the ones who tell them what to do.
TM: There are generally two different schools of thought in the UK about influencing power. Either you infiltrate existing structures, or you set up parallel structures. Obviously, your party isn’t in power but you do sit parallel to it. Do you think there is any use in infiltration into institutions?
IAB: If there is a war, you don’t just use one tactic. You use land, air, and sea. You also use spies and infiltration. It’s a combined offensive. That is how I view politics. This is a sort of war and you have to fight it on all fronts. You have to infiltrate and also set up parallel societies and organisations. We are in the process of setting up schools and apps and other things. Our planned app for example allows people to do commerce and provides alternatives for maps and things. You can also use it to see what businesses are run by FvD supporters. They get discounts at these shops and things. You don’t have to go to a leftist’s or a communist’s pub or shop by accident anymore. You can support people who agree with you and who are like you and stop helping people who hate you.
TM: Yeah, that would probably be illegal in the UK. We have a few acts of parliament that would make that not even an option.
ME: Wouldn’t you say that that actually makes you sort of stateless? I mean, you can say you are fighting for a state which defends your ideals and who you are. Your current state doesn’t just not have a place for you, it actively opposes who you are. It stops you from expressing yourself. I would think that you are stateless and that you should orient your actions as a stateless person.
TM: In the UK we talk a lot about how a fair amount of our problems are caused by older people. They were the recipients of low house prices and a well-funded welfare state. Now that they are in a position of money and power, they have pulled the ladder up and made it harder for young people. We call it the ‘gerontocracy’. Do you agree with that? Do you have something similar?
IAB: That group was very mediocre throughout their lives too.
ME: Are they really that united against you though? It feels sort of like a false dichotomy. Think of a company like Blackrock which buys up huge amounts of land and property to turn it into rental property in Amsterdam and here too. The influence of one such company is vastly superior to one group of Baby Boomers who, to some extent, have taken actions to hold on to their wealth. I don’t think it’s necessarily the Boomers fault, they are a product of the world around them. They were posed different challenges than us. That’s life, I think.
IAB: Being a Boomer is of course an age thing but I think it can be a part of someone’s soul. People can have a Boomer mentality even if they are young. They believed that we are able to become anything we want. My parents said to me that I can just go to school and get a diploma and just do whatever I wanted. They gave us this box with all these things we could achieve and when we opened it, it was actually full of nothing. We had to work with that. Old people will complain about young people but that’s because they just don’t know what the reality is. I agree with Massimo though that a lot of these problems are actually caused by big companies like Blackrock.
ME: The greatest crime of the Boomer is raising a generation of spoiled kids. It’s the reason why people don’t understand that things are hard and that you have to struggle to get things. They didn’t have to fight in wars or do anything. Our greatest challenge is undoing this mindset and bringing struggle back to people’s lives.
TM: Yeah I think a lot of these older people, the Boomers, were raised in a more harsh or ‘Victorian’ way. They reacted to that by raising their children in a very hands-off and spoiled kind of way.
ME: They get their kids spoiled and then they scream when they grow up and find out that life is not as easy as they thought.
IAB: The weakest people are praised for it all the time. They are drained in the face, and they are rewarded for it. The few people who are actually struggling to carry everything and fight for things are seen as dangerous.
ME: Life in the end turns out to be hard and it implodes a lot of people. This is a renunciation of real life and it never had to be like this.
TM: Especially in the short-term things are seemingly getting worse with the war and the strikes and the prices of things rocketing. As things get harder, do you think maybe people will embrace struggle?
ME: It can go one of two ways. People are either going to rely much more on the state for handouts and welfare to make their lives easier. If there is no support offered and people start having to struggle, that may awaken something in people that shifts them.IAB: The whole ‘Build Back Better’ thing implies that something has to be destroyed. Things like social credit may be actually destroyed by this. We may end up going down the communist path of trying to make the world malleable and changeable. Or you can accept life as it is and build back something that’s true. You can’t avoid struggle and I don’t think our current artificial way of life is sustainable. There will be a time maybe in 10, 100, or 200 years where it does collapse and we might not even realise until after it’s happened. We think we probably aren’t going to be the generation that goes through that and turns it all around, but we will be the first people to lay foundations and make way for it so that future generations can continue this project and we can return to who we are.
