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@quatremer Si vous n’arrivez pas à comprendre ce procédé humoristique simple qui s’appelle « l’ironie » c’est que vous n’avez aucune leçon à donner à qui que ce soit en matière d’intellect. Votre oeuvre journalistique plaide d’ailleurs déjà largement en ce sens. #Humour #Ironie #Journalisme

AI detection is like word processor detection, typewriter detection, or use-of-Google detection: a knee-jerk reaction to a change in how we do intellectual work. It might make people feel good, but it doesn't work, and will be seen as a idiotic in the future. If it expands, it #AIDetection #IntellectualWork #FutureOfWork #Nocountrycodesarepresentinthetweet.

De intellectueel is iemand die zich niet door een vakgebied laat opsluiten, leest ruim buiten de eigen expertise, legt verbanden tussen verschillende domeinen van kennis en leven, en durft op grond daarvan mee te denken over kwesties van gemeenschappelijk belang. #Intellectueel #Kennisdeling #Vernieuwing

A Crown Instead of the Barracks: An Idea From Outside the Box Could Egypt’s exiled opposition use constitutional monarchy to dismantle the legitimacy of the 1952 coup? By Adham Hasanin Egyptian journalist and political writer, based in the Netherlands To understand what follows, a reader unfamiliar with Egypt needs one basic fact: since 1952, Egypt has never been governed by anyone who did not first wear a military uniform. Gamal Abdel Nasser, Anwar Sadat, Hosni Mubarak, and today Abdel Fattah el-Sisi four men, four eras, one common origin. All rose through the armed forces. All inherited a state built by a coup that year, when a group of officers calling themselves the "Free Officers" overthrew King Farouk I and, within a year, abolished the monarchy altogether and declared a republic. For seventy-three years, the underlying equation has not changed: the army rules, power passes from one officer to the next, and legitimacy is drawn from the barrel of a gun rather than the ballot box. Every conceivable form of opposition has been tried legal parties and banned ones, Islamist movements, liberal and leftist coalitions, the 2011 popular uprising, and the 2013 elections whose result was overturned by force within a year. All of them hit the same wall: a military institution that reproduces itself under different names, while the core of the system remains untouched. So what if the problem, all along, has not simply been who rules, but the constitutional framework that makes military rule possible in the first place? And what if the answer lies not in swapping one president for another, but in dismantling the underlying equation itself, through a framework Egyptian opposition movements have never seriously tried: a purely ceremonial constitutional monarchy, on the model of Belgium, the Netherlands, or Spain where the head of state becomes a symbol above the political fray, while the army is permanently expelled from politics and returned to its barracks. This is not a call to revive a particular family, nor nostalgia for a golden age that never quite existed. It is a proposal for a political and strategic tool that has not yet been used in the intellectual arsenal of Egypt’s opposition in exile a tool that deserves serious discussion, regardless of whether it is ever literally realised or simply serves to expand the boundaries of what is politically thinkable. I. Why 1952, Not 2013 or 2011, Is the Root The strategic error made by most Egyptian opposition movements from the Muslim Brotherhood to the April 6 Youth Movement to the various civil opposition parties has been treating each political crisis as an isolated case: Mubarak was corrupt and had to be toppled; Sisi staged a coup that must be condemned; the interim military council was a transitional phase to be endured. This piecemeal approach treats the symptoms while leaving the original illness untouched. That original illness is the very structure of legitimacy established by the coup of 23 July 1952. The Egyptian republican system, from Nasser to today, has never built its legitimacy on a genuine democratic social contract. Instead, it has rested on a fixed trinity: the rhetoric of "revolution against feudalism and colonialism," charismatic individual leadership, and military protection of the regime framed as the guarantor of stability. This trinity has repeated itself from Nasser to Sadat to Mubarak to Sisi, with only cosmetic variations. Each new president was never a break from the system he was its continuation. When the opposition says "let us return to the constitutional framework that preceded the coup," it is not criticising a particular policy. It is declaring that the legal foundation of everything that came after 1952 was illegitimate from the start. Here lies the rhetorical power of "returning to the pre-1952 order": it does not merely demand swapping one ruler for another. It withdraws historical legitimacy from the entire republican military system including today’s regime, which draws its own declared legitimacy from that same "1952 legacy." II. Why a "Ceremonial Crown," Not "the Return of a Ruling Family" Here is the most important distinction anyone advocating this idea seriously must grasp: the project does not rest on restoring any particular individual from the Muhammad Ali dynasty, nor on nostalgia for King Farouk or his ancestors. The real power of the idea lies in the constitutional form, not in the person who happens to sit on the throne. Three successful European democracies illustrate the model clearly. Belgium, where King Philippe is a purely constitutional symbol with no real executive power, while the state is run through an elected parliament and a complex coalition government reflecting the country’s linguistic and political diversity. The Netherlands, where King Willem-Alexander formally opens the parliamentary year and signs laws, but where actual decision-making rests with the prime minister and the elected parliament. And Spain, where the king represents symbolic continuity of the state above party politics, while the military and security services answer entirely to civilian authority a transition achieved after the death of the dictator Francisco Franco in 1975, when King Juan Carlos I voluntarily relinquished the extensive executive powers he had inherited and backed free elections, most dramatically in February 1981, when he personally ordered the armed forces to remain loyal to the constitution during an attempted military coup, causing it to collapse within hours. The common thread across these three models is not "the presence of an ancient royal family." It is the principle of separating symbol from power. The monarch in these countries does not rule; he represents. He issues no political decisions; he provides the continuity and symbolic stability that allows party political competition to revolve beneath him, without every transfer of power becoming an existential crisis of legitimacy. This is precisely what Egypt’s military republican system lacks: a neutral mechanism for guaranteeing state continuity that does not depend on the person of the ruler or his security apparatus. When Egypt’s military-republican president is absent, it is always the army that fills the vacuum, because it is the only institution built to be the "guarantor of stability." Under a ceremonial monarchical model, by contrast, it is the king not the army who represents that symbolic guarantee, genuinely opening the door to removing the military institution from the political equation altogether. III. Egypt’s Standing Under the Monarchy: An Honest Reckoning, Not Blind Nostalgia For a Western reader with little prior knowledge of Egypt’s monarchical period (1922–1952), it helps to know this: Egypt was nominally independent under its own king from 1922, but Britain retained enormous informal control over the country’s foreign policy, military bases, and the Suez Canal throughout the period a reality that shaped everything that follows. Any honest invocation of "Egypt’s standing under the monarchy" must avoid the trap of mythologised nostalgia that many advocates of this idea fall into. Egypt in that era was no lost paradise, and any honest article must say so plainly. The Egyptian pound, for instance, often invoked as a symbol of "national currency strength" in that period, was not strong because of independent Egyptian monetary policy. It was pegged to the British pound sterling as part of Egypt’s complete colonial financial dependency until 1947, with Egypt exercising no independent oversight of its own currency whatsoever. The pound’s strength, in other words, was not a sovereign Egyptian achievement it was a reflection of British imperial power ruling Egypt from behind the throne. But this does not mean Egypt lacked a genuine regional standing worth studying. Cairo, in the 1930s and 1940s, was the undisputed cultural capital of the entire Arab world: the Egyptian film industry produced more than half of all Arabic-language cinema; its theatre scene, led by figures like Youssef Wahbi and Naguib al-Rihani, and its music, with Umm Kulthum and Mohammed Abdel Wahab, set the standard across the region; Cairo University was the first modern university in the Arab world; and the Egyptian press was the reference point for Arab public opinion from the Atlantic to the Gulf. Cairo was, quite simply, to the Arab world what Paris was to Francophone Europe: an unrivalled centre of cultural and intellectual gravity. This standing was not necessarily a product of monarchy itself, so much as a product of a relative space of political and press pluralism that allowed Egyptian civil society to flourish, despite all the flaws of the political system and the interference of both palace and occupier. The lesson here is not "bring back the king and the standing will return." It is: when even a limited margin of civic freedom exists, Egypt flourishes culturally and intellectually almost by its own nature. And that margin is precisely what has been entirely absent across the past seven decades of unchallenged military rule. IV. What Reform Would Actually Require Not Repeating the Old Mistakes Any serious advocacy of this model must include, even briefly, a clear vision for avoiding the flaws of the old monarchical system itself otherwise the proposal collapses into simply replacing one form of authoritarianism with another wearing a different crown. First, the armed forces would need to be placed fully under a civilian ministry of defence, with its budget subject to transparent parliamentary oversight the exact opposite of its current status as a state-within-a-state, and equally opposed to its role under the monarchy, when it often served as an instrument of British influence. Second, a judiciary fully independent of both palace and government alike, unlike the old model, which saw direct royal interference in political life as when King Fuad I dismissed the elected government of Prime Minister Saad Zaghloul’s successor, Mustafa al-Nahhas, in 1928, in one of the clearest "constitutional coups" in modern Egyptian history. Third, a parliament that genuinely represents the people rather than landowners and the aristocracy, as was the case before 1952, when membership in the Senate was effectively conditional on the ability to pay land taxes meaning political representation was, by law, restricted to the wealthy. Fourth, genuine economic sovereignty, with a truly independent national currency rather than one pegged to a foreign power’s currency, unlike the historical dependency of the Egyptian pound on sterling. These four principles are enough to clarify that the project on offer is not a literal "return to the past," but a borrowing of the constitutional form (symbolic monarchy) combined with an explicit rejection of its old substance (colonial dependency, palace interference, parliamentary feudalism). V. The Role of Egyptian Movements in Exile: Between Goal and Instrument This raises the most practical question of all: how might Egypt’s opposition abroad actually adopt this idea, and in what capacity? The honest answer is that the power of this proposal does not necessarily lie in its literal fulfilment, but in its dual strategic function. On one hand, it can be advanced as a genuine political goal adopted by broad coalitions of Egyptian movements coalitions that might include Islamists, liberals, leftists, and traditional monarchists, united around a single shared premise: rejecting the legitimacy of the 1952 order and everything that followed from it, even if they later disagree over the precise final shape of the state. On the other hand and this matters more in practice the idea can be deployed as a rhetorical instrument of pressure to widen a Egyptian political debate currently trapped between two false choices: "continued military rule" or "no alternative, chaos awaits." When the opposition puts forward a clearly defined third model a European-style constitutional monarchy it breaks this false binary and opens new intellectual space in Egyptian public discourse, even if the project is never realised in its literal form. This kind of "leverage idea" is common in the history of political movements worldwide: it is not necessarily proposed to be fulfilled immediately in full, but to redraw the boundaries of the politically possible, and to force the existing regime to defend its legitimacy rather than simply assume it. Conclusion: An Invitation to Debate, Not a Ready-Made Prescription This article does not claim that restoring a monarchical form would magically resolve Egypt’s chronic crisis of legitimacy, nor does it ignore the immense difficulties facing any transformative project under a military institution as economically and securitywise entrenched as Egypt’s is today. But it raises a question that deserves serious debate among Egypt’s opposition in exile, rather than automatic dismissal simply for being unfamiliar: Has the Egyptian opposition exhausted every available tool for dismantling the legitimacy of 1952, or has it remained trapped in the same old binary swapping one ruler for another while the framework that makes military rule possible remains untouched? The idea is on the table now, not as a finished solution, but as an overdue invitation to think outside the box.

Non. Et ta comparaison ne tient pas. Bally Bagayoko a fait lui-même le choix de transformer son mandat de maire en scène permanente : vidéos, mises en scène, danses, déclarations face caméra, annonces spectaculaires, communication nationale, autopromotion… Il ne communique pas comme un maire qui administre discrètement sa ville. Il a choisi les codes de l’influenceur politique et travaille lui-même à sa notoriété. Très bien. Mais la notoriété a une contrepartie : l’exposition à la critique. Quand on annonce beaucoup, on vérifie beaucoup. Quand on donne des leçons, on examine les résultats. Quand on transforme chaque décision municipale en contenu pour les réseaux sociaux, il ne faut pas s’étonner que les réseaux sociaux commentent ensuite les contradictions, les reculs, les budgets, les promesses et les erreurs. Et surtout, cesse cette facilité intellectuelle consistant à dégainer le racisme dès qu’un responsable politique noir est critiqué. Le racisme existe et doit être combattu précisément pour cette raison : le mot est trop grave pour servir de bouclier à un élu contre la critique politique. Bally Bagayoko a voulu devenir un personnage politique médiatique. Il l’est devenu. Bienvenue avec la lumière, les caméras… et les critiques. Et ce n’est pas la peine d’appeler Grok c’est un fait fabriqué par Bally Bagayoko lui-même. #Politique #Médias #Critique

Een ochtendcolumn Ik zag een fragment waarin Bob Scholte van Left Laser tegenover Annemarie van Gaal zat. ‘Wat is er mis met een betaalbare woning voor iedereen?’, vroeg Scholte. Van Gaal had niet onmiddellijk een antwoord. Zo ontstaat tegenwoordig een uitstekend filmpje. Kijk eens. Mond vol tanden. Er is natuurlijk niets mis met een betaalbare woning voor iedereen. Net zoals er niets mis is met goede zorg voor iedereen, voldoende inkomen voor iedereen of vrede voor iedereen. Het probleem zit niet in het verlangen. Het probleem begint wanneer een verlangen wordt gepresenteerd als een oplossing. Betaalbare woningen bestaan al. Alleen wil niet iedereen in Appingedam wonen. Stel dat morgen alle Nederlanders in Amsterdam willen wonen. Hebben we dan allemaal recht op een betaalbare woning in Amsterdam? En als het antwoord nee is, wie bepaalt dan wie er wel mag wonen? De hoogste bieder, degene die er geboren is, de verpleegkundige die er werkt, het gezin met kinderen of degene die het langst op een wachtlijst staat? Zelfs met genoeg woningen blijft die vraag bestaan. Een huis aan het Vondelpark is iets anders dan een huis naast de snelweg. Locatie, ruimte en omgeving zijn schaars. Die schaarste kun je niet wegpraten met het woord betaalbaar. En wat betekent betaalbaar eigenlijk? Betaalbaar voor wie? Iemand met een minimumloon, een modaal inkomen of twee salarissen? Zodra betaalbaarheid een recht wordt, moet iemand een norm bepalen en vervolgens vaststellen wie eraan voldoet. Van Gaal bracht het scheefwonen ter sprake. Scholte pareerde dat met de opmerking dat scheefwonen een typische VVD-uitvinding is. Iedereen moet gewoon betaalbaar kunnen wonen. Dat klinkt opnieuw sympathiek en lost opnieuw niets op. Als inkomen niet van belang is, kan iemand met een hoog inkomen in een goedkope woning blijven terwijl iemand met een laag inkomen op de wachtlijst staat. Vinden we dat prima, dan accepteren we die verdeling. Vinden we het onrechtvaardig, dan moeten we inkomens controleren. Krijgt iemand opslag of gaat een partner meer verdienen, dan moet opnieuw worden bepaald of het recht op die woning nog bestaat. Achter de simpele vraag ‘wat is er mis met een betaalbare woning voor iedereen?’ gaat een complete wereld schuil van schaarste, inkomensgrenzen, wachtlijsten, prijzen, controles, voorrang en politieke keuzes. En precies daarin zit de intellectuele leegte van dit soort debat. De vraag klinkt als een argument, maar is in werkelijkheid een wens. Niemand hoeft uit te leggen hoe die wens wordt uitgevoerd, wie ervoor betaalt of wat er gebeurt wanneer twee mensen aanspraak maken op hetzelfde schaarse goed. Probeer daar maar eens in twintig seconden op te antwoorden Ik moest denken aan Brandolini’s law, het kost veel meer energie om onzin te weerleggen dan om die te produceren. Alleen hoeft de oorspronkelijke uitspraak niet eens onzin te zijn. Dat maakt deze manier van debatteren zo effectief. Een sympathiek doel wordt uitgesproken en de ingewikkeldheid van de werkelijkheid wordt vervolgens het probleem van de tegenstander. Bouw betaalbare woningen. Belast de rijken. Grenzen dicht. Pak de vervuilers aan. Schaf het eigen risico af. Minder managers, meer handen aan het bed. Bijna iedere zin bevat iets waars of wenselijks. De werkelijkheid begint bij de volgende vraag. Juist die vraag doet het slecht op beeld. Wie antwoordt moet voorwaarden noemen, gevolgen uitleggen en soms nadenken. De ander hoeft alleen de volgende eenvoudige waarheid klaar te hebben. Twijfel oogt zwak, nuance klinkt als een uitvlucht. Zo beoordelen we intellectuele kwaliteit steeds vaker op presentatievaardigheden. Bestuur vraagt het tegenovergestelde: informatie verzamelen, gevolgen overzien en soms eerst nadenken voordat er een antwoord komt. Misschien moeten we het publieke debat weer per handgeschreven brief voeren. Zodat we wat tijd hebben om na te denken. Het zal allemaal wat langzamer gaan maar de kans bestaat wel dat we daardoor sneller vooruitkomen. #BetaalbareWoning #Huisvesting #SociaalDebat

It's done. Anthony Fauci 'is held in contempt for the Senate'. De arrogantie is verdwenen, de jager werd het wild. Jammer dat het alleen in de V.S. kan en niet hier. Maar misschien kan @Daandekort92 en zijn team van intellectuele vedervlieggewichten bij de #GoedPraatEnWitwasCommissie nog eens bij @MarionKoopmans navragen of er inderdaad 'wetenschappelijke consensus' bestond over de #OriginOfCovid, of dat deze gecreëerd en onder straffe van uitsluiting afgedwongen werd. Ralph Baric is nog steeds de sleutelfiguur in dit verhaal, maar hij blijft buiten schot. Toch is het goed dat hét Amerikaanse gezicht van de #coronapandemie hard aangepakt wordt. Want Fauci gaat tot aan zijn dood geen rust meer krijgen. En ik vind dat wel een plezierige gedachte: dat degenen die voor ons een #lockdown hadden bedacht, er uiteindelijk zelf in terechtkomen. @dr_louwen #Fauci #CovidOrigin #PandemicResponse

Metaphysics of the Solitary Absolute: Philosophical and Legal Analysis of the Thesis of Solitary Amorality ​The Thesis of Solitary Amorality, formulated by Tom Nesky under the banner of the Axiom of Relationality of Law and Being, constitutes a radical challenge to classical and contemporary normative theories. Its central premise—stating that law, morality, and the category of crime are not inherent properties of reality, but artificial products of social relations—requires a rigorous deconstruction at the intersection of legal positivism, phenomenological existentialism, ontological anarchism, and monistic metaphysics. This paper attempts a systematic analysis of the intellectual pillars of this thesis, examining its internal coherence, genealogical roots, and consequences for the understanding of freedom and human subjectivity. ​The Systemic Construction of Crime vs. Pure Theory of Law ​The first pillar of the Thesis of Solitary Amorality, designated as Nullum Crimen Sine Systema, posits that law does not discover pre-legal categories of evil, but brings them into existence through the very act of establishing a boundary of permissibility. This assertion exhibits a profound convergence with 20th-century legal positivism, particularly with Hans Kelsen's Pure Theory of Law (Reine Rechtslehre). Kelsen advocated for a methodological purification of legal science from ethical, sociological, and political elements, defining law as a normative system founded upon a hypothetical basic norm (Grundnorm). ​In the Kelsenian view, the legal system functions as a coercive apparatus devoid of inherent moral value. A crucial point of intersection with Nesky's thesis is the elimination of the traditional dualism between acts that are inherently evil (mala in se) and acts prohibited merely by law (mala prohibita). Kelsen argued that an act becomes unlawful solely when a legal norm attaches state-enforced coercion to it. Unlawfulness is not an ontological property of the act, but the result of a relationship of normative imputation. This implies that the law does not penalize an act because it is intrinsically evil; rather, an act is considered evil solely because it has been subjected to systemic penalization. ​This clash became prominent during the debates surrounding the Nuremberg trials, where positions based on natural law and legal positivism collided. While prosecutors such as Robert Jackson invoked universal moral norms (mala in se) as the basis for punishing criminals despite the previously binding positive law of the Third Reich, Kelsen pointed out the theoretical inconsistency of such an approach. He argued that judging on the basis of retroactive law (ex post facto) constitutes a breach in the systemic coherence of positivism, even if it might be justified by political and historical necessity. ​Nesky's project imparts an existential dimension of oppression to this structure, bringing it close to the critique of the state formulated by Friedrich Nietzsche. Nietzsche famously described the state as "the coldest of all cold monsters," which devours the individual's singularity and imposes herd morality upon them. The gaze of the state, mediated through the Other, paralyzes the sovereignty of the individual and forces them to navigate within arbitrarily designated normative boundaries. Every stroke drawn across the chaos of reality establishes a boundary, and every boundary instantly creates the concept of its transgression. ​The Paradox of the Systemic Cage and the Limits of Ontological Anarchism ​The second pillar of the thesis—The Paradox of the Systemic Cage—points to the impossibility of escaping the system through rules alone. Every attempt to negate the existing order, from establishing anarchist structures to escaping into geographical isolation, immediately transforms into a new system whose primary imperative becomes the defense and maintenance of that very absence of rules. This process of structural looping finds its reflection in the current of ontological anarchism formulated by Hakim Bey (pseudonym of Peter Lamborn Wilson). ​Bey, drawing on a synthesis of Nietzscheanism, Situationist theory of the spectacle, and chaos esotericism, recognized that classical revolutions striving to overthrow the state inevitably reproduce structures of domination, becoming new forms of confinement. As an alternative, he proposed the concept of the Temporary Autonomous Zone (TAZ). TAZ is a tactic for creating temporary, non-hierarchical spaces that deliberately evade formal structures of state control. The key element of TAZ is its ephemerality: before the system can map, define, and absorb the autonomous zone, it must dissolve itself and relocate to another point in space-time. ​Attempts to transform TAZ into Permanent Autonomous Zones (PAZ) immediately encounter the paradox noted by Nesky. The need to defend and codify freedom within a lasting community gives rise to internal rules, mechanisms of exclusion, and hierarchy. For this reason, Murray Bookchin criticized ontological anarchism (calling it "lifestyle anarchism" or "bourgeois anarchism") for its lack of political realism and its flight from systemic struggle against capital and state in favor of aesthetic rebellion. The convergence of these perspectives demonstrates that freedom defined as reactive resistance to a system remains structurally determined by it. ​The Dissolution of the Relational Mirror: The Existential Gaze and the Collapse of Morality ​The third pillar of the thesis, designated as The Dissolution of the Mirror (L'Autre), posits that good and evil require the presence of an external witness and judge. This assertion represents a direct application of Jean-Paul Sartre's existential phenomenology, particularly his analysis of the Gaze (le look / le regard) and the relation to the Other (l'Autre) presented in Being and Nothingness. ​Sartre illustrates the constitutive role of the Other through an analysis of the voyeur's situation. At the moment of complete absorption in the act of peeping through a keyhole, the subject's consciousness is pre-reflective—the voyeur does not reflect on himself; his consciousness completely merges with the act being performed. Only the sudden sound of footsteps in the hallway shatters this unity. The voyeur realizes that he himself is seen, and is instantly paralyzed by shame. ​For Sartre, shame is not a purely internal emotion; it is shame of oneself before the Other. The Gaze of the Other objectifies the free subject (being-for-itself—pour-soi), freezing them into a specific role and moral evaluation (being-for-others—pour-autrui). As Ellie Anderson points out, Descartes' formula "I think, therefore I am" is replaced in Sartre by "I feel shame, therefore Others exist." The Gaze of the Other marks the birth of social morality, wherein the individual learns to view themselves from a third-person perspective. ​This existential dynamic corresponds to the Nietzschean genealogy of "bad conscience." Nietzsche demonstrates that morality and guilt are products of the forced internalization of human instincts that could no longer be discharged outwardly due to social barriers. Forced into the constraints of society, man turns against himself, creating an internal judge (conscience) modeled on the external tyrant. ​This vision also resonates with the classical theory of Thomas Hobbes. In Leviathan, Hobbes explicitly declares that in the state of nature, where there is no common power, there is no law, and where there is no law, no notion of injustice exists. Concepts of good, evil, justice, and property are attributes of man living in society, not in solitude. Removing the social fabric reverts the individual to a state in which theft and injury lose their raison d'être due to the absence of relational reference to the Other. #philosophy # metaphysics # thesis # morality

Niet om deze columnist in het zonnetje te zetten maar vooral vanwege het quasi-intellectueel instemmend knikken aan progressief-linksliberale kant naar aanleiding van dit soort teksten. https://t.co/FpNshfw4Oy De gevolgen van deze keuzes? Verdiep je eens in de USSR, Cuba, Cambodja. Helaas verheft deze politiek niet de armen maar maakt het een samenleving collectief armer. De elite van dat moment in dat land daargelaten. #Politiek #Samenleving #Geschiedenis

A Generation That Forgot the Shape of the Square On memory left to die alone By Adham Hasanin Egyptian journalist and political writer, based in the Netherlands In a house near mine, there is a boy of thirteen. Born in 2013 just a few months younger than the July coup itself, younger than the new republic under whose shadow we now live. I asked him once, with no preamble, no test, out of nothing more than passing curiosity: do you know what January was? He answered simply, without hesitation, without any sense that he was missing something: "An old revolution, against Mubarak, right?" Not entirely wrong. But it is everything he knows. The name Tahrir Square means nothing specific to him. The sound of the crowd chanting has no echo in his mind. He does not know that his own family whom he sees every day saying "thank God for stability," who warn him against "chaos" whenever a political headline crosses the screen once, at a moment two years before he was born, went down into the street, betting their entire lives on the possibility that something might change. This article is not about politics. It is about memory, and about who decides what gets told and what is left to die in silence. I. Who Erases the Picture? The first question that comes to mind is the easiest and most deceptive one: who erases this memory? And where do we begin holding them accountable? But the truth is too complex to reduce to a single actor. No one actually erases memory, in the literal sense of the act. There is no ministry called the "Ministry of Forgetting," no presidential decree ordering January struck from the collective consciousness. What happens is simpler than that, and more dangerous at once: the subject is simply never told. School says nothing. The textbook leaps from one period to another without pausing on January for more than two faded lines, composed with deliberate neutrality, devoid of any detail that might make the event feel alive to its young reader. Television no longer has any reason to return to it; the programmes that once hosted witnesses and activists stopped years ago, replaced by an official discourse that mentions January only in passing, as an unfortunate prelude to the "stability" that supposedly followed. And the home the most dangerous link of all has become afraid of the subject. Speech now carries a price, and many families, whether consciously or by sheer survival instinct, have decided that silence is safer than the story. The father who marched fears passing on to his son a curiosity that might one day lead him into trouble the family cannot afford. The mother who lost a friend in the events prefers not to reopen the wound before a child who does not yet grasp the weight of loss. And so, generation after generation, the circle of those who know shrinks, and the circle of those who do not even ask because they do not know there is anything worth asking widens. No one decided to erase the memory through an explicit decision. The memory was simply left to die alone, with no one tending it. And it is precisely this decentralised absence of responsibility that makes this kind of erasure more dangerous than any direct official ban: there is no single decision to challenge, no single body to hold accountable. Responsibility is distributed across thousands of small decisions made by thousands of individuals, each within their own context, each seeming reasonable when viewed in isolation. II. Why This Is More Dangerous Than Direct Repression An objection might be raised: is direct repression arrest, imprisonment, publishing bans not far more lethal than mere gradual forgetting? The answer is complex, and deserves calm unpacking. Direct repression can be seen. It can be documented, and the victim can know they are a victim, can tell their story, and their pain can become a testimony added to the collective memory, even if it never reaches justice. The political prisoner knows he is a political prisoner. The journalist banned from writing knows he is banned, and can tell the world he is banned. Direct repression, for all its cruelty, leaves a trace that can be followed. But a generation that has forgotten something happened at all does not even have a starting point from which to ask. This thirteen-year-old boy will never ask "why were we repressed?" because he does not know there is anything deserving that question in the first place. He feels no absence, because he does not know there is anything absent. He simply lives in a version of reality stripped of an entire chapter of his country’s history, and never for a moment suspects that this void is a void at all. Here lies the essence of the danger: direct repression creates victims who know they are victims. Erasure of memory, when it succeeds, creates a generation that does not even know it has been deprived of anything. And deprivation that is not felt cannot be resisted, because resistance always begins with an awareness of loss. The regime that came after 2013 does not need to convince the new generation that January was a mistake. That would be an arduous, costly task, requiring sustained propaganda and continuous effort to persuade each individual one by one. It is far easier, and strategically far more efficient, simply to ensure they never know it was anything at all. The void requires no defence; it requires only silence, and silence is free and always available. III. The Four Mechanisms of Erasure Four complementary mechanisms can be identified working together to produce this collective void not as an organised conspiracy, but as a system of incentives that pushes each party, consciously or not, to contribute to the same process. The first mechanism: formal education. The curriculum, as currently designed, treats January as a passing footnote rather than a founding event deserving detail and analysis. The student memorises two dates the start of the revolution and its presumed end without understanding why people took to the streets, what they were demanding, or how they felt in that pivotal moment. The second mechanism: broadcast media. The channels that once hosted live discussions on January, featuring varied perspectives, have gradually disappeared, or transformed their discourse entirely. Today’s televised image either ignores the anniversary altogether, or invokes it only to frame it as a prelude to chaos that must be avoided. The third mechanism: the silence of homes. This is the most dangerous of all, precisely because it is the most human and understandable. Parents who lived through the experience protect it with silence, not out of aversion to the story, but out of fear of its price. This silence, however legitimate its motives, achieves exactly the same effect as official censorship: it blocks the transmission of knowledge from one generation to the next. The fourth mechanism: the absence of alternative spaces. Even those among the new generation who wish to know cannot easily find places to look. Archives are scattered, trustworthy websites are blocked or require effort to reach, and personal testimonies are dispersed across corners of the internet that an ordinary student at an ordinary school will never stumble upon. These four mechanisms require no central coordination to work together. Each naturally serves the others, and all converge on a single result: a growing void in the consciousness of every new generation. IV. Memory as an Act of Resistance If erasure operates without a centre, then resisting it must also be decentralised. No one waits for a government decision to restore January to the curriculum, nor for a television programme to revive the testimonies. Resistance here is necessarily individual, happening in small details, in passing conversations, in the simple decision to tell rather than to stay silent. This is exactly what I try to do, without any claim to heroism, without any grand mission. I try, whenever I can, to tell the thirteen-year-old boy and others like him details that are never written in official reports or in schoolbooks: what the voices in the square sounded like, how someone felt the first time they realised change was possible, what that moment of hope was like before everything changed. The goal is not to bring back the past; the past cannot be brought back. The goal is that this boy, when he grows older and asks again and he will ask, because the questions always return at some point finds someone to tell him the full story, not two faded lines in a schoolbook. That he knows the stability he is told is the fruit of "wisdom" has a prior history, that this history carried other possibilities, and that real people bet their lives on those possibilities. V. Why This Matters Now Talking about the memory of a generation not yet aware might seem an intellectual luxury next to more urgent matters: arrests, a collapsing economy, regional wars. But the truth is that this issue is the foundation on which every other issue is built. A people who do not know they once rose up will not understand why they should ever think of rising again. A generation raised to believe "stability" is the only natural state possible will never ask itself what drove its own parents, shortly before it was born, to risk everything for an alternative that was never guaranteed. Memory is not a luxury; it is the reference point by which every generation measures its present, and through which it determines what is possible and what is not. And whoever understands this understands why erasing memory, not direct repression alone, is among the most important tools of any regime seeking to guarantee its permanence: because a people who have forgotten they were once free will not even know they are missing freedom. Memory, like the word, needs someone to tell it in order to survive. And when the tellers stop, memory does not die suddenly; it withers slowly, generation after generation, until the day comes when a boy asks an innocent question, and finds no one to answer him but two faded lines in a schoolbook.

Beste Sophie Straat, Je bent 31, hebt een handjevol smartlappen en wat activistisch bijgeluid uitgebracht, en nu presenteer je jezelf als een soort moreel geweten, een morele heldin? ‘Niet alle mannen zijn kut, maar ze nemen wel verdomd veel plek in.’ Wat een dappere analyse, verdomd origineel ook, waar hebben we die meer gehoord? Waren je nummers maar zo grijs gedraaid als deze ‘analyse’. Je eist dat witte mannen ‘naar achteren’ gaan zodat de girls, queers en people of colour eindelijk ruimte krijgen. Je noemt het ‘geen tijd voor nuance’. Natuurlijk heb je daar geen tijd voor. Nuance is namelijk verdomd lastig als je hele artistieke identiteit bestaat uit het herhalen van dezelfde twee zinnen over mannen die te veel ruimte innemen. Zonder dat simplistische vijandbeeld heb je geen act meer. Je klaagt over haat en bedreigingen. Terecht: doodsbedreigingen zijn walgelijk en onacceptabel, geen discussie. Maar het is wel stuitend naïef om te pretenderen dat jouw eigen uitspraken, openlijk discrimineren op huidskleur en geslacht in een publieke setting, niets te maken hebben met de reactie die volgt. Jij mag collectief een hele demografische groep naar achteren verbannen en noemt dat artistieke vrijheid, kunst en ‘punktraditie’. Iemand die hetzelfde doet met ‘alle vrouwen’ of ‘alle mensen van kleur’ zou terecht als racist of seksist worden weggezet. Die hypocrisie is zo mogelijk nog stuitender dan je naïviteit over wat dit losmaakt. Weet je wat het daadwerkelijk is Sophie? Het is intellectuele luiheid verpakt als morele superioriteit. Je strijdt niet tegen onrecht. Je strijdt tegen de realiteit dat individuen verschillen, dat macht niet exclusief in één huidskleur of geslacht zit, en dat de meeste mensen, man of vrouw, gewoon hun ding willen doen zonder dat een zangeres ze op basis van hun biologie en afkomst de les leest. Daar heb je kennelijk nooit een seconde over nagedacht? Maar ik realiseer mij dan ook weer terdege dat je de soundtrack bent van een hele generatie die denkt dat identiteitspolitiek hetzelfde is als politiek, en dat een microfoon + correcte meningen automatisch moreel gezag geeft. Maar de realiteit is dat je zelf verdomd veel plek inneemt met je slogans, je verontwaardiging en je weigering om ook maar één centimeter complexiteit toe te laten. Maak eens tijd voor nuance! Misschien zou jij daarom eens een stapje naar achteren moeten doen? Niet omdat je vrouw, van kleur, queer of wat dan ook bent. Maar omdat de show die je opvoert al lang niet meer over rechtvaardigheid gaat. Die gaat over jouw behoefte om de morele heldin te spelen in een verhaal waarin de helft van de mensheid standaard de boeman is, een soort identiteitspolitiek 2.0. Dat is geen protest Sophie. Dat is geen kunst. Dat is kitsch. Bron: https://t.co/VjyGXXO9wB #Identiteitspolitiek #Kunst #MoreleSuperioriteit

‘Op basis van een heel korte en saaie briefing over het boek van Maggot Hagerman – een ‘maggot’ is een made – kan ik zeggen dat het grotendeels verzonnen is. Fake news. Voor een groot deel fictie, net als de meeste dingen die ze al jarenlang over mij heeft geschreven. Ze is een derderangs schrijver en intellectueel, die een eersteklas inkomen heeft verdiend dankzij jullie favoriete president: mij.’

Ik mag eerlijk tegen je zijn toch @jesseklaver? Wat een plat, nietszeggend bericht zonder enige diepgang. Je schrijft: 'Een ongelooflijke tragedie waar we de ogen niet voor mogen sluiten.' Maar dat doe je juist wel, ik lees namelijk geen vragen over hoe de Marokkaanse grensbewaking de hordes jonge mannen ongehinderd lieten passeren, geen woord over de massale bestorming van de Spaanse enclave, en al helemaal geen bespiegeling over de oorzaken of de gevolgen. Maar goed, je scoort natuurlijk wel punten bij je achterban met de opmerking: 'PRO staat volledig achter Spanje en (de socialistische) premier Pedro Sánchez.' Maar misschien leg ik de lat te hoog? Wie jouw biografie op de site van de Tweede Kamer leest, leest dat je alleen een VMBO-diploma op zak hebt? Daarna heb je een opleiding Social work en een schakelprogramma politicologie gedaan, waarbij je die laatste niet eens afmaakte. Prima hoor, iedereen mag politicus worden, ook met een VMBO diploma. Maar als je vervolgens al jaren meedraait op het hoogste niveau en nog steeds denkt dat voor een fractievoorzitter zinsneden als: 'we mogen de ogen niet sluiten' en 'we staan achter Sánchez' passend zijn, dan is dat VMBO-denkniveau kennelijk nog steeds je plafond? Maar ik oordeel misschien te hard, dat kan, maar dan herinner ik mij weer dat je het zelf ooit als troef hebt verkocht: 'Er werd tegen me gezegd dat mijn wens misschien te hoog gegrepen was.' Pakkend verhaal en ik kan ambitie altijd erg waarderen. Maar als je dan in plaats van die lat echt hoger te leggen, en zowel mentaal als intellectueel te groeien, blijft hangen in hetzelfde simpele frame van morele verontwaardiging en steun aan de 'goede' kant geef je weinig blijk van groei toch? Ik lees nergens confronterende vragen over migratiedruk, geen kritiek op de Marokkaanse overheid, geen zorgen over wat 50.000 mensen die een stad als Ceuta bestormen betekent voor de inwoners. Nee, alleen de veilige, feel-good reactie die past bij iemand die nooit verder heeft hoeven denken dan 'empathie'. Potverdorie Jesse, je bent al vijftien jaar kamerlid. Je bent fractievoorzitter geweest, lijsttrekker, kreeg zelfs het label 'Jessias' opgeplakt, en nog steeds produceer je teksten en inzichten van dit niveau? Dat is niet inspirerend. Dat is treurig. Je zaagt jezelf bij de enkels af, Jesse. Niet omdat je van het VMBO komt, maar omdat je er nooit bovenuit bent gegroeid ondanks alle kansen die je hebt gekregen. Jammer. #politiek #migratie #socialeZaken

J’aurais préféré répondre au tweet, mais les commentaires ont étrangement été bloqués, alors je vais le faire ici. La carte Vitale : si j’en avais la possibilité, je la troquerais dès demain contre une assurance privée. Par contre, on me rend les cotisations à 6 chiffres que j’ai payées ces dernières années. Les transports en commun : je ne les utilise pas, et les rares fois où j’en ai eu besoin, le service était payant et désastreux. Les congés payés : ça n’existe pas pour un entrepreneur. Les 35 heures : j’imagine qu’on parle des heures réalisées entre le lundi et le mercredi ? L’hôpital public : là aussi, le service est devenu désastreux. Tous les soignants pourront le confirmer. La Sécurité sociale : voir le point numéro un concernant la carte Vitale. Les infrastructures publiques : haha. Les alloca… quoi ? Les aides socia… quoi ? L’école publique ? Elle tombe, elle aussi, en lambeaux. Même l’école privée dans laquelle ma fille se trouve laisse à désirer. Il va falloir arrêter de se voiler la face : la France est l’un des pays les plus taxés du monde, avec des résultats désastreux que chacun peut constater au quotidien. Avoir comme cheminement de pensée qu’il serait nécessaire d’augmenter encore plus les impôts pour résoudre nos problèmes relève, au mieux, d’une profonde malhonnêteté intellectuelle, au pire, d’une déficience mentale. #France #SécuritéSociale #Entrepreneuriat

🔴🇫🇷 𝗙𝗟𝗔𝗦𝗛 𝗜𝗡𝗙𝗢 — L’influenceur Laboiserie témoigne de son cambriolage par 17 individus : « On a eu une invasion d’ingénieurs à l’intérieur du magasin. » « Je sais qu’il n’y aura aucune peine, merci aux forces de l’ordre qui sont intervenues […] Sur les 17 intellectuels, il y en a 8 qui ont été attrapés. » Il est prêt à offrir 10 000 € pour chaque moto retrouvée parmi les 3 restantes disparues. https://t.co/4jI9SddvRu #Vol #Sécurité #Influenceurs

In plaats van een gemeenschap op te bouwen rond jeugdige ambitie, intellect, wetenschap, ondernemerschap, fierheid, leergierigheid, onbevangenheid, nieuwsgierigheid, vooruitgangsdenken, doet de Regimepers er alles aan om ons leeghoofdige rolmodellen op te dringen als proeve van succes. #jeugd #ondernemerschap #wetenschap