Dealing with the mirror world

We are all looking in bewilderment at the US, where with a criminal record, a racist and misogynist attitude, a story about eating dogs & cats and many other lies you can still become president. But in Holland we also have an upside down government, working to enshrine lies in legislation.

My advice to everyone: read up. Get to know and understand the mirror world of Trump, JD Vance, Wilders, Meloni, climate deniers, migration fantasists and supremacists. We have to learn to deal with it in order to fight it.

I am now reading ‘Doppelganger’ by Naomi Klein and it is so enlightening! My cousin is enthusiastic about ‘Alkibiades’ by Ilja Leonard Pfeiffer, but you can also pick up ‘Tricky Tijden’ by Jitske Kramer.

HOW DOES THIS MIRROR WORLD WORK?

In the words of Brazilian professor of philosophy, Rodrigo Nunes quoted by Naomi Klein in Doppelganger: ‘The mirror world displaces the real threats looming on the horizon into distorted fun-house versions of themselves.’

For example:
-The mirror world diverts our attention from destructive hyper-capitalism, preferring to state that we are in the grip of a network of paedophiles.
-The mirror world denies climate change and argues that we are drowning in migrants.
-The mirror world does not raise the issue of racism or lack of health care for large groups of Americans (of colour), preferring instead to make noise about made-up migrants eating dogs and cats.

Paedophiles, masses of migrants, eating dogs and cats. These are all things that upset many people and therefore cause uproar. And where there is enough turmoil about peripheral issues (which are not true), attention disappears to the main issues (which are true and threaten humanity).

Bottom-line: the people who participate in or finance the mirror world do not want to fight the real crises.

-They do not want to tackle climate change, because, for example, with a strong reduction in CO2, they will earn less.
-They do not want a strong, successful government, because then the money has to be distributed fairly across society (= more taxes)
-With a more regulated society and less chaos, they are less free to loot. (E.g. sneaky privatisation of public services)

Plus: we live in an attention economy, where there is still good money to be made from clickbait. And all that excitement is pure clickbait. And so, step 1 in dealing with the mirror world: don’t get distracted by all the excitement. But: STAY CALM.

‘Calm is a form of resistance,’ says John Berger, a friend of Naomi Klein’s to her.

Keep your eye on the ball. Getting to know and understand this situation that we are in, helps to keep calm. Berger tells Klein that was the effect when he read her book ‘The Shock Doctrine’. I experienced the same when reading ‘Doppelganger’.