On Monday a small plane hung over the city with a banner: ‘War is not of this time.’ There was a lot of blue-yellow on the street, the sun was shining, it made you feel good – and the national collection for Ukraine had yet to begin. Solidarity is a great idea. Most people want to be good.
In the meantime I was listening to a podcast by The Wall Street JournalSure enough, that’s where the thunder started. They explained that rising gasoline prices are bad news for Democrats’ chances in the fall Congressional election. US solidarity with Ukraine ends at the pump.
Solidarity is often not what it seems. In the beautiful Lenin on the train (2017) British historian Catherine Merridale describes the story of the free passage Germany gave to Lenin in 1917 so that he could travel by rail from Switzerland to Russia. The militarily weakened German monarchy thus helped Lenin and the Russian revolution, after which he made peace with Germany by agreement. German self-interested solidarity (with quite some consequences).
Solidarity with Ukraine has yet to be determined in The Hague. A national collection on Monday is nice, but it is also expected that people will be ‘compensated’ for the increased energy bill. There is also a call for higher defense spending and the arrival of Ukrainian refugees must be financed. You hear that there is no prospect of an agreement yet. Solidarity with Ukraine has been confessed, but it is far from established.
And the uneasy thing is that war always creates suspicion, even here, far from the front. We are already one post truth societybut because of Putin we might as well have a post trust society become: a society that loses mutual trust when making complex choices. So whatever well-intentioned texts people hang behind airplanes: war is of this time, unfortunately that’s the whole point.
It also plays a role in the biggest dilemma in the near future: how can the country reduce its dependence on Russian gas via the EU? European Commissioner Frans Timmermans (Climate) already told the BBC last week that longer coal consumption should be possible in order to achieve that goal more quickly. And research for the Newspaper of the North learned this weekend that Groningen residents massively support a stop on Russian gas imports, while 61 percent would even approve the resumption of gas extraction in Groningen.
Real solidarity of a group that has been seriously affected. Some people don’t just want to be good, they can do it. How superior is that.
A version of this article also appeared in NRC on the morning of March 8, 2022
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