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Johan Leman, 25 November 2021

Doesn’t it strike you that we are sliding towards a society where a ceertain number of people have to be more and more careful about saying what they really think?

The real victims are definitely not those who are always exclaiming that they are victims … because if you look closely and listen carefully, then this claiming to be a victim and not being allowed to name reality actually turns out to be very rewarding, because it de facto allows those involved to send out the crudest comments and lies. Yes, the extreme right is a champion in proclaiming that it is not allowed to say what it thinks, but at the moment it is one of the movements that very easily and without any complex sends what it thinks into the world. Today, the mainstream media even think they have to give them – those “neglected” people – a little more coverage.

The problem of being able to express oneself without complexes today mainly concerns people who want to bring nuance to the debate and who, through such nuances, are immediately identified with the extreme left or the extreme right when they speak out.

By maintaining the culture that assumes that people will come to the middle ground, their own nuanced judgement, by listening to extremes, one does not promote that people will come to a balanced judgement, but rather that it will lead to a dominance of extreme ideas and to the suppression of nuanced thinking. In short: it promotes polarisation, which is then reinforced via social media.

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