[{"content":"The Past as a Weapon On nostalgia as state strategy and why it works\n1. Two images, one mechanism On 27 January 2024, satirical Dutch outlet De Speld published a piece about a Dutch tradwife who longed so intensely for the past that she accidentally ended up in 1917 — and no longer has the right to vote. \u0026ldquo;Well, that\u0026rsquo;s a bit annoying,\u0026rdquo; she says to her 5,000 TikTok followers, washing dishes in full make-up. Spanish flu, World War One, and no say in anything. She is considering joining the Association for Women\u0026rsquo;s Suffrage.\nIt is satire, but it cuts more sharply than most analyses of the tradwife phenomenon. Because the mechanism it exposes is exactly the same as that of Viktor Orbán, who on 12 April 2026 might lose an election for the first time in sixteen years — but perhaps not, because he has hollowed out the checks and balances thoroughly enough to stay in power even if he loses.\nOrbán also sells a longing for the past. Only grander. And with state resources.\n2. Trianon as a myth-engine To understand Orbán\u0026rsquo;s use of the past, you need to know the Treaty of Trianon. In 1920, Hungary lost two thirds of its territory and three fifths of its population as a result of the post-World War One peace settlements. A 1991 opinion poll found that Hungary, of all European countries, had the highest share of citizens claiming that parts of neighbouring countries rightfully belong to them: 68 percent. That feeling has not disappeared. A 2020 study by the Hungarian Academy of Sciences found that 85 percent of respondents called Trianon the greatest national tragedy in the country\u0026rsquo;s history.\nOrbán did not invent this. He instrumentalised it. The constant deployment of history, memory and identity politics was a building block of the Orbán regime. The Fidesz government declared 4 June the \u0026lsquo;Day of National Cohesion\u0026rsquo; in commemoration of Trianon — and the 2011 constitution literally promises \u0026ldquo;to preserve the spiritual and intellectual unity of our nation, torn apart in the storms of the last century.\u0026rdquo; Make Hungary Great Again is not written above it, but it comes close.\nThe politics of nostalgia binds populist, nationalist and authoritarian frames into a coherent whole: the elites are corrupt, but they weren\u0026rsquo;t always; they have lost their way, because they lack a moral compass and have been captured by minority interests. It is a story with a villain, a victim and a saviour. Orbán is the saviour. The enemy is Brussels, Soros, Ukraine — the content varies, the structure does not.\nWhat makes this so effective is its emotional logic. Trianon offers a way to reassert personal dignity in a situation of powerlessness — the emotions around this treaty tell us not something about the past, but about the current condition of those who commemorate it. Nostalgia is never about then. It is always about now.\n3. The universal pattern It is tempting to treat Orbán as an exceptional case. He is not. The pattern is recognisable everywhere.\nTrump\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Make America Great Again\u0026rdquo; evokes nostalgia for a time that was relatively good for white, male working-class Americans — and structurally bad for almost everyone else. Erdoğan builds his legitimacy on the glorious days of the Ottoman Empire. The Dutch version is milder but recognisable: the 1950s as the benchmark for what has been lost. The tradwife on TikTok is that logic in its most innocent — and therefore most revealing — form.\nNostalgic rhetoric offers a powerful antidote to heightened levels of anxiety and perceived threat — and that is precisely why it works, even when it is historically demonstrably false. Nobody at Orbán\u0026rsquo;s speeches asks whether the Dual Monarchy was actually so good for the average Hungarian peasant, just as nobody at tradwife videos asks how women who wanted a job in the 1950s but were kept at home fared. De Speld\u0026rsquo;s satire does precisely that — and is therefore more lethal than many an academic analysis.\nThe central question is not whether the nostalgia is accurate. The central question is: which current problem makes it attractive?\n4. Nostalgia as symptom There is wounded national pride in Hungary because the economies of Central European neighbours have overtaken a stagnating Hungary. The unexplained wealth of Orbán\u0026rsquo;s inner circle, which parades on luxury villas, yachts and private jets, also provokes anger. And yet a substantial part of the Hungarian population has voted for him for sixteen years. Not despite his failures, but partly because of his story.\nThis is the point that the progressive and liberal centre structurally misses. Nostalgia does not win because people are stupid. It wins because it offers a narrative that connects people\u0026rsquo;s fragmented experience into something comprehensible. There was a time when things were better. That time was taken from us. We can bring it back. The culprit is known.\nIt is wrong. But it is a story. And the centre no longer has a story — only policy documents.\nThe Hungarian elections are not just a contest between parties, but a test of whether a political change of power can still bring meaningful democratic change after years of state capture. But even if Orbán loses, that does not resolve the underlying problem: his system has become a reference point for illiberal actors across Europe. The question is not whether he stays in power — the question is who will tell the next Orbán-style story, and in which country.\n5. The antidote is not counter-nostalgia — it is going further back The wrong conclusion is that the centre must invent its own glorious past. A better version of the same drug is not a cure.\nBut there is another problem with the right-wing nostalgic timeline: it is simply too short. Orbán refers to pre-Trianon Hungary. Dutch nostalgics refer to the 1950s, or to the Belle Époque, or sometimes to the VOC era. Trump refers to a mythical America before the civil rights movement. These are all fairly recent reference points — and each has been carefully chosen to keep certain people in the picture and exclude others.\nGo further back, and the story changes completely.\nTake the idea of a closed, self-sufficient European nation-state as the historical norm. That norm has never existed. Already in the early Middle Ages, trade routes ran from India to Scandinavia — spices, silk, knowledge, technology moved via the Indian Ocean, the Arabian Sea, the Gulf and the Red Sea, overland through West Asia, via Venetian and Genoese trading posts to Western Europe. Nutmeg, pepper and cardamom were already known in European kitchens long before Vasco da Gama, and centuries before Jan Pieterszoon Coen massacred the Banda Islands to seize the monopoly. The Crusades did not bring knowledge to Europe — they collided with knowledge already in transit. To pretend that a closed Netherlands or a closed Europe would be a return to something normal is therefore not conservatism. It is historical fiction.\nThe same applies to the position of women. The tradwife ideal — submissive, domestic, dependent on her husband — is presented as a return to the natural order. But that timeline too is carefully edited film. Hunter-gatherers and early farmers very likely had a far more egalitarian division of labour than the late-medieval and early-modern hierarchy taken as the reference point. The stories of shield-maidens among the ancient Germanic peoples — women as warriors, as political actors — are not exceptions but part of a much older pattern. Wengrow and Graeber show that rigid gender hierarchy is historically the exception rather than the rule. The \u0026ldquo;natural order\u0026rdquo; of the tradwife is a fairly recent and geographically specific experiment, not an ancient standard.\nThat makes the irony of figures such as Eva Vlaardingenbroek or Lidewij de Vos, party leader and parliamentary leader of Forum for Democracy, almost too large to ignore. Both hold prominent public and political positions. Both simultaneously propagate the ideal of female submissiveness. That is not a consistent conservative position — it is the use of rights won by feminism to undermine feminism. You don\u0026rsquo;t even have to frame that moralistically. The logical contradiction speaks for itself.\nThe point of Wengrow and Graeber — and the reason why going further back is so politically useful — is precisely this: the past as an arsenal of possibilities. Not \u0026ldquo;things were better before\u0026rdquo; but \u0026ldquo;it has always been possible to do things differently, and the choices we now present as inevitable never were.\u0026rdquo; Nostalgia looks backward and excludes: this people, this glory, this territory, these gender relations. Memory looks backward in order to look forward — and discovers in doing so a world that was always more unpredictable, more diverse and more experimental than the nostalgics want to acknowledge.\nThe tradwife who ends up in 1917 is out of luck. But she could also have ended up in the year 900 CE, among the Norsemen, as a shield-maiden with an axe. The default is not what the nostalgics are selling. The default has always been more complicated than that.\nThis essay is the second in a series. The first essay, \u0026lsquo;Other Paths Were Always Possible\u0026rsquo;, was published earlier on luxzenburg.nl. The next contribution will be about systems thinking as a political instrument — and how fragmentation works as a governance strategy.\n","permalink":"https://luxzenburg.org/posts/the-past-as-a-weapon/","summary":"\u003ch1 id=\"the-past-as-a-weapon\"\u003eThe Past as a Weapon\u003c/h1\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eOn nostalgia as state strategy and why it works\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003chr\u003e\n\u003ch2 id=\"1-two-images-one-mechanism\"\u003e1. Two images, one mechanism\u003c/h2\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOn 27 January 2024, satirical Dutch outlet De Speld published a piece about a Dutch tradwife who longed so intensely for the past that she accidentally ended up in 1917 — and no longer has the right to vote. \u0026ldquo;Well, that\u0026rsquo;s a bit annoying,\u0026rdquo; she says to her 5,000 TikTok followers, washing dishes in full make-up. Spanish flu, World War One, and no say in anything. She is considering joining the Association for Women\u0026rsquo;s Suffrage.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The Past as a Weapon"},{"content":"This is not a blog in the traditional sense. No daily commentary, no news digest, no personal diary.\nLuxzenburg.nl is a place for essays. About geopolitics, society, history and the connections between them that are rarely named. Written from the conviction that most of the problems of our time do not stand alone — and that you cannot understand them in isolation either.\nI am Erik van Luxzenburg. By training a human geographer, specialising in political and cultural geography, geopolitics and macro-history. By character a systems thinker who struggles with loose fragments. By nature someone who thinks by writing and talking, not before.\nThe essays here move between the large and the small: from prehistoric governance to contemporary democratic crisis, from Islamic anarchist traditions to the question of why the Netherlands has a constitution frozen in 1848. Sometimes an essay begins with a news item. Sometimes with a book that loosened something. Always with the question: how does this connect to everything else?\nSome of the articles here are old — some date from the nineties, others from the early 2000s. They are here as historical documents: this is how I thought then, this is how those ideas grew. It is not an archive of finished work but a trail of continuous thinking.\nResponses, counterarguments and additions are welcome.\n","permalink":"https://luxzenburg.org/posts/first-post/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThis is not a blog in the traditional sense. No daily commentary, no news digest, no personal diary.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eLuxzenburg.nl is a place for essays. About geopolitics, society, history and the connections between them that are rarely named. Written from the conviction that most of the problems of our time do not stand alone — and that you cannot understand them in isolation either.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI am Erik van Luxzenburg. By training a human geographer, specialising in political and cultural geography, geopolitics and macro-history. By character a systems thinker who struggles with loose fragments. By nature someone who thinks by writing and talking, not before.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"First Post"},{"content":"Other Paths Were Always Possible An essay on systems thinking, prehistory and the narrative that is missing\n1. The hook: two ways to misuse the past In the magazine 1843 of The Economist I read the article How Graham Hancock became conspiracy theorists\u0026rsquo; favourite historian about Graham Hancock and his Netflix documentary about a glorious civilisation some 13,000 years ago that collapsed around 12,000 years ago. A story about the so-called Atlantis and the sages who built it, leaving behind grand ruins that still astonish us today. It is a reading of history that appeals to many: grand and sweeping, a lost paradise with us as its descendants. Unfortunately it is not supported by real science. Hancock says it himself in the article, almost accidentally: there is no evidence in what archaeologists have studied. That is a classic epistemic trap — the theory is formulated such that every absence of evidence becomes evidence of a cover-up. Archaeologists find nothing? Then they haven\u0026rsquo;t looked hard enough, or they\u0026rsquo;re hiding something. This mechanism makes the theory immune to refutation. It is not falsifiable in the Popperian sense. That is not proof the theory is correct, but it shields it from the normal corrective workings of science.\nHancock mystifies the past. David Wengrow and David Graeber do the opposite in The Dawn of Everything — they emancipate it. But neither reaches the broad public. Hancock wins on accessibility, Wengrow and Graeber on rigour. Meanwhile, politics is stuck in a third and more dangerous misuse of the past: the far right offers a glorious past from the 1950s, while those years were still a miserable time for many — marked by poverty, hunger and oppression. Glorious? Yes, if you were a white adult man, perhaps.\nThis essay is an attempt to do it differently: to use the past as an arsenal of possibilities, not as myth and not as nostalgia.\n2. The real problem: we think in isolated pieces We live in an era of grand challenges that are beginning to seem almost unsolvable for modern societies. When I read the news about affordability and the growing poverty that follows, it appears as a standalone problem. The same goes for the housing crisis. Or consider climate change and, specifically for the Netherlands: nitrogen pollution, PFAS, contamination of agricultural land, the rise of debilitating diseases such as diabetes, cancer, Parkinson\u0026rsquo;s and dementia.\nThe problem is not the individual problems. The problem is that we think in individual problems.\nTake glyphosate and Parkinson\u0026rsquo;s: the relationship is now stronger than \u0026ldquo;not proven.\u0026rdquo; There is consistent epidemiological evidence from farming communities in France, the US and Latin America. The IARC classified glyphosate in 2015 as \u0026ldquo;probably carcinogenic.\u0026rdquo; The counter-study by EFSA that cleared it was partly based on Monsanto\u0026rsquo;s own data — this has since come to light through the Monsanto Papers. The Netherlands is a particularly stark case: one of the highest pesticide applications per hectare in Europe, combined with an extremely dense built environment where agriculture and residential areas are intertwined. The PFAS contamination via Chemours in Dordrecht is now undeniable. That politics responds so slowly also has a governance explanation: the agricultural lobby is structurally better represented in The Hague than the public health interests of residents.\nBut look at what happens when you connect the problems instead of fragmenting them. Affordability and housing can be grouped together, as can climate and pollution. And with current geopolitics, those two overarching themes can be combined further: with rising oil prices, a climate measure like renewable energy suddenly also contributes to lower energy costs and thus to combating poverty. In passing, it also delivers more autonomy. Suddenly four problems become one challenge.\nThat connection, however, is not being made. The individual problems go unsolved, and this leads to distrust of politics. Populist and extremist parties then offer false solutions by blaming foreigners and political opponents — amplified by social media acting as a megaphone for extreme views. A slick story that resonates and taps into a deep longing for a paradisiacal past sticks well. Not a sustainable model.\n3. The past as arsenal But while politics is paralysed by isolated problems and the past is being misused as nostalgia, real science is doing something disruptive: it is discovering that the past itself was far more radical than we thought.\nThere is the story of Göbekli Tepe, discovered in 1994 by Klaus Schmidt: people without agriculture built a megalithic complex 12,000 years ago, with large buildings and sculptures, and then carefully buried it themselves. Why? We don\u0026rsquo;t know. I first read about it two or three years ago, because it only escaped the archaeological niche between 2015 and 2018 via podcasts and YouTube — and ironically via Hancock himself, who writes extensively about it. Science made the discovery. The alternative scene did the popularisation. That is a structural failure.\nWengrow and Graeber connect Göbekli Tepe with a whole series of fascinating examples in The Dawn of Everything. Two lessons are crucial. First: other paths were always possible. The linear history from hunter-gatherer to city-state to empire to complex bureaucracy is not that linear. Second: early human societies were far more experimental and politically conscious than the standard narrative suggests.\nThe best example is Teotihuacan. At its height (100–550 CE) the city had some 100,000 to 200,000 inhabitants — comparable to Rome at the time. What is remarkable is that there are no identifiable royal tombs, no monumental glorification of individual rulers as among the Maya. The art is largely collective and cosmological in character. There was initially probably a central power of some kind of nobility or priestly class. That disappeared, presumably through a revolt, after which a cooperative bottom-up model took its place.\nWhat followed is impressive. The so-called apartment compounds — residential blocks for extended family groups — became suddenly larger around 300 CE, better built, equipped with drainage and courtyards. Archaeologist Linda Manzanilla has shown that these complexes were relatively autonomous economic and religious units. No top-down allocation, but organised self-determination within an urban framework. The city attracted people from the surrounding region, people with different cultural backgrounds who were all housed in dwellings meeting the latest hygienic standards. They apparently paid no heed to so-called economic laws or free markets when building these residential compounds.\nThe city appeared to function through distributed governance — multiple centres of power, with religious, economic and political functions not concentrated in one person or institution. Whether that was a deliberate political choice or an emergent system, we do not know. But it worked, for a long time.\n4. Constitutional imagination Applying an approach like Teotihuacan\u0026rsquo;s to our current society requires constitutional flexibility. We could organise politics differently to break through the division between political tribes.\nFor this, the Great Law of Peace of the Haudenosaunee is interesting for a specific reason: it has a built-in mechanism for revision and an explicit principle of seventh-generation thinking — decisions are tested against their effect seven generations into the future. That is structurally the opposite of the four-year electoral cycle that forces every politician into short-term thinking.\nThe electoral cycle in Western Democracy versus Seventh-Generation Thinking among the Haudenosaunee\nIceland made an attempt at constitutional revision after 2008 via a citizens\u0026rsquo; assembly — literally crowdsourcing the constitution. The process was fascinating; the result was blocked by parliament. But it proved it could be done. Unfortunately, existing power structures prevented this adaptation because it went against their personal interests.\nIn the Netherlands, experiments with citizens\u0026rsquo; assemblies are now running here and there, such as the Climate Citizens\u0026rsquo; Assembly. The criticism is always: they are not binding. That is true — as long as the constitutional structure itself does not change, they remain advisory. But there is another criticism that is plainly wrong: that citizens\u0026rsquo; assemblies are not democratic. We have a completely mistaken picture of what democracy is.\nIn ancient Athens there were elections. But these were considered the least democratic — because popularity determined who won. Real democracy lay in the sortition of the popular assembly. Every free male citizen of Athens could be drawn by lot for one year to help govern. This prevented populists from gaining unlimited power. Exactly what we now see in Western democracies: populists who spread their too-good-to-be-true stories best via algorithms are doing well. That in doing so they call for the overthrow of democracy is accepted by many as a side effect — because the current system is not solving the problems.\nPippa Norris and Ronald Inglehart showed in Cultural Backlash (2019) that populist authoritarianism does not primarily stem from economic anxiety alone, but from a combination of material insecurity and the feeling that established politics structurally does not listen. From affordability and housing through climate and pollution to distrust to radicalisation. That is not speculation. It is a demonstrable pattern.\n5. The missing narrative — and where it begins Radical parties offer non-solutions — pointing to culprits instead of changing structures. But they win because they do have a narrative. A coherent, emotionally satisfying story about why things are going wrong and who is to blame. However primitive.\nThe centre no longer has a story. It has policy documents.\nAnd yet a narrative is possible that connects and appeals to the desire for things to be different. Let us then build a narrative grounded in conservative ideas — only somewhat more conservative than the non-existent glorious 1950s, something more like Teotihuacan in the year 500 CE. And somewhat less Eurocentric, drawing more on the Haudenosaunee for constitutional flexibility. A narrative that connects problems instead of fragmenting them, uses historical examples of different ways of organising, is pragmatic rather than moralising, and gives people agency instead of blame.\nThat is precisely what Hancock does — only for the past. He says: there was another world possible, and it was wiped away. That resonates. The political translation would be: other paths were always possible, and they still are. Graeber and Wengrow say the same, but too academically to land broadly.\nThis essay is a first step toward changing that. At least five more essays will follow to explore the above further and build the narrative.\n","permalink":"https://luxzenburg.org/posts/other-paths-were-always-possible/","summary":"\u003ch1 id=\"other-paths-were-always-possible\"\u003eOther Paths Were Always Possible\u003c/h1\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eAn essay on systems thinking, prehistory and the narrative that is missing\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003chr\u003e\n\u003ch2 id=\"1-the-hook-two-ways-to-misuse-the-past\"\u003e1. The hook: two ways to misuse the past\u003c/h2\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn the magazine \u003cem\u003e1843\u003c/em\u003e of \u003cem\u003eThe Economist\u003c/em\u003e I read the article \u003cem\u003eHow Graham Hancock became conspiracy theorists\u0026rsquo; favourite historian\u003c/em\u003e about Graham Hancock and his Netflix documentary about a glorious civilisation some 13,000 years ago that collapsed around 12,000 years ago. A story about the so-called Atlantis and the sages who built it, leaving behind grand ruins that still astonish us today. It is a reading of history that appeals to many: grand and sweeping, a lost paradise with us as its descendants. Unfortunately it is not supported by real science. Hancock says it himself in the article, almost accidentally: there is no evidence in what archaeologists have studied. That is a classic epistemic trap — the theory is formulated such that every absence of evidence becomes evidence of a cover-up. Archaeologists find nothing? Then they haven\u0026rsquo;t looked hard enough, or they\u0026rsquo;re hiding something. This mechanism makes the theory immune to refutation. It is not falsifiable in the Popperian sense. That is not proof the theory is correct, but it shields it from the normal corrective workings of science.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Other Paths Were Always Possible"},{"content":" This article was originally written on 30 March 2014 and published on blog.luxzenburg.org — twelve years before the large-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, and eight years before Finland\u0026rsquo;s accession to NATO. It is republished here as a historical document and reflects the author\u0026rsquo;s ideas at the time of writing.\nAn article in the Times of India gives pause for thought. According to a former Russian Minister of Economic Affairs, Putin does not only want Crimea back. Belarus, more parts of Ukraine, and even EU member state Finland he reportedly wants to \u0026lsquo;reclaim\u0026rsquo; — to restore the old Russian Empire.\nViewed from our frame of reference, a war of conquest is unthinkable. Many politicians and commentators insist that Putin is not pursuing that goal either. The Crimea annexation was a kind of impulse, an accident, some say.\nBut from the perspective of a Putin or another autocrat, it is entirely logical. He has been in his position far longer than any of his opponents in the West. Patience is a virtue. President Bush was a hawk — surrounded by hawks — who had to be watched carefully. Currently, a dove occupies the White House who will not strike back quickly. As for the leaders of European member states, he currently has nothing to fear from them: they are busy navel-gazing, afraid of losing power to populist nationalists, and trying to solve the economic crisis. In the process, they are hopelessly divided on the international stage. A perfect opportunity to see how far you can push your goals.\nOf course, one can question the claims of a minister who fell from Putin\u0026rsquo;s favour some time ago. The man may want to settle a score.\nBut I return to the point of our defence. Cutting defence budgets further is undesirable. Better safe than sorry. As Obama already said: Europe must honour its commitments. The NATO agreement is to spend 2% of GDP on defence. Only Poland and Norway come close to that. The Netherlands currently spends just 1.3% on defence and wants to cut further.\nEU member states see advantages in cooperation, but in the meantime they all want everything: their own tanks, their own fighter jets, their own transport aircraft, their own paratroopers, their own submarines, aircraft carriers. The US spends 600 billion dollars — more than the rest of the world combined — on defence, and has one paratrooper training programme. Russia spends 90 billion. Also one. EU member states jointly spend 290 billion and divide this across 28 separate programmes.\nAt some point, the nationalist egos of politicians and citizens will need to be set aside in order to truly cooperate. Do we really need to bloody our noses in a drawn-out, bloody war first, before we can say we have learned from history?\n","permalink":"https://luxzenburg.org/posts/putin-finland-2014/","summary":"\u003cblockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eThis article was originally written on 30 March 2014 and published on blog.luxzenburg.org — twelve years before the large-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, and eight years before Finland\u0026rsquo;s accession to NATO. It is republished here as a historical document and reflects the author\u0026rsquo;s ideas at the time of writing.\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/blockquote\u003e\n\u003chr\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAn article in the Times of India gives pause for thought. According to a former Russian Minister of Economic Affairs, Putin does not only want Crimea back. Belarus, more parts of Ukraine, and even EU member state Finland he reportedly wants to \u0026lsquo;reclaim\u0026rsquo; — to restore the old Russian Empire.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Russian Ex-Minister: Putin Also Wants Finland — Are We Prepared?"},{"content":" This article was originally written on 1 December 2012 and published on blog.luxzenburg.org. It is republished here as a historical document and reflects the author\u0026rsquo;s ideas at the time of writing.\nNu.nl headlines: First flight of new European combat aircraft. The French Dassault has invested around 400 million euros in the aircraft — a remarkably low amount for a more advanced aircraft than the JSF. Far better value for money than what the Americans have delivered in developing comparable aircraft.\nWhy does the Netherlands not cooperate more intensively within the EU? There is far more to gain from that than from being a junior partner in an American project in which we have virtually no say — and certainly no ownership.\nThe logic is simple. EU member states jointly spend around 290 billion dollars on defence. But they divide this across 28 paratrooper training programmes, 27 small air forces, equally many small navies and tank units. The aircraft of the Europeans were all designed in the 1970s, with the occasional exception (Eurofighter Typhoon) from the 1980s. Those of the Americans, Russians and Chinese were designed in the 1990s and the first decade of this century.\nThe Americans spend — at 600 billion dollars — more on defence than the rest of the world combined. They have one paratrooper training programme. Russia spends 90 billion. Also one. The EU spends 290 billion and divides this across 28 separate programmes.\nEvery individual member state loses out. If we cooperate with the current fragmented resources, we also lose out. At some point the nationalist egos of politicians and citizens will truly need to be set aside in order to cooperate effectively. Only then do we stand a chance — against a more assertive Russia, or any other country.\nThe Americans have repeatedly indicated that a free ride on their robust defence cannot continue indefinitely. There\u0026rsquo;s no such thing as a free lunch. Do we really need to bloody our noses in a drawn-out, bloody war first, before we can say we have learned from history?\n","permalink":"https://luxzenburg.org/posts/european-defence/","summary":"\u003cblockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eThis article was originally written on 1 December 2012 and published on blog.luxzenburg.org. It is republished here as a historical document and reflects the author\u0026rsquo;s ideas at the time of writing.\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/blockquote\u003e\n\u003chr\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eNu.nl headlines: \u003cem\u003eFirst flight of new European combat aircraft.\u003c/em\u003e The French Dassault has invested around 400 million euros in the aircraft — a remarkably low amount for a more advanced aircraft than the JSF. Far better value for money than what the Americans have delivered in developing comparable aircraft.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Why the Netherlands Should Cooperate on European Defence"},{"content":" This article was originally written on 5 March 2012 and published on blog.luxzenburg.org. It is republished here as a historical document and reflects the author\u0026rsquo;s ideas at the time of writing.\nA well-written article about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, by an American scholar on Al Jazeera. He argues why the debate over whether a Palestinian nation exists is nonsense. The Palestinian nation is just as invented as the Israeli nation.\nJudging by the scholar\u0026rsquo;s name, he appears to have a Jewish background. If so, his contribution to the dialogue is all the more valuable: people who bridge the \u0026lsquo;camps\u0026rsquo; — that is ultimately where peace must come from.\nNot from the Newt Gingriches of this world, who think in boxes, take sides and deliver rhetoric that some far-right figures in Europe would not yet dare to voice.\nThe core of the argument is simple but powerful: both \u0026rsquo;nations\u0026rsquo; are, in the modern sense of the word, constructs. Palestinian identity as a national category was largely formed in response to the Zionist project. Israeli national identity was formed by the return of diaspora Jews to a land that had never been a single coherent Jewish state. That makes neither identity \u0026lsquo;fake\u0026rsquo; or less valid — but it strips both parties of the argument of historical exclusivity.\nWhoever recognises that nations are made and not found can perhaps also recognise that they can be remade — in a way that leaves room for more than one story.\n","permalink":"https://luxzenburg.org/posts/palestinian-israeli-nation/","summary":"\u003cblockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eThis article was originally written on 5 March 2012 and published on blog.luxzenburg.org. It is republished here as a historical document and reflects the author\u0026rsquo;s ideas at the time of writing.\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/blockquote\u003e\n\u003chr\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eA well-written article about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, by an American scholar on Al Jazeera. He argues why the debate over whether a Palestinian nation exists is nonsense. The Palestinian nation is just as invented as the Israeli nation.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eJudging by the scholar\u0026rsquo;s name, he appears to have a Jewish background. If so, his contribution to the dialogue is all the more valuable: people who bridge the \u0026lsquo;camps\u0026rsquo; — that is ultimately where peace must come from.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The Palestinian Nation Is Just as Much an Invention as the Israeli Nation"},{"content":" This article was originally written around 2008 and published on Google Knol. It is republished here as a historical document and reflects the author\u0026rsquo;s ideas at the time of writing.\nThis is part of the Project Policrateia series.\nMuslim Anarchism sounds to many like an illusion, as most Muslim nations are known for harsh governments and suppression. However, Islam has many anarchist tendencies incorporated. This article will study these anarchist components and offer an alternative for Islamic politics.\nIntroduction Anarchism is an ideology which deeply affected human life since the 19th century — in both positive and negative ways. Anarchists have influenced historical events and societies all over the world. The deeper philosophy of anarchism has been laid down by the likes of the French philosopher Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, the Russian thinkers Mikhail Bakunin and Peter Kropotkin, and the famous writer Leo Tolstoy. The last is of special notice here, because his thoughts combine the anarchist idea with religion. Tolstoy is one of the leading figures of the Christian Anarchist movement.\nIt was this movement, combined with developments in Islamic societies, that made me wonder. Many Muslims would prefer the Caliphate and a Khalifa to return to rule them, as it is to many the only true Islamic form of government. Though their version of the Khalifa does in most cases not differ from the average corrupt and despotic rule in the Middle East to date. When we look at the few cases in which an Islamist revolution succeeded, a corrupted state emerged. Iran and Afghanistan under the Taliban are notorious examples of how such a corrupted worldview would occur. By thinking along the lines of the mullahs and ayatollahs, these people ignore the concept of Shûra and other important Islamic thought. Perhaps they ignore Shûra because most Muslims have never experienced any form of it in their lives, living as they do under some form of oppressive government. As Shûra is said to require an Amir/Emir/Ameer to lead the people and consult them before making a decision, they accept any ruler even when this ruler does not consult them. They probably do not know what to do when consulted.\nFrom a Muslim Anarchist point of view, such an Emir does not have to be a human. A Muslim Anarchist considers Allah (swt) to be the only Emir to whom he or she pays allegiance. That stems from the anarchist view that no human can make another human listen, unless it is the free will of that other person to do so. Combined with the aforementioned concept of Shûra, this enables Muslim Anarchists to create consensus in accordance with the will of Allah (swt) as laid down in the Qur\u0026rsquo;an and the Hadith, and to prevent chaos from ruling their society.\nIslam is, according to many, a religion that can be simple in all its complexity, as well as complex in all its simplicity.\nWorking on a workable Muslim Anarchist framework will take time. The nature of anarchism also means that people will tend to disagree with each other. In this regard, Islam will provide a natural constitution for anarchists to agree upon, as the Qur\u0026rsquo;an and Hadith provide straightforward guidelines for humankind to live by.\nHistorical anarchist tendencies in Islam Throughout history there have been anti-authoritarian movements within Islam, though they are not well documented and it is unclear how much impact they have had on mainstream Islam.\nThe first recorded strand of anti-authoritarian Islam dates back to the death of the third Caliph Uthmān ibn Affān. A dispute over his succession resulted in the Shia–Sunni split. There was a third group, however — the Kharijites — who opposed both sects and claimed that any qualified Muslim could be an Imam. They held that all people were individually responsible for the good or evil of their acts, challenged all authority, and encouraged everyone — especially the poor and dispossessed — to see the struggle against injustice as divinely sanctioned. Although the Kharijites saw all believers as completely equal regardless of social differences, they believed that non-believers had no rights. At least one sect of the Kharijites, the Najdiyya, believed that if no suitable imam was present in the community, the position could be dispensed with altogether.\nA strand of Mutazalite thought paralleled that of the Najdiyya: if rulers inevitably became tyrants, then the only acceptable course of action was to stop installing rulers.\nAs both Sunni and Shia Islam developed into authoritarian ideologies, the libertarian ideas within Islam continued most strongly through Sufism — the mystical strand of Islam. Sufism was widespread at the edges of the Islamic empires, in secluded areas, developing under the influence of eastern philosophy; anti-authoritarian and revolutionary ideas are present throughout its history. Many Sufi orders and Sufis advocated and struggled for women\u0026rsquo;s equality and social justice. Sufism also provided much of Islamic poetry and literature where these tendencies are visible. One of the most famous Sufi poets was the Persian writer Farid al-Din Attar (13th century CE). In one of his works, he tells the story of a Sufi teacher, Fozail-e Iyaz, and the fifth Abbasid Caliph Harun al-Rashid: as Harun seeks someone in his kingdom to tell him the truth about himself, he finds Fozail — the only person who speaks honestly, without fawning. Fozail tells him that he respects no authority and that \u0026ldquo;to obey God for one moment is better than a thousand years of people obeying you.\u0026rdquo;\nCurrent figures and trends The French cartoonist Gustave-Henri Jossot, a frequent contributor to anarchist magazines, converted to Islam in 1913, citing \u0026ldquo;simplicity, no priests, no dogmas and almost no ceremonies\u0026rdquo; as reasons. After the change, he continued to criticise the idea of a fatherland, demanded equal payment for all, and rejected political action, violence and formal education. He rejected social action with the rationale that change is only possible on an individual level.\nAn important and influential figure in the 20th century was Ali Shariati, one of the ideologues of the Islamic Revolution in Iran, of whom Jean-Paul Sartre said: \u0026ldquo;I have no religion, but if I were to choose one, it would be Shariati\u0026rsquo;s.\u0026rdquo; After the revolution took on a particularly vicious authoritarian note, Shariati was imprisoned for his lectures — enormously popular with students — and was forced to flee Iran. He was assassinated shortly afterwards. Although Shariati was not an anarchist, his vision of Islam was one of a revolutionary religion siding with the poor. He believed that the only true reflection of the Islamic concept of Tawhid (unity and oneness of God) is a classless society.\nOn 20 June 2005, Yakoub Islam, a British-born convert to Islam, published his online Muslim Anarchist Charter. The charter asserted a set of basic principles for anarchist thought and action founded on a Muslim perspective. It reaffirmed some of the core principles of Islam — belief in God, the prophecy of Muhammad and the human soul — but asserted the possibility that a Muslim\u0026rsquo;s spiritual path might be achieved by refusing to compromise with institutional power in any form, be it judicial, religious, social, corporate or political.\nThe Qur\u0026rsquo;anic verse that perhaps most powerfully encapsulates this thought:\n\u0026ldquo;If you were to obey a human being like yourselves, then verily you indeed would be losers.\u0026rdquo; — Surah 23, Al-Mu\u0026rsquo;minun, Ayat 34\nThis verse proves that Islam does contain anarchist elements. The renouncement of human government appears clearly in the Qur\u0026rsquo;an: no Muslim should obey any other Muslim, but only listen to others in order to make up their own mind.\nSee also the Project Policrateia series.\n","permalink":"https://luxzenburg.org/posts/muslim-anarchism/","summary":"\u003cblockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eThis article was originally written around 2008 and published on Google Knol. It is republished here as a historical document and reflects the author\u0026rsquo;s ideas at the time of writing.\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/blockquote\u003e\n\u003chr\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eThis is part of the \u003ca href=\"/tags/policrateia\"\u003eProject Policrateia series\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMuslim Anarchism sounds to many like an illusion, as most Muslim nations are known for harsh governments and suppression. However, Islam has many anarchist tendencies incorporated. This article will study these anarchist components and offer an alternative for Islamic politics.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Muslim Anarchism"},{"content":" This article was originally written around 2008 and published on Google Knol. It is republished here as a historical document and reflects the author\u0026rsquo;s ideas at the time of writing.\nThis is part of the Project Policrateia series.\nPolicrateia is a political system based on the best values of democracy, federalism and aristocracy. Why these three? Democracy is chosen because it is a widely accepted form of government that gives citizens the ability to choose and to maintain influence in government. Federalism is a political form that places power as close to the citizens as possible. By aristocracy is meant the political form described by Plato and Machiavelli: \u0026ldquo;the government of some gives the most powerful decision-making abilities; the government of many is weak government. Democracy is only a solution to keep as many people as possible satisfied.\u0026rdquo;\nThe polis as foundation In Policrateia, the federal system gives power to the city or county — the polis (Greek for city, hence the name Policrateia: city-power). A polis can be a city, like ancient Athens, but also a group of villages or a combination of a city and surrounding villages. The foundation is the democratic fundamental right of citizens: they have the right to choose the size of their polis, its political structure, and the power level of its government.\nBelow are some possible political forms — with the note that almost endless variations can be created:\nPeoples-Policracy The most fundamental form: all inhabitants of a community hold power. There is no assembly making laws, nor need there be a government — at most an executive authority that reports to a peoples\u0026rsquo; congress in which every adult citizen has a seat. The peoples\u0026rsquo; congress is derived from the Athenian assembly and functions through debate.\nParliamentary-Policracy This middle form operates much like the peoples-policratic form, but here the people elect an assembly to make laws and an executive authority to handle daily affairs. Both are elected at different times — the assembly in January, the executive authority in July — so that each governmental body operates for at least one year.\nAristocratic-Policracy In this case the people delegate their powers for at least one year and a maximum of three and a half years. The executive and law-making powers rest with a single body: the aristocratic council, in which some of the community\u0026rsquo;s notable citizens hold seats. The aristocrats are not hereditary but are elected to a lifelong function. After demonstrating service to the community, someone may be nominated and voted in — or not — at the annual peoples\u0026rsquo; congress.\nThe Poleis State The next stage in Policrateia is the union of poleis into a state. Preferably, the power of a polis in the state depends on its financial strength and number of inhabitants. All poleis send their deputies to the Poleis Congress (PC). Since the relative economic position and population of a polis can fluctuate, voting weights in the PC are periodically adjusted. Decision-making in the PC requires a qualified majority of 67%.\nThe tasks of the PC are: creating and managing the Central Bank, International Relations, Defence, and inter-polis infrastructure. The allocation of social funds may also become a PC task. The PC functions as a parliamentary democracy — this means there will likely be far more Members of the Poleis Congress (MPCs) than there are now members of parliament: in a country like the UK, approximately 1,500. To manage daily affairs, the PC installs a Government which functions as Machiavelli\u0026rsquo;s aristocrat, since it is impossible to have all MPCs work daily on everything together. The PC convenes monthly to evaluate the Government.\nFees and commissions for politicians The members of the Poleis Congress and the Government do not receive exorbitant salaries, but only expense commissions. They work for the citizens, but are also citizens themselves. Politics should be like a professional hobby, not a job. This prevents the emergence of a caste of professional politicians, as politicians stop after a time to find work and earn money in the real economy. This is akin to Plato\u0026rsquo;s idea of philosophers and soldiers. According to this same philosophy, the buildings of the Poleis Congress and the Government should be sober, without any luxury.\nSee also the other articles in the Project Policrateia series: A New World, The Celtic Confederation and Muslim Anarchism.\n","permalink":"https://luxzenburg.org/posts/policrateia-why-democracy-is-not-enough/","summary":"\u003cblockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eThis article was originally written around 2008 and published on Google Knol. It is republished here as a historical document and reflects the author\u0026rsquo;s ideas at the time of writing.\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/blockquote\u003e\n\u003chr\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eThis is part of the \u003ca href=\"/tags/policrateia\"\u003eProject Policrateia series\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ePolicrateia is a political system based on the best values of democracy, federalism and aristocracy. Why these three? Democracy is chosen because it is a widely accepted form of government that gives citizens the ability to choose and to maintain influence in government. Federalism is a political form that places power as close to the citizens as possible. By aristocracy is meant the political form described by Plato and Machiavelli: \u0026ldquo;the government of some gives the most powerful decision-making abilities; the government of many is weak government. Democracy is only a solution to keep as many people as possible satisfied.\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Policrateia: Why Democracy Is Not Enough"},{"content":" This article was originally written around 2008 and published on Google Knol. It is republished here as a historical document and reflects the author\u0026rsquo;s ideas at the time of writing.\nThis is part of the Project Policrateia series.\nIntroduction The Celtic Confederation is a proposal for a cultural confederation for the Celtic Nations in Europe. Besides the cultural aspects, economic cooperation and international lobbying — mostly at the European Union — can also become part of the confederation\u0026rsquo;s tasks. Another aspect worth considering is the development of education and science policy.\nAs two of the nations are part of the United Kingdom and one is part of France, guarantees shall be built in to prevent those two nations from feeling threatened. One such guarantee is that Ireland shall sign a mutual defence treaty with the UK, which can only be cancelled when both nations agree. With this treaty, the UK is assured that the confederation is no threat to its territorial integrity. For France another measure must be taken. One option is that Brittany receives the status of partner region of the confederation rather than full member. Although in practice, this will make little effective difference.\nNotes by I. Klees: A confederation of Celtic nations would be useful if the main purpose were to preserve the Celtic identity of the involved nations and to direct resources toward promoting and safeguarding their common cultural heritage. France and the UK do have an interest in this, since any constituent part of these countries with a distinct identity is bound to attract tourism and hence revenue.\nProposed Members Ireland Northern Ireland Isle of Man Scotland Wales Cornwall Brittany This region is quite different from the two groups above (Scotland \u0026amp; Ireland, Wales \u0026amp; Northern Ireland) because it is part of France rather than the UK. Despite the image that the Celtic language is mainly extinct, the Breton language (ar Brezhoneg) is still one of the most living Celtic languages — spoken by about 8% of the population, and much more widely than Icelandic. About 300,000 persons can speak Breton in Brittany (about 500,000 worldwide). Even if it has been greatly damaged by French centralisation, it is still more vital than Scots Gaelic.\nThe French constitution is highly centralistic, giving little power to regions. Departments 22 (Côtes-du-Nord), 29 (Finistère), 35 (Ille-et-Vilaine) and 56 (Morbihan) form the \u0026ldquo;Région-Bretagne\u0026rdquo;, grouping four of the five Breton departments. The fifth Breton department, Loire-Atlantique, is part of the \u0026ldquo;Pays-de-la-Loire\u0026rdquo; region. The Bretons currently hold some hope of administrative reunification.\nThe Confederation The topmost authority for these Celtic regions shall be a confederate one. Why a confederation and not a federation? Because the Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish members are part of the UK, and Brittany is part of France — making a stronger federation impossible. The confederation shall not be named as such, since the UK and France would object. A possible solution is that it be established as a foundation in Ireland, the only fully independent Celtic nation.\nThe organisation is structured so that the members (the poleis) elect the Board of Governors (B.o.G.), which acts as the confederation parliament. From the B.o.G., a Board of Directors (B.o.D.) is elected, which serves as the actual government. Its members function as secretaries for each policy area: Celtic Culture \u0026amp; Heritage, Education, Economic Development and Cooperation, and Agriculture, Fishery, Forestry and Environmental Conservation. The B.o.D. has at least six members — one secretary per policy area, plus a Secretary-General acting as Prime Minister.\nSecretary-General This person chairs the B.o.D., sets the main policy outline and acts as Secretary of Foreign Affairs. He or she represents the Confederation at the European Union and may send ambassadors to EU offices within the confederation\u0026rsquo;s policy areas. The Confederation can use Irish embassies; at these embassies, a confederation office with representatives from Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and Brittany cooperates with the Irish staff.\nSecretary of Celtic Culture \u0026amp; Heritage After the Secretary-General, this is the most important person in the B.o.D. Tasks include encouraging cultural events for Celts within the Confederation and worldwide, and guarding Celtic heritage: historical sites and buildings.\nThe International Celtic Games\nOrganised by the International Celtic Games Organisation (ICO), these are the Olympics for Celts worldwide. Not only Irish, Northern Irish, Scottish, Welsh and Breton teams participate, but also teams from the USA, Australia, New Zealand and (South) Africa — at least 21 teams in total. The games consist mainly of typical Celtic disciplines: stone throwing, log throwing and hurling, alongside regular athletics and typical British sports such as rugby, football, hockey and cricket. Cultural competitions in bagpiping, sword dancing, poetry, theatre and music round out the programme. The games are held every two years, alternating summer and winter, rotating between Scotland, Ireland, Wales, Brittany and Northern Ireland.\nThe CBC\nThe Celtic Broadcasting Cooperation is the new pan-Celtic broadcaster: a merger between the Scottish BBC and the National Irish Broadcaster. It broadcasts regionally in the English dialect of each nation (or in French for Brittany) and in the Celtic language. Via the CBC World Service it reaches the Celtic diaspora worldwide.\nSecretary of Education \u0026amp; Science Education is a crucial tool for nation-building. Celts have always been important scientists with a strong sense of national identity. The British Empire grew partly thanks to Celtic inventors and philosophers (the Scots Adam Smith and James Watt). The Secretary of Education \u0026amp; Science must encourage this scientific focus and, in coordination with the nations, design a new educational approach applicable in every language and Celtic sub-culture.\nSecretary of Economic Affairs This person oversees the economic development of the confederation members. Where internal development is a task for the national parliament or polis, the Confederation focuses on international institutions. It lobbies the UK, France and the EU for investments and subsidies, and coordinates cooperation between members. A specific task is the development of Celtic crafts — small businesses producing silverwork, goldwork and similar goods in typical Celtic styles — alongside promoting tourism to the Celtic nations.\nSecretary of Agriculture, Fishery and Forestry This secretary coordinates the national parliaments on these issues. Fishery in the Irish Sea in particular requires coordination, as Northern Ireland, Scotland, Wales and Ireland all border it and make economic claims. Together with the Secretary of Environmental Conservation, the secretary works on developing new agricultural techniques and forestry methods.\nSecretary of Environmental Conservation This secretary not only preserves natural heritage but also ensures healthy urban environments. The role effectively combines classical environmental and nature conservation, urban planning and public health. In cooperation with the poleis and nations, new city plans are designed, new public transport initiatives are encouraged, and classical nature conservation tasks are carried out.\nSecurity Since the UK parliament is able to withdraw Scottish and Welsh autonomy, both authorities must build in a security mechanism. Their parliament or assembly can create associations and merge with them — for example a Scottish Parliament Association and a Welsh Assembly Association of which every Scot and Welshman is a member. The Board of Governors then effectively constitutes the members of parliament, who in turn elect the government or Board of Directors. The specific departments are structured as foundations; the Secretary of Culture thus becomes the director of the Cultural Foundation. Should the UK withdraw autonomy, the Scots, Welsh and Northern Irish can maintain their autonomy through this structure. The same system applies to Brittany, should the French government seek to constrain their autonomy.\nSee also the Project Policrateia series, which offers relevant philosophies for sub-sovereign forms of governance.\n","permalink":"https://luxzenburg.org/posts/the-celtic-confederation/","summary":"\u003cblockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eThis article was originally written around 2008 and published on Google Knol. It is republished here as a historical document and reflects the author\u0026rsquo;s ideas at the time of writing.\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/blockquote\u003e\n\u003chr\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eThis is part of the \u003ca href=\"/tags/policrateia\"\u003eProject Policrateia series\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003ch2 id=\"introduction\"\u003eIntroduction\u003c/h2\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe Celtic Confederation is a proposal for a cultural confederation for the Celtic Nations in Europe. Besides the cultural aspects, economic cooperation and international lobbying — mostly at the European Union — can also become part of the confederation\u0026rsquo;s tasks. Another aspect worth considering is the development of education and science policy.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The Celtic Confederation"},{"content":" This article was originally written on 8 October 2009 and published on blog.luxzenburg.org. It is republished here as a historical document and reflects the author\u0026rsquo;s ideas at the time of writing.\nOpenDemocracy, an open-source knowledge network and think tank on international politics, publishes a compelling essay on borders by Parag Khanna. He gives a tour d\u0026rsquo;horizon of geopolitics, seen through the lens of infrastructural connections.\nA fascinating picture, with many maps. It raises a question for me: what do we make of this, and what does it mean for us? Can we create a world in which we are united by lines on maps — infrastructure, trade, connection — rather than divided by other lines: borders?\nKhanna\u0026rsquo;s argument is essentially that the world is increasingly defined by corridors of flow — goods, energy, people, data — and less by the sovereign territories that occupy the centre of traditional maps. Whoever controls the corridors holds power. Whoever falls outside the corridors is irrelevant.\nIt is a thought that fascinates me as a political geographer. The border as dividing line is, historically speaking, a relatively recent and particularly fragile concept. The infrastructure we build — motorways, pipelines, fibre-optic cables, trade routes — determines in practice more about who belongs with whom than any line on a political map.\n","permalink":"https://luxzenburg.org/posts/united-by-lines-on-the-map/","summary":"\u003cblockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eThis article was originally written on 8 October 2009 and published on blog.luxzenburg.org. It is republished here as a historical document and reflects the author\u0026rsquo;s ideas at the time of writing.\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/blockquote\u003e\n\u003chr\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOpenDemocracy, an open-source knowledge network and think tank on international politics, publishes a compelling essay on borders by Parag Khanna. He gives a tour d\u0026rsquo;horizon of geopolitics, seen through the lens of infrastructural connections.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eA fascinating picture, with many maps. It raises a question for me: what do we make of this, and what does it mean for us? Can we create a world in which we are united by lines on maps — infrastructure, trade, connection — rather than divided by other lines: borders?\u003c/p\u003e","title":"United by Lines on the Map, Not Divided"},{"content":" This article was originally written on 22 April 2008 and published on blog.luxzenburg.org. It is republished here as a historical document and reflects the author\u0026rsquo;s ideas at the time of writing.\nThe Dutch like to think of the Netherlands as an enlightened nation — a beacon of civilisation in a sea of outdated, backward ideas. We were, after all, the first to give same-sex couples the right to marry, the first to legalise euthanasia. So we must be progressive! But is this really the case? Are we truly as emancipated as we think?\nRecently in the Netherlands, the debate flared up again over whether, following Norway\u0026rsquo;s example, we should introduce quotas for businesses and politics requiring at least 40% women in senior positions. The PvdA agreed with FNV chair Agnes Jongerius that it would be a good idea. The Christian parties CDA and CU were against — officially because the benefit had not been proven, in the words of CDA Minister of Social Affairs Donner.\nThe question is: has the benefit not been proven? After introduction in Norway, the share of women at the top of business rose to more than 35%. In the Netherlands, fewer than 10% of senior leadership positions are held by women. Overall female labour participation also lags behind European averages. Even Mediterranean countries, known for their macho culture, are ahead of us.\nWhatever excuse is offered — they remain excuses. We can only conclude that we grant equal rights to gay people while still holding women back. Women structurally earn less than men in equivalent positions. The Netherlands has fewer female ministers than other European countries. We lecture Muslim-majority countries on women\u0026rsquo;s emancipation — yet we have never had a woman as head of state. Muslim-majority Pakistan, Bangladesh and Indonesia have. Who are we to lecture them?\nAnd then today: newspaper Dag reports on the new Spanish cabinet. Of 17 ministers, 9 are women, including Carme Chacón — the seven-months-pregnant Minister of Defence. Spain has a strong macho culture. Until 1974 women had no rights there; after the transition from Franco\u0026rsquo;s dictatorship to democracy, that changed rapidly. Spain only joined the European Union in 1986. The Netherlands refused until 1984 to implement the European rules for equal treatment of men and women.\nIt needs to be said, plainly: we are a hypocritical country that only respects women\u0026rsquo;s rights under international pressure. We do not give them equal opportunities and have no will to advance them. Childcare is too expensive, we argue — Scandinavian countries have therefore made it free. Men receive fewer days of leave after births and cannot make use of care leave as women do. In short, there is a distinction between men and women, and politics is neither willing nor able to address it.\nWhere are the women protesting this? Or do they, like Spain, need a man to grant them equal rights?\n","permalink":"https://luxzenburg.org/posts/europes-backward-hinterland/","summary":"\u003cblockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eThis article was originally written on 22 April 2008 and published on blog.luxzenburg.org. It is republished here as a historical document and reflects the author\u0026rsquo;s ideas at the time of writing.\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/blockquote\u003e\n\u003chr\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe Dutch like to think of the Netherlands as an enlightened nation — a beacon of civilisation in a sea of outdated, backward ideas. We were, after all, the first to give same-sex couples the right to marry, the first to legalise euthanasia. So we must be progressive! But is this really the case? Are we truly as emancipated as we think?\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Europe's Backward Hinterland"},{"content":" This article was originally written on 14 July 2007 and published on blog.luxzenburg.org. It is republished here as a historical document and reflects the author\u0026rsquo;s ideas at the time of writing.\nLarge parts of the United Kingdom are under water following heavy rainfall. The image reminds me of the Netherlands in 1995, when large parts of Limburg in particular were flooded. Unlike the UK, the Netherlands has since implemented a delta plan for its inland waterways, designed to protect the Dutch interior from flooding for the coming centuries.\nThe new climate changes are already requiring adjustments to those plans. There is now talk of the Gelderse Vallei as a possible expansion of water buffers — which would mean that places like Veenendaal and Barneveld would in some form become islands.\nHow different things are in the United Kingdom. The government there does not yet seem aware of climate change; a delta plan for coastal management and inland waterways does not exist. Reading that fills my heart with Dutch pride: send the Dutch! Just as the Dutch firm Arcadis was asked to help protect New Orleans against a repeat of Katrina, Dutch companies and Rijkswaterstaat could help the British keep their feet dry.\nWhere is the Dutch government now in offering assistance to the British? Because I have not yet read about that. Offering help would be an ideal opportunity to get a foot in the door. If there is one thing we have reason to be proud of, it is our water management expertise. As Descartes reportedly said: God created the world, but the Dutch created the Netherlands. And that pride was what I wanted to share here.\n","permalink":"https://luxzenburg.org/posts/wet-feet-and-dutch-pride/","summary":"\u003cblockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eThis article was originally written on 14 July 2007 and published on blog.luxzenburg.org. It is republished here as a historical document and reflects the author\u0026rsquo;s ideas at the time of writing.\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/blockquote\u003e\n\u003chr\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eLarge parts of the United Kingdom are under water following heavy rainfall. The image reminds me of the Netherlands in 1995, when large parts of Limburg in particular were flooded. Unlike the UK, the Netherlands has since implemented a delta plan for its inland waterways, designed to protect the Dutch interior from flooding for the coming centuries.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Wet Feet and Dutch Pride"},{"content":" This article was originally written on 14 June 2007 and published on blog.luxzenburg.org. It is republished here as a historical document and reflects the author\u0026rsquo;s ideas at the time of writing.\nA debate is currently raging about the secular republic of Turkey. A new president is being chosen by parliament, in which the religious AK Party holds an absolute majority. In the first round, Gül, the AK Party\u0026rsquo;s candidate, won. But the constitutional court has declared the elections invalid. The military has already stated it will defend the secular republic by all available means — and last weekend hundreds of thousands of Turks protested against the election of a \u0026lsquo;religious\u0026rsquo; president. His wife even wears a headscarf.\nWhat surprises me is the automatism with which Dutch media take the secular side. There is talk of the \u0026lsquo;Islamisation\u0026rsquo; of Turkey, a prime minister who is allegedly a fundamentalist. Let us first look at ourselves. The Netherlands is governed by a Christian Reformed trio — all three graduated from the Free University of Amsterdam, and two are members of a Christian party, one of which could even be labelled \u0026lsquo;fundamentalist\u0026rsquo;.\nIf we applied the same language to the Netherlands as to countries with a predominantly Muslim population, would the Netherlands not look exactly like Turkey? Countries with predominantly Muslim populations are invariably called \u0026lsquo;Islamic countries\u0026rsquo; by our media. Countries with predominantly Christian populations are never called \u0026lsquo;Christian countries\u0026rsquo;. Turkey is a \u0026lsquo;secular republic\u0026rsquo; but simultaneously an \u0026lsquo;Islamic country\u0026rsquo;. So is the Netherlands a \u0026lsquo;secular monarchy\u0026rsquo; and a \u0026lsquo;Christian country\u0026rsquo;?\nThe AK Party is a religious party, and some media seem to suggest it should be banned. But nobody is calling for a ban on the SGP, CU or CDA. Why are Christian parties permitted to exist but not Muslim ones? When a group of Muslims in a fragile democratic country finally forms a democratic party, that is apparently not good enough either.\nA double standard is being applied. With Muslims, the focus is on fundamentalism, terrorism, undemocratic principles from the Quran — as long as it is negative. That the Bible is also no paragon of democracy, equal rights for women or non-violence goes unmentioned. It is always argued that Christians \u0026lsquo;contextualise\u0026rsquo; those passages historically. Let us assume that the majority of Muslims do the same with certain passages. Take any recognised and respected member of the ulema, and he will preach peace. A small number of obscure fanatics receives full attention and sets the tone. Even the media acknowledge this, yet repeat the same image regardless.\n","permalink":"https://luxzenburg.org/posts/turkey-and-democracy/","summary":"\u003cblockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eThis article was originally written on 14 June 2007 and published on blog.luxzenburg.org. It is republished here as a historical document and reflects the author\u0026rsquo;s ideas at the time of writing.\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/blockquote\u003e\n\u003chr\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eA debate is currently raging about the secular republic of Turkey. A new president is being chosen by parliament, in which the religious AK Party holds an absolute majority. In the first round, Gül, the AK Party\u0026rsquo;s candidate, won. But the constitutional court has declared the elections invalid. The military has already stated it will defend the secular republic by all available means — and last weekend hundreds of thousands of Turks protested against the election of a \u0026lsquo;religious\u0026rsquo; president. His wife even wears a headscarf.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Turkey and Democracy"},{"content":" This article consists of two separate posts, originally published on 15 October 2005 and 14 March 2007 on blog.luxzenburg.org. They are republished here together as a historical document and reflect the author\u0026rsquo;s views at those moments.\nI. The Burqa Ban (October 2005) The Dutch parliament has voted in favour of banning the burqa in public spaces. As a Dutch person and as a Muslim, I find myself wondering what the advantages and democratic justification for this ban are.\nLet me be clear from the outset: I believe the burqa — a garment invented centuries after the death of our beloved Prophet — is not Islamic at all. The choice to wear one rests entirely with the woman, or she has submitted to the will of her husband. I have no opinion, except that I would certainly never allow my partner to wear one — if I were allowed to permit or forbid her anything, which in my humble opinion I am not: man and woman are equal before Allah, as the Quran states.\nBut my objection is directed at the ban itself. The Netherlands claims to be a democracy, but actions like this — driven by far-right conservatives — only prove that the Netherlands is being occupied by cowardly neo-Nazi fascists. In Amsterdam, a man has for years been walking around in his thong, virtually naked. That is permitted. But covering yourself fully is banned? Have we all become paranoid, or simply openly anti-Muslim?\nI also disagree with nudity in public spaces, but that is not banned in the Netherlands. I can imagine that certain groups do not appreciate how some gay people dress during the Gay Pride — but that is not banned either. Should our sisters then organise a Muslimah pride to win the right to wear a garment they consider Islamic?\nWho is the Dutch government to decide what is Islamically correct? Who is Geert Wilders to decide what is good for Muslims in the Netherlands? I am certain he is not doing it for the sake of Islamic women. He is doing it against Islam, as he tries every meaningless, idiotic idea to irritate Muslims and frustrate Islam. I urge my brothers and sisters not to attack him physically — that is exactly what people like him want. We can only protest through words and defend our democratic rights through democratic means.\nII. The Burqa Ban, Revisited (March 2007) Geert Wilders wants a burqa ban. It is elaborately explained what that would entail. Coalition partner CDA wants something similar, but packages it more neutrally as a blanket ban on face-covering clothing — including full-face motorcycle helmets.\nWhat nonsense.\nIn Amsterdam, a man has for years been skateboarding in his thong, virtually naked. That is permitted. But covering yourself fully is banned? Have we all become paranoid, or just openly anti-Muslim?\nAnd the motorcycle helmet argument makes no sense. Have you ever seen someone walking around in a full-face helmet, other than a motorcyclist? And then only because it is compulsory. Will the police now stop motorcyclists for violating the law on face-covering clothing? That the CDA supports proposals like this demonstrates democratic bankruptcy.\nI know no Muslims who wear the burqa. I do know women who wear a headscarf, and many more who wear nothing at all. So we are talking about an exceptionally small group of women. And politics is falling over itself to address this? Let them focus on serious matters. Or at least on the ninety percent of Muslims in the Netherlands who function exactly as society wishes. By scrutinising the small minority of burqa wearers and so-called jihadists under a magnifying glass, you send a negative signal to a large group. That is precisely what Wilders wants. But can the coalition honestly support that?\n","permalink":"https://luxzenburg.org/posts/burqa-ban/","summary":"\u003cblockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eThis article consists of two separate posts, originally published on 15 October 2005 and 14 March 2007 on blog.luxzenburg.org. They are republished here together as a historical document and reflect the author\u0026rsquo;s views at those moments.\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/blockquote\u003e\n\u003chr\u003e\n\u003ch2 id=\"i-the-burqa-ban-october-2005\"\u003eI. The Burqa Ban (October 2005)\u003c/h2\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe Dutch parliament has voted in favour of banning the burqa in public spaces. As a Dutch person and as a Muslim, I find myself wondering what the advantages and democratic justification for this ban are.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The Burqa Ban"},{"content":" This article was originally written on 15 May 2005 and published on blog.luxzenburg.org. It is republished here as a historical document and reflects the author\u0026rsquo;s ideas at the time of writing.\nThe French non has exposed several problems within the European Union.\nFirst, the democratic deficit. Politicians emphasise that citizens can vote for their national and European representatives, but for most people the Union has remained an invisible entity, even as its powers have risen to unprecedented heights.\nSecond, the lack of a clear vision for the future. This constitution made no clear choice. Politicians once again emphasised that there would be no European superstate. But as a Dutch philosopher noted: the Union follows the reverse path of what would be logical and just. It involves itself in policy that belongs at lower levels of government — education, agriculture, regional development — while leaving to national governments and lower authorities what should be regulated at a larger scale: defence and international relations.\nThe Union and its member states must make clear choices and involve citizens more directly. The constitution did have at least one positive side effect: people are now talking about Europe. I have never heard as many political discussions on the street as in the run-up to the referendum. Interest in neighbouring countries also increased — what is happening in France, what are the others choosing? All of that became a topic of conversation.\nFor now, the constitution is dead. But the next generation of Europeans can shape their own Europe — without the old guard of nationally minded politicians. Young people still feel French, Dutch, British or German, but they also see what Europe means and can mean for them, if the older generation does not block integration out of nationalist sentiment.\nOne curious footnote: in deeply divided France, communists and neo-Nazis of Le Pen jointly celebrated a victory over the centre. That must have been a strange feeling for both groups. Perhaps even the foundation of a new coalition?\n","permalink":"https://luxzenburg.org/posts/the-french-no/","summary":"\u003cblockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eThis article was originally written on 15 May 2005 and published on blog.luxzenburg.org. It is republished here as a historical document and reflects the author\u0026rsquo;s ideas at the time of writing.\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/blockquote\u003e\n\u003chr\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe French \u003cem\u003enon\u003c/em\u003e has exposed several problems within the European Union.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFirst, the democratic deficit. Politicians emphasise that citizens can vote for their national and European representatives, but for most people the Union has remained an invisible entity, even as its powers have risen to unprecedented heights.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The French No Is Not the Way Forward"},{"content":" This article was originally written on 15 May 2005 and published on blog.luxzenburg.org. It is republished here as a historical document and reflects the author\u0026rsquo;s ideas at the time of writing.\nThe New York Times is publishing articles from the Council on Foreign Relations about the military threat posed by China. One article describes how China has significantly expanded its military expenditure and capabilities over the past fifteen years — from a basic army to an advanced fighting force that can match the US in defensive power, though its capacity to operate outside China remains limited for now.\nThe article contains a remarkable quotation. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld asked pointedly on 4 June in Singapore: \u0026ldquo;Since no country threatens China, one must wonder: why this growing investment? Why these continuing large arms purchases? Why these robust expansions?\u0026rdquo;\nThis comes from the defence secretary of a country spending 8 billion dollars a week on a war in Iraq that they cannot even justify to their own population. China spends, according to the article, around 30 billion per year on defence — let us even assume 100 billion for the wildest estimates. The US spends 200 billion on the Iraq war effort alone — separate from the Pentagon\u0026rsquo;s base budget of well over 400 billion dollars.\nAnother point the article raises to stoke fear of the \u0026lsquo;Yellow Peril\u0026rsquo;: the Chinese military numbers 2.3 million personnel. Exactly the same as the American military — which, however, can operate on 400 billion dollars compared to China\u0026rsquo;s 100 billion.\nWhy does a defence secretary leading such a colossal and wealthy organisation hold a country with the same number of people, the same resources and the same threats to account? Why do American media never question this kind of statement? I can think of only one reason: they stoke fear among their own population to justify exorbitant expenditure, and to deflect attention from that expenditure. And by \u0026lsquo;any other country\u0026rsquo; they mean every country — because even Europe is portrayed in this article as the fallen ally betraying the US by being willing to sell weapons to China.\nThe US seems to see ghosts on its path, dreaming on that the world loves them and that they must save the world.\n","permalink":"https://luxzenburg.org/posts/us-vs-china-hypocrisy/","summary":"\u003cblockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eThis article was originally written on 15 May 2005 and published on blog.luxzenburg.org. It is republished here as a historical document and reflects the author\u0026rsquo;s ideas at the time of writing.\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/blockquote\u003e\n\u003chr\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe New York Times is publishing articles from the Council on Foreign Relations about the military threat posed by China. One article describes how China has significantly expanded its military expenditure and capabilities over the past fifteen years — from a basic army to an advanced fighting force that can match the US in defensive power, though its capacity to operate outside China remains limited for now.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"US vs China: Hypocrisy"},{"content":" This article was originally written on 15 April 2005 and published on blog.luxzenburg.org. It is republished here as a historical document and reflects the author\u0026rsquo;s ideas at the time of writing.\nThe BBC reports that the treatment of minorities and foreigners attempting to enter Greece has been sharply condemned by human rights organisation Amnesty International.\nAccording to Amnesty researcher Olga Demetriou:\n\u0026ldquo;People at the margins of society — asylum seekers, migrants, Roma and members of other minorities — are most likely to be victims of discrimination in all its forms. Usually their attackers are representatives of the state.\u0026rdquo;\nAnd yet we say that Turkey cannot become a member of the European Union because its treatment of minorities does not meet the standards of a Western democracy. While the country that calls itself the cradle of democracy is apparently setting the example.\nLet me be clear: I have nothing against Greeks or Greece. But who ever admitted that nation to the Union, and on what grounds? A member since 1981, having absorbed a considerable share of EU funds since then — and after 24 years the country does not meet the standards we impose on former communist Eastern European countries and on Turkey. That makes the entire human rights rhetoric one great farce.\n","permalink":"https://luxzenburg.org/posts/greece-turkey-eu/","summary":"\u003cblockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eThis article was originally written on 15 April 2005 and published on blog.luxzenburg.org. It is republished here as a historical document and reflects the author\u0026rsquo;s ideas at the time of writing.\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/blockquote\u003e\n\u003chr\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe BBC reports that the treatment of minorities and foreigners attempting to enter Greece has been sharply condemned by human rights organisation Amnesty International.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAccording to Amnesty researcher Olga Demetriou:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cblockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003e\u0026ldquo;People at the margins of society — asylum seekers, migrants, Roma and members of other minorities — are most likely to be victims of discrimination in all its forms. Usually their attackers are representatives of the state.\u0026rdquo;\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Greece, Turkey and the EU"},{"content":" This article was originally written in September 2003 and published on blog.luxzenburg.org in December 2004. It is republished here as a historical document and reflects the author\u0026rsquo;s experiences at the time of writing.\nMy interest in Islam began after a trip to India, where I came into contact with an Indian Muslim who became a very close friend of mine. His mother is Dutch and his father is an Indian Muslim. We discussed faith, the values of a good life, and all manner of things related to spirituality on a regular basis. We also talked about our doubts, choices and feelings. All those conversations inspired me enormously.\nIn August/November 2002 I was living and working in Belgium. Everything revolved around business. I felt so homeless — the way of life was so hollow, I felt so empty, so \u0026lsquo;unclean\u0026rsquo; in those days. During that difficult period I decided to take part in Ramadan. Everyone thought I was crazy for fasting in those demanding circumstances — we worked from seven in the morning until one at night. But rather than breaking me, the fasting brought calm and strength. I truly enjoyed it.\nIn November I returned abruptly to my family in the Netherlands. Shortly after, I visited my Indian friend and his family, and I invited several Moroccan friends for iftar. It was an enormously stimulating and informative period. I studied Islam intensively. It was also a period of calm and reconciliation.\nOne incident must be mentioned. In the summer of 2002, after a football match with friends, my Indian friend suddenly called out that he considered me more of a Muslim than many of the Muslims present. He said I was already living much like a Muslim. This was before my time in Belgium, but it influenced that period enormously.\nAfter Ramadan, I was regarded as a Muslim by my Dutch Muslim friends. I took part in prayers and was taken to the Pakistani mosque in Amsterdam. I spoke with my friend\u0026rsquo;s father — a noble and wise man in my eyes. He said I was already regarded as such, but that I needed to think about how I would tell my family. The mood in the West at that time was not pro-Islamic. His wife, a Dutch convert, advised me to keep quiet and live as a good Muslim — to show them that I was still the same Erik. Then they might not be afraid.\nI underwent a period of intensive study, from December 2002 to May 2003. This was not an academic study of a social phenomenon — as I had previously studied Buddhism or joined a political party for practical experience. My study of Islam was one of conviction and genuine interest.\nBut then I discovered the drawbacks of staying silent. My family knew nothing and reacted strangely when I told them I was no longer doing certain things. Some friends thought it was a phase. Others reacted with outright rejection. One became angry at me — merely being Muslim was enough to see me as an aggressive oppressor of women and a terrorist. Later she took back her words and apologised.\nI grew up with the idea that a higher power exists — some call it God, others Allah, others still Nature. And Islam gave me the anchor I needed: the support, the wisdom and the strength.\nMy conversion ultimately took place in November 2002, three years after my trip to India. My third Ramadan was approaching, my second \u0026lsquo;birthday\u0026rsquo; as a Muslim. I said the Shahada with my friend and his parents, and went home with my prayer mat and the advice to first become a stronger Muslim before stepping forward publicly.\nThat went against my philosophy of openness. But anti-Islamic sentiment in the Netherlands had reached new heights after 9/11 — including within my own family. To ease my conscience I put my story on a webpage and added the link at the bottom of my emails. That way they could read it. It took nine months before my family read that page. Nine months of weekly emails. Then they asked: \u0026ldquo;Are you a Muslim now?\u0026rdquo; I answered: \u0026ldquo;You can read — what does it say on the site?\u0026rdquo;\nMy parents wanted to return to the subject later, but never did. In the meantime they began consulting me whenever Islam was in the news. They noticed changes in me — far less alcohol, more patience, more respect and helpfulness — but did not attribute these to Islam.\nIn February 2004 I gave in to a Muslim friend who was working hard to change the Dutch image of Muslims. He had arranged an interview for a conservative magazine, with several converts, and wanted me to participate. I agreed, but asked the journalist if I could play a small role. She promised to try.\nAt that point I was in India for my Indian friend\u0026rsquo;s wedding — where I had the honour of reading the Quranic verses in Dutch for the Dutch guests. When the article appeared I was still there. Title: \u0026lsquo;Erik is in Allah\u0026rsquo;. My face on the cover. That was not what I had wanted.\nWhen I returned I kept a low profile. Until my father\u0026rsquo;s birthday was approaching. A week beforehand my mother called: \u0026ldquo;What is that article? Why did you never tell us? We\u0026rsquo;ll discuss it next week, bring it with you.\u0026rdquo;\nAnd so I sat at the family table — my parents, my sister and her boyfriend, my brother. Others would arrive later. Islam was in the dock. They began with reproaches: I had never told them. I did not deny it. I answered that we would never agree on the matter of \u0026rsquo;telling versus not telling\u0026rsquo;, because I thought I had made myself clear enough in August 2003.\nWhen the doorbell rang and friends arrived, the conversation was over. My mother would return to it later. Since then she never has.\nThere was one exception: my younger brother. He was the most non-religious of all — but he was the only one who said: \u0026ldquo;Bro, I respect your choice to become a Muslim.\u0026rdquo;\n","permalink":"https://luxzenburg.org/posts/how-i-became-muslim/","summary":"\u003cblockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eThis article was originally written in September 2003 and published on blog.luxzenburg.org in December 2004. It is republished here as a historical document and reflects the author\u0026rsquo;s experiences at the time of writing.\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/blockquote\u003e\n\u003chr\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMy interest in Islam began after a trip to India, where I came into contact with an Indian Muslim who became a very close friend of mine. His mother is Dutch and his father is an Indian Muslim. We discussed faith, the values of a good life, and all manner of things related to spirituality on a regular basis. We also talked about our doubts, choices and feelings. All those conversations inspired me enormously.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"How I Became Muslim"},{"content":" This article was originally written on 15 October 2004 and published on blog.luxzenburg.org. It is republished here as a historical document and reflects the author\u0026rsquo;s ideas at the time of writing.\nI read a short note on Wikipedia about the region of \u0026lsquo;Asir in Saudi Arabia, which included the following passage:\nSaudi Arabia annexed \u0026lsquo;Asir, Najran and Jizan from Yemen in 1934, but the culture of the region has more in common with that of Yemen than with the rest of Saudi Arabia. This is most visible in clothing and architecture, which have been adapted to the sometimes heavy rainfall. Moreover, \u0026lsquo;Asir has been much less influenced by the oil boom than the rest of Saudi Arabia, and the modern urban development of cities like Riyadh is entirely absent here. Tribal laws and customs are still exceptionally strong among the population of this region.\nFollowing this informative passage, a trivia section contains the brief note that:\n12 of the 15 Saudi hijackers in the 9/11 attacks came from the \u0026lsquo;Asir region.\nAs a political geographer, I begin to wonder: is this once again a case in which religion is being used by certain individuals — the twelve — to serve a national agenda, namely the secession of \u0026lsquo;Asir from Saudi Arabia? It is not the first time, and I had made this kind of observation before, but could not find a conclusive explanation. Why would Saudi citizens attack the main pillar of their own government, while they benefit so much from both that government and the sale of oil to the US? It was somewhat logical that dissidents would attack their government or its biggest sponsor — but it did not quite add up.\nNow, however, it seems clearer: \u0026lsquo;Asir has not benefited from the Saudi oil boom. It was conquered and annexed in the 1930s and is considered occupied territory. Its residents are regarded as Yemenis, not Saudis, and maintain their cultural ties with Yemen. Such a place is a breeding ground for separatist movements. But it is difficult to keep the West\u0026rsquo;s attention focused on Saudi Arabia, because so many other regions demand attention and Saudi Arabia provides so much to the West — oil, but also strategic partnership in a contested region. No Western nation will confront the Saudis over a relatively small region like \u0026lsquo;Asir, and the people of that region will realise that a struggle for independence or autonomy has no chance of success.\nThen the extremist strategy comes into view: seeking alliance with other dissidents and using religion as an instrument to destabilise a totalitarian government. In this case, people from \u0026lsquo;Asir aligned with another dissident, Osama Bin Laden. In return for his support they carried out the most devastating attacks on the US since Pearl Harbor — and in doing so dragged the world into a war on terror that to date has known only losers. The US has lost its credibility in the world. Islam has lost and is regarded as a religion of aggression. The Saudis have lost, forced as they are to accept democratic reforms. And \u0026lsquo;Asir has lost: it received nothing from Bin Laden. And Bin Laden himself? He had nowhere left to go.\nA sad story of poor strategy, poor planning and poor calculation.\n","permalink":"https://luxzenburg.org/posts/jihad-or-freedom-struggle/","summary":"\u003cblockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eThis article was originally written on 15 October 2004 and published on blog.luxzenburg.org. It is republished here as a historical document and reflects the author\u0026rsquo;s ideas at the time of writing.\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/blockquote\u003e\n\u003chr\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI read a short note on Wikipedia about the region of \u0026lsquo;Asir in Saudi Arabia, which included the following passage:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cblockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eSaudi Arabia annexed \u0026lsquo;Asir, Najran and Jizan from Yemen in 1934, but the culture of the region has more in common with that of Yemen than with the rest of Saudi Arabia. This is most visible in clothing and architecture, which have been adapted to the sometimes heavy rainfall. Moreover, \u0026lsquo;Asir has been much less influenced by the oil boom than the rest of Saudi Arabia, and the modern urban development of cities like Riyadh is entirely absent here. Tribal laws and customs are still exceptionally strong among the population of this region.\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Jihad or Freedom Struggle"},{"content":" This article was originally written on December 12, 1996 and published on Google Knol. It is republished here as a historical document and reflects the author\u0026rsquo;s ideas at the time of writing.\nThis is part of the Project Policrateia series.\nThe New World is the alternative for a state with a community of citizens and can easily be adopted in the Project Policrateia. The New World will contain anarchistic, communistic, socialistic, altruistic and kibbutzim ideals combined with a strong pacifistic and environmentalist feeling. The community exists out of small colonies (kibbutzim) of approximately 50 persons. The membership is voluntary: if you like the way of life you can join a colony; if you do not like it anymore, you leave. The people make up together some targets and create a constitution in which they put basic rights for all life and all sentient beings. This is to prevent chaos as would otherwise happen with anarchism.\nIf there are more kibbutzim close together in a region, it is possible to create a co-ordinating council in which every kibbutz has one or more deputies. This council can encourage trade between the communities by creating MOECs (Medium of Exchange Currency), and by making an industrial task list wherein every kibbutz has its product to fabricate. The council will not be the highest organ in the sea of communities — that will be the individuals and the individual kibbutzim themselves. Deputies have to return to their kibbutzim and discuss every item with the other members. The community members have to approve every proposal before it can become legislation; they can also demand changes in the proposal, but every other community has to approve these changes too. Because of this system, deputies may travel from kibbutz to council and back several times — but there is no need for speed, only for democracy, so it does not matter.\nThe New World communities can live within existing nation states. Nevertheless, the members have chosen not to be part of these nations anymore. They respect the nations and want respect from these nations. The kibbutzim do not use the facilities of the nations in which they exist and do not buy products from them. With their MOECs they can survive. As recompense for having some territory they can sell or grant products to the nation — and of course they deliver new ideas and new ideals to the nations.\nThe New World communities will be intellectual, scientific and artistic places where new ideas will see their first daylight. The properties within the kibbutz belong to the community. All belongings are free of charge. This counts for the machines for production (which the members use communally) but also for consuming products (bikes, computers, etc.). For the last category: whoever comes first in the day has the first right to use the product; nobody can claim anything. The kibbutz shall try to be self-sufficient in the production of food and materials. There will be agriculture and small-scaled industry. The production will be as large as the needs for necessary materials. The kibbutz can trade agricultural surpluses for products which it does not grow itself, and/or for materials for which the knowledge and/or tools do not exist. This is one of the main reasons why an erected council should create MOECs. For industrial production — and less so for agriculture — there is a need for electricity; the kibbutz will try to produce energy with an ecological method.\nAs said in the first paragraph, the community members do not use violence against each other and will not be violent to the outside world. Because the communities are small and everybody lives and works together, social control will be great; criminality is non-existent and quarrels are fought out by words. On the other hand, enemies from the outside world with serious aggressive intentions will meet the kibbutz resistance group (KRG). These are community members who will even give up one of their most important ideals — pacifism — and fight against the aggressor with the same means.\nThe New World is an initiative for a New World community, based on pacifism, socialism and environmentalism. Heiko de Graaf and Erik van Luxzenburg created it on December 12, 1996 after a period of discussion about how a New World order should look, with additions by Ronald Visser. Erik van Luxzenburg completed this report on December 12, 1996, and made this translation on February 29, 2000.\n","permalink":"https://luxzenburg.org/posts/a-new-world/","summary":"\u003cblockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eThis article was originally written on December 12, 1996 and published on Google Knol. It is republished here as a historical document and reflects the author\u0026rsquo;s ideas at the time of writing.\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/blockquote\u003e\n\u003chr\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eThis is part of the \u003ca href=\"/tags/policrateia\"\u003eProject Policrateia series\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe New World is the alternative for a state with a community of citizens and can easily be adopted in the Project Policrateia. The New World will contain anarchistic, communistic, socialistic, altruistic and kibbutzim ideals combined with a strong pacifistic and environmentalist feeling. The community exists out of small colonies (kibbutzim) of approximately 50 persons. The membership is voluntary: if you like the way of life you can join a colony; if you do not like it anymore, you leave. The people make up together some targets and create a constitution in which they put basic rights for all life and all sentient beings. This is to prevent chaos as would otherwise happen with anarchism.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"A New World"},{"content":"This is not a blog in the traditional sense. No daily commentary, no news roundups, no personal diary.\nLuxzenburg.org is a place for essays. About geopolitics, society, history, and the connections between them that are rarely named. Written from the conviction that most problems of our time do not stand alone — and that they cannot be understood in isolation.\nI am Erik van Luxzenburg. By training a social geographer, specialising in political and cultural geography, geopolitics, and macro-history. By nature a systems thinker who struggles with loose pieces. By disposition someone who thinks by writing and talking, not before.\nThe essays here move between the large and the small: from prehistoric forms of governance to the contemporary crisis of democracy, from Islamic anarchist traditions to the question of why the Netherlands has a constitution that has been frozen since 1848. Sometimes an essay begins with a news item. Sometimes with a book that dislodged something. Always with the question: how does this connect to everything else?\nSome of the articles here are old — some date from the nineties, others from the early 2000s. They are presented here as historical documents: this is how I thought then, this is how those ideas have grown. It is not an archive of completed work but a trail of continuous thinking.\nResponses, counterarguments, and additions are welcome.\n","permalink":"https://luxzenburg.org/about/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThis is not a blog in the traditional sense. No daily commentary, no news roundups, no personal diary.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eLuxzenburg.org is a place for essays. About geopolitics, society, history, and the connections between them that are rarely named. Written from the conviction that most problems of our time do not stand alone — and that they cannot be understood in isolation.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI am Erik van Luxzenburg. By training a social geographer, specialising in political and cultural geography, geopolitics, and macro-history. By nature a systems thinker who struggles with loose pieces. By disposition someone who thinks by writing and talking, not before.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"About"}]