Reply to Johan Sanctorum

Comedy Is the Beginning of Decadence

Commentary, 2 November 2021 — Sid Lukkassen

Dear Johan,

Although I appreciate your wish to present my side of the story, perhaps it would have been better to say nothing. This Dutch affair—with its long, particular history within the Dutch media landscape—has now suddenly been dumped in the laps of Doorbraak’s Flemish readers. I therefore feel compelled to unravel, step by step, a number of misconceptions in your well-intentioned but clearly hurried piece. Here goes!

First, I am not aware of ever having been lured into bed by a government spy. I was once approached by a woman of easy virtue to write down her spectacular life story. An unexpected pregnancy—yes, by a client—threw a spanner in the works. Just to say: I am not easily shocked.

Everything becomes mockery, play and irony

The philosopher Jelle van Baardewijk has said some sensible things about this affair. The artists’ collective KIRAC apparently invokes the “aesthetic life”, in which everything is mockery, play and irony, including intimacy and love. That immediately renders the entire premise of Jini’s project impossible: without sincerity, the divide between left and right cannot sincerely be bridged. What remains is borderline behaviour and empty play-acting. That is precisely why I felt this project had trapped me. Van Baardewijk describes this as my “integrity”, whereas you, Johan, unfortunately get no further than Northern Dutch “Calvinism”.

According to KIRAC’s “Kierkegaardian aestheticism”, I was supposed simply to submit to it all. According to KIRAC’s Kate Sinha, the whole of life can be accepted in the beauty of whatever presents itself. First, that makes everything art, and therefore nothing. Second, she forgets that these are real people with real lives. This equanimity mainly concerns other people’s misery—she is anything but equanimous about her own. What does this mean in practice? What if I had brutally fucked that girl on camera? Art! What if I had killed myself under the pressure of stress and shame? Art too! What if I had first brutally fucked her and then killed myself? Higher art!

Dismayed reactions to trolling

Now, Johan, I knew I had done nothing strange or wrong, so my initial thought was: KIRAC can hype up that video, but there is simply no shocking footage, so the best thing for my mental health is to ignore the whole affair. The outcome of the “Battle of De Balie” proved that initial intuition right. Unfortunately, by then we had been through several stressful media shitstorms.

You miss the fact that the article in De Morgen is a recycled piece from Het Parool. And you miss the fact that, in the Netherlands, a great many people have become particularly angry with the media outlets that promoted this film, since I state in the film itself that I do not approve the publication of the footage. These people transcend left and right and include secular Muslims, left-wing journalists, conservative legal philosophers, prominent humanists and intersectional feminists. It is therefore extremely thoughtless and rather unethical of De Morgen simply to catapult that piece into the Flemish media landscape.

Fortunately, the people whose opinions I take seriously now understand that I went there with a sincere desire to create something. My opponents, who pretended to be collaborators, wanted to troll people with media scandals, gaining cheap publicity through outrage.

Beyond the media framing

Then there is your story that I followed my dick and thus fell into the trap; it is a sympathetic explanation, and every man can relate to it. A pity that this sympathetic story is untrue.

Sex was, at most, the means here, not the end. This was a search for genuine contact, genuine acceptance and a genuine bridge across the divide. So many people have an image of me based on what others once wrote or said in the media. Who you are as a human being is no longer seen. I thought: I can get beyond all those layers of media representation and what people think of me by meeting one another as a “left-wing” and a “right-wing” person. To me, that would feel like proof that there is more than just the media framing. If I can feel an authentic connection with her, that demonstrates that a left-wing woman can still see me as a person, that a human being in his entirety can find acceptance beyond those media frames.

Your claim that I “protested loudly” and “struggled as part of the staging” is also untrue. I informed KIRAC that I did not approve publication, and otherwise I was paralysed by stress-related symptoms and feelings of depression. Until last Saturday I was being treated for severe neck spasms and had to avoid additional stress and conflict. Only at the very last moment did I publish anything about what had happened. There was a specific reason: a legal philosopher who is a friend showed me information in which the debate centre De Balie claimed to have seen a consent form for publication signed by me. I knew that was untrue and took action to have the statement corrected.

It is about authenticity

You say that I “had not done my homework” and bring up “autism”. Here your interpretations really go astray. I wrote about the sexual rights of autistic people in Levenslust en doodsdrift (2017). That is correct, and I mention that fact alongside my analysis of polyamory in Avondland en identiteit (2015) and my writing about the flamboyant life of the dandy and womaniser Theo Kars. But I mention all this to demonstrate, first, that my work has never had a puritanical bent—as Francis van den Eynde was the first to recognise and point out. And second, that the puritanical critics judging me on the basis of rumours about this film are hypocrites.

That is the context in which you should understand that word. And the fact that I did not do my homework—in other words, did not research “Ms Van Rooijen”—was deliberate. If I had researched her, Google and therefore Big Tech, or other intermediaries, would have mediated the information I brought into the conversation. That could have stood in the way of an authentic encounter.

You could simply have gathered this from my two previous publications, “Conservative Thinker Does Something Unconservative” and “Sid Lukkassen on KIRAC: ‘What Is Happening Here Is Horrifying, Exploiting Emotional Vulnerability’”. I regret that you are forcing me, through this correction, to pour oil on a fire that had rightly burned itself out.

Sincerity

You do introduce some nuance in the question-and-answer section of your account, but, for example, I never agreed to attend the screening at all. The way your question suggests otherwise is just as much an expression of the sensationalism you accuse me of encouraging! It is also striking that you speak of “blind eagerness”—you were not there to see that “blindness” with your own eyes.

I do think you have a point that all of life today is a public performance, wanted or unwanted; in my case, it is unwanted. My intuition is that, as a “right-wing” person, your only defence is to be sincere, authentic and honest about your underlying motives—for which you can find no better word than “Calvinism”—so that people can relate to you as a lived response to cancel culture. No doubt we will discuss this further one day.

Too much humour

Finally, it feels like a blow below the belt when you invoke this individual tragedy to attack De Nieuwe Zuil as a collective project. I strongly urge all Doorbraak readers to read the article “The Debate about De Nieuwe Zuil Erupts”.

You end with my supposed lack of humour, but I see it the other way round: it is precisely your excess of humour and satire that is problematic. As Nietzsche says, comedy is the beginning of decadence—before you know it, everything is drawn into irony. Humour becomes a sneer and a sneer a giggle; soon nothing is sacred and the human soul no longer knows reverence. Then we find ourselves, indeed, fist-deep in KIRAC’s anarchic nihilism.

Best wishes,

Sid.

Sid Lukkassen (1987) studied history and philosophy. He is an independent thinker, a volunteer board member of the Vlaamse Club Brussel and the inspiration behind De Nieuwe Zuil. His books include Avondland en identiteit and Levenslust en Doodsdrift. His doctoral dissertation was De Democratie en haar Media.