A New Mythology

The electoral victories of far-right parties, including Wilders in the Netherlands, Trump in the US, Orbán in Hungary, Meloni in Italy, and especially their connection to billionaires like Musk and Zuckerberg, lead to almost desperate attempts to analyze this global shift to the right.

In an article in the NRC from January 17 of this year, Bas Heijne attempts to explain the phenomenon, with his primary conclusion being that the far-right voter is not a protest voter, as is often argued from the left. What if, Heijne asks, “the appeal and ideology of Trump, Wilders, and their ilk are simply found to be more attractive?” Well, how so? What exactly is so appealing about this far-right mythology? The only argument Heijne offers is psychological in nature. Both the right (“cage fighters”) and the left (“snowflakes”) reject universal boundaries, allowing the ‘self’ to determine everything. From both sides, this amounts to “a form of narcissism”. But where does this narcissism come from? He mentions a billionaire (Thiele), but nowhere does he address the power of all that capital or the influence of Musk and Zuckerberg, who wield enormous sway over politicians and their policies via their digital platforms.

The parallel Heijne draws with the French Revolution is interesting in itself. A further elaboration of this could perhaps be illuminating. I think here of Jacques Necker, a Swiss statesman and banker who served as France’s Minister of Finance in 1789. His dismissal directly led to the storming of the Bastille. One of the Revolution’s triggers was the enormous national debt, which was exacerbated by the pressure of ever-increasing interest rates. Musk/Trump/Zuckerberg/Necker: Follow the money.

Beyond the financial aspect, which was of fundamental importance in that Revolution, there was also the new mythology. Romantic poets and thinkers like Schlegel, Fichte, Schleiermacher, and Schiller ¹⁾ advocated for (or responded to) the French Revolution with a call for a “revolution of the spirit”. Safranski cites the following line from a text dated 1797, whose authorship — Schelling, Hegel, or Hölderlin — is unclear: “First and foremost, I will discuss an idea that, as far as I know, no one has yet conceived: we ought to have a new mythology, but that mythology must serve the ideas; it must become a mythology of reason.” ²⁾ This Romantic idealism became Europe’s new mythology, although, as Safranski notes, it was ‘a German affair’.

A few years ago, I spoke with Cristiano Melli, a former Brazilian student of mine, about my plan to withdraw art from the public domain and reinvent it within the private sphere. His response was that this would ultimately be inadequate: “We need a new mythology.” He gave the example of Bolsonaro, who was then still the president of Brazil. After a meeting with his cabinet, Bolsonaro walked outside, where a group of journalists was waiting for him. He carried a bunch of bananas to distribute to the press. In Brazilian culture, a banana holds the same meaning as when we raise our forearm with a clenched fist to convey a heartfelt Fuck You. Everyone understood the metaphor of the bananas, and everyone, including the journalists, found it hilariously funny.

That Bolsonaro understood the mythology his voters were waiting for. The left could learn a thing or two from this. So could artists. That is the problem with art today: it is locked into small, insular niches where everyone understands the minor myths, but no one seems bothered by the lack of an overarching meaning regarding what art is and what it does.

Is it even possible to invent a new mythology? Is there a recipe book for creating it? Constant Nieuwenhuys tried in the 1950s through the 1970s with his project New Babylon. It was celebrated in artistic circles, but I fear Wilders and his ilk would not be moved by it. A mythology must emerge — ideally from an artistic act — that is greater than the individual artist. It must manifest as a Gestalt, a whole greater than the sum of its parts. Let me attempt to chart a possible direction.

In the Netherlands, the second half of the 20th century saw the creation of a comprehensive social safety net, encompassing old-age pensions (AOW), healthcare, disability insurance (WAO), minimum wages, housing subsidies for the lowest earners, and unemployment benefits. ‘From cradle to grave’ was the motto. This system, which the U.S. could only envy, has its downside: a cultural aversion to risk. Ultimately, much of our behavior has become a form of risk management. This has repercussions for our thinking: we’ve unlearned how to think grandly and visionarily. The mindset of “Gezelligheid kent geen tijd” [literary: Cosiness doesn’t keep track of time] has made us focus on the small. Somewhere along the way, we distanced ourselves from the idealistic, Romantic project — perhaps for good reason, but perhaps not.

Mythologies can change, disappear, or be invented, but these processes deserve critical scrutiny. Sensitivity readers, an overabundance of imposed politically correct policies in the arts, and the rejection of universal standards of taste — all these reflect a small-mindedness that Romantic idealism fundamentally opposed. That idealism was about infinity, chaos, and art and life as a Gestalt. Safranski cites a fragment from Friedrich Schlegel’s Athenaeum-Fragment No. 116: “Romantic poetry is a progressive, universal poetry. […] It wants and must now and then combine poetry and prose, genius and criticism, artistic poetry and natural poetry, sometimes mix them, sometimes merge them, make poetry living and social, and make life and society poetic.” ³⁾ The poet writes the world.

We need to relearn how to embrace risks and design a mythology of risk. Visionary thinking requires risk-taking. The central question is whether such a mythology is viable and, if not, what the consequence would be. Do we settle for petty bourgeois mediocrity?

I propose two paths we must analyze and pursue: that of capital and that of mythologies — plural, because there are many. Against the mythology of capitalism, we must place a progressive mythology of the Gestalt of life and art, a mythology that exposes and ironizes the far-right mythology of narrow-mindedness and fear.

But one might ask, wouldn’t this ‘new’ mythology merely be a repetition or variation of the Romantic mythology — a kind of Romantic Mythology 2.0? That question must be explored, as well as whether there is anything inherently wrong with that.

In the early 1980s, I went to the cinema for the first time in years. I no longer remember the movie — a thriller or action film, something meant to be suspenseful. To my astonishment, during a supposedly intense scene, the entire audience burst into laughter. What was intended to be chilling and horrifying turned out to have an utterly comic effect. And yet, it was clear that the director had not intended it this way.

The film industry, meanwhile, quickly grasped how to respond to these kinds of audience reactions. Just a few years later, in 1985, Roger Moore starred in what would be his final James Bond film, A View to a Kill. Moore had initially been reluctant to take the role again but was persuaded by a princely paycheck. In a famous scene, Bond skis through a bobsleigh track while being pursued by gun-toting enemies. The scene is blatantly fake — Moore is visibly projected onto the bobsleigh track. At one point, we get a close-up of Moore. After glancing briefly at his pursuers, he looks directly into the camera, flashing a wide smile that suggests to say, I’m making a million dollars for this! The mythology of the film was effortlessly updated.

What we can learn from this is that a mythology can be playfully transformed through a dynamic interaction between creators and audience. Moreover — and this is something the left must take to heart — trying to impose changes by decree will only have the opposite effect. A new mythology must not be a mere copy of the old but should arise playfully, through a collaborative process.

— Cornelis de Bondt, January 20, 2025

References
¹⁾ See also: Friedrich Schiller, Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man.
²⁾ Rüdiger Safranski, Romanticism: A German Affair [Chapter 8].
³⁾ Rüdiger Safranski, Romanticism: A German Affair [Chapter 3].

— Cornelis de Bondt, January 20, 2025