When people get upset because I am critical of the Dutch government's necropolitical strategy, here's a good explainer via BBC

"Coronavirus: Why Dutch lockdown may be a high-risk strategy" https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-52135814

When they faced critics for peddling herd immunity at the cost of thousands (if not more) lives, they did not backtrack. Choice quote:

"It was initially embraced by the Dutch government too, but then rapidly repackaged as a useful by-product rather than the main goal".

"repackaged" means that this IS the ultimate end game and the bleak figures that apparently are not even accurate of death reported every day is just a by product of this "strategy"

I am aware that some deaths will be inevitable but between Dutch media constantly peddling eugenicist discourses "for the economy" and politicians who have put us in a perpetual austerity, a lot of suffering is sold to us as "advantageous"

Dutch mainstream media was "problematic" (bear with my choice of words, I am trying to be kind!) before this. Now it is practically unreadable when there isn't a day that some "opinion maker" doesn't tout the benefits of mass death and resignation

there is also a rather pervasive and persistent delusional belief that the social isolation is "for others" across the country. So many people are convinced that they are sacrificing themselves for other people and not to protect themselves

it's amazing because I have spoken before about this rather perplexing attitude of so many Dutch people becoming armchair eugenicists because they believe they will be spared from being at the receiving end of the necropolitical.

and of course this is all aided by a constant rhetoric of "we are at war" rather than "we are in an unprecedented health crisis". The war rhetoric normalizes that death is inevitable. A health crisis would put the responsibility on the State to provide a solution

eventually, if the situation escalates, people will have to finally come to terms that they have voted for administrations that made this situation what it is. They have willingly chosen this path for themselves. Not a war, a government that prefers us to die rather than spend $$

also, in this rhetoric of war, worth pointing to @tvandeputte recent commentary on a constant discourse of "sacrifice to be made", as a justification for the loss of life. "some people will have to sacrifice themselves for the greater good" etc

Another casual observation: there are a lot of lonely and scared socially isolated Dutch white men on social media reacting very aggressively. These men are now living with the fact that they do not have "networks of care" and the government will not provide one.

I empathize with the fact that this crisis is very hard and even more so in solitude but the situation is not leading towards a re-examination of the kind of masculinity that has created the conditions to begin with. Instead, they aggressively engage with others