Nijmegen

Richard's mother had moved him. His father had
bought her a second-hand DAF car. Both Philips
and DAF employees received discount on own
products and thus sold them to each other.
Rear seat and front seat out ... so an old Philips
desk and mattress fitted into it. Richard himself
took the train. Had found a room somewhere in
Hatert ... a village grown together with Nijmegen.
Corner 'Treub' and 'Couwenberg' ... above a
supermarket, the Edah. In Hatert lived many
beautiful Moluccan girls ... and ugly ones.

Serve the people?

Richard had bought 'de Kabouterkrant'
(the Gnome paper, an anarchist periodical)
in Eindhoven a couple of times.



And also the maoist 'Dien het volk'
(Serve the people)



The hippies or the revolution?
Anarchism or steeled cadres?
Was growing long hair and a beard.
Had a career test that advised:
Librarian or agricultural science
No, no ... rather to Nijmegen.

Diogenes or the Girls Club

Political science, in those days, the seventies, was
written with a k, politikal science. Didn't know then,
that it was Mussolini, who wanted that the Italians
had to write 'kilo' instead of 'chilo'.



Well ... Richard had quickly found the way
to two hang outs where cannabis was smoked.
Diogenes on the 'Schaeck Mathon' ...



and Dynamene ... former girls club on the 'Anna'.
Moreover, open till four o'clock at night. Then
you only had to hang around for one hour till the
Bongobar on the 'Eiermarkt' opened ... And at dawn
cycle down the 'Hatertse' ... eat a sandwich with
marmalade ... read the newspaper ... and go to sleep.

Lecture hall to lecture hall

That year more than 70 people showed up
for the first year political science. Too much
for the barracks on the 'Verlengde Groene' ...
moreover, they had to share those temperary
buildings with anthropology. Their biggest
hall was the ethnological museum ... more
than 50 people couldn't get in there ... between
spears, masks, drums, penis sheaths, hammocks ...



Lecture hall to lecture hall ... blue hall pharmacy,
physics 3, geography on the 'Berg and Dalse',
auditorium, student church. But especially those
halls spread throughout the city. Kolping House ...
where professor Albinski ... gave research methods,
Remember the theory of the light switch,
where Jan Blokker always was whining about.
Dance school 'Vermeulen' on the 'Gerard Noodt',
parish house 'Molkenboer' ... etcetera.


Jan Blokker

Karl Deutsch

The first lecture of professor Hoogerwerf was
in an old building, abandoned by Public Works.
Smashed windows ... the lot ... near the Bongobar.
Hoogerwerf was a Social Democrat. The first one
after years of Catholic professors. Modern American
theories ... cybernetics ... cutting edge those days ...
meant steerage. Schedules ... flowcharts ...
"Politics and Government" by Karl Deutsch.



Richard studied as follows: read the book
once, learn the content pages by heart ...
and the diagrams. From enumerations he
took the first letters and made an acronym ...
S.P.E.F.N.A.K. or something ...

Karl Popper

Richard grades usually ranged from C plus to
C minus. Hoogerwerf's definition of politics
was: policy, the preparation, the result and
the feedback of the process. Of course Richard
had made P.P.R.F. of that. If there were no
questions, Hoogerwerf had prepared the following:
this week people whose name begins with an A ...
That proved not necessary. Immediately there
was opposition. Lots of questions. Is politics
not about power? He began about the difference
with influence ... interruption: what about
front men, figureheads? The most eloquent
students came up with: the difference between
formal and material (father probably a lawyer?) ...
value-free ... objectivity ... those things ...
was apparently the latest discussion. Richard
knew nothing about it. Neither did Hoogerwerf.
Was a Popper-Wiener Kreis man. Everything had
to be falsifiable and therefore quantifiable.

Thomas Kuhn

Thomas Kuhn

There were very few people good at math
throughout the social faculty. Only Albinski,
who came from the Technical University in
Eindhoven. About objectivity and value-free,
Thomas Kuhn had written interesting things
in 1962. Nowadays he is one of the most cited
scientists, in 1971 there was hardly any attention.

Philosophy

Richard went another direction. Joined Politeia,
the Marxist continuation of Studium Generale.
Not that it made him a lot wiser ... reading
Andre Gorz ... spontaneism ... yet another
fashionable word from that time. Whether
you had to organize yourself ...


André Gorz

Or a translated course from the Marxist
workers college in Paris ... Marx as
Readers Digest ... Friedrich Engels
in discussion about idealism versus
materialism with Bishop Berkeley ...
doesn't get beyond the proverb ...
the proof on the pudding is the eating ...
and if he tries to save the Bishop:
he will perfectly well jump aside for a bus ...


..........Marx.............................Engels.................Berkeley...........

In philosophy classes Richard learned
that Moore against Wittgenstein didn't
come further than: common sense ...
when Wittgenstein wanted to know if
if there was a crocodile in the room.



.................G.E. Moore..........................Wittgenstein..................

The Film League

Swapped Politeia for the Film League.
In unusual places ... whirring projector
in the room ... mostly rather political:
Orson Welles' The Trial. After Franz
Kafka's novel Der Process (Der Prozess)
about clerk Josef K. (Anthony Perkins)...




Viva la muerte by Fernando Arrabal.
Gory film about a boy at the time
of the Spanish Civil War.


Afterwards having a beer
that didn't taste at all ...

Cinema

But also lots of regular cinema.


Planet of the apes


Valdez is coming


Who is Harry Kellerman ...

Myra Breckinridge

So bad that it's good


Raquel Welch is Myra Breckinridge


Myra Breckinridge rapes Rusty Godowsky
(Roger Herren) with a strap-on


Myra and Myron (Rex Reed)


Mae West: "never mind about the 6 feet,
let's talk about those seven inches" ...


In bed with Farrah Fawsett ...

Study and action

A workshop about the party programs of
the Dutch political parties was rejected
by the students rather scornful ... they
had done that more than one can stomach
in high school ... never came out one
sensible thing. Moreover ... they could
write in those programs what they wanted.
Years later, one of Richard's classmates
would be one of writers of the PvdA
(Social Democrat) program. Jos de Beus ...


Jos de Beus

Obviously most student stumbled over
statistics. Richard's only B. On the
other hand he was floundering in a
project about Chile ... Ultimately he
copied a lot from Regis Debray's
'Chilean revolution'. And actions,
demonstrations, occupations? Hardly ...
pasting some posters ... the head of
a Mozambican on a pole ... and had been
to the Vietnam demo in Amsterdam.


Régis Debray

Zappa and Soft Machine

From the 'Verlengde Groene' mostly straight to
the Anna's Corner Pub... play cards, billiards,
table football, pinball, drink. Habitual four in
those games: Richard, Martin, Ron and Nick.
Often continued in nightly sessions at Ron and
Nick's place, in the 'Van Slichtenhorst'. Richard
always wanted to hear Zappa's Absolutely Free ...



and The Soft Machine: We did it again, we did it again ...



Ron's father knew a real estate agent who
wanted to rent a house on the 'Lupine' in
Beuningen, cause the owner, an engineer had
accepted a job in Indonesia ... Fully furnished ...
rent 600 guilders including utilities. They could
move in directly after the summer holidays.

Franco and Brezhnev

If Martin would pass his driving test,
they could buy a cheap car and ride
to the south. Spain ... Ron said.
Impossible ... Martin said ... Franco!



Ron and Nick weren't impressed. Martin had
inherited his father's rather traditional leftist
conception. For example, Moscow had to be
spared somewhat ... determine the main enemy.
But Ron and Nick retaliated: Hungary ...
Czechoslovakia ... nomenklatura ... Brezhnev's car
and horse collections ... all his country houses.



Being long-haired not always meant leftism ...
although ... They weren't conservative ...
anti-Franco ... anti-Nixon ... and had been
to Barcelona last year... Catalonia is ...
yet different than Spain. Smoked the best
hash ever ... They knew a fantastic beach
resort over there. Richard didn't mind going
to Spain ... it was cheap. But Martin failed
the written test ... they had to take the train.

Beuningen

To Beuningen, now a Nijmegen suburb ...
then a sleepy village in the 'Maas and Waal'
district. Had to learn how to cook, do the
laundry ... et cetera. Ron and Nick didn't
like potatoes ... so spaghetti all the time.
Later they started trying all the Indonesian
kitchen equipment. But they didn't get much
beyond: rice with peppers, minced meat and
peanut sauce. Cycling to Nijmegen wasn't that
far, yet Richard had picked up his Zündapp,
that he had left with his parents in Eindhoven.



Richard was the only one who passed his freshman
year. Nick would give it another go. Ron switched
to the Faculty of Law. And Martin to the Faculty
of Arts. After the first year the distinction in years
pretty much disappeared ... you had about two or
three years to do about fifteen exams and the
Bachelor's exam. For Richard reason to no longer
visit the lectures ... only the workshops. Others had
developed a rotation system of making summaries,
but Richard could't do a thing with summaries from
others ... too long and / or not to the point ... specially
summaries filled with color markers made by girls ...
almost copied the entire lecture and then underlined
nearly everything.

p, q and R.

Richard had to get used to that multiple
choice system ... suspected everything to
be trick questions and hesitated to select
the obvious answer. It went too far when they
also had to indicate how confident they were
of their choice. So in addition to a, b, c, d,
also p, q ... respectively: I'm sure ... and
I gambled. That was of course in Statistics.
Determined not to put up with this nonsense,
the students organised a group called Critical
Monitoring Statistics. And successfully ...
p and q were abolished.



Lots of time to study there in Beuningen ...
acquired many of the required testimonials ...
until the program was shut down, since the
squatting of the barracks on the 'Verlengde
Groene'. The students ... that is to say the
Socialist Student Union, which Richard now
had joined, demanded the appointment of the
Marxist R. in a particular job. Richard didn't
participate in the occupation ... didn't sleep
there, but occasionally took a look. Besides
in Beuningen there were refurbishing a Ford
Transit to go to Afghanistan. Had cost only
800 guilders ... in vain ... broke down and
sold for 150 guilders, spent on a train ticket
to Rijeka, Yugoslavia. Eventually R. was
appointed, but many students evaded him
when he turned out to be a so-called
revisionist Communist from Amsterdam.


R.

Gerrit Huizer

The success of the students actions escalated
quickly. Occupation of the auditorium together
with sociology and anthropology students...
solidarity occupations elsewhere. The demanded
appointment of Latin-America liberation
Marxist Gerrit Huizer was also granted.



Even got his own building ... the former
Philosophy Institute at the Coehoorn
became the Third World Centre.



The Faculty of Arts studies, spread throughout
the city were moved to the twenty story building,
named after Desiderius Erasmus.



The political science barracks were
exchanged for the beautiful Stella Maris
villa designed by Derk Semmelink, situated
on the Schaeck Mathon ... almost next to Diogenes.



New favorite bar ... Tempelier (Templar)

Radicalisation

The political situation in Indonesia forced the
man from who they rented the house to return.
Find new accommodation ... in the 'Parkdwars'
near the Kronenburger park. Dumped their stuff
over there ... and off to Yugoslavia. Richard
had a large, expensive ... well ... could you
call it a room? Over a walled courtyard, which
also had a basement ... was put halfway down a
roof and a wall ... so there were more or less
six outside walls. By October it got far too
cold. From one room to another ... for a month
a room on the Waldeck Piermond and then
Richard moved to a dorm in Galgeveld.

Meanwhile the political situation had radicalized.
Martin, by now joined the Student Union, but their
section didn't want to be called Socialist, at first
they flirted with Spontaneïsm, later with Autonomism
... organized support groups for sentenced members
of the Rote Armee Fraction and Brigate Rosse ...
or was it Lotta Continua?



While the Student Union at political science and
especially, physics developed into a direction
that was called ... Democratic Centralism. There
were heard phrases like: we don't want to attract
more people ... we must transform ourselves into a
cadre organization. With high political consciousness
and satellite-like mass organizations ... then there
were three mainstreams: Maoists ... Spartacists
(Rosa Luxemburg, Karl Liebknecht) and ... Trotskyists.


...........Mao..............Liebknecht...Luxemburg.........Trotsky........

Dorm

The dorm ... fourteen rooms ... two communal
toilets and showers ... a communal kitchen with
a black and white TV on the fridge. A cleaning
woman Thursday morning's. The wife of the
janitor would do the laundry. The building
used to be a fraternity housing. The only
remaining function from those days was the
booze keeper ... who also might try to decipher
the phone administration. They had an indoor
football team and ate together every now and
then. Otherwise to the Mensa lunchroom, or
cafeteria's like the 'Oude Toelast' or 'Moeke Nas'.


Mensa Molukkenstraat.

Passed the exams anthropology, socio-economic
history and philosophy of science. Failed sociology
and psychology. Did an interesting workshop ...
Van Der Graaff-theory about power clustering ...
which people can you find over and over in top
committees, councils ... who is a commissioner
with whom. But used for our own political
purposes. For example, the opposition to the
restructuring of science. That reorganization
was mainly the work of people like: Veringa or
Van Riemsdijk (Philips), Loudon (AKZO) and
Wagner (Shell). Students and staff were appeased
with more participation in order to have the
professors adapt more to the business model.
Impossible to stop that ... realized the students.
No other option than talk big in the new councils.


........Veringa........Van Riemsdijk........Loudon..........Wagner......

Ferdinand

Another workshop ... a survey of the union activity
in the industry in the region was a breeze ... there
was hardly any ... Interview union members with a
pack of multiple choice questions. Could take up
to an hour and a half. Don't tell them. They lost
interest after half an hour ... This way you could
learn firsthand what errors of the first type or
the second type were (Research methods II). If
only a Spearman's Rho or something rolled out.

Also Richard was turning into a kind of full-time
activist. Base: the Stella Maris basement and the
stencil room with one Ferdinand ... in same kind
of role as Tony Curtis in that pink submarine ...
hustler and busybody ...



Organized night films such as Costa-Gavras' Z
to make money for the buses to the 'Nieuwmarkt'
riots in Amsterdam ... wrote press releases,
arranged paint sprays and so on.

Moscow-Beijing

Ferdinand was also the initiator of the Anti NATO Committee,
an example of such a satellite organization of the (cadre)
Student Union. Wrote a brochure on the NATO ... had it
printed by the Socialist Party, in exchange for the promise
to go peddling with them ... go into the neighborhood as
they called that. That is to say, not after a sharp debate
about a paragraph on the Warsaw Pact. The Moscow - Beijing
rupture ... that had split the Netherlands communists
approximately along the line Rotterdam - Nijmegen ...
deepened when the Chinese no longer saw imperialism ... read
USA ... as objective main enemy ... but the social-imperialist
Soviet Union ... with their tendency to world domination.
That carried too far as the SP was concerned. But you could
barely have a discussion with them ... always came up with
phrases like: all that theory ... practice! That is ... don't babble ...
and the students actually had to be sent into the factory ...
just like in China.


Mao Zedong and Nikita Khrushchev

Moscow perhaps was no good ... but it wasn't very useful
to come up with. However they thought it important to work
together with the Anti Nato Committee, cause the paragraph
remained. They probably thought: nobody is gonna read the
brochure anyway ... they probably were right. The price was
1 guilder. Sometimes somebody bought a copy, but Richard
thought ... mostly out of pity ... or to get rid of him. Those
political analysis of the world situation you could find, only
in obscure brochures of the Marxist-Leninist German Communist
Party (KPD.ml) and the Italian Avantguardia Operaia. In Portugal
you had like 19 ML organizations. Also in Nijmegen they popped
up ... the Communist Unity Movement (Marxist-Leninist) (KEN.ml)...
with their student organization KSB ... their cover organization
National Vietnam Committee (LVK)... Mainly from Tilburg and
Rotterdam, where they had to do with the strike in the harbor.
Their magazine was called the Red Tribune.

Vacated

At a meeting of all student unions where was decided
upon yet another auditorium occupation, there was one
member of the MLS, the student organization of the
Socialist Party, who asked ... the occupation of which
buildings would absolutely not be tolerated? Well ...
the data center ... and the University administration ...
perhaps the Faculty of Arts administration. Let's try
that one then ... After two or three days the police
arrived and the building was vacated without any
violence. So the University administration building
was the next one. Of course Richard was there ... but
the same afternoon they were removed with brute force.



The hard-core occupiers were driven into a corner.
Richard was holding off a police dog when a baton
crushed the left glass of his spectacles. Profusely
bleeding taken to hospital ... fortunately the retina
hadn't been damaged ... just a few stitches. Like Leo,
who had broken his nose in another action, he now
was a victim ... that could only increase his prestige.
Moreover, he already had a scar on his other eyelid ...
moped accident ... and one across his nose ...
bicycle accident ... the symmetry restored.

Restructuring

Richard usually had little to say at meetings.
If he came up with something, most of the time
he was given a vague look ... with the message:
not relevant ... an effective method against
newcomers. But soon he found out that
important decisions were taken afterwards
in the pub ... informal ... after lots of booze.
Then at the next meeting formally settled.
Two pubs near cafeteria 'Moeke Nas' ...
't Haantje' on the 'Daalse' and 't Hoekje'
on the 'Beyen' ... where students were
supposedly fraternizing with the working
class ... were soon shunned by the workers.


Piet and Joop pub owners 't Haantje

Meanwhile the university was being restructured.
Faculty departments were set up. Some staff
members were given administrative tasks ...
others a scholarship in the USA. The German
Marxist Prof. Tudyka was appointed as head
of the department International Relations.
For the department Public Administration ...
they found the Social Democrat Van Den Doel ...
a supporter of the convergence theory of Tinbergen.
That meant that the economic systems of the USA
and Soviet Union would grow towards each other.
When Richard doubted that very much at the oral
exam ... he promptly failed. Although he only
needed two more testimonials to be able to do
the bachelor exam ... first he took a temporary
job ... filling mailbags in Doetinchem.

Social Imperialism

Richard became a member of the National Vietnam
Committee LVK and so came into contact with people
of the KEN(ml). Besides a kind of vague general
trend towards radicalization, a bit of an aversion
to the SP (too scouts like ... too Catholic) there
were really only banal arguments, that drove Richard
in that direction. The Student Unions used old sheets
to paint their slogans on. The KEN(ml) had banners
made of solid red cloth and the slogans were made
with yellow masking tape ... so everything could be
used again. Slogans like ... Down with the hostile
government den Uyl!   That one was used in the
harbor strike ... and those letters could come off
because ... last summer the Central Comittee had been
to Italy ... a meeting of the European Maoists. There
was decided upon a new political strategy ... suspend
the class struggle ... and focus on the main enemy of
the moment: the Social-Imperialists.



Richard was invited to discuss a paper entitled:
the Dimitrov Thesis. That Dimitrov was the Bulgarian
representative to the 2nd International ... and at
that time there was also the question of the main
enemy ... their own ruling class or fascism.
Using typical Marxist rigmarole the Maoists stated
that the Soviet Union were waging an unprecedented
hegemonism strategy. Should that strategy succeed,
you didn't have to think of the struggle against
national oppression anymore.


Georgi Dimitrov

The facts they came up with: the Russian infiltration
in Vietnam and their naval base in Da Nang ... the role
of the KGB, the HVA (East German secret service), and
Cuban forces in the African liberation movements ...
the efforts of the Soviets to get involved with Argentina.
The Maoist strategy: switching support for the ANC to PAC
... MPLA to Unita ... anti NATO to anti Warsaw Pact.
Vietnam and Cambodia ... ignore ... shut down the LVK.
Move focus to Iran, Afghanistan, Indonesia ... How were
their ideas about China? Mainly about persons ... the
death of Zhou ... the gang of four ... Mao's wife ...
what was the link with Lin Biao? Deng ... out of favour.
It does not matter whether the cat is black or white,
as long as it catches mice. Deng reinstated again ...


Deng Xiaoping