Prooemium: Intentional Retorica ad Contrarium

Since 2011, Dutch political discourse has undergone a marked transformation, increasingly dominated by radical-right populism. Within this shifting landscape, Alfons Scholing positions himself not merely as a dissenter but as a deliberate rhetorical antagonist. His quote—provocative, vulgar, and disciplinarian—does not emerge from ideological alignment with the far right but as a calculated act of retorica ad contrarium: the strategic appropriation of radical-right language to expose and destabilize its epistemic foundations. Scholing’s method is not mimicry but counterattack — one that employs the same semantic weapons wielded by radical-right actors in order to invert and implode them from within.

Argumentum: The Language of the Beast to Slay the Beast

Scholing’s rhetorical mode is rooted in a paradox: he speaks the language of radical authoritarianism not to endorse it, but to indict it. His scathing phrase:

“It’s your own fucking fault, mongrel… now sit in the corner with the dunce cap…”

is emblematic of disciplinary language that radical-right figures have used against immigrants, intellectuals, feminists, and other perceived outgroups. Yet in Scholing’s usage, the direction of this punitive voice is reversed. It is no longer “the elites” or “foreigners” being chastised—it is the radical right itself, now portrayed as the obstinate child on the playground, deserving of scorn, exile, and symbolic punishment. This is not ideological irony but rhetorical inversion: the use of familiar tools to dismantle the master’s house.

Modus Operandi: Deconstructio per Identificationem

Crucially, Scholing’s strategy derives its legitimacy from his embedded positionality. He does not speak about radical-right subjects from a distance—he speaks as one who knows. His self-identification as “born of the same mud” signals epistemic authority. Unlike liberal critics who approach the radical right with sociological detachment, Scholing operates as an insider renegade: one who knows the affective codes, discursive reflexes, and tribal signals of the radical right, because he was once proximally shaped by them. This enables a mode of deconstructio per identificationem—a dismantling from within, grounded in shared symbolic soil.

Praxis: Rhetorical Violence as Political Mirror

Far from being an uncalibrated outburst, Scholing’s rhetorical violence is methodical. It performs a pedagogical function: to hold a mirror to a political subculture that only respects dominance, humiliation, and exclusion. As such, the verbal aggression is not gratuitous, but instrumental. It constitutes an act of mimetic critique: if the only language the radical right understands is one of force and vilification, then Scholing offers them that very language — only to make them experience the very affective economy they impose on others. In this sense, the act becomes ethically justifiable as violentia rhetorica iusta: rightful rhetorical violence in defense of democratic integrity.

Conclusio: Discursive Subversion as Existential Resistance

Alfons Scholing’s rhetorical practice is best understood as a radical form of discursive subversion: the deliberate adoption of far-right syntax, tone, and affect not to reinforce but to implode. It is an act of political reappropriation, not ideological conformity. The quote in question, with its brutal infantilization and authoritarian tone, is not a descent into the ethics of the far right—it is a scalpel carved from their own bone, used to perform ideological surgery. It is precisely because Scholing is not a “radical-right football-worshipping cocaine-snorting believer” that his intervention lands with epistemic precision: it is the act of one who knows, speaks, and rejects — all in the same breath.

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