Three years after the mass anti-regime protests in Belarus, the pro-Russian state continues to brutally repress all expressions of national identity. But people have not forgotten their experiences in 2020 and believe that Belarus’s long history of foreign rule is nearing its end.
Power to the powerful, contempt for the weak: in replicating this rule of Turkish politics, the opposition CHP differs in no way from Erdoğan’s AKP. Indeed, in persecuting all critics of the Turkish state, the Islamists are simply re-enacting the republican legacy.
However urgent, a common European security policy requires democratic legitimacy. The goal of ever closer union is realistic only if Europe has a clear understanding of what a federation is and can be. Part of the series ‘Lessons of war: The rebirth of Europe revisited’.
Conveying a traditionally maternal yet anti-patriarchal image, and espousing hardline nationalism and cultural conservatism while encouraging pluralism and gender liberalism, Marine Le Pen is mainstreaming far-right politics in France and beyond.
Resignation towards the war in Ukraine ignores not only the ongoing atrocities but also their implications for underlying European narratives. Now is the moment to rethink political orthodoxies. Part of the series ‘Lessons of war: The rebirth of Europe revisited’.
Moves to disenfranchise Russian citizens in Estonia come against the backdrop of increasingly radical anti-Russian discourse and a tradition of national xenophobia. An Estonian-Russian responds.
Russian war crimes have prompted some to attribute such acts to a pathology in the national character. But liberal psychoanalysing often avoids the truly disconcerting cause of our revulsion, argues a Russian philosopher.
In Italy, Romanian daycare workers for the elderly are known as ‘badanti’. Their story is one of sacrifice: leaving behind their country and family and losing years of their lives at work. They pay for it with years of their lives and, sometimes, with their health.
The war in Ukraine has shown up the limits of European pacifism and revived a long-forgotten precept: republican opposition to empire. Today’s imperial threat no longer comes disguised as democracy but is openly anti-democratic. Part of the series ‘Lessons of war: The rebirth of Europe revisited’.
Overlapping crises, enforced political passivity, a new political normal: all things that gradually dismantle a democracy. Ferenc Laczó talks the death of democracy in a new episode of Gagarin.
For younger Roma novelists, writing about recent Roma experience often means overcoming taboos within their own culture. But for Maria Siváková, who chooses to write in Czech, the greatest motivation is the need to challenge majority stereotypes.
The original assembly in 12th century Spain was not a space for popular democracy, but for tough bargaining and long distance government. After 800 years of evolution and facing civilizational challenges, parliaments need to further transform to meet the moment and deliver on the promise of inclusion. Can watchdog parliaments gather enough steam to effectively restrain those in power?
The feeling that we are being watched by a wild animal can lead to shock. Suddenly we comprehend how immense the world is, and how overwhelmingly lonely we feel.
As police carry away protesters blocking oil carriers, a very detailed and technical debate is unfolding about the framework to introduce the notion of ecocide in international criminal law. Social scientists and legal experts debate the approach, and Victor Tsilonis cautions them to always consider practical applications.
Most European cities were never meant to withstand the kind of heat they are facing now – and accelerating every year. Climate proofing cities has to be done equitably. When done right, there is social potential in the transformation.
Ukraine’s resistance to Russia’s imperialist war has discredited the spheres of influence theory once and for all. The EU is being forced to reappraise not just its security policy, but also its colonial mindset towards smaller countries beyond its borders. Part of the series ‘Lessons of war: The rebirth of Europe revisited’.