While Europe focuses on upcoming elections in Austria and the Czech Republic, the grinding war in Syria, source of much of the migration that has influenced politics in central Europe over recent years, continues. Slowly – in some cases, block by block – the so-called Islamic State’s hold on its last urban strongholds in the Euphrates valley is being broken. Polish journalist Paweł Pieniążek sent this photo report from the front.
Brexit, migration, the eurozone debt crisis: despite the victories of Macron and Merkel this year, the EU’s problems have not gone away. Indeed, the future shape and direction of both the EU and the UK remain far from clear. At the heart of the challenges they face lies the contestation of sovereignty, argues Stefan Auer.
The entry of Alternative für Deutschland into the Bundestag is a watershed moment in post-war German history and an indictment of twelve years of Merkel: never before has an openly far-right party had a seat in the federal German parliament. An analysis by ‘Blätter’ editor Albrecht von Lucke.
Digitalization reveals the distance between the democratic ideal and its practical reality. Only a society that is open, sceptical and flexible can adapt successfully to this transformation, writes Manuel Arias Maldonado.
The rift between Catalonia and the rest of Spain appears to have grown wider since violence marred the attempted independence referendum on Sunday, 1 October. Luka Lisjak Gabrijelčič, a Eurozine network editor and a Catalan speaker, who closely follows the issue, has been commenting day-by-day, via social media, about the events there over recent weeks. Here are his reflections.
Since 1 October 2017, it is illegal in Germany to spread hate speech online. But serious doubts exist, both about the law’s correct enforcement by internet companies, and whether it will be effective against a far-right that now uses Russian servers and social media channels.
In Kosovo, political corruption, a weak cultural sector and the absence of regulatory bodies allow fake news to thrive. Without a normalization of the political, institutional and social situation, a responsible media can never exist in the recently independent Balkan state, writes Orjela Stafasani.
The regional government in Catalonia is planning to go ahead with a referendum on independence on Sunday, 1 October. However, the Spanish central government has condemned the vote as unconstitutional, and moved to block it. Jordi Muñoz says that the Spanish authorities seem unconcerned by Catalan or international public opinion.
Conspiracy theories are all about power – who has it and what they are doing with it, particularly when no one is looking. The losing side will inevitably accuse the winners of conspiring. Democrats would be convinced that Trump is involved in a grand conspiracy, no matter what evidence was available.
From dialectical materialism to neoliberalism, any politics that lays claims to the truth is both illusory and dangerous. But does this mean that democracy is simply rule by opinion, without recourse to facts? And does the rejection of absolute relativism mean abandoning the postmodernist critique of truth and power?
The Turkish government’s ongoing assault on academic freedom is nothing new, argues Ayse Caglar. But following last year’s coup attempt, the authorities have used their extensive emergency powers as cover to ‘legalize’ their illiberal moves. Is Europe slowly waking up to this reality?
‘In post-truth regimes, what has been lost is the moral or ethical principle that keeps expression faithful to the truth of what people see, think or feel.’ Nilgün Tutal discusses a famous work of performance art in communist Yugoslavia to show how harmless the concept of truth has become in the face of contemporary authoritarianisms.
As the contentious referendum on independence for Catalonia – planned by the Catalan regional government for 1 October 1 2017, but denounced as illegal by Spain’s central government – approaches, tension is rising. Daniel Gascón, editor of Eurozine partner journal Letras Libres, argues that the Catalan government is attacking democratic legality, and Spain is defending it.
The functionalist housing built across the USSR in the 1960s is one relic of the past that is here to stay. Architects must take an interest in these increasingly decrepit buildings, which despite lack of architectural merit are popular with residents.
Born in Hungary before becoming a communist in Germany, then a French Foreign Legionnaire, then a wartime propagandist for the British government – but, above all, a writer and thinker – Arthur Koestler was one of the most intriguing intellectuals of the twentieth century. Michael Scammell, the author of his official biography, ‘Koestler, The Indispensable Intellectual’, spoke to Eurozine partner journal Letras Libres about Koestler’s life.
Alt-right extremism is a consequence of mainstream neo-conservative discourse on liberalism, manhood and national security post-9/11. Its success is measured by its ability to project an updated rhetoric of anti-left antagonism into the window of acceptable political discourse.