Political Critique: Poland Hope and Fear in LGBT Poland

“I’m afraid that the vast majority of [Law and Justice politicians] are just utterly cynical and they’re willing for the sake of retaining power and support to risk other people’s safety, well being, and dignity by using language like this,” says Marek Szolc, the only openly gay member of Warsaw’s city council. “This strategy apparently is working quite well in Poland and Hungary, and in Russia and in other states.”

Some have pointed to the similarities between the rhetoric used by the Law and Justice party and that used in Russia’s “anti-LGBT propaganda” legislation as reasons for their distress. [...]

While the most recent round of political attacks against them has been exceptionally vitriolic, Poland’s LGBT community has always faced discrimination. In terms of enumerated rights and protections for Queer people, Poland ranks last — tied with Latvia — among the 28 EU member states. Poland does not recognize same-sex marriage, grant civil partnerships, or have LGBT hate-crime legislation; a 1997 amendment to the constitution defines marriage as between a man and woman (though there is some legal dispute over its exact wording) and while cohabitating same-sex couples do have limited shared legal rights, adoption of children by a non-biological same-sex parent is not allowed. [...]

Due to a lack of hate-crime statistics, it is hard to know how much PiS’s language has contributed to violence against LGBT people, but it inarguably has. In the PiS stronghold of Białystok in eastern Poland, thousands of people protested against the city’s first-ever pride march. Outnumbering marchers four to one, counterprotesters threw rocks and bottles while some residents were reported to have dropped bags of flour from their apartments as the march wound its way through the city.

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Political Critique: Poland’s Future: A view from the countryside

The principal driver of re-ruralisation is the rediscovery of the countryside as an attractive place to live. According to CBOS survey from 2015, just 18 per cent of Poles want to live in a large city, while 40 per cent think of living in the countryside as their ideal.[2] Contrary to the global trend of urbanisation, Poles started the 21st century by going back to the countryside. Material changes such as the ever-increasing ease of working remotely from home facilitated this shift. It is borne out in the numbers: since 2002 the proportion of urban dwellers has declined, while that of rural residents continues to grow. Currently 40 per cent of Poles live in villages and, if such a trend continues, by 2049 this figure will rise to 45 per cent of a population of 34 million (compared to 38 million today).[...]

The countryside itself is the theatre of a third trend: de-agrarisation. Despite EU money, rural areas are losing their agricultural character. Villages have less and less to do with farming land and are becoming a sort of rusticate Arcadia with peace, quiet, and nature at its core. While farming (at present) is still limited to the countryside, only 10 per cent of Poland’s employment is made up of agriculture – by 2049 this figure may shrink to single digits. At the same time for growing category of people, a small plot of land next to their house is an element of their lifestyle.

Finally the trend of internal migration means that wealthier, more highly educated people are starting to come to live in the countryside, while people with low cultural and economic capital go to the cities. Villages near dynamic cities become bedrooms, while places near attractive tourist destinations are enclaves for people searching for a summer relax or a calm life as middle-class pensioners from the city. Such colonisation results in rising class conflict. Especially if we consider that another growing group in the Polish countryside is that of the ‘NEETs’ (people not in education, employment or training) – people that are inactive in cultural, social and political terms and whose views, research shows, may end up on the extreme margins of the authoritarian political spectrum.[3] [...]

All those changes contribute to the unstable political and class relations that determine the balance of power between urban and rural in Poland. They create the structural context for populist mobilisation against various ‘Others’ (middle-class colonists in the countryside, rural migrants in large cities, economic immigrants and refugees in both environments), fuelling radical right-wing sentiment and activism. The best example in Poland is rising nationalism, which, stoked by anti-immigrant campaigns from the ruling Law and Justice party, heightens the risk of ethnic violence. Its combination of Polish nationalism, religious conservatism, anti-elitism, and attacks on those supposedly seeking to dictate to Poland about values and migrant quotas made Law and Justice the largest party in Parliament after 2015 election and is very likely to help it maintain its dominance in the forthcoming 2019 elections.

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Political Critique: Could Slovakia Elect A (Somewhat) Progressive President?

Interesting times have come upon Slovakia: while the mass gatherings remembering that it has been a year since the murder of investigative journalist Ján Kuciak still chanted slogans protesting against the rule of the SMER-SD party (social democrats in name only, in reality your garden variety populists with a conservative bent), they only served as a sad punctuation of the fact nothing really happened apart from the resignation of the then-PM. Robert Fico, apparently finding himself without anything to do, decided that ruling the country should be followed up by being appointed a judge of the Constitutional Court after having brilliantly convinced the Parliament that 13,5 is, in fact, more than 15 when it comes to the required number of years spent working as lawyer. Almost immediately afterward, the genius mathematician’s judicial career was nipped in the bud by the current President, who – not unreasonably – pointed out that the function has a moral dimension and a man forced to resign over mass public protests concerning the process of investigating a murder might not be the best candidate for a judge. Fico responded by having his party boycott the nominations of all the other candidates, leaving the Constitutional court effectively paralyzed as the four remaining judges is a number insufficient to reach a verdict in most issues. Which might pose some problems as the Slovaks are about to elect a new President and the Constitution’s wording regarding the amount of votes required to win the first round is unclear. And the only one with the authority to re-interpret that is, you guessed it, the Constitutional Court, currently lacking the manpower do anything about the mess thanks to a vengeful ex-PM. Interesting times, interesting times. [...]

52% is an optimistic estimate, especially for a liberal candidate in mostly conservative Slovakia. But there are several factors playing in Čaputová’s favor. One, people are disillusioned with the current government as the Ján Kuciak anniversary protests showed, and Čaputová has no connections to that; her biggest claim to fame before the elections was environmental activism, specifically (and more shockingly, successfully) fighting against an illegal landfill built by a business connected to both SMER and Kuciak-implicated businessman Kočner – according to her website, anyway. Two, she is potentially acceptable to voters who do not necessarily share her views but are rightly terrified of having their country represented by a conspiracy freak or a neo-Nazi. Three, she is the only candidate openly supportive of minorities; such trustworthy sources as the Czech mutation of Sputnik frequently accuse her of such horrible crimes as supporting LGBT equality and pro-immigration propaganda. [...]

See, the President of Slovakia is purely representative (unless they pull a Zeman, may his hemorrhoids explode, and start overstepping their authority), and a lot of their power is the power to draw attention and open public discussion. Slovakia needs this; we’re talking a country that has decided to incorporate the frankly medieval „traditional“ definition of marriage into its Constitution as late as 2014. A President sympathetic to the plights of minorities could finally draw out the issues “we just don’t talk about” like discrimination of minorities to public attention – kicking and screaming, if necessary.

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Political Critique: A Tale of Two Europes

Examples of the unimaginative elite are easy to find. The financial crisis hitting Europe in late 2007, which rapidly turned into a crisis of the euro, was above all a crisis of the banks which could have been decisively addressed early on and could have been used to complete the fiscal union necessary for the sustainability of the eurozone. Instead, the structural weaknesses of the eurozone and the lack of proper balanced governance of the single market persist, and the crisis has instead been used to reinforce a neoliberal economic model based on austerity and precarity which works to the benefit of a few elites principally in core European countries. [...]

Likewise, the increased migration flows in 2015 were not only predictable but predicted and the European Union not only failed to make adequate preparations for these but failed to use the policy mechanisms already at their disposal, instead allowing itself to get into a ‘beggar-thy-neighbour’ situation where each member state blames the other. Few take responsibility and the fortress around the European Union is reinforced. Again, this situation is not sustainable. People will continue to come to Europe, and either efforts to stop them will become so restrictive that the rights of Europeans to move will become caught up in the fortress, or a real coordinated European asylum and migration policy will be developed. [...]

Now let us turn to the history ‘from below’ of the European Union, which is perhaps the real novelty in the past decade: the first time that a European citizenry has really expressed itself as such. The last decade has not only seen crisis, but also citizens mobilising to address them. We have had solidarity actions with and inside Greece and refugee-welcome initiatives, ‘blockupy’ mobilisations against the policies of the European central bank, the launching of NGO boats to rescue migrants in the Mediterranean (most recently the boat Mediterranea in Italy, the first such boat to sail with an Italian flag and therefore in principle the right to dock), Amazon and Deliveroo strikes in the gig-economy, mobilisations to protect or advance women’s rights to abortion in Poland and Ireland, or the rights of LGBT couples in Romania, protests for freedom of the press and against corruption in Romania, Slovakia, Malta and elsewhere. Such civic initiatives have found electoral expression and success, notably at city level. Cities like Barcelona under the administration of Ada Colau have become inspiring paradigms for others. [...]

How the Brexit process evolves will be crucially important for the future direction of Europe. The European Union elites are attempting to use the process to generate legitimacy for themselves negatively: by showing how bad it is to leave the European Union, they aim to build legitimacy amongst their own populations. This shows the staggering lack of positive ideas for the future of the Union amongst the elites. On the other side, the far-right nationalists build their betrayal narrative not only in the UK but across Europe – ‘look at the mendacious European Union which once again frustrates national sovereignty’ – and hope for an even more dysfunctional European political economy they can exploit further.

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Political Critique: Democratizing Europe’s Economy

Italy’s right-wing government has earned popular support for deliberately questioning the European Commission’s budget guidelines in the name of addressing poverty. This shows how skeptical many Europeans are about the EU’s commitment to social welfare and democracy, and it is precisely this skepticism the Italian right-wing is using to provoke a conflict and further undermine the commission’s popular legitimacy. Such an approach has support beyond Southern Europe, and if the commission does not reconsider, it will find itself increasingly vulnerable to popular backlash.[...]

This renewed emphasis on the social dimension is supposed to be connected to the European Semester, which is the commission’s attempt to bring order to European economic governance. Thus the commission ranks the member states according to unemployment rates (especially youth unemployment), reduction in poverty, lifelong learning, access to childcare, and other social indicators. Yet it does not measure the meaningfulness of work. It also fails to assess whether workers have a say over the nature of their work, their relationships at work, their work’s relationship to the greater economy, or their working conditions. In an age when more and more people classify their work as “bullshit jobs,” to use the provocative phrase from the anthropologist David Graeber, something important is being missed.1 [...]

The studies of Herbert Kitschelt and Philippe Rehm using the European Social Survey show that in post-industrial economies, people involved in administrative-organizational occupations tend to have more authoritarian views, independent of their income status (although those at the top may be less inclined toward redistribution, and those at the bottom more inclined). Those involved in more interpersonal occupations, which involve communication and agreement on norms and objectives, tend to have more liberal views independent of their income status. [...]

It is no surprise that the European Commission has not managed to fully connect economic, social, and democratic concerns. Doing so would require the commission to challenge the dogma that economic growth is the basic answer to all social problems, to face up to its own role in undermining social cohesion and democracy simultaneously in the many parts of Europe that have been exposed to austerity programs, and to acknowledge that a technocratic approach exacerbates anti-democratic tendencies and sentiments. With the upcoming European summit in May 2019, the European Parliament elections, and the new European Commission, the union needs a much deeper and more nuanced appreciation of the changing dynamics of the global economy and its implications for political preferences. In so doing, it should follow the lead set by some of its most politically active working citizens.

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Political Critique: Paweł Adamowicz: A Very Political Death in a Country Torn by Culture Wars

Contrary to some reports, Adamowicz wasn’t a figure of the left. He had, until 2015, been a member of the centre-right Civic Platform (PO), currently the biggest opposition party. With that said, he was known for taking positions that were highly controversial in Poland – including among the anti-PiS opposition. He welcomed refugees while the PiS-controlled national broadcaster ran almost daily stories about the ‘Muslim threat’ descending upon Europe. He supported the growing feminist movement as the powerful Polish Catholic Church declared war on the so-called ideology of gender. He carried a rainbow flag during local Pride parades when even fellow PO-backed mayors were distancing themselves or outright trying to ban them. No wonder he was a hate figure of the radical right.[...]

Equally significant is the event during which the assassination took place. The Great Orchestra of Christmas Charity is an annual gala which raises millions for hospital equipment. In recent years, the event has been the target of a smear campaign by the right-wing press. The popularity of the charity and of its charismatic founder, Jerzy Owsiak, is seen as a threat to PiS’ agenda. Vocally pro-choice, supportive of LGBT rights and religious minorities and critical of the influence of the church, he represents the very cosmopolitan values that PiS defines itself against. Owsiak’s catch phrase “róbta co chceta” (do what you want) has been interpreted as an endorsement of promiscuity and moral relativism and the charity itself as a secular alternative seeking to undermine catholic charities. Why hospitals need to rely on charity at all is rarely discussed in a country without a major left force.[...]

The success of PiS – which still regularly exceeds 40% support in opinion polls – lies in bringing together a broad coalition of support: from radical right ideologues to a large number of working class families, rooted in a patriotic-catholic tradition but more concerned about putting food on the table. A few headline redistributive policies, such as the famous “500+” child benefit programme, have undeniably lifted people out of poverty – but they come in a package, with a narrative about protecting the traditional family and the great Polish nation from what threatens it – Muslims, atheists, queer people.

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Political Critique: European Others

Being European without being white and Christian does not only put one in a strange place, but also in a strange temporality: Europeans who lack one or both of these qualities tend to be read as having just arrived or even as still being elsewhere – if not physically, then at least culturally. In European discourse (legally, culturally, socially, economically, academically…) the term ‘migrant’ describes someone who moves across borders, but also includes all racialized European communities, which are reframed as non-European through their ascribed permanent status as migrating (from somewhere that is not Europe). This status is transmitted across generations and thus increasingly decoupled from the actual event of migration, shifting the meaning of ‘migrant’ from a term indicating movement to one indicating a static, hereditary state. In other words, movement into Europeanness is impossible as long as racialized difference is still visible.

Racialized populations are thus positioned within a spatial and temporal paradox: they are permanently frozen in the moment of arrival – and the further away the actual moment/movement of migration, the stronger the paradox, i.e. the ‘queer­ness’ of their presence in space and time. The current so-called third generation of post-war labour and post-colonial migrants is perceived to be more alien and out of place and time in Europe than their grandparents, the first generation of actual migrants, exactly because they are (made) impossible as an internal presence within (and by) the ideology of normalized colour-blindness that places ‘race’ and thus racialized populations necessarily outside of Europe. [...]

Instead they are framed as an attempt at silencing necessary critiques of migrant communities and their supposed innate sexism, anti-Semitism, and homophobia (the prominence of discourses around ‘migrant extremism’ notwithstanding, there is an equally prominent assumption that it is taboo to criticise these communities). And indeed, at first glance it might seem as if Europe exists outside of the US American (post)racial temporality. While the latter is built on a narrative of having successfully overcome intolerance and discrimination, the myth of European colour-blindness claims that Europe never was ‘racial’ (anti-Semitism is still often analysed as both an exception to this and as clearly separable from racism). That is, despite the origin of the concept of race in Europe and the explicitly race-based policies of both its fascist regimes and its colonial empires, the dominant assumption is that this history had no impact on the continent and its internal structures.

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Political Critique: The far right knocks on the the door of Spanish politics

On Sunday October 7, the Spanish far right party Vox achieved what they had been looking for for a long time: their baptism as a relevant political actor in the Spanish public sphere. They did it by filling the Vistalegre palace in Madrid with 10,000 supporters and leaving a thousand people out for lack of space. In the past few years, Vistalegre has symbolically become the venue used by Podemos for their annual congresses. The choice of the venue for this event is not coincidental: Vox is explicitly looking for parallels with the first Podemos. They want to turn the political indignation of a certain sector of the Spanish right into political capital. And to achieve this they hope to use the springboard of the European elections. In this sense, it’s fundamental to note that there are people within the Vox party who are studying the political campaign and strategy of Podemos in 2014, when the party entered candidates for the 2014 European Parliament election, polling with 7.98% of the national vote.[...]

In the arena, well beyond the burladero, there is a first row where writers, historians, journalists and even bullfighters, all identifying within the far right spectrum in Spain, gather together looking at the audience. However, the absences are more surprising: Vox had invited international personalities from other European political parties, both from the ENL parliamentary group (which brings together in Brussels the National Front, the Northern League, the Austrian FPÖ or the Freedom Party of Geert Wilders) and from the parliamentary group of the European Conservatives and Reformists, where Polish, Czech and British conservatives meet. But none of them attended. Not even Steve Bannon, whose presence was speculated a few weeks before.[...]

Vox’s strategy for the next year’s electoral cycle rests on three pillars: appeal to a vote of conviction, use politically incorrect language and indicate very clearly who the enemies are. Namely: the Catalan independence movement, feminism and immigration.With these wicks, the party led by Santiago Abascal will try to be involved in all the decisive issue on Spanish agenda and, in the end, win everything. Some polls indicate that Vox will foreseeable reach parliamentary representation in the European Parliament and that it could be decisive when it comes to deciding the balances between left and right in some regions such as Madrid or Murcia.

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Political Critique: Romanians didn’t show up to an anti-LGBT referendum. But the battle for equality continues

A statement published by MozaiQ claimed the result shows “that Romanians have rejected hatred and division in society and have not identified with a political act aimed at stigmatising and discriminating against the LGBT community.” The result was hard-won. Ahead of the vote, activists reported an increase in homophobic and transphobic hate speech. [...]

The timing of this referendum provided a government under attack from anti-corruption protests with a chance to deflect attention from their own problems. By allowing the referendum, MozaiQ argued, “the political class has shown that it is disconnected from the daily realities” of Romanian people. The third thing to note is that voters rejected outside interference in their democracy from international ultra-conservative anti-LGBT groups. [...]

The ballot box defeat of their agenda suggests that outside groups determined to undermine LGBT rights around the world have been rejected in Romania. It also suggests that the influence of the Orthodox Church – whose Patriarch urged Christians to go and vote on Sunday – has been overestimated.

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Political Critique: Czech Local Elections: a sharp turn to the right

Probably the sharpest, most explicit messages showed up in the northern parts of the country, namely the city of Most – a peripheral area devastated by heavy industry (and subsequent job loss when the coal mines closed) which suffers from a prolonged housing crisis caused by real estate brokers tied into local politics. Curiously enough, it is the party most intertwined with the poverty business that fans the flames driving proper the proper, good folk into a racist frenzy: the Mostians for Most Association (SMM) were openly advocating segregation, establishing locations excluded from housing social support and, yes, building “scum villages” to which they would move the “rabble”. As for determining who exactly the “rabble” is supposed to be, the procedure is not exactly clear but one can assume it will involve a color filter. [...]

SMM did not win the elections in Most, but they came third; enough to leave a mark on the city’s future (un-)social policy. Their campaign did, however, echo with that of the party which came fourth – the traditional, conservative Civic Democrats (ODS), a party that has been a determining factor in Czech politics since the nineties and has fallen on hard times with the advent of mass populism. Undeterred, they got the message – ODS has been promising Zero Tolerance To Foreigners (this particular slogan coming from Mladá Boleslav – a city whose economic lifeline happens to be foreign workers from the Škoda automobile factory) and scoring great successes with it; if there is an overall winner to this election, they are it. What the hell? [...]

The xenophobic SPD ended up with a disaster, with only 155 representatives across the whole country. Their leader, famously fearmongering fraudster Tomio Okamura, promptly amended his previous statement of expecting “hundreds of SPD representatives” to “I meant a three-figure sum”. His people were a lot less phlegmatic, though; “enjoy your immigrants”, tweeted a failed SPD candidate in Prague. And for all the horrible things to be said about the results in Brno, the openly neo-Nazi party Decent People flunked the election hard.

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Political Critique: No orphans allowed in Czechia

Czech anti-immigration sentiments got lifted up from the domain of quacks, wannabe Nazis and populists into actual policy when Andrej Babiš woke up one day and realized his party’s popularity dropped a couple percent; a situation very easily remedied by causing an international faux pas by telling Italy he will not accept a single immigrant (because look what they did to your country). His resolve has been tested for the last few weeks with a full-on media barrage regarding the proposed acceptance of fifty orphans from Syria – an issue on which he managed to change his firm opinion only about five or six times a week. [...]

And here is the thing: those fifty orphans could seriously help us there. The Czech Republic has mostly managed to avoid EU scrutiny due to Babiš playing chameleon and changing colors based on whether he was speaking to home or foreign audience. But it seems the chameleon is going senile and cannot shift its complexion as fast as it once could – and sometimes, like in Italy, the true colors shine through. Now, viewed from the outside, there is an opportunity to put his money where his mouth is and prove that he is dedicated to a common European cause. The only problem is that, back home, he has just announced zero tolerance for immigrants. What to do, what to say? [...]

Putting aside the rather distressing implication that a human life loses value with age (something the masterpiece of applied necromancy posing as our current President should get through its brain, whichever canopic jar that might be stowed away in), this first attack was deflected rather easily by pointing out that we’d have our choice of orphans to accept; no one was talking a specific group of children. This did not stop plenty of other parties to join the fun; the xenophobic SPD calling the initiative “pseudohumanistic cries of the neo-marxists” (given the rhetorical capabilities of the average SPD member, one can only assume a dictionary was heavily involved in the creative process behind that phrase) and a party called Czech Sovereignty (nope, never heard of them either) outright accused the orphans of being ISIS fighters – amazing foresight since no specific children were chosen.

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Political Critique: Pride and Prejudice in Prague

Pride has become a commercial event. It still does a lot of good – events such as art happenings, lectures, and workshops that focus on education and showing the sexual minorities in a positive light definitely have their place in a country that prefers equality not to intrude the reality. It is easy to cheer for the tide of happy, colorful waving people, especially when their opposition consists of Catholic crackpots and neo-Nazi twits physically incapable of setting a flag on fire (quotes: “Burn, you bastard” and “Those assholes made them fireproof on purpose!”). But there is an element of protest in the march, a statement of identity: we are different, we are not ashamed of it and we deserve being treated equally, just like the rest of our society.

But what Prague Pride actually gets – as the media coverage shows – is tolerance; a rather different concept. Instead of pushing for equality, there is a sense of condescending acceptance of those weird colorful people and their quirks. Do what you want, kids, as long as it does not threaten us in any way. Again, make no mistake: this is a preferable state of events to that in other Eastern European countries; very few Czechs still feel the need to cure homosexuality through violence. The majority seems content to just pretend no political issues connected to sexual orientation exist. And while Prague Pride tried to address this, this year’s theme being familial life and labels pinned on LGBT people, the discussion somehow failed to reach past the people already involved. It’s like preaching to the choir.

This leaves the event somewhat devoid of a central message; a vacuum that many rush to fill with their own agenda. This year, two political parties – the Greens and the Pirates – took part in the events. They had their parade floats with nicely visible logos, they had their stands where politicians and volunteers handed out fliers and kept reassuring everyone of just how awesome they are. Pride by its very nature cannot be an apolitical event (if such a thing even exists) and both parties have profiled themselves as pro-LGBT, but there are time and place for scoring brownie points with potential voters and, apparently much to the surprise of our elected representatives, it might not be at an event aiming for equality.

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Political Critique: Humanitarian smugglers, fraternité, and european citizenship

The event had all the trappings of a typical festival: a four-day festival pass (for a donation of any amount), souvenir t-shirts, beer in reusable plastic cups. But the celebrities featured were not the usual festival headliners. The crowd went wild for Cédric Herrou, a local farmer who has hosted hundreds of migrants and been brought to court for his actions; José Bové, a deputy in the European Parliament known for his anti-globalisation activism; Mireille Damiano, a lawyer who defends migrant minors in irregular legal situations. As Damiano said, “we’ve been treated as smugglers so often that for once claiming the status of smuggler is good!” They led lively debates along with festival attendees, who had come from the villages of the valley, across France, and some from across Europe. Still, notably absent from the festival were migrants and refugees themselves, with only a few in attendance. To show true solidarity with migrants, those assisting migrants must also make space for their voices. [...]

Residents of the valley are assisting those who arrive with food, shelter, and help with legal processes. However, both EU and French law criminalize actions that facilitate the illegal entry, stay or circulation of foreigners. Violations of this law are known as a “délit de solidarité”, an offense of solidarity, and residents of the valley have faced legal consequences for their humanitarian actions to assist migrants. Despite this hostile climate, residents of the valley continue welcoming migrants in their capacity as individuals and through associations like Roya Citoyenne. Those helping migrants claim that doing so is their duty as French citizens, an act of fraternité to protect the human rights of vulnerable people. [...]

A major victory these activists was the recent decision of the French Constitutional Court affirming “fraternité” as a constitutional principle. The ruling stated that “the concept of Fraternité confers the freedom to help others, for humanitarian purposes, without consideration for the legality of their stay on national territory”. While this is undoubtedly good news, there are some important concerns. First, there is the issue of compensation: the humanitarian action cannot have any direct or indirect benefit for the person performing it. However, compensation is not explicitly defined as financial gain, which leaves a grey area. One court in France has even ruled that if the humanitarian action contributes to a person’s activism that can be considered compensation. The court decision also leaves it up to the legislature how to balance the principle of fraternité with public order, which could still result in measures restricting assistance as part of the political agenda securitizing migration.

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Political Critique: Of Rainbows and Rabbits

While the man’s expertise lies primarily in obtaining illegal financing for his party since 2010, what ultimately broke his back as a member of the government was disapproval by His Senility the President, who claimed Poche had voted in favor of the country accepting immigrants in the European Parliament. As a result, Zeman refused to call Poche a minister. Surprising? Not at all, considering that Poche tried to rally the Social Democrats to vote against Zeman in this year’s presidential elections. And that, no self-respecting vindictive zombie can forgive. [...]

It is a school well-known for providing easy titles with no questions asked to people with the proper political inclinations and, coincidentally, also a school whose graduates are not recognized in the Czech Republic as lawyers. Further research revealed that her thesis contained passages plagiarized from somebody else’s work, including the typos.  Still, one does not have to be a lawyer to be an expert Minister of Justice, right? [...]

The inevitable question of why did Babiš – who, unlike, Malá, would have had a fair chance of successfully defending the claim that he is not a complete moron – appoint a clearly unsuitable candidate into an already extremely unpopular government, was in part answered when Malá gave her resignation. At the same press conference, Babiš announced that he would suggest that he temporarily takes the place of Minister of Justice himself. He has since consulted this with his PR department and backpedaled into appointing another sycophant – not that they are in short supply, ANO being what it is – but chances are that press conference provided a rare moment of him speaking the truth about his intentions.

With all the staffing curiosities, this is still a minority government that walks a very thin line if it wants to pass any laws through the Parliament so it takes sympathy wherever it can get it – and this is where the same-sex marriage proposal fits in. Babiš himself does not give a flying fig about minority rights, ANO has no clear political stance on essentially anything and it does not hurt him in the slightest to point at the bill and claim his party is being progressive, since after all, this is the first time a Czech government has backed up such a law. Similarly, the groups most likely to sympathize – liberals, intellectuals, city folk – would find their anti-government sentiments somewhat curbed by the fact the current parliamentary opposition, which they mostly voted for, is in large part opposing it. As far as PR gambits go, it is genius; it shows a populist/social democrat/communist government in a positive light to those convinced it is physically incapable of doing a good thing.

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Political Critique: Are the media the main allies of Matteo Salvini?

It is an innovation in the relationship between politics and communication. Mateo Salvini, Deputy Prime Minister of Italy and Minister of the Interior since 1 June 2018, seems to have understood more than others, also of Grillo’s supporters who seemed to be at the forefront of the field, the extemporaneous and volatile nature of contemporary political communication, as well as how to relate to it. Salvini’s efforts are all aimed at a constant production of “novelties”, newsworthy information, dictating the agenda to newspapers and online media in particular, with outbursts against the enemy of the day, in an attempt to dominate the political scene with a sort of ubiquity.

Salvini acts in a decidedly linear way. Generally he rants the loudest, the way Trump does in the United States, he waits to see what “effect” this has, and once he has fired up his supporters, once the controversy is unleashed, he stands his ground with a “decisionist” and unrelenting attitude, head-on, further reinforcing his image as a strong man in charge. This is how he prevents a real debate on the issues he raises from taking shape, because yet another rant immediately shifts the attention to another issue, and so on.  [...]

This interpretation also stems from an intelligent analysis of the new relationship between economy and media. The success of social networks has also entailed a decrease in profit of the press. The economic policies of today’s press is also driven by the logic of click-baiting, i.e. the constant need of editors to publish articles capable of attracting repeated views. And so, of attracting investments of advertisers, which have become increasingly pivotal in ensuring the economic sustainability of a newspaper.  [...]

In other words, it is a communication tactic whose only objective is to outstrip the media’s role as fact checker and address the audience directly and that, however, employs these same media outlets which have become mere carriers of information. The fact that Salvini is behind the exponential growth of his party, not the other way round, is, by the way, indicative of how the new media-driven political economy is a decisive factor in the personalization of politics, in the rise of parties constructed around a single personality and in the redefinition of the party system in a “populist” sense.

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Political Critique: Breaking the Silence: The New Media Revolution in Turkey

The Turkish media is facing the wrath of a government that is using a coup attempt to root out the opposition. Under the cover of an ongoing state of emergency, journalists are being hounded and locked up, media outlets are being closed and the free press is gradually being bought by government-affiliated businesses. Yet, out of this despair comes a glimmer of hope, a silent revolution of new media, finding ways around the repression to get the message out. And it’s not just in Turkey. Eighty-seven percent of the world’s population lives in a country without a free press. As media censorship spreads across Europe, resilient journalists are bypassing the mainstream to raise their voices from brand-new platforms. [...]

Turkey has long suffered from state interference in the media, but matters have taken a steep downward spiral since the attempted coup of 2016, when a faction within the Turkish armed forces tried to wrest power from government institutions. This worrying trend continues in 2018, as a crisis in the judiciary weakens the media still; in January, two high-profile journalists remained in prison even after Turkey’s constitutional court ordered their release. Between January 20 and February 26, 648 people were detained because of their posts on social media. Under mounting international pressure, German-Turkish journalist Deniz Yücel was finally released. But he had been held in pre-trial detention for 367 days, without any charges. In another crushing blow, 13 journalists who worked for an opposition newspaper were sentenced to prison on April 26 for “aiding and abetting terror organisations without being a member”.

Another worrying trend is the state seizures of media outlets, which are subsequently bought by pro-government businesses, creating what has been termed a ‘pool media’ – newspapers all churning out exactly the same pro-government stories. In what some see as a death blow to Turkish independent media, in March, the Doğan media group, owners of the last credible opposition newspaper and television channels, was bought by a business conglomerate with government ties. In reaction to this trend, one young Istanbullite told me that she now avoids the news, as she considers it all to be government propaganda; trust in the mainstream media is at an all-time low. [...]

Media oppression has swept across European borders, an insidious creep into the new normal. As the prospect of EU enlargement fades and it focuses on achieving stability over internal reforms, its influence is waning in much of eastern Europe, while Russian influence is on the rise. At the same time, fake news websites increase media noise, and as well as the usual political and financial pressures, reporters are having to deal with being labelled as spies and foreign mercenaries.

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Political Critique: Can cities become the space for a new idea of transnational solidarity?

Gesine Schwan: I think this trend for renationalisation is one type of fragmentation, and it’s due to several causes. One cause is the whole tendency of cultural neoliberalism, which we saw at work in the Treaty of Maastricht, in the form of competition between states as places for capitalist investment. This means that in addition to traditional conflict, which characterizes European history, there is now economic conflict, caused by competition for capital investment. This is certainly one tendency, in line with the idea that, in general, the market is the main actor, not the state or common goods policies, and I see this idea as the basis for fragmentation. But another source of this fragmentation is the tendency of the market to ignore people’s needs for self-determination and participation, and this was underestimated and negated. So I think that part of this need for autonomy, which leads to fragmentation, is actually part of this people’s will to participate and control their environment. The third point is also related to the main economic thinking, which increasingly underestimates solidarity. In the German discussion, very often in the context of neoliberalism, solidarity was understood as ‘self-responsibility’, which is undermining. The term ‘self-responsibility’ by definition undermines the concept of solidarity, because responsibility normally means that I’m responsible for myself, but ‘self-responsibility’ means that one should no longer expect solidarity from the state or from others, that one should act in one’s own name, and this means undermining solidarity. So there are several cultural points that come together. But indeed, I think that preaching the moral of solidarity is certainly necessary but not really effective. I think solidarity is possible if you know these ‘others’ and have this proximity with others that allows to understand their situation. And this, I believe, is behind the trend for smaller entities of political life and also of daily life and of self determination. [...]

Gesine Schwan:  It was very frightening to see the lack of solidarity in the welcoming of refugees. Not only solidarity with the refugees, but also solidarity between nation states; caused by mechanism and dynamics which distracted politicians from finding solutions. So my proposal was to create a European fund that municipalities could benefit from, in order to welcome refugees, a way to finance integration, but also a way to access additional funding for their own development. Today we are witnessing a bad kind of competition between the poor living in cities who don’t have houses etc., and the poor who arrive to the city. So, because we need investment without corruption, I see the possibility of strengthening municipalities, by creating multistakeholder groups organizing civil society, which is already much more organised and committed at the city level, in order to plan strategies for the development of the city combined  with strategies for the integration of refugees. These groups would apply for European funding. This model would also mean more participation on the part of citizens taking part in such committees, and at the same time a more direct involvement in the European Union, that already gives a lot of money to cohesion funds, although people don’t perceive this because they are not involved in the decision making processes. If this money were to be given directly to the municipalities, people could actually see that they have the opportunity to develop their cities and do this in a participatory way. What is also evident today is that we have no networks connecting cities and towns, which could, on the contrary, help each other and share experiences of integration of refugees. During this process of integration, in fact, municipalities gain a firsthand experience of – for example – the African community fleeing from war: in this sense such initiatives are able to combine the local and the global level, providing experiences and knowledge, and this would be very helpful. [...]

Gesine Schwan: Yes exactly, and when you say ‘creative’ it is exactly what I expect from cities, to be creative. Today, from the legal point of view, it is the national  government that has to decide whether refugees are allowed to enter the nation state or not. We have to put political pressure on the nation state to give some of this legal competences also to municipal bodies, or at least allow them to take in refugees voluntarily. This would also help the national governments, because at present they are not willing to welcome refugees, they are afraid of doing so, but if they allowed  municipalities to decide voluntarily, this would create a form of support that would work in the long term, at a national level. The fact is, governments have problems with this “long term thinking”, something that is absolutely necessary and is also expressed by the very common term ‘sustainability’, used in all fields today – think of the sustainability goals the UN have agreed to in 2015. This line of reasoning points in the right direction, and we need to put political public pressure on national governments, so they may understand that it is in their own interest.  

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Political Critique: World Paranoia and the post-modern right

We argue that the paranoia expressed by post-modern conservatives is the symptom of a collective anxiety in an increasingly global society. The paranoia expressed by post-modern conservatives is often directed against a nefarious alliance bent on their destruction, an amorphous enemy against which they have no recourse.  The character of post-modern right wing paranoia is such that the world of “others,” which includes everyone from elites to terrorists, is conspiring to dismantle the paranoiac’s world. This world of cultural tradition, stability, and order—and the identity at home within it—must be defended at all costs. [...]

On one hand, the foreign other can be regarded as an invader who must be destroyed, yet the root of this fear goes deeper than mere unfamiliarity.  The real problem is that the foreign “invader” threatens to reveal that our “big other,” the watchful guarantor of our mores and traditions, is a local construction. For example, being confronted with Muslims who accept the validity of their religion on “faith,” threatens to expose the fundamental contingency of the Christian worldview. How might we reject the argument of Muslims, who accept the validity of their religion on “faith,” and yet maintain that our Christian values are unassailably true if they’re based on similarly contingent commitments? If we choose not to face such a reality—which would require no less than a reordering of the world itself—we may instead signify “the Muslim” as an antagonist from which nothing can be learned and against which “we” must defend ourselves at all costs. The paranoiac worldview of post-modern conservatives is a reactionary defense against all things “other” due to the profound anxiety caused by the possibility that the world might be more complex than their psychic construction.

To maintain the coherence of their worldview, post-modern conservatives transform the foreign/cosmopolitan/wealthy “others” into a unified enemy. The enemy, somehow, emerges from their rhetoric as a bizarre alliance of refugees with the global elite, opposing political parties, and cosmopolitan celebrities, the purpose of which is to infiltrate, steal from, disenfranchise, or terrorize “us.”  Many liberal critics correctly show that the logic of post-modern conservative positions is contradictory, yet itself a symptom rooted in something immune to logic and far more valuable: to wit the coherence of the world and one’s identity therein.

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Political Critique: Different languages and symbols but still our common fight

Elżbieta Korolczuk: I think it’s partially a polarisation of the political scene, where you have these very strong emotions, where you have changes in almost every area of social and political life, and that makes some people feel that this is the right moment to go out into the streets and, let’s say, openly support fascist views. But at the same time there is also a strong opposition towards these kinds of ideas. As for women, for quite a long time we were told that the situation would get better, that we were getting there, you know, we would become civilised and more gender equal. But then last year there was a moment when we felt “no, this is not going to happen”. What was actually taking place was an attack on women’s rights, on women’s political rights, but also on their bodies. [...]

Inna Shevchenko: Right, I think it is important to see the international dimension, the fact that the feminist movement became so international, also in our case, or at least in the case of these two movements. When Femen went international for us personally it was a big surprise, we didn’t aim to build an international movement. For us it was a personal and local fight, as we were addressing our personal problems as Ukrainian women in Ukraine.  Then we saw that women from Spain, from France, from Brazil, from Tunisia, from Turkey were writing to us and saying “I have different issues in my country, but your tactic speaks to me because my body is also victimised, objectified. As a woman I’m not safe in this society, I also want to join. I want to have Femen in Turkey, I want to have Femen in Spain”. So this was a form of approval, it was proof that women’s rights are a global issue, because there is a global attack on women’s rights, it is a global world-wide attack on women and that is why the fight of women becomes global, a worldwide defence of common goals, common aims, with all the diversity – which is beautiful indeed – and differences. We are very different, and sometimes we have very different goals, but we are also united by one idea, united by one aim, and this is something we share. So with regard to solidarity and the transnational movements we are seeing today, I think we have proof that there are so many issues that we share as human beings, that we have more things in common than differences between us. What we share is actually more, and the question of solidarity and united fights, transnational fights and transnational politics, makes much more sense when we think of ourselves as equal human beings, when we think about the fundamental human rights we all want – the same rights, not rights for women in the Middle East different from those for women in America. No, we are equal human beings in different parts of the world and we share so much that having a transnational fight makes much more sense.  

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Political Critique: Why the right wing fight against cultural nihilism is meaningless: post-modern conservatism as a capitalist product

I believe these conservative critics are deeply misguided in their diagnosis of the situation. While cultural nihilism may be on the rise, the accounts of these critics are strangely idealized. For the conservative critic, cultural nihilism has its roots in the sophistical cafes and salons of Enlightenment Paris and is now propagated by insidious liberal elites who wish to destabilize Western civilization.  These accounts never acknowledge the transformative impact of far more powerful social forces: most notably the emergence of capitalism and its tendency towards the creative-destruction of traditional values. This was noted by Marx more than a century and a half ago:  [...]

Post-modern conservativism is the product of cultural nihilism masquerading as a solution. Post-modern conservatives claim that the locus of truth and morality are homeland identities which have been marginalized by social fragmentation and the demand for more tolerance of difference.  They demand that the traditional morals treasured by homeland identities be restored, and a culture of tolerance replaced by one of “responsibility” for toeing the traditional line.  Oftentimes these post-modern conservatives also claim to be fighting against the nihilism of trends such as cultural relativism and social fragmentation, as with President Trump’s Warsaw speech calling for a defense of “Western Civilization.” But this is to be accomplished by deconstructing the ideals of truth, democracy, and respect for difference that constitute the best features of that civilization.  This has resulted in the erosion of institutions and norms designed to protect the most vulnerable in society.

It is possible that the ascendency of post-modern conservatism will swallow the still too globalized and outdated neo-liberals who increasingly cling to power.  Neo-liberal icons such as David Cameron and Hilary Clinton have seen their authority melt into the air under pressure by post-modern conservatives who denigrate them as progressive liberal elites of another stripe, eager to integrate more tightly into the global economy with its rootless cosmopolitans and relativistic multiculturalists. In their place post-modern conservatives have elected illiberal strongmen who disdain the very idea of truth and wish to establish a more homogenous nation-state that will remain oriented by internal capitalist dynamics. This is an extremely worrying development that should be of concern to all.

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