4Liberty: LGBTQ Community Became Viktor Orban’s Latest Scapegoat

In the second half of 2019, racism was the next topic to be tested, and the Hungarian Roma community became the focus point of Orbán’s hateful rhetoric. Orbán started with a harsh anti-Roma narrative, then denied financial compensation for Roma children who were forced to learn in segregated schools for years. Orbán portrayed the victims of segregated education as people who are “looking for free money”.[...]

In May 2020 Fidesz made a radical move: they completely banned legal gender recognition for Hungarian transgender and intersex people. This is an unprecedented phenomenon in Europe: legislators usually work towards a more equal society, not the other way around. This law ended a 20 year practise with which transgender people could (although, though a very long and malfunctioning, but still existing process) get the personal documents that provide their basic safety within the society. [...]

These cases show how Fidesz shifted from the “behind closed doors” narrative to the “pathologizing” narrative. And when Fidesz started talking about changing what LGBTQ people are doing in the privacy of their own home by sending them to conversion therapies or depriving them of their right to adopt, fundamental radical groups started to disrupt LGBTQ cultural indoor events.

read the article

openDemocracy: How the Greens won Budapest

On the back of an anti-Semitic re-election campaign that spring, Fidesz had secured 2/3 of the seats in Hungary’s gold-plated parliament building, giving it the right to change the country’s constitution at will – a power they’ve not been slow to use. None of the various progressive parties had managed to even reach second place: they’d also been beaten by another far right party, Jobbik. [...]

It’s not only Roma people. Orbàn has chased much of the Central European University out of Budapest, and attacked gender studies departments as part of his war on feminism. His allied oligarchs have bought out the majority of the press. Last year, openDemocracy uncovered a long list of examples of electoral malpractice in the 2018 election. And in 2018 more than one person said to me that public criticism of the ruling party – including in social media posts – can mean losing your job if you’re one of the many people on the government’s public works scheme. The country is sometimes described by those following the rise of the global far right as a model for social control with the veneer of democracy. [...]

Just as important, though, was a new innovation the party brought to Hungary: door-knocking. In a media environment where people don’t know what to believe, nothing beats meeting them face to face. While Fidesz rely on mobilising a huge database of their own supporters, the Greens knocked on thousands of doors, speaking to people about their concerns. Barabás tells me he personally knocked on 1,500 doors – 40% of the district he now represents, and that this is something other parties haven’t done in the past in Hungary.

read the article

The Guardian: How immigration became Britain’s most toxic political issue

When New Labour came to power in 1997, just 3% of the public cited immigration as a key issue. By the time of the EU referendum in 2016, that figure was 48%. During those intervening years, the issue came to dominate and distort British politics – exactly according to the script established by Bigotgate. Brown’s gaffe both consolidated and gave credence to a political coding that would shape everything that came after: the “hostile environment”, the Windrush scandal, the EU referendum and the revival of Britain’s far right – deploying a narrative in which sneering, out-of-touch, big-city politicians who favour foreigners and open borders are hopelessly oblivious to the struggles and the so-called “legitimate concerns” of ordinary working people (who, in this scenario, are always white).[...]

Just as communities were exposed to the shocks of an unrestrained free market and a shrinking state, they were simultaneously bombarded with stories about “Slovak spongers” and cheating Czechs. Politicians of all stripes fell in line, producing hostile rhetoric and policies in response – and defining the issue as a reflection of supposed concerns over the exact number of arrivals, the “pace of change” in local communities and the need to exert control over migration. This was the catalyst for David Cameron’s foolish 2010 election pledge to introduce a target figure for “net migration” – which the Conservative party failed to meet, again and again, only enflaming public resentment and mistrust over the issue (this impossible target underpinned the Conservative’s hostile environment policy and produced the Windrush scandal). [...]

But what if this narrative is the wrong way around? Perhaps it wasn’t immigration itself that was such a defining issue of those 20 years – but rather, the way political parties and journalists discussed it and the policies implemented in response. The big assumption is that it was a foregone conclusion that there would be hostility to immigration, which in turn would become politically explosive in the UK. While Britain has always received migrants with initial suspicion, it was not inevitable that the issue would become so damaging or derail our politics so comprehensively. [...]

It was later painted as a crisis, but in truth, the British economy needed even those unexpected numbers. David Blunkett tried at the time to explain that migrants would in any case be coming to Britain in high numbers and it was better to have them in the labour market legally, paying tax. Study after study has showed that EU migration, in particular from A8 countries, produced a net economic gain for the UK. According to one authored by economists Helen Lawton and Danny Blanchflower in 2008: “The fact that the UK opened its borders to a flow of highly skilled, motivated, educated, low cost mobile workers upon EU-enlargement was a stroke of genius, for which the UK government should be given credit.”

read the article

UnHerd: Has Hungary conceived a baby boom?

Both Hitler and Mussolini incentivised childbearing with limited success. In the 1960s Romanian dictator Nicolai Ceaușescu, eager to boost his nation’s demographic heft, removed the availability of contraception overnight. At first there was a sharp increase in the number of babies being born, but before too long people found ways around the system, and by the time of his fall, Ceaușescu’s Romania was not performing much better from a population perspective than most of its neighbours – which is to say, very poorly. [...]

Likewise in nearby Poland, where the current government stands on a pro-traditional-family platform and since 2016 has offered relatively generous child benefits – £100 per month per child – as well as maintaining strict anti-abortion laws. The policy has been credited with helping the ruling Law and Justice party win re-election, but, as in Hungary, the rise in fertility is small and still leaves Poland at barely two-thirds of what would be required for replacement. [...]

For now, two things for sure can be said. First, the best guarantee of avoiding the very lowest fertility rates in developed countries is an acceptance of extra-marital births and assistance to women in combining work and family. Where women get the education to aspire but are not encouraged to combine aspiration with motherhood, they tend to opt for the former, which is why fertility rates are so low in countries with traditional attitudes to women in the workplace, such as Italy and Japan, but higher in places like Scandinavia and France.

Second, much as governments can try their best, the only true guarantee of replacement fertility is a family-oriented and child-loving culture. Societies or ethnic groups wanting to survive and thrive should not just look to their governments for tax breaks and benefits but should look to themselves, their values and attitudes.

read the article

Jacobin Magazine: Italy’s War on the Roma

Nevertheless, he proposed a census of Italy’s Roma population such that the non-Italian Roma might be expelled from the country. As for the Italian ones: “Purtroppo te li devi tenere in Italia” — “Unfortunately you have to keep them in Italy.”

Sane observers immediately denounced Salvini’s plan of action, warning that, besides not really being legal, an ethnicity-based population tally was reminiscent of a certain Benito Mussolini. Then again, maybe that was the point. [...]

Such affronts to justice are bolstered by public animosity toward the Roma, who are estimated to number up to 180,000 in Italy. A 2016 Pew Research Center survey, for example, found that 82 percent of Italians held anti-Roma views — much higher than any other European nation listed.[...]

Salvini’s “Italians first” slogan — while clearly not encompassing those Italians who happen to be Roma or black or Muslim — recalls the rhetoric of another right-wing icon across the Atlantic who is similarly working to sanitize racism and xenophobia. Yet unlike Trump, the more Salvini plunges into full-blown fascist whackjobbery, the more popular it seems he becomes. In a recent interview, Italian actor Moni Ovadia argued that the reason Italy has ended up with the likes of Salvini is that the country never properly came to terms with its fascist past — a history that, it bears reiterating, also saw untold thousands of Roma exterminated at concentration camps.

read the article

The Guardian: How a Slovakian neo-Nazi got elected

In many of the smaller settlements there were simply not enough jobs, and the most talented people got out as soon as they could. There was a vague resentment at being seen as second-class citizens inside the European Union, and a more acute feeling that the Slovak political class was isolated from the masses and only interested in lining its pockets. Soon enough, the same issues would fuel the rise of rightwing populism across the region. Within a few years, after migration and nationalism had taken over the political agenda, much of Europe would also be grappling with the far-right’s success at the ballot box. But back in 2013, nobody was expecting a neo-Nazi to win an election. How was it possible that 55% of voters had backed someone this extreme? [...]

Kotleba rebuffed my attempts to talk with him, saying he did not trust western journalists, so, instead, I met Milan Uhrík, who was Kotleba’s deputy in Banská Bystrica and is now an MP from his party. We drank coffee in a shopping mall outside his home town of Nitra, an hour’s drive away from Banská Bystrica. Regarded as the polished face of Kotleba’s party, Uhrík had a couple of days’ worth of light stubble and wore a checked shirt. He spoke to me softly in fluent English, and although he was friendly enough, within seven minutes of us sitting down, he was on the defensive, insisting unprompted that he had no problems with “the Jews”. He repeatedly denied Kotleba or the party was racist or fascist, batting away criticism with wide-eyed mock-surprise and the predictable retort that the real victims of discrimination were white Slovaks.

Uhrík ran over what he saw as the achievements of Kotleba’s time in office, which he lamented were fairly miserly only because the central government had blocked them from doing more. I asked him what he was most proud of, and he buried himself in his phone, looking for the right English translation. “Ah, pickaxes, that’s the word,” he said with a boyish grin. “Pickaxes and shovels – that was our programme.” The policy in question hit on two of Kotleba’s favourite themes in one: Roma and roads. It involved long-term unemployed people being put to manual labour on the roads, using the simplest of tools. It employed around 90 people, many of them Roma. “They couldn’t work with computers, or do some business, they were simplest people on the labour market, but they have to do something because when they sit at home and do nothing they just start drinking, stealing and doing some criminal stuff,” he said. Kotleba’s programme was widely criticised for being both demeaning and pointlessly inefficient. It was soon shut down by the regional parliament – in Uhrík’s mind, because they were alarmed by its success. [...]

After being crushed at the polls, the party was liquidated by the courts in 2006 for its overtly anti-democratic nature. Kotleba took a brief break from politics, opening a shop in Banská Bystrica called “KKK – English fashion”. The three Ks were meant to represent the three Kotlebas, but the Ku Klux Klan reference was fairly obvious, especially given the clothing on sale – T-shirts and hoodies with far-right emblems and insignia. Kotleba and his followers regularly dressed in Hlinka Guard uniforms (making minor alterations, as the actual uniforms were illegal). “We are Slovaks, not Jews, and that is why we are not interested in the Jewish issue,” he said in 2009, when asked about the wartime deportations of the Jews from Slovakia by the very unit in whose uniform he was dressed. [...]

Kotleba did not have control of the regional parliament, which tried to frustrate his initiatives at every turn, but he set about making his influence felt wherever he could. He was particularly put out by programmes promoting human rights and tolerance in schools, and issued guidelines suggesting that instead of doing that, it would be better if the schools held beauty pageants. These were aimed at “girls learning to present themselves as ladies, and for them to see that there is still a world that values women’s dignity and spiritual beauty”. Some schools ignored the recommendations and still held the anti-extremism sessions; others did indeed hold beauty contests. Kotleba’s Kulturkampf continued in other areas, as he cancelled a contemporary dance festival he deemed to contain “pornography”, as well as an EU-funded project to resettle people with mental disabilities from a decaying communist-era facility into smaller supported housing units, and reintegrate them into society.

read the article

Jacobin Magazine: Ukraine on the Brink

Neither the NGOs nor the parties could articulate any progressive, egalitarian agenda. It was pretty clear from the outset that even progressive liberals were in the minority, never mind socialists. They were only loosely organized, and had no substantial influence, either on the development of the protests or on their ideological framing. They were probably more important in terms of framing the protests for parts of the Western audience which, in a kind of wishful thinking, focused on the most progressive elements of the movement but not the much stronger reactionary ones. From the outset it was clear that if the Maidan protests succeeded, they would bring right-wing opposition parties to power.[...]

What we’ve seen in the five years since then is that Ukraine has become poorer. The IMF recently updated their global statistics on GDP per capita, and Ukraine’s is now the lowest in Europe. The only countries even lower down the scale are located in sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia. Ukraine is the northernmost of the Global South — and not just in terms of economic statistics. Its economic structure is also more typical of the Third World: it is export-oriented and primarily focused on raw materials. And unlike Southeast Asia, Ukraine is not industrializing but deindustrializing — particularly because the most advanced parts of Ukrainian industry, which were inherited from the Soviet Union and primarily served the markets of the former Soviet republics, have been harmed by the introduction of the Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Area with the European Union; they are not usually competitive on global markets. A significant part of those industries is located in Donbass, where the war is going on. [...]

Many argue that this lack of parliamentary representation means that all the talk about Ukrainian fascists and the far right is simply Russian propaganda. But this is wrong — at the extra-parliamentary level, the radical nationalists have become much stronger. No party or coalition of liberal NGOs can mobilize so many people on the streets as the Ukrainian nationalists do every year on their key dates. These include the day of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, which is now a national holiday in Ukraine (it wasn’t before Maidan), and the birthday of Stepan Bandera (the leader of the Ukrainian nationalists during World War II, and of a movement which conducted ethnic cleansing of the Polish population in western Ukraine, as well as collaborating with the Nazis in the Holocaust). The nationalists gather tens of thousands of people for these rallies, and it’s incomparable to anything that the liberals can mobilize.[...]

First, it’s important to understand that radical nationalists don’t actually have so much popular support. It may seem surprising, but they have more legitimacy within civil society than among Ukrainian society at large — many so-called “Ukrainian liberals” are basically just moderate nationalists. The far-right parties’ electoral support, even if they were to unite, would at best be 5–10 percent. That’s support for the parties — support for some nationalist ideas would be higher. The reason for this low support is that the politics is dominated by much better-resourced oligarchic parties that control the media and have money they can put into electoral campaigns. [...]

Another problem with Tymoshenko is that she is unpredictable, not only at the level of her views on the EU and NATO. The same concerns her social populist rhetoric. This is an easy way to criticize Poroshenko: nobody wants to pay more for utilities and so on, and obviously most people don’t want austerity — they are poor and do not see many prospects in this country. But that doesn’t mean a Tymoshenko administration will really be more redistributive — definitely not consistently.

read the article

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.

read the article

The Guardian: Persecution of the Roma brings shame on Europe

The Roma are Europe’s most unwanted people. Some 10 to 12 million Roma live across the continent. They have been here for more than a millennium – and have been ostracised and suppressed throughout that time. One in four Roma is thought to have perished in the Holocaust. [...]

In most European countries, Roma are the most despised social group. France is often criticised for its antipathy towards Islam. But whereas less than a third of the French population dislike Muslims, almost two-thirds have an unfavourable view of the Roma. So do four in five Italians, two-thirds of Greeks and Hungarians and almost half of Spaniards and Britons.

The Roma may be Europe’s largest minority group, but they are socially isolated and have no powerful figures to lobby on their behalf. That makes them easy scapegoats. It also makes it easy to ignore the hostility towards them. The silence is as shameful as the bigotry.

read the article

Quartz: The election of Italy’s first black senator won’t make a dent on rising racism there

wobi is not only the first Senator of African origin to have been elected in Italy. He’s also the first person from sub-Saharan Africa to have been elected to represent a far-right party, la Lega (The League) led by Matteo Salvini.

But his election is unlikely to lead to less racism and xenophobia in the country nor will it bring any respite for migrants in the country. This is for two reasons: racism and xenophobia have become more entrenched in Italy, and neither Iwobi’s party, nor the senator himself, are sympathetic towards migrants. [...]

Migrants in Italy are increasingly seen as a threat to society. The centre-right coalition, which attracted the highest percentage of votes in the recent elections, focused its campaign on the slogan “Italians first”. The leader of the coalition Silvio Berlusconi even declared that “migrants are a social bomb.” [...]

In March 2011, Human Rights Watch published a report entitled “Everyday Intolerance: Racist and Xenophobic Violence in Italy”. The report pointed to “worrying signs exist that increasing diversity has led to increasing intolerance, with some resorting to or choosing violence to express racist or xenophobic sentiments.”

read the article

The Local: Italy is 'steeped in hate', Amnesty warns amid toxic election campaign

Against this background, the campaign for Italy's election on March 4th has only aggravated the problem, Amnesty said. The group has been monitoring comments made on social media by political leaders and candidates nationwide and in the past two weeks alone has identified more than 200 that it flagged as hateful or discriminatory on grounds of race, religion, gender or sexual orientation. 

Virtually all were made by members of the centre-right alliance that the latest polls show leading, comprised of Forza Italia centrists, the populist League and far-right Brothers of Italy. [...]

Meanwhile the Brothers of Italy, while making fewer discriminatory statements about migrants, refugees and Roma people, made the highest number of negative comments about women and LGBTI people. While the party has a high-profile female leader, Giorgia Meloni, it promotes "traditional family values" that tend to exclude orientations other than heterosexual.  [...]

Amnesty's Rufini warned that Italy is more polarized than ever before, saying that part of the public believes itself to be "great, pure, Italian while the rest don't deserve to share the country [...] creating an impossible climate in this country and killing all chance of debate". 

read the article

Political Critique: Romaphobia. The last acceptable racism?

There are several reasons that might explain why Roma are stigmatised. The first is exclusion. For centuries, Roma have been excluded from nation-building exercises promoted by political entrepreneurs, their difference harnessed as fuel to build the nation as ‘us’ (the majority) not ‘them’ (Roma). Roma, as a heavily constructed and policed identity, become necessary ‘others’ positioned outside of the nation. Roma then become easy targets for political elites who want to bolster their own popularity and power. An example of this is seen in Hungary with Roma culture and identity consistently equated with criminality by media and politicians. [...]

This Romaphobia ‘loop’ is fuelled by distrust and a lack of understanding between the majority and Roma communities. Changing the hearts and minds of the majority is made more challenging by the presence of Romaphobic statements made by political representatives, the persistence of entrenched negative associations of Roma/Gypsy identity in everyday discourse, as well as the inability of Roma communities to effectively break these stereotypes. In Italy and France, for example, elites have actively targeted Roma communities, creating a narrative which maintains that Roma are not part of French or Italian societies even though Roma have lived there for over 500 years.

Another reason is avoidance: some Roma want to avoid the enveloping arms of the state and create opt-out strategies to actively resist incorporation into society. The ultimate aim here is to retain control over one’s own affairs believing that survival cannot be left in the hands of others. For a community which has been persistently persecuted, such a strategy is understandable. However, this oversimplifies the story as many Roma actively participate in societies across Europe.

read the article

openDemocracy: What motivated the 60,000 people who joined the far-right Polish Independence March?

On November 11th, the same woman who had taken it upon herself to spread Szczęsny’s words, Gabriela Lazarek, entered a Catholic Church where the far-right Independence March organisers held their pre-demonstration mass. She held a sign that quoted the late Polish Pope John Paul II: ‘Racism is a sin that constitutes a serious offence against God’. She was pushed out of the church while the priest lectured about the importance of nationalism and Polishness. The congregation later joined 60 000 people in the Independence March.

In Poland, we rarely talk about racism – it is wrongly understood as something that Poland has little historical encounter with. Racism has a long, if not often talked about, history in Poland. Racism in Poland is expressed through ways in which racialised people have been treated in the country, including Jews, Roma and Muslims. We can’t ignore the connection between race and Polish homogeneity, where whiteness and racial politics have become key to a nationalist project promoted by the current Polish government that perceives heterogeneity as a threat. [...]

Nationalism expressed through racist sentiments has become mainstream in Poland. In Poland, like other parts of Europe, racist views are on the rise and becoming more commonplace acceptable with the shift to the right following the election of the Prawo i Sprawiedliwość (PiS) party. As Rafał Pankowski of the Nigdy Więcej [Never Again Association] emphasised, there is a climate of acceptance for extreme nationalist ideology. In 2016, the organisation recorded the ‘biggest wave of hatred’ in the country’s recent history, reporting several incidents taking place every day. While the mainstreaming of racist discourse and corresponding violence has to be partially attributed to the current ruling party, the phenomenon of racism in Poland is not new, even if it is rarely discussed. [...]

The Polish Law and Justice (PiS) government needs to take concrete actions against the culture of hate that is growing, and going unpunished, in Poland. It is time for Poles to recognise that Poland has a problem with racism, that the nationalism currently promoted by its government and right-wing groups is intimately tied to a long history of dangerous racial exclusion. It is time that the call to action of Piotr Szczęsny be answered by all sections of the Polish society: “We, ordinary human beings, like you, hear your call – and we won’t wait any longer!”.

read the article

Deutsche Welle: My Europe: 'Foreigners can be racists too'

I can well imagine this homeless man standing with the 60,000 far-right extremists in Warsaw on Polish independence day, bellowing, "All Poland sings with us: Piss off, refugees,” or calling for a "white Europe of brother nations”. And as he stood there, demonstrating against Muslims and refugees – of whom there are hardly any in Poland – the far-right demonstrators would be looking at him with contempt because he's homeless. Simply being the object of discrimination doesn't make someone a better person. [...]

Things start getting particularly complicated when xenophobes flee abroad and meet other xenophobes. Is that too abstract? I can offer you a concrete example as an explanation: At a demonstration by the right-wing extremist Identitarian Movement of Austria in Vienna, I heard the language spoken by my parents. Many Serbs and Croats were there to demonstrate against "Umvolkung” ("ethnicity inversion,” a term historically used by the far right to describe demographic change through immigration), "Islamification,” or whatever else it is they fantasize about. [...]

Serbs, Croats, Poles and other people from Central and Eastern Europe are now marching in Germany and Austria alongside the people who not long ago wanted them thrown out of the country. Ever since the war in Syria, we Balkan refugees suddenly find ourselves a little further up the pecking order. We're now deemed good enough to join in demonstrations against refugees. If that's what you call integration, it's worked beautifully. European nationalists have a very efficient cross-border network. The bogeymen they all have in common are refugees and Muslims – regardless of whether or not there actually are any in their respective countries.

read the article

Political Critique: Czech Republic Drugs in the Czech Republic: A Reflection on Three Decades

The first civic groups were created in a completely organic way and saw the involvement of experts in psychology and psychiatry, Christian activists and, most importantly, active or former drug users themselves. The last group was the only one possessing any real insight into the drug scene: to exaggerate a little, they managed to naturally develop the trend of a participative approach which has only recently started appearing here thanks to some of the more enlightened international organizations. Their enthusiasm for the new possibilities helped set up a – for the time – very sophisticated and complex system of secondary and tertiary prevention. The relevant positions at ministries and advisory organs were staffed by experts holding pragmatic attitudes to drugs and addiction and a system of financial support for services that were until then financed by subsidies from abroad started taking shape. Maybe it was because of this well-off drug policy that the less fortunate side of the situation started showing itself; however, in that time of euphoric beginnings, this was hardly noticed. [...]

Halfway through the decade, a rising number of drug users among the Romani was noted in several regions. In Prague, there were families in which all three generations took heroin together and its use and trading overtook entire city districts inhabited traditionally by the Roma and a similar situation arose in Brno shortly afterwards, with drug trade paralyzing the neighborhood around the now-legendary Cejl street and decimated the local community of the Olachian Romani. The social services did not handle the crisis well, failed to spread information about the risks and means of help including the harm reduction services among the affected community and clinics have not managed to find a way to reflect the specific needs of the Roma. In Prague, the on-site harm reduction teams played a game of cat and mouse with the open drug scene – which was chased around the districts by the police applying their „forcing out“ strategy. Those originally responsible for the creation of anti-drug strategies, by now firmly planted in high political circles, focused on creating management positions and obtaining money for the drug sector, resulting in a neoliberalization of the field where all the deciding power was concentrated in the hands of a closed circle of experts, the “founding mothers and fathers”. The non-profit sector missed a unique opportunity to respond to the sharp increase of drug users’ numbers in their natural environment in a time when the public was not yet completely hysterized and trusted the experts, and politicians had yet to use the public scares for their own gain. It would not even be necessary to go too far for inspiration: at the time, the Swiss Zurich managed to stabilize what was the biggest European open drug scene with their progressive drug policies. [...]

Another legislative intervention that greatly affected the pervitin black market and the behavior of its users was the limit enforced on selling prescription drugs containing pseudoephedrine (necessary for making pervitin). As a result, the pills could only be sold in a much smaller amount and only upon providing an ID. This measure utterly failed at lowering the amount of drug users, but the one thing it lowered drastically was the quality of pervitin. Production of the drug was taken over by large, well-organized groups capable of securing a sufficient supply of pharmaceuticals; they, however, made the drug exclusively for sale, which resulted in lower quality and side effects. Last January, the same measure was taken in Poland, which used to supply the pharmaceuticals for most of the Eastern part of the Czech Republic; it is only reasonable to assume another drop in the quality of pervitin and a resulting outbreak of health issues of its users will occur soon.

read the article

Politico: Bulgarian far right set to shock Brussels

With Sofia taking over the EU’s rotating Council presidency in January, politicians and officials in Brussels are sounding the alarm over the United Patriots (UP) — a group of three far-right parties in Bulgaria’s coalition government. [...]

UP leaders have used racist rhetoric toward Bulgaria’s Roma minority, advocated violence to prevent migrants from entering Europe and publicly expressed doubt that man-made climate change is a problem. [...]

One UP leader, Deputy Prime Minister Valeri Simeonov, once publicly described the Roma as “ferocious apes.” A second leader, Deputy Prime Minister Krasimir Karakachanov, who, as defense minister, will participate in the EU’s Foreign Affairs Council, recently said the EU and NATO should stop migrants entering Europe “by force of arms if necessary.” [...]

Asked by POLITICO about the UP’s rhetoric, Commissioner for Justice Věra Jourová, who is in charge of promoting the integration of Roma communities across Europe, said: “It is absolutely unacceptable … I am nervous about this situation.” She said she is already monitoring the new government’s policy toward the Roma for signs of backsliding and would be in “intensive” discussions with Sofia in the coming months. [...]

In some cases, UP leaders have sought to turn their nationalist rhetoric into action. Earlier this year, Simeonov and Karakachanov, the defense minister who is also leader of the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization (IMRO), joined protesters who tried to barricade the Bulgarian-Turkish border to stop ethnic Turks from voting in the election.

read the article

openDemocracy: The politics of being Roma in France

If French citizens enjoy such rights fully, for Roma nationals political rights might be an issue for many reasons. Being part of a specific administrative category called “Travellers” (Gens de voyage), targeted by specific legislation and living in segregated areas, Roma nationals have been isolated for years from the rest of the society; this has had a direct impact on their rights and participation in the political life in France. [...]

After WWII Roma continued to experience institutional racism, which has had a negative impact on their political participation and rights in France. Roma, so-called “nomads”, were kept in internment camps until 1946 where living conditions were not very different to those in concentration camps. [...]

Nevertheless the art.8 of the law of 1969 stipulates that the number of Travellers (Gens de voyage) assigned to a municipality must not exceed 3% of its population according to the most recent census. Local authorities may refuse to grant township to Travellers when the quota is completed. In this case, Travellers need to refer to another municipality which may in some cases be far from their living place, which creates unique obstacles to their participation during elections. [...]

In addition, art. 10 of the Law of 7 July 1969 established an obligation for Travellers to prove three years' residency in a municipality to be allowed to vote, compared to six months for any other citizens, a measure which was repealed by the Constitutional Council (Conseil Constitutionnel) in 2012 because of contradiction with the French constitution.

read the article

BBC4 Analysis: Detoxifying France's National Front

Has Front National leader Marine Le Pen really detoxified the party founded by her father 40 years ago? Is it a right-wing protest movement or a party seriously preparing for power? Anand Menon, professor of European politics at Kings College London, analyses the process the French call Dédiabolisation. Le Pen has banished the name of the party and even her own surname from election posters and leaflets. Her party is making inroads into socialist and communist fiefdoms in northern and eastern France. Combining nationalism with a message designed to reach out to the left, she speaks up loudly for the have-nots, people who live in the land she calls "the forgotten France." She targets trade unionists, teachers and gay voters. But widening the party's appeal leads to a tricky balancing act. Can Marine Le Pen manage the process of political exorcism without alienating die-hard supporters? 

listen to the podcast 

Al Jazeera: Roma in Kosovo: The justice that never came

Although Milosevic's army began its withdrawal on June 11, 1999, the violence continued in the months that followed. Despite the presence of NATO troops, members of the KLA and other organised groups launched a series of revenge attacks on the Roma community, who were suspected of siding with Serbia.

These attacks varied from harassment and theft to arson, rape and murder. In 2001, Human Rights Watch (HRW) reported that up to 1,000 Serbs and Roma were missing or unaccounted for since the end of the conflict. [...]

A 1999 report by the European Roma Rights Centre (ERRC) also questioned the idea of a community-wide allegiance. The Roma community was caught in the middle of a conflict that allowed no neutrality, the report suggested, as a consequece of which, the community was targeted by both sides. [...]

Last week, thousands of Kosovar Albanians took to the streets of Pristina to protest against the arrest of Ramush Haradinaj - a former KLA commander. Haradinaj, who was briefly prime minister, had been detained in France on a war crimes warrant issued by Serbia.

read the article 

Political Critique: A country of confused millenials

A few weeks ago, the Slovakian NGO Institute for Public Questions (IVO) released the results of a comprehensive quantitative survey focusing on the online behaviour of young Slovaks. It came to quite a few important and staggering conclusions: the media immediately jumped on the revelation that the party with the most support from voters aged between 18 and 39 (although it remains somewhat questionable whether middle-aged people should be considered “young Slovaks”) was the People’s Party of Our Slovakia (Ľudová strana Naše Slovensko – ĽSNS) led by the infamous fascist leader Marián Kotleba. Nevertheless, the survey tells us that around a quarter of young Slovaks would vote for ĽSNS and ninety per cent of them have no qualms about their style, political program and plans. Furthermore, a third of Slovakia’s youth openly sympathizes with the values and activities of the party. During the last parliamentary elections, when ĽSNS gained over 8% of the vote, it had the support of 22% of first-time voters – and their electorate consisted of 70% of people under the age of 39. [...]

The employment policies of Slovak governments have displayed signs of labour precarization for a long time, and together with their investment policy, this resulted in a situation where we can find the sixth richest region in EU, Bratislava, in the same country as the extremely poor areas of central and eastern Slovakia, such as Rimavská Sobota, Revúca, Velký Krtíš, Kežmarok, Gelnica, Trebišov or Sabinov. It is no coincidence that some of these places lie in the Banská Bystrica region, for the last three years led by the fascist Kotleba. These areas suffer from high unemployment as well as the lowest education level and room space per person in the country. Households without fresh running water are a fairly common sight. The poverty line in Slovakia is set to 347 euro and 640 000 people are directly threatened by poverty, many of whom are families with children. [...]

What is also worth our attention amongst the survey results is the lack of an easily defined relationship between political orientation and digital literacy. It turns out the young voters of the fascist ĽSNS are the most active when it comes to looking up information online (right above the voter base of SaS) – although they often resort to sources typologically similar to Breitbart News. Anti-systemic thinking is fueled by false alarms, hoaxes or conspiracy theories; these can entertain and articulate one’s political views in exactly the same way as criticism based on working with mainstream media sources. From the point of view of search engine algorithms and social networks segmenting content for end-users, there are no real differences between these two kinds of infotainment. And it is digital platforms that are becoming the meta-media of today, generating social realities and creating mutually impermeable bubbles. The public, as the nexus of communicative activity in Slovakia, is slowly ebbing out – as society takes a downward spiral towards becoming a constellation of parallel universes that can apparently only be helped by mutual collision.

read the article