Europe will either be united or not. It cannot be ruled out that an unforeseen event may lead to the disintegration of the EU. But it can also not be ruled out that an unforeseen event will cement it. Paradoxically, the COVID-19 pandemic, which is currently devastating the global economy, may prove to be such an event.

Prior to the creation of the European Union, Europe did not exist. It did not exist in the political sense, that is. It is true that François Guizot, the 19th century historian and statesman, believed that there is something like a European civilisation because a certain kind of unity permeates European countries despite countless differences dividing them. This unity, however, was manifest only to a select number of Europeans and only through comparisons with the brutally colonised European “Others” across Africa, Asia, the Middle East and Americas. Certainly, the thus conceived civilisational unity did not translate itself into political unity. The geographical concept of Europe made political sense only as an unstable system of volatile states linked more frequently, and tightly, by their mutual hostilities than their alliances.

An interview with Henrik Müller, a professor of economic policy journalism at the Institute of Journalism at TU Dortmund University, Germany. Interviewer: Markus Krzoska

MARKUS KRZOSKA: In your book, published last year, you analyse “turbo democratism” which, as you argue, poses a great threat to our social life. What characterises this phenomenon and what distinguishes it from the parliamentary democracy from which we have long been used to?

HENRIK MÜLLER: Actually my first idea for the title of my book was “turbo democratism”. It was later decided to be called Kurzschlusspolitik (a short circuit policy or a quick reaction policy). In the 2000s there was a lot of talk about turbo capitalism, which is an unstable economic system and which, as we now know, reached its peak with the 2008 financial crisis. Today, I argue that the political system, just like financial capitalism, is innately unstable. This instability comes from public opinion and society’s tendencies to have knee jerk reactions, which (at least partially) affects the traditional political structures.

The politics of today’s populist leaders is nearly always the eternal return to the past. 1989, however, represents a normative stop they would prefer to skip.

The past does not exist. It is what one makes of it. From a purely axiological point of view, every one of us is constructed of different pasts and we have different memories at our disposal. The non-existence of the past as a tangible point of reference is a subject of individual or collective creation and interpretation; it is the founding assumption of any sociological research devoted to mnemonic subjects.

A review of The Light That Failed: A Reckoning. By: Ivan Krastev and Stephen Holmes. Publisher: The Penguin Random House, United Kingdom, 2020.

A debate during the 34th Days of Contemporary Art in Białystok with Edwin Bendyk, Alex Freiheit, Father Wojciech Lemański, Tomasz Sikora, Joanna Wichowska and Serhiy Zhadan. Moderated by: Anna Łazar

This episode features an interview with Francis Fukuyama, a professor at Stanford University and author of the recent book Identity: the demand for Dignity and the Politics of Resentment.

A conversation with Francis Fukuyama, professor, writer and public intellectual. Interviewer: Maciej Makulski

Modernisation appeared to spell economic deprivation for large segments of the Weimar Republic’s society. They felt threatened by uncertainties; in fact, hopes and expectations about the future were disrupted. Aggression turned against democratic institutions and minorities depicted as scapegoats.

On October 15th 1929, the Fritz Lang film Woman in the Moon premiered at the Ufa-Palast am Zoo in Berlin. The cinema’s façade had been redesigned for the event. Launched from a skyscraper silhouette, a spaceship replica shuttled back and forth to the moon against the backdrop of a starry sky simulated by hundreds of light bulbs. Offering tantalising visions of future technology – not quite unlike Bauhaus architecture with its twin promise of functionalist building and re-styled urban life, it conveyed the impression of epitomising a cosmopolitan republic that eagerly embraced modernity.

The ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) in Turkey originally founded itself as a secular, anti-establishment party. Now that its leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan has effectively eliminated institutional controls and silenced opposition, AKP has become the de facto establishment and amended its narrative and policies to capitalise on the increasingly authoritarian mood. As the global availability of cheap credit dwindles, will Erdogan’s government resort to further authoritarian measures?

A conversation with Basil Kerski, director of the European Solidarity Centre in Gdańsk. Interviewers: New Eastern Europe.

NEW EASTERN EUROPE: For today’s meeting you brought with you a book authored by the late Lord Ralf Dahrendorf…

BASIL KERSKI: Yes, this is his 2006 work titled Versuchungen der Unfreiheit. Die Intellektuellen in Zeiten der Prüfung. Ralf Dahrendorf wrote here about the breakthroughs which we experienced in the 20th and early 21st centuries. These were the events of 1945, 1968, 1989 and 2001. The most interesting in this book is the chapter where Dahrendorf analyses the challenges that still await us. Reading this piece today, we can see how much of his forecast is confirmed by reality.

Through a rhetoric of radical change, issue-oriented politics and a centre-right platform, KPV LV has become one of the main forces in Latvia’s new parliament.

Batkivshchyna Party leader Yulia Tymoshenko and the proposals made at her June 15th “New Deal” congress resemble those introduced by Nicolás Maduro, successor to military officer and President Hugo Chávez, a socialist-populist who ruled Venezuela from 1999-2013. Chávez and Maduro are anti-democratic leaders who have ruined the country’s once strong economy based upon it being a major oil producer.