Europe Archives - Page 4 of 15

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How Jewish Was Polish History?

David Stromberg Interviews Magda Teter About I.B. Singer, Jews, and Poland.

September 3, 2018 • by David Stromberg and Magda Teter

Magda Teter [MT]: Soon after Isaac Bashevis Singer won the Nobel Prize for Literature, Literatura na świecie, a literary monthly predominantly interested in world literature, devoted a portion of its April 1979 issue to Isaac Bashevis Singer. This marked a turning point for a discussion about Polish Jewish history and culture, ...

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The Özil Affair and the Limits of Progressive Nationalism

Why liberal nationalists can’t have their cake and eat it, too

August 28, 2018 • by Lior Erez

This July, German football star Mesut Özil resigned from the national team. His resignation provides a dramatic illustration of the crisis of multiculturalism in Europe. Özil, the son of Turkish immigrants, resigned with a public letter on social media. “I am a German when we win, an immigrant when we lose,” he ...

The Özil Affair and the Limits of Progressive Nationalism

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Ágnes Heller: Orbán is a Tyrant

From the time he became the prime minister of Hungary, Orban was always interested in concentrating all the power in his hands.

August 26, 2018 • by Jan Smoleński

Jan Smoleński: Is Viktor Orban a populist? Agnes Heller*: I do not like the term populist as it is used in the context of Viktor Orban, because it does not say anything. Populists rely typically on poor people. Orban uses nationalistic vocabulary and rhetoric, he mobilizes hatred against the stranger and ...

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A Call for International Solidarity

On the fight for immigrant and refugee justice

August 16, 2018 • by Elena Gagovska

About a month and a half ago I applied for an American tourist visa at the U.S. embassy in Skopje, Macedonia, because I plan on visiting my boyfriend there during fall break. Admittedly, I felt a little resentful of the process. Security guards with guns they weren’t going to use ...

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The Electoral Success of the Radical Right in Europe

Why are the Radical Right better at “capitalizing” on ‘Populism’ than the Radical Left?

August 7, 2018 • by Valerio Alfonso Bruno and James F. Downes

Contemporary Radical Right parties have tended to outperform Radical Left parties electorally in Europe, particularly in national parliamentary (legislative) elections during the post-economic crisis period. However, it is not clear why this is the case. Given the context of growing dissatisfaction towards the democratic establishment in which contemporary populism developed, ...

The Electoral Success of the Radical Right in Europe

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Trump’s Outrageousness and Democratic Opportunity

Looking ahead to the midterm elections after Trump’s recent international misconducts

August 4, 2018 • by John Lawrence

O.K., pop quiz. Which name does not belong on the following list: Aaron Burr, Aldrich Ames, Robert Hanssen, Bob Hope and Donald Trump? After Monday’s eye-popping, breath-taking display of Trumpian obsequiousness and naiveté, the answer is pretty obvious. Old Ski Nose was a patriot, through and through. Not so Donald Trump, whose irresponsible, ...

Trump’s Outrageousness and Democratic Opportunity

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Public Space, Public Art, and Public Memory

Responding to the Neo-Nazi Trial Verdict in Jena

August 3, 2018 • by Irit Dekel

Jeffrey C. Goldfarb is off today. He has selected this piece on the complexities of public memory as this week's Gray Friday post. On Wednesday, July 11, 2018 the verdict of five of the National Socialist Underground (NSU) members was given in the Higher Regional Court in Munich. Beate Zschäpe, the ...

Public Space, Public Art, and Public Memory

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200 Years of Karl Marx

Some lessons on the politics of commemoration

July 24, 2018 • by Kathy M. Newman

This year marked the 200th anniversary of the birthday Karl Marx, a fierce critic of capitalism. In an effort to think through the legacy of—and the possible futures of—Marx’s influence, the Humanities Center at Carnegie Mellon University hosted Marx@200, a program of more than two dozen lectures, performances, panels, and ...

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Was it all futile?

Review: John Kelly’s ‘Contemporary Trotskyism: Parties, Sects and Social Movements in Britain’

July 14, 2018 • by Ian Birchall

Among the many moral panics aroused by Jeremy Corbyn's accession to the Labour leadership has been the return of the spectre of Trotskyism. Lord Hattersley has warned that ‘the old gang is back’, referring explicitly to the Militant grouping of the 1980s; Labour's deputy leader Tom Watson has produced ‘evidence’ ...

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A New Committee with Lech Walesa, 2018

Reflections on the limitations of the continuing struggle for democracy in Poland

July 12, 2018 • by Leszek Budrewicz

In opposition to the threat to democracy in Poland today, Lech Walesa is calling for a united front against the ruling Law and Justice Party (PiS), reviving a citizens committee he led thirty years ago in the democratic struggle against Communist dictatorship. Here the first of two pieces responding to ...

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Editors versus Algorithms

Reflecting on not so distant suffering at home and abroad in a moment of American state sponsored child abuse

June 22, 2018 • by Jeffrey C. Goldfarb

My morning ritual includes reviewing my email messages, looking at my Facebook feed, and reading “the paper,” i.e. the print edition of The New York Times, which arrives at my doorstep sometime between 5:00 and 5:30. I try to read the paper first, though sometimes, I can’t. The paper arrives late, ...

Blue Monday

Memory, Forgetting, and the Bluest Kind of Blue

Bucharest Reflections on the 20th Century

June 4, 2018 • by Jeffrey C. Isaac

"I merely took the energy it takes to pout, and I wrote some blues." -Duke Ellington Memory, Forgetting, and the Bluest Kind of Blue: Bucharest Reflections on the 20th Century I am writing this while drinking my second cup of strong cappuccino on the veranda of Bon Pain, a wonderful small French patisserie in ...