Europe Archives - Page 8 of 15

Feature

Poland’s Immoral Refugee Policy

EU files lawsuit for refusing to admit refugees

June 29, 2017 • by Sławomir Sierakowski

On June 13, the European Commission filed a lawsuit against Poland, the Czech Republic, and Hungary, accusing them of violating European Union law by refusing to admit refugees. The next day, Polish Prime Minister Beata Szydło gave a speech at the site of the Auschwitz death camp to mark the 77th anniversary ...

Feature

Have Muslims Replaced Jews as the Other of the Twenty-First Century?

An excerpt from ‘Modernity and the Jews in Western Social Thought’

June 19, 2017 • by Chad Alan Goldberg

The rise of Muslims as a prominent ethnoreligious minority in Western Europe and the United States raises a pertinent question for this study: Have they taken the position formerly occupied by Jews as a foil for the construction of modern European and American identities? Numerous scholars have suggested such a ...

Have Muslims Replaced Jews as the Other of the Twenty-First Century?

Feature

Europe’s Nationalist International

Europe’s far-right groups and ideologues have long been collaborating across national borders to further their agendas

May 15, 2017 • by Andrea Mammone

Immediately after Marine Le Pen successfully advanced to the second round of the French Presidential election by beating the candidate from the mainstream right, Italy's far-right leader Matteo Salvini, tweeted a photo of him with the French politician, with the caption "Go Marine." He later added: "it is time get ...

Feature

You Can’t Always Get What You Want, or In Defense of False Choices

Žižek on Macron and LePen

May 5, 2017 • by Laura Nelson

“You can’t always get what you want, but if you try sometimes, you’ll find you get what you need” -- Mick Jagger Blackmail is ugly. Political blackmail is more than ugly: it undermines the political as a distinct mode of human action, and transforms it into a manipulative battle of insult ...

You Can’t Always Get What You Want, or In Defense of False Choices

Feature

Is Right-Wing Populism Really Surging?

A look back at the Dutch election

April 21, 2017 • by Lysan Boshuyzen

A question on the exit polls during the US presidential election was which “presidential quality” mattered most. Interestingly enough, it was not experience, nor good judgment that people deemed the most necessary quality for a president: it was their ability to “bring needed change” (39%). That was also the only quality ...

Education

Hungarian Higher Education Under Attack

The Fate of CEU is the Fate of Freedom

April 3, 2017 • by Jeffrey C. Isaac

Central European University, one of the most important institutions of higher education in Europe, is currently being threatened by the Hungarian government of Prime Minister Viktor Orban and his nationalist-populist FIDESZ party. CEU, founded in 1991 during the early phases of the post-Communist transition, is officially registered and accredited in ...

Feature

Donald Tusk’s Polish Stalker

Jacek Saryusz-Wolski Challenging Tusk for President of European Council

March 15, 2017 • by Sławomir Sierakowski

But then, on February 27, the Financial Times reported that the Polish government was sounding out the possibility of presenting an alternative candidate, Jacek Saryusz-Wolski, an MEP from Civic Platform, the party Tusk founded. In the European Parliament, Saryusz-Wolski is a member of the European People’s Party (EPP), which he served as Vice ...

Feature

The Fall of Turkish Democracy

Codifying Autocracy through Constitutional Amendments

March 3, 2017 • by Ertug Tombus

If these amendments are passed at the referendum, their main effect will be to concentrate power in the hands of the President eliminating any remnants of checks and balances, most of which have been rendered ineffective already. Many argue that if it is approved the new Constitution will mean a ...

Feature

White European Women’s Rights

France’s Paradoxical Women’s Liberation

March 1, 2017 • by Hannah Leffingwell

While Clinton ran on the notion that “women’s rights are human rights,” Le Pen’s slogan might best be summed up as “women’s rights are white European women’s rights.” Employing xenophobic rhetoric all too familiar to Americans under the Trump administration, Le Pen has become the face of contemporary French nationalism, ...

Feature

Thoughts on Putin and Trump

Democratic “Interference,” and the Transnational Contest for “Democracy”

January 26, 2017 • by Jeffrey C. Isaac

This second response has obvious merit. The US government historically has very deliberately interfered with elections elsewhere on numerous occasions, many of which involved efforts to undermine perceived “enemies” and to promote “friends” even if they were “our sons-of-a-bitch,” as President Franklin Roosevelt famously said of Nicaraguan dictator Anastasio Somozo ...

Feature

Why We’re Not Re-living The Interwar Years

We’re back in the 19th century

January 20, 2017 • by Quentin Bruneau

In many accounts, the historical parallel between our time and the interwar period refers to both the economic conditions of the two periods, i.e. a major international economic crisis, and to a lesser extent, to the political situation, namely the rise of far right and far left parties. This analogy, like ...

Uncategorized

How A Conservative Rural Country Defeated A Far-Right Presidential Candidate

The 2016 Austrian Presidential Election

January 18, 2017 • by David Kretz

On the same day, Austrians also voted in the final round of their presidential election. There, center-left candidate Alexander Van der Bellen (Green Party) defeated far-right candidate Norbert Hofer (Austrian Freedom Party, FPÖ) 53.8% to 46.2%. Austria is a small country, but the outcome of this election has international significance ...