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<font size=3>dear spotykachers,<br>
<br>
since I am in process of thinking about the future seminar Two world or
moja tvoja ne ponimaj, I wanted ask you following:<br>
since I had an idea invite to our anti-east-west meeting for next year
some writers who write interesting stuff about our painful topic of
east-west understanding and who have really interesting and not standard
approaches (I mean not only pro-Western al'a Andruchovych who liked and
famous on the West already) but more not famous authors who have a fresh
view on the problem and perhaps also present a analysis on the way out
from the dead point.<br>
Any links are welcome! <br>
as an example I send you a link to Slavenka Drakulic works who some
probably have read, but anyway she express some interesting and some
discussible thoughts (look below).<br>
<br>
regards, Olga<br>
<br>
Who is Afraid of Europe?<br>
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<br>
Opening Speech for the 14th European Meeting of Cultural Journals,
Politics and Cultures in Europe: New Visions, New Divisions, Vienna,
November 9th 2000<br>
<br>
Slavenka Drakulic, a committed European, expresses doubts in the
continuing momentum of European integration amidst rising anxieties about
a loss of national identity. Mirrored in the success of right-wing and
populist parties across Europe and concerns being voiced in the
post-communist countries queuing for "entry" as well, this
anxiety, however, focuses on a cultural construct, the author argues. To
make the project Europe work, a new kind of imagined community will need
to be created - is Europe ready for that?<br>
<br>
I live in Sweden, Croatia and Austria. Europe is my home. I remember
when, a couple of years ago, the checkpoint at the border crossing
between Austria and Italy was abandoned and we were passing the border
near Klagenfurt, barely believing that we were not going to be stopped by
the police. But there was no police, only empty booths. What a great
feeling of relief it was! Especially because I remembered the strange
sensation when I crossed the newly erected border post between Slovenia
and Croatia in 1991 for the first time. Being an Eastern European, I also
know how it feels standing in line at the airport checkpoint that says
"non-EU citizens", or sometimes just bluntly
"Others".<br>
<br>
Living on both sides of real and imagined European borders and crossing
them back and forth all the time, I have to say that only a year ago I
believed in the project of constructing a united Europe much more than I
do today. But of course, that was before the elections in Austria, in
Norway and Switzerland or in the city of Antwerp, before the referendum
on the Euro in Denmark - or incidents such as the one in Malaga where a
mob, mobilized by a neo-Nazi web site, chased Moroccan workers for three
whole days. The list of disturbing events all over Europe is much longer.
It is as if there is suddenly a pattern of a different Europe emerging in
front of my eyes, and when I look at it, it gives me goosebumps. It is
not a deja vu because I belong to a generation that did not experience
fascism, but I can see growing xenophobia, nationalism and racism
everywhere. Moreover, because of where I come from, I can tell when the
fear of the Other becomes something one must start to take into account.
And I just wonder if these are isolated incidents or are perhaps already
signs that the project of European integration is in danger of losing its
momentum?<br>
<br>
I was born after WW II and grew up on a sleepy continent divided by the
"iron curtain", dwelling in the shadow of a possible nuclear
war. As school kids, we would practice what we had to do in the case of
such an attack. We learned to recognize its characteristics by heart:
first a mushroom cloud would appear on the horizon, followed by a blast
of heat and ashes. You should hide behind any barrier, pull the gas mask
over your face and under no circumstances drink water (the bit with the
water was particularly strongly impressed upon us and I always wondered
why). Although only children, we understood that these preparations would
give us little protection if such a horror as described in our textbooks
would happen. Still, we practiced dutifully. It did not help us. When the
next war, the war in the Balkans erupted much later, we were taken by
surprise. Little did we know in the late fifties that the war we would
witness would be a local one, limited and of small intensity - the war
that would catch us totally unprepared.<br>
<br>
My generation grew up with the idea that such a war, with genocide,
concentration camps and forced resettlement of entire populations is
simply impossible after WWII. Europe had learned its lesson, the history
teachers told us, and such horrors could not take place any longer.
Today, after the war in my country and in Bosnia and Kosovo, I no longer
believe that Europe has learned that lesson. But perhaps I am wrong.
After all the last war happened not quite in Europe, but in the Balkans.
Are the Balkans Europe? Today it seems so, although tomorrow it could be
decided differently. But if this is so, what then is Europe and where
does it end?<br>
<br>
Back then, in my school days, even that was somehow clearer. Europe was
where the Soviet Union was not. The big political changes during the last
ten years blurred that childish certainty. The Europe of today is no
longer a question of geopolitics and defined borders to the East, not
even of economic unity - but more of attitudes, definitions,
institutions, of a certain mental landscape. There is no longer any
"iron curtain" to make definitions easier. During the last ten
years the peoples of Europe witnessed the collapse of communism and the
disappearance of the common enemy, the speeding up of the integration
process within the EU, its planned enlargement into the East as well as
the war in the Balkans. At the same time the globalization process seems
to engulf the entire world. But these changes happened too fast for
people to comprehend them, to grasp them fully. They reacted as people
always react to the unknown, with a feeling of uncertainty and fear.
While the known world is dissolving in front of their eyes, the new one
that is taking shape is not yet comprehensive. What is Europe really and
how far can it spread eastwards whilst still remaining Europe? Is Turkey
Europe? In that case, what about Russia?<br>
<br>
These are not abstract questions. The bottom line here is how these
changes will influence the life of Europeans, their work, income,
education, language and so on. More and more people have the feeling of
losing the possibility to control their own lives. A feeling of anxiety
undermines their confidence in the world around them and their sense of
certainty. This anxiety is vague, to be sure. But although it is not
entirely identified or specified, often not even recognized as such, it
is out there, palpable, measurable in opinion polls, referendums,
election results, articulated as doubts about the necessity of a common
currency, of integration and enlargement, or about free circulation of a
working force. That is to say, as vague as it is, this anxiety is already
having effects on the political life of some countries and might perhaps
soon bring substantial changes to the political landscape of
Europe.<br>
<br>
The mechanism of exploiting fear is simple and well known. As an
individual, you may feel lost and confused, swept away by the speed and
magnitude of historical events. Suddenly, there is somebody offering you
shelter, a feeling of belonging, a guarantee of security. We are of the
same blood, we belong to the same territory, our people first, so goes
the rhetoric. To scared ears it is soothing to hear old-fashion words
like blood, soil, territory, us, them. Hearing that, you feel stronger,
you are no longer alone, confronted with the Others - with too many
immigrants, Muslims, Turks, refugees, Africans, asylum seekers, Gypsies
or too much big bureaucracy that wants to rule your life from Brussels.
Once you have found the pleasure of belonging, Others don't frighten you
any longer. From the fear of the unknown to the creation of the
"known" enemy, it sometimes takes only a small step. It doesn't
need much more than that vague sense of anxiety, plus a political leader
who will know how to exploit it. The media will do the rest.<br>
<br>
It looks as if the new, darker picture of Europe started to surface with
the victory of the Freedom Party and Jörg Haider in Austria a year ago.
The truth, however, is that his electoral success only made the anxiety
more visible. Haider has been the most successful, but others such as
Umberto Bossi, Christoph Blocher, Karl Hagen, Edmund Stoiber, Filip
Dewinter, Pia Kjersgaard or Jean-Marie LePenn are catching up as well.
Recently, the ultra-nationalist Flemish Block party in Belgium celebrated
the biggest victory for the extreme right in Europe ever since the
Freedom Party entered the Austrian coalition government. It got 10% of
the votes in general elections. In Antwerp it has increased its votes
from 18% to 33% over the past twelve years by exploiting xenophobic
sentiments. Their excited young leader, Filip Dewinter, confessed that
"Even I did not dare to dream this." The Northern League in
Italy got 10% in the 1996 general elections, another success based on
xenophobic immigrant politics. The Danish People's Party got 18% in the
last polls thanks to very aggressive xenophobic propaganda. Pia
Kjersgaard openly says that immigrants, especially Muslims, are
threatening the safety of families and the Christian values of genuine
Danes," their very Danishness", as she expressed it. She went
as far as comparing cultural pluralism to the Holocaust. Therefore, the
recent referendum rejecting the Euro in Denmark did not come as a big
surprise. The Front National in France is not as strong as it was, but is
still there with its 15% of voters. On the other hand, the German Prime
Minister Gerhard Schröder suffered a defeat in opinion polls last spring
after having suggested to "import" 10.000 computer experts,
mostly from India. Although it has been estimated that Germany needs some
70.000 computer experts to catch up with the international developments
in the field of information technology, 56% of the population opposed
this plan. In another poll only 4% of the Germans expressed enthusiasm
for the free circulation of the working force within the EU. The rise in
popularity of Norway's Progress Party is part of the same tendency of
closing borders and building new walls. So is Blocher with the Swiss
People's Party, which jumped to 22,6% in the federal elections last
October (from 14,95% in 1995). Another Swiss case is also very telling:
voters in Emmen, an industrial suburb of Luzern, used the ballot box to
reject citizenship applications from foreigners. Only four Italian
families were accepted. Blocher is now proposing a popular vote on
citizenship as a model for the entire country. "People are feeling
insecure in a very new globalized world and have feeling that being
isolated makes them more secure", explained an official from the
Swiss foreigners commission.<br>
<br>
Even this very superficial overview indicates the growing success of
ultra right wing parties all over Europe. What emerges is not necessarily
a pattern of brown and black shirts again - but a new pattern of the
rising anxiety of people. The right wing parties, whipping up people's
fear with populist rhetoric then use this anxiety. However, the truth of
the matter is that the right wing parties are the only ones to have their
fingers on the people's pulses, to recognize that feeling of anxiety. Of
course they use it for their own purpose - to come to power. But it would
not be right to say that the anxiety is produced or invented by these
parties. To say that would mean to dismiss the anxiety in the easiest
way. These parties, with the generous help of the media, only give that
vague feeling of dissatisfaction shape. Directing it towards xenophobia
is easy, there are Others in every society. As long as this xenophobia
expresses itself on the level of polemics about this or that law proposal
regarding citizenship for immigrants (like in Germany in 1998) one can
say that it is not alarming. But it is alarming that an opinion poll
published in Der Spiegel this summer shows that the majority of Germans
agrees with some opinions of the extreme right, especially regarding
immigrants. And it is alarming that this kind of rhetoric has produced
concrete political results in elections - especially during the last
year. After that, it is hard to dismiss it, and arrogant to consider it
just a marginal phenomenon.<br>
<br>
Anxiety is sweeping over post-communist Europe as well. The enthusiasm of
the first years after the fall of communism has been replaced with
disappointment. Once more a united Europe looks distant, there are now
walls different from the Berlin wall, conditions for joining the EU are
hard to meet and the date is pushed further into the future. This opens
up room for nationalists and anti-Europeans who argue that the newly won
sovereignty should not be given up so easily. They spread fear of
multinational companies that will buy their country, of the
Americanization of their culture, of globalization. It is not surprising
when somebody like Slobodan Milosevic uses this kind of language. Yet,
democrats like Vaclav Klaus, the former Czech Prime Minister, are
speaking out against the EU as well: "Europe is now fundamentally
challenging the nation state, particularly its sovereignty:" he
said, speaking in Austria this June. He is right - but this is the very
idea of an integrated Europe. Klaus, too, speaks of assimilation and the
loss of national identity: "We don't want to become
Euroczechs!" The Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban is also
skeptical about the EU, not to mention the Slovak populist Vladimir
Meciar or the Hungarian nationalist and anti-semite Istvan Csurka.
Post-communist Eastern Europe is far away from a united Europe in another
sense as well: 67% of the Poles, for example, believe that when their
country joins the EU they will become second class citizens.<br>
<br>
Success of right-wing nationalist, xenophobic and anti-European parties
and populist leaders seems to be a danger in both Western and Eastern
Europe. By spreading their influence even further through the
exploitation of anxiety and fears that no one else wants to address, they
can really undermine the integration process. Their leaders tell people
that they will lose their national sovereignty, their culture, their
language, etc. Their national, cultural and social identity is in
jeopardy. Not only will foreigners take all their jobs, but also - and
this seems more important - the society itself will be transformed beyond
recognition. In the language of the right wing, a multicultural society
means cultural disintegration. This does sound threatening to people. It
is not important if we prefer to call this political egocentrism,
regional nationalism or new regionalism, the result is the same
everywhere: homogenization, mobilization of defensive mechanisms and
isolationist politics.<br>
<br>
In research done in March (at the Institut fur Demoskopie Allensbach)
about the fear of losing their identity in a united Europe, over 50% of
Germans said that yes, they thought a German identity will be lost -
compared to 35% in 1994. But what is the identity they would like to
protect so much? Usually one is not often in a position to ask this
question because there is no need to do so until this identity is in some
way challenged or threatened. From the point of view of an individual,
national identity looks like something given and definite, something as
"natural" as the color of the eyes. Culture, history, language,
myth, memory, mentality, values, habits, food... All this is part of a
national identity, and a national identity strongly dominates our sense
of personal identity. Recently, in the small French town of Millau a man
was imprisoned for destroying a local McDonald's restaurant. But the
process turned into a manifestation of support for Jose Bove. He became a
national hero because he had managed to articulate the French fear of
American domination. This time people protested against the globalization
of taste and the French are against McDonalds fast food just as they are
defending their right to make cheese out of non-pasteurized milk.
Anything else would threaten their national identity. You cannot ask the
Germans to stop drinking their beer or the Dutch not to grow tulips. When
they were negotiating their joining the EU, the Swedes were particularly
keen to make sure that chewing tobacco would not be forbidden for them -
it is a matter of their national identity.<br>
<br>
On the other hand, in newly established states like Croatia for example,
one could actually observe how a national identity is being constructed
and symbols of national identity are being invented - mostly out of myths
and the re-interpretation of history. It only proves what modern
anthropology argues, that national identities do not represent a set of
eternal, ready-made cultural, historical or social characteristics. In
other words, what we believe to be a fundamental support for an
individual is no more than a cultural construct - that is, invented, not
"natural". But the archaic populist rhetoric of Franjo Tudjman
didn't want to know that identity is always constructed in relation to
the Others, it only wanted to exclude these Others, that is Serbs. Yet,
on the examples of emigrants, mixed marriages and people who live close
to borders, anthropologists are proving that it is possible to identify
with more than one nation and one culture.<br>
<br>
When I met a Turkish Gastarbeiter on a train in Germany, he complained
that "When I am in Germany, they consider me a Turk, but when I
visit Turkey, they don't take me as one of them, they consider me a
foreigner, a German. I always feel that I have to choose between the two,
and I don't like that." "Well, how do you feel, what do you
think you are?" I asked him. He answered, "I am both." He
himself did not have a problem with his identity - others did. Indeed, in
a culture of nationalism, identity is made up of borders, territory and
blood and one is forced to choose one nation. But forcing people to
choose sometimes brings unexpected results. Some years ago, two small
villages in Istria were caught in a dispute between two newly founded
states, Croatia and Slovenia. When Slovene journalists asked people there
if they were they Slovenes, they answered positively. But when Croatian
journalists asked them if they were Croats, they also answered
positively. This, of course, was confusing and journalists sought an
explanation. Finally somebody told them that "either/or" simply
is the wrong question to put to them. They feel strongly about their
identity, but they don't define it in national, but in regional terms,
they are Istrians. Indeed, in a 1991 census about 20% of people in that
region declared themselves Istrians; according to the regulations, they
should have declared themselves as "others". This was a kind of
an anti-nationalist demonstration against Franjo Tudjman's government and
the message was clear: for Istrians, their nationality and their identity
do not necessarily overlap. Nation, as a political category, is only one
aspect of their identity. For them the transnational regional identity
was stronger than the national one. Istrians were not willing to choose
one nationality over the other, but rather experience their identity as a
sum of the cultural, national, political etc. identities represented in
their region. "The EU will only achieve a solid basis of legitimacy
when Europeans perceive a European political identity. This does not
imply that they would no longer feel themselves to be Swedes, Finns,
Frenchmen, Portuguese, Czechs, Poles or Hungarians, but that the sense of
a common European destiny had been added to these identities."
writes Ingmar Karlsson.<br>
<br>
I recall the earlier census of 1981 in Yugoslavia when almost 10% of the
population declared themselves Yugoslavs. Further analysis demonstrated
that this was the voice of the post-war generation, the young urban
population. Was this the beginning of the Yugoslav nation? I don't think
so. I think people were still very much aware of their ethnic identities.
In my experience, this was rather the case of simply adding one identity
to another, a common Yugoslav identity had been added to a Serbian, a
Croatian, or a Bosnian one.<br>
<br>
If nations are not eternal and national and personal identities are
constructed, then they can be re-constructed as well. Another kind of
imagined community can be created. Perhaps this is the right time to
think about a new paradigm of understanding identity in order to balance
the growing anxiety in Europe. Instead of using cultural exclusion
mechanisms, is it possible to create identities by summing up ethnic,
regional, national, transnational elements of identity? If identity can
be reconstructed in terms of a multiple identity, is this a way to
establish a European identity? Not as a standardized and globalized
community, but as a non-hierarchical community of diverse cultures.
People would feel that they belong to a specific culture but not to a
state - just like the Istrians. Can transregionalism help to overcome the
anxiety people feel towards integration?<br>
<br>
Because of the way I live, a united but diverse Europe is a possibility
that enriches me and gives me more freedom. But in order to create such a
Europe, people need to be convinced that they, too, are gaining, not
losing something. We are at the point when losing seems more obvious,
when fear overtakes hope facing our future. Who is afraid of Europe?
Bronislaw Geremek, the former Polish foreign minister already answered
that question beautifully when he said, "Europe is afraid of
itself!"<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
Published 2000-11-15<br>
Original in English<br>
© eurozine<br>
© Slavenka Drakulic<br>
<br>
<br>
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