‘Alors que j’attendais’, a theatre piece from Damascus currently touring European festivals, makes us understand that the people whose lives are being destroyed are exactly like us. Review.
To counter ISIS and address the other crucial crises that poison our days we need a regime change – at home.
How is it that Greek PM, Tsipras, who tries to relieve the suffering of his people, is a less acceptable EU negotiation partner than Viktor Orbán?
Fidesz does not have any coherent ideology, but depending on the context, employs elements of various currents, mixing neo-conservative tropes (God, Patria, Family) with anti-globalization arguments (anti-corporation, anti-finance), classic populist slogans with anti-EU and anti-minority refrains
The only electoral promise Fidesz has fulfilled has been the “restoration of order”, through a myriad of laws, decrees and regulations, a particularly harsh new Penal Code and several new organizations.
The political establishment has a decisive role in determining the place of hatreds in society; with adequate rules, laws and institutions it can marginalise and neutralise or, on the contrary, tolerate and encourage them.
The violent break-up of Yugoslavia, like a long shadow, forecast what we are facing today: a Europe, tangled in a web of political and economic calculations, unable to stand up for its proclaimed values, leaving the space for extremist nationalist and right-wing forces to take action and implement
The common denominator of Greece's and Europe's (and the world's) problems is the uncontrolled power of business. Politics has become privatised. On behalf of ‘efficiency’ the defence of the common good was outsourced to business groups. With the result that is unfolding in front of our eyes.
The EU has to deal with a government that came to power democratically and uses its power to dismantle the democratic institutional system. Fidesz' ‘solutions’ are desperately wrong. But the problems are real. Europe can only offer attractive alternatives to its peoples, if it finds viable solutio
