is a historian, essayist and translator. He is an editor at Razpotja.
It’s 100 years since Mussolini took political control of Italy. Given a period of violent tensions across large parts of Europe after the First World War, what specifically lay behind the rise of fascist totalitarianism? And how does the Duce’s leadership compare to that of other contemporary authoritarianism?
In a controversial yet peaceable move, the Spanish government has pardoned nine jailed Catalan leaders. José Miguel Arenas Beltrán, more widely known as the Spanish rapper Valtònyc, was sentenced to three and a half years in prison for insulting the monarchy and ‘glorifying terrorism’ in his lyrics. He is still on the run from the Spanish authorities.
Was it foolish to expect Europe to unite after the Iron Curtain fell? What kept the wounds from healing? Talking the post-Communist heritage in Gagarin, the Eurozine podcast.
When the Cold War came to a sudden end thirty years ago, the two halves of Europe declared in unison their intention to overcome the legacy of the division. Today, the hopes and ambitions of those heady days can be viewed as unrealistic at best. But is talk of a new East–West divide justified?
Psychologist Jordan Peterson has attracted fame and controversy with a series of YouTube lectures and interviews challenging what he calls ‘radical leftist ideological assumptions’ in the academy and elsewhere. Luka Lisjak Gabrijelčič asks him what all the fuss is about.
Spanish and Catalan nationalisms are to a large extent mirror images, argues historian Luka Lisjak Gabrijelčič; the clash between them represents a battle between competing ideas of sovereignty, and makes the Catalan dispute so important for wider European debates.
The rift between Catalonia and the rest of Spain appears to have grown wider since violence marred the attempted independence referendum on Sunday, 1 October. Luka Lisjak Gabrijelčič, a Eurozine network editor and a Catalan speaker, who closely follows the issue, has been commenting day-by-day, via social media, about the events there over recent weeks. Here are his reflections.
Political scientist Michael Freeden talks to Slovene journal Razpotja about rightwing populism’s sub-ideological fantasies, anti-liberalism and political dogmatism, and why there can be no such thing as a democracy without deficits.
In his recent book Black Earth, the historian Timothy Snyder analyses the Holocaust in terms of the destruction of the state. This allows him to compare the roles of the Nazi and Soviet regimes in causing the Holocaust, despite their different ideologies and intentions. In interview with the Slovenian journal Razpotja, Snyder explains this argument and its implications for contemporary conflicts in Europe and beyond.
Once considered a force of stability after the Yeltsin years, Vladimir Putin now depends on exporting instability and escalating international tensions in order to retain his grip on power at home. In the face of which, Garry Kasparov warns against complacency – at the same time as insisting that it is merely a question of time before Putin’s apparent show of strength gives way to dramatic change in Russia itself. Kasparov speaks to Luka Lisjak Gabrijelcic of Razpotja (Slovenia).
