Articles

When a group of claimants in the UK took on Google for invasion of privacy, they had little idea that the case would become a landmark in the fight to tame the Internet giant’s intrusion into our lives on the Web, writes Judith Vidal-Hall.

As Walter Benjamin once remarked, “every rise of Fascism bears witness to a failed revolution”. A statement that events in Ukraine after the Orange revolution go some way toward confirming, writes Mykola Riabchuk; not that a sudden reversal of recent trends remains out of the question.

Russian responses to the Charlie Hebdo attack in Paris reveal the contradictions of political and social trends in today’s Russia, writes Nikolay Mitrokhin; with the most dramatic response being the unprecedented political killing of leading opposition politician Boris Nemtsov.

A highly individualist identity politics is clearly one of the mainstays of the culture of the new capitalism. But, asks Jacob Mukherjee, could this also be precisely what constitutes a barrier to the formation of a collective political subject in the first place?

“Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.” However, what if remaining silent is unacceptable? Then Wittgenstein’s famous dictum no longer helps, writes Stefan Auer. Then one narrates stories, even cinematic ones.

Why is it that, 25 years after independence, the attachment that Lithuanian citizens once felt to their country has weakened considerably? Because postmodernist self-consciousness prefers regional identity to state identity? Bronislovas Kuzmickas reports.

Intensifying the exploitation of underground resources has been suggested as a solution for Europe’s crisis-ridden regions. But who really owns these resources? And where do the proceeds from their exploitation go? Evie Papada reviews the situation in the villages of Chalkidiki, Greece.

Political and economic relations need to be established that provide Greek society with a future in Europe, argues Claus Leggewie. But if this is to happen, even more important than dealing with the past is future-oriented investment in areas such as renewable energy.

The philosopher Alberto Toscano visited Bergen on 29 November 2014 to participate in the seminar “Fanaticism, Extremism, Radicalism”, organized by the research group Radical Philosophy and Literature at the University of Bergen. Toscano also took part in an event at the Literature House in Bergen, where he was interviewed by Gisle Selnes, professor in Comparative Literature at UiB. This interview is an edited version of their conversation and was first printed as part of a dossier on fanaticism in the Norwegian magazine Vagant’s first issue of 2015.

An array of photography and film, visual arts, theatre, mixed-media storytelling and online journalism is dispelling notions of refugees as voiceless victims. Almir Koldzic and Áine O’Brien report on new channels providing an antidote to mainstream media coverage of life as a refugee.

The Internet platform t0 – Public Netbase in Vienna and the magazine Mute in London both have an emphasis on critical media discourse and both came into being about twenty years ago. Both played a pioneering role in their respective contexts as regards the emergence of a diverse Net culture and the discourse accompanying it. Both have been exposed, in different ways, to the upheavals and turning points of the ensuing era. More than enough reason then to reflect on developments in the field and track parallels and divergences in various locations, as well as to look into future prospects. To which end, representatives from both platforms took part in the following roundtable. They remain active today in the World Information Institute, which grew out of Public Netbase, and in the online medium metamute.org.

The far right straw man is certainly not new to the European debate, writes Cas Mudde. But it has gained in importance as mainstream leaders increasingly adopt a soft eurosceptic rhetoric (rather than policies), with a view to thwarting the advance of hard eurosceptic parties, most notably of the far Right.

The main stakeholders currently involved in Roma social inclusion continue to struggle to define clear and distinct responsibilities, or simply avoid them. Ahead of this year’s European Roma Platform, Valeriu Nicolae calls for systemic change that addresses key issues of anti-Gypsyism and multi-stakeholder cooperation.

The devout cannot have it both ways, writes Ian McEwan. Free speech is hard, it’s noisy and bruising sometimes, but the only alternative when so many world-views must cohabit is intimidation, violence and bitter conflict between communities.

For both Russia and Ukraine, the conflict in eastern Ukraine marks the beginning of a painful process of emancipation from a pre-modern imagined community of eastern Slavs. A process, writes Mykola Riabchuk, from which modern civic national identities must emerge.