Articles

Islamophobia has become the “defining mental state of the new Europe”, concentrated mainly in the image of the female Muslim immigrant. In a discourse mainly driven by feminists, writes Rita Chin, what began as the expression of concern for Turkish women and their problems in West German society became the articulation of boundaries between East and West, between feminist praxis and unreformed patriarchy.

Norway’s prime minister Jens Stoltenberg seems to have spoken for most of his countrymen when, responding to the attacks of 22 July, he said that “the Norwegian response to violence is more democracy, more openness and greater political participation”. But this quiet call of defiance has been accompanied by severe critique of the harsh tone of public debate, especially on the Internet. Illiberal and intolerant opinions echoing those held by terrorist Anders Behring Breivik thrive on blogs and online forums, but also in the commentary fields of mainstream media. Knut Olav Åmås, culture and op-ed editor at Aftenposten, joins in the call for “more debate” – even if it is repellent and offensive. Conflicts in society must remain visible. That also goes for sensitive issues such as integration and multiculturalism.

Hazy though its contours might be, Greece’s economic crisis didn’t creep up from behind, writes Victor Tsilonis. The scandals littering Greek politics in recent decades indicate a chronic lack of accountability, culminating in the anti-constitutional approval of the EU/IMF loans.

New media are changing news production, but not in the way democratisation theorists hope, writes Tamara Witschge. The journalistic profession remains resistant to the “amateur”, defending values under threat yet shoring up existing relations of power.

Caught between publishing giants and small independents, the only asset available to authors is their copyright, argues Pirjo Hiidenmaa of the European Writers Council. This asset must not be weakened through digitization and the new ease with which content can be reproduced.

The most beautiful fairytale of the summer has turned into Norway’s worst nightmare, writes Prableen Kaur, vice chairperson of the Oslo labour youth organization. She was attending the annual summer camp on Utøya when they were attacked by Anders Behring Breivik. This is her account given just hours after she escaped.

Is there something extreme in Norwegian society? asks Remi Nilsen, editor of the Norwegian edition of Le Monde diplomatique after the tragedy in Oslo. Anders Behring Breivik’s writings are not the wild fabulations of a madman. We have heard it all before.

Whether it is prehistoric paintings on the walls of caves or the graffiti and advertising we see all over the walls of our modern cities, people need to mark out their space, distinguish it from the untamed wilderness. Peter Wendl asks why we still need to produce signs and icons in public spaces.

The current financial crisis is not confined to economies, writes Daniel Daianu, former Romanian finance minister and MEP from 2007 to 2009. The erosion of the middle class, the spread of extremism and the threat to democracy are some of the more obvious social effects demanding attention.

Paranoia functions as an element of everyday American life, writes Boris Vezjak, it is simply a part of cultural algorithm, and it is no coincidence that the examples most commonly cited in connection with it are predominantly American in origin.

Genuine knowledge or intellectual bullshit? Reformed bullshitter George Blecher recalls the moment he learned the difference…

Modernist humanism, in which individual rights and freedoms are won at the expense of the natural world, is entering into ever greater tension with the new emphasis on interconnectedness. Environmental historian Sverker Sörlin on the ongoing scientific renegotiation of concepts of humanity and nature.

Emancipation, the central demand of democracy, has come to mean liberation from restrictive social and ecological imperatives. Before proposing radical participatory solutions we need to ask how democracy itself serves the politics of unsustainability, argues Ingolfur Blühdorn.

Spain’s Amnesty Act of 1977 ensured that, during the first two decades of democracy, the memory of the Civil War and the human rights violations of the Franco dictatorship remained taboo. Initiatives by the Zapatero government to redress historic injustices signal a new era, yet there is a way to go before Spanish society is unanimous about its past, writes historian Julián Casanova.

What is the connection between the mediaeval hunt for relics and the idolization of Benno Ohnesorg? Or between Nietzsche and Oliver Cromwell? Outlining aspects of the history of western martyrdom and its ideologies, Michael Azar shows how to this day the dead are instrumentalized for the purposes of the living.

The comparison of genocides is neither a crude equation nor an equivalence of evil, argues historian Ugur Ümit Üngör. Rather, comparative study enhances understanding of individual cases and counters political manipulation of genocide under hierarchies of uniqueness.