It took the film industry over four decades to oust Roman Polanski after he drugged and raped a child. The case, as well as other allegations, has long been known to the public, but a cultural shift was necessary for the director to face professional consequences.
Russia’s popular vote approving the ‘zeroing’ of Putin’s terms has been hailed by the regime as a triumphant demonstration of trust. Putin’s uncontested status as supreme authority has indeed been reinforced. But will the legitimacy bought by the vote be enough to stem growing uncertainty among elites and declining support among urban constituencies?
Conflict over Israeli territory is a historically sensitive issue. But should past injustices and fear legitimize recent crimes against humanity? Avraham Burg’s home truths on current Israeli societal division assess critical ideological, economic and constitutional issues.
Contact-tracing, legitimized by COVID-19 security risks, is already a dating app reality. The privacy of LGBTQ communities is particularly open to abuse. Jemimah Steinfeld calls for better protection of sexual identities, citing a new Index on Censorship global report.
In a rush to minimize the recession following COVID-19, some hold their economies dearer than the saving of lives. But prosperity isn’t the indefinite depletion of bodies and resources. It is through the satisfaction of basic needs that we will restore the dignity of all.
We speak about the differences between North and South as though they explain everything. In the process, age-old prejudices again penetrate the European consciousness and shape how we think about the world.
Speculation is based on the belief that housing prices will keep increasing and there will always be a bigger fool willing to pay a higher price. Anita Aigner looks into the culture of responsibilization and the policies that turned real estate ownership into pure, abstract investment.
Campaigns to remove monuments commemorating racism, slavery and empire are criticized for attempting to erase history. But anti-racists protesting the public prominence of these statues are challenging what history is remembered, in order to make way for a fresh lens on the past.
Education under neoliberalism – a contradictory mix of competition and austerity promoting vaulted excellence over grounded learning. Cornelia Klinger highlights awards ceremonies appropriating the names of famous historic achievers as prime example of capitalist commodification masking old and new sociopolitical inequality and injustice.
Does the comfort of the quarantined consumer outweigh the life and safety of the slaughterhouse workers who cannot afford to stay home? The recent coronavirus outbreaks in meat processing plants pose a dreadful question.
Coronavirus further intensified the fetishization of science. Experts are being cast as saviours; orderly lines of masked marketgoers mimic religious processions, and daily press conferences function as mass. But metrics have to be relieved from spiritual obligations.
From anti-vaxxers to terrorists, people often look for hidden causes which match the magnitude of the collapse they are facing. Uncertainty and public distrust are fertile ground for conspiracy theories. When used to legitimize violence, however, such narratives are more a strategy than psychopathology.
Environmental destruction and social oppression have always gone hand in hand. Colonialism and slavery are deeply connected to the ongoing ecological crisis, so to address it, Europe’s whitewashed past must be recast and the demands of the colonized taken seriously.
Vladimir Putin’s anger and jealousy has taken down many proactive leaders throughout Russia – and left the country vulnerable to crisis. The oil price war against Saudi Arabia backfired, and a recession was already in motion when coronavirus hit the country.
Insufficient housing in growing cities is a pressing issue, for which the German right blames migration and proposes exclusive free-market solutions.
Europe’s uncoordinated reaction to the pandemic and the controversies over the European Recovery Fund have again revealed the political fissures between East and West. COVID-19 will pass, but other external threats will not.