Articles

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.

Despite ’60s slogans, making love does not stop one from making war. On the contrary: violence and sexuality are intertwined in dominant masculinity, and the hurt this causes is often denied and unaccounted for. How should we interpret the ambiguous links between lust and hostility?

Our slowed-down, cooled-down, scaled-down lives during the pandemic are evidence that quality of life does not depend on high productivity and frantic consumption. Suddenly, it has become respectable – and realistic – to talk about reforming society and the economy.

The US has no monopoly on under-serving and over-policing minorities. Police brutality is reported from the French suburbs to the Bulgarian countryside, and neo-Nazi resurgence is threatening European Roma in Hungary and Ukraine. Europeans must not wait for another horrific murder to draw attention to our own systemic racism.

Finding time and space for literature and reflection: Mererid Puw Davies’s poetry review advances the merits of literary fragmentation that cuts chronology and slots into layered lives.

The Movement for Black Lives has influenced public opinion about racism in American life, changed policy, helped reduce police violence and reshaped the politics of social justice. Finally, the wider public is coming to understand the need for a radical political transformation.

The spatial limits of speculation have been broken and the world is constantly combed for investment opportunities. The aim is to create the image of prosperous, dynamic cities, but for the majority of the urban population, it’s more a curse than a blessing.

Bellingcat’s pathbreaking work on the shooting down of MH17 and on chemical weapons use in Syria has led to open source investigation being recognized as a vital journalistic technique. Eurozine talks to Bellingcat founder and director Eliot Higgins about both stories and the disinformation around them.

When crisis hits, vulnerable groups suffer. And sex workers, already enduring precarity, have become the scapegoats of COVID-19’s health focus, facing heavy fines, police abuse and deportation threats. Boglárka Fedorkó investigates the lessons that can be learnt from the solidarity and organization of those facing adversity.

Rents are usually considered affordable when below around a third of a household’s income. But this rule of thumb is tailored to middle-class homes, ignoring the financial realities of low earners who struggle to cover necessities.