Giovanni Tiso reads the recently published transcript of the famous 2007 conversation between ‘New Atheists’ Daniel Dennett, Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris and asks why ridiculing your targets with sceptical tools has been so influential.
The ‘question of women’s rights’ has been asked and answered in very different ways in Turkey since the founding of the secular republic in 1923. Ayşe Durakbaşa traces this history from ‘state feminism’ to the second wave and the Islamic Women’s Movement, shedding new light on the ruling AKP party’s legislative agenda.
Western Europe’s culture of anti-violence continues to exert a magnetic pull on Ukrainian society. But will that be enough to resist Russia’s twenty-first century politics of dog-eat-dog? The answer depends on the strength of Europe’s own conviction, argues philosopher Volodymyr Yermolenko.
The sight of the US president staring ahead impassively while around him the crowd chanted ‘Send her back’, felt like the crossing of the Rubicon. This was the point when Trump and his Republican supporters finally dropped the mask and revealed their contempt for the values underlying the liberal consensus.
A recent study shows that cultural journals in Estonia provide a space for criticism not offered by larger media. The Estonian cultural journal sector is among the best-funded in Europe. Despite a conservative definition of the medium – only print journals qualify for support – journals retain full independence and the field is diverse.
Many Russians were happy to exchange the freedoms of the 1990s for a stream of oil money and a concept of ‘order’ guaranteed by a paternalistic leader. Putin’s popularity may be wavering, but the demands he caters to are stronger than ever.
Philosophy: what is it good for? ‘It‘s complicated‘, says Dialogi editor Boris Vezjak, as he asks what can be done about a field of enquiry that seems so detached from the world.
A mixed field of populists emerge in Croatia amid a loss of confidence in the status quo; Cyprus takes stock after a campaign defined by nationalism; and in Slovakia far-right advances underline the need for innovative politics.
Caroline Muscat learned the dangers of running an independent news website in Malta after journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia, the country’s most prominent journalist, was assassinated and she herself was sued for libel.
The widespread fear from the label of radical feminism has blurred the interpretation of pre-1989 women’s movements. A generational clash further complicates the process of remembrance. The superficiality of post-feminism and gender mainstreaming threatens to erase the struggles of yet another feminist generation.
‘The Russians are in the pantry already!’ The European Union is finally starting to address the Kremlin’s political interference, but yet doesn’t address domestic disinformation.
While the rest of the world concentrated on the fall of the Berlin Wall, another wall in China brought about a different type of change. The economic power the most populous country has accumulated is now challenging the western claim that only liberal democracy would provide ideal circumstances for capitalism.
How can a writer possibly contribute to averting catastrophic climate change? By putting literature into an ‘ecological template’, writes the Icelandic poet and novelist Sjón. Together, writers are responsible for the ecosystem of literature as a whole.
Interviewed by Ludger Hagedorn, Czech political scientist Pavel Barša makes the case for a balance between the ideals of liberalism and collective sovereignty. Barša argues that individual freedom and civil solidarity are not possible without collective re-distribution and social solidarity, in his response to Timothy Snyder’s book ‘The Road to Unfreedom’.
The results of Greece’s snap general election, triggered by Syriza’s defeat in May, are eagerly awaited. Support for the far-right Danish People’s Party has collapsed, while Lithuania has grown more conservative. But isn’t there more to European politics than national swings and roundabouts?
The anachronistic appearance of the post-communist world fascinated westerners visiting eastern Europe after ’89. As Håkan Forsell puts it, the East offered the image of a ‘future that would never happen’. Four decades of totalitarianism were rapidly forgotten by the seekers of ‘true Europe’.