Nationalism, anti-liberalism and ultra-conservatism mark the political discourse in Central Europe today. What was once referred to as the ‘kidnapped West’ now seems to imitate its former captor. Jacques Rupnik seeks causes for the decline of the liberal consensus in Central Europe after 1989, following the trajectories of some of its major political thinkers.
The Russian region of Kuzbass is entirely dependent on the extraction and export of coal. But the environmental toll of coal mining there is heavy. Despite some resistance by local communities and indigenous peoples, there appears to be no will among the authorities to slow the spread of coal extraction, which has already devastated several towns and villages in the region.
Croatian war criminal Slobodan Praljak’s televised suicide at the ICTY has made him a hero in his home country and is seen as proof of his innocence. Unfortunately, Croatia’s revisionist attitude towards the recent past has precedents elsewhere in Europe, writes Slavenka Drakulić.
In his keynote speech to the ‘Dialectics of Liberation’ symposium, delivered in Vienna on 24 November 2017, theatre director Milo Rau describes a nightmarish global economic system that, paradoxically, ‘began with the demand for liberation.’ He asks: What is to be done?
Ukrainian media are forced to choose between ‘patriotic’ journalism and impartiality. Angelina Kariakina explains why having a public-service broadcaster can be a game-changer in Ukraine’s fight against Russian military aggression and ongoing corruption.
The idea of what employment really means, in the UK and elsewhere in the industrialised world, has undergone radical change. Now some thinkers are questioning whether it should exist at all, writes Rhian E Jones.
This year marks 100 years since the momentous revolutions in Russia in 1917. The Russian government’s stance on the anniversary is deeply ambivalent, but 2017 offers Ukraine a chance to explore its own centenary of (short-lived) independence, as well as other parts of its national story, as Tatiana Zhurzhenko explains.
Britain’s imperial cultural residue has always expressed itself through reluctance about Europe, coupled with an obsession with the idea of British international leadership. With Brexit, Britain’s ‘go-it-alone’ syndrome has returned with a vengeance, writes Anne Deighton.
Social media providers are currently faced with a dilemma: to take on an editorial role or respond to the demands of their investors. The revolt against fake news is part of a defence mechanism on the part of elites and poses a problem that we are far from resolving.
For all their importance, human rights have become ineffectual in the face of market fundamentalism, writes historian Samuel Moyn. In order to confront material inequality, human rights must overcome their individualist and anti-statist origins.
Is an independent artistic statement at all possible in today’s Russia? Political scientist Sergei A. Medvedev ponders the fate of art and artists in a country where most cultural production is heavily state-dependent, and where artists and writers in the provinces are under especially strict supervision.
The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia has found Bosnian Serb military leader Ratko Mladić guilty of genocide for his part in the 1995 massacre at Srebrenica, among other atrocities. Slavenka Drakulić reflects on a photograph from the first days of the Bosnian conflict, and what it tells us about the nature of evil.
The ‘Irish slaves meme’– assertions that Irish immigrants to the US were once slaves – has been mobilized by the alt-right to promote a white nationalist agenda based on claims of victimhood. Yet its popularity cannot simply be blamed on the online propaganda of white supremacist groups, argues Bryan Fanning.
Understanding Brexit means understanding the history of English exceptionalism, writes Maurice Earls, editor of ‘Dublin Review of Books’. Anti-Catholicism, maritime expansionism, wartime heroism: the myth of splendid isolation is the common thread. With a hard Brexit looming, however, England may yet come around to the benefits of team-play.
The days when Soviet citizens had only three or four TV channels to choose from are long gone. Today, Russians have hundreds of options. So why, asks Maxim Trudolyubov, do they still choose just one?