A hundred years after the end of the First world war, Europe is full of Fears. Who had believed that the battles of Ypres and Verdun are past, will know Better: Nothing is over, says Barbara Wesel.
It could be a day where a part of our common history would have been deposited in the memorials and museums. Where countries shake the handlebar, the hands in the certainty that the horrors of the First world war, let a hundred years later, the memory fading and the fabric of the historian. However, from the martyrdom of blood, Dirt and sorrow, in which the youth of Europe went down on the battlefields of Ypres or Verdun, rises suddenly again, a reminder of shocking presence.
Macron understands the message of the story
“History threatens to repeat, sometimes tragic, and to destroy the legacy of peace that we think we have with the blood of our ancestors to be sealed.” Clear the warning by the French President to the more than sixty meeting in Paris States could not be handlebars. And Emmanuel Macron warns against the “old demons” and “new ideologies”, which, once again, the peace is threatened.
Seemingly disoriented, become, keep track of the democracies of Europe suddenly to a unsafe rate. In countries such as Poland, Italy or Hungary, populists take advantage of the insecurity of their citizens, to destroy the tools of the past to the common future of Europe. These faces of time turn of the 20th century. Century, you are back.
Since minorities as scapegoats for all social Ills. You watch Matteo Salvini in Italy, the demonising of migrants and in social media, the preachers of hate. In Poland, Jaroslaw Kaczynski poisoned the relations with the European neighbors, and creates an autocratic nationalism. Viktor Orban uses of xenophobia to anti-Semitism any means from the Handbook of fascism, to cement his corrupt dictatorship. Marine Le Pen wants to move to France in the national isolation, and politicians such as Boris Johnson in the UK with the help of Brexit the Empire rise again.
Between our peaceful everyday life in Europe and the abyss that opens up behind these political movements, there are only a handful of responsible politicians and the treaties of the European Union.
Nostalgia is the poison of the present
Many citizens in Europe have a longing, a diffuse, after a better than the perceived past. You do not understand the requirements of the technological change or turn away. You feel overwhelmed, overburdened and left alone. And then the new political pied Piper to come and tell you something of ‘ domestic Church tower, which is allegedly threatened by immigrant Muslims. No matter, if in this Church for years, hardly anyone left. Or you will incite the envy of the neighbors, and declare them enemies of the Fatherland, as it is just in Italy, against Germany, is practiced, or in the UK compared to the Rest of Europe.
Barbara Wesel, Germany – the Europe correspondent of the DW
All the ingredients are there again to mix the toxic brew of nationalism, the exclusion of Others, Dormer Windows to the own peculiarity, hatred of dissenters, and willingness to use violence, which had led to the international disaster a hundred years ago. Add in a degree of political blindness, narrow-mindedness and Power obsession, then the spark can lead to fire.
Nothing is over
The Polish EU leaders Donald Tusk called on the European Christian Democrats Meeting in Helsinki, in a flaming speech, to go for democracy at the barricades. Unfortunately, nothing is further than that, how about the view to Austria. The call of the “nip it in the Bud” has long been unheard. Since the middle of the made in Europe, the independence of the judiciary in question, the press silenced, civil society is cold – it is silent and is reminiscent of the Western heritage.
A couple of decades, we have lived in the cheerful Faith, our future, in democracy and freedom. You don’t need to look at the disgusting Behavior of Donald trump at the memorial service in Paris, deems it necessary to honor the American dead of that time and at the peace conference today. He believes neither in the Doctrines of the past to multilateralism. Europe can survive the latent threat posed by the US President but only when it stands shoulder-to-shoulder, and over all the pettiness, the Commonality of addiction.
A hundred years after the end of the First world war, the views of the present, shows the shocking realisation that The past is not past, it is over for the time being. Nothing is over.