To come to grips with growing racism and right wing populism in Europe is a common concern for many popular movements, important Groups within minorities and different religious organizations and other actors. What can PS2 do about this?
I think that PS2 have to take into consideration three things. Firstly PS2 have been able to maintain a mix of action and organizing Events and CEE participation for three years. This shows a strength but at the same time weakness in terms of a very limited group of mainly men which in practice are organizing the activities. Secondly PS2 have been able to put anti RWE and populism struggle into a much wider context than the traditional of fighting on the basis of being for tolerance or political but not economic equality be placing the issue within a framework of anti RWE in a time of social and ecological crisis. But this ability have not been able to shape a strong enough PS2 criticism both against RWE and the shortcoming of other anti RWE perspectives in the present conjuncture. Thirdly the Budapest Meeting might be a chance for PS2 to advance our struggle but the text proposed by Matyas Benyik is taking for granted that first and foremost stating ideological unity in terms of seeing capitalism as the main problem is not bringing us forward. It has no strong component in making it possible to go beyond the male dominated PS2 core group nor beyond traditional left wing tactics.
It is of course anyway a good job that has been done and maybe so far we can get with some slight changes. I will anyway outline some other options below.
It seems to have come as a surprise to many that racism is on the rise in most parts of the Europe while neoliberal austerity politics mot often explicitly avoiding racist argumentation is dominant in every corner of the continent. To some this is the result of the Austerity and growing social inequalities coming as a result of too few market reforms and formal democracy making the economy to prosper. Others may say the same roots but claim it is the result of neoliberal dismantling of the welfare state both in the East and the West. Others might claim that it is also a part of the present neoliberal development model. Others may see a lack of tolerance and civil courage to stand up for everyone’s dignity.
How is it then possible to bring the different anti-racist Forces together with their sometimes conflicting positions beyond simple least common denominator tactics? One could claim that to hold in honour the indivisibility of the UN human rights is a possible starting platform beyond least common denominator. Thus that there is a need to address both political and economic rights and not only look at racism as a question of moral or lack of formal political rights.
One will loose quite a few anti-racist who wants to separate anti racism stating that only daily life racism or moral lack of tolerance have to be addressed while state racism or any connections between racism and socio economic relationships should be avoided.
Of course it will be necessary to act as broadly as possible without loosing political sharpness in the case of outbursts or widespread Islamophobia or Antiarabic racism, Antiziganism/roma, Antisemitism, Antigreek or whatever kind o racism or xenophobia that occurs or are developing. But at the European and wider international level in the present economic and ecological crisis there is a need to go further to be able to be stronger against racism.
Another solution is to put antiracism within the framework of being against Right wing extremism and populism. After this way of putting racism into a wider political context one might add for both antiracism and anti RWE that the starting point for both is to share an analysis that what we are facing is a crisis for capitalism and after this starting point appeal to a broader plural understanding. This may be a strengthening of building alliances by getting together a more coherent opposition and alliance building. It may also exclude several important actors who may not be willing to make a compromise neither towards racism or RWE but do not share the idea that first and foremost must capitalism be criticized.
Weak spots in the rise of racism and RWE
The weak spots in the rise of racism and RWE is their connection to the neoliberal regime. At the level of political economy and political ecology this has to be addressed by different and hopefully mutually strengthening social struggles and alliance building. This PS2 have been doing at its own conferences and by organizing participation at events like the Altersummit. This can be further developed but is a task heavily dependent on what different movements are doing a both domestic and international level making it a hard but important task.
There are some dimensions of special and similar dimensions in the anti RWE which may not be so useful to reduce to primarily a question of anticapitalism if one do not want to exclude important alliance partners. One is the conflict between feminism and RWE and populism.
Feminism have had some tendency to be caught up in social liberal struggle for political equal rights weakening the fight against RWE.
Here we can see a similarity between feminism, environmental and antiracist movement, all with the tendency to be separated and brought into the formula of struggling for tolerance and environmental protection within the neoliberal growingly authoritarian regime. Each of these struggles, the feminist-RWE, the environmental including the rural-urban conflict in relation to RWE and the antiracist have great potential in growing radicalism but can loose a lot of strength if they are subaltern under the shared ideology of firts and foremost criticizing capitalism. One or all of these three dimensions of the anti RWE and anti populism struggle could become working Groups preparing for the Budapest meeting.
PS2 against the Prague Declaration
Most potential for Prague Spring 2 network in addressing the present rise of RWE and populism might be in a new antiracist struggle which simultaneously attacks RWE and populism at its heart in its Connection to neoliberalism. This new antiracist struggle is to attack the antisemitism of countries like Lithuania and the obfuscation of the holocaust in the EU initiative to commemorate victims of communism and nazism on similar grounds. The main basis for this neoliberal ideological movement is the Prague declaration placing the Prague Spring 2 network in an interesting possibility of opposing this initiative supported by most new EU countries in CEE as well as countries as Sweden.
Central to the present neoliberal regime is to connect all System critical popular movement to violence the crimes against humanity. To this end state museums and corporate and governmental initiatives are made at EU and other levels with the aim to dominate the writing of history and the understanding of what is acceptable and what is criminal ideologies. Interestingly is this neoliberal ideology supported in all of Europe with some countries both in the West and the East as avantgarde.
This new way to use the holocaust to make it the same category as communist crimes is utterly opposed by some Jewish activists and the biggest synagogue in Europe, the United synagogue in the UK. 70 MEPs have also opposed the Prague declaration. World Without Nazism is also opponents to the Prague Declaration with far wider support than the Jewish organizations and the MEPs but have had limited success due to its sometimes close linkage to Russian foreign policy interests which to some degree are legitimate but due to wide spread Russo phobia in Europe are ignored.
What makes the Prague declaration crucial to neoliberalism is that it becomes a tool to fight the present opponent of economic globalization and their neoliberal dismantling of the welfare state. The key to the success of the Prague declaration so far is its base in anti totalitarian ideology and demand that all European peoples experience must be included in a shared common European memory. Furthermore is the focus directed toward easily documented specific cases of cruelty while more structural violence are excluded. The odd thing with this ideology that it is not interested in spreading information and making aware of the kind of cruelty which is stated as important to address.
Only crimes against humanity are addressed if they are committed by totalitarian regimes. He re is the key in its usefulness for the present neoliberal regime both in terms of glorifying capitalism under democratic constitutionalism and demonizing system critical movements as the alternative globalizations networks.
The origin of this neoliberal project has its roots in the 1930s but has only been able to become more wide spread after war and put in practice during the present neoliberal regime when it is becoming more and more authoritarian. One of its roots is Sweden were in the late 1990s the social democratic government and history teachers and academicians saw a possibility in addressing primarily nazism and the holocaust but also crimes against humanity committed by communist regimes or communism. This was radicalized after the victory of the centre-right in the elections 2006. After this both the state department for ”living” history and the institute for information on communism financed by corporations in close cooperation with the government begun more strongly making campaigns against the atrocities linked to communism. Sweden also became the strongest supporter in Western Europe supporting the Prague declaration and celebrating the day commemorating victims of totalitarian regimes. Lithuania initiated the Prague declaration according to defendinghistory.com starting in 2006 with several initiatives. Virulent antisemitism came to the fore, RWE marche through the streets in masses shouting ”Juden raus” when going through the earlier Jewish quarters and Jews on cartoons were presented when they were kissing the red army soldier with the brunt down Lithuanian village in the background. The Jewish-Bolschevik enemy was alive again. The state prosecutor that has not been able to convict anyone of the many Lithuanian participators in the Holocaust.
Instead they started to select in 2006 on racist and political grounds juridical proceedings against three Jewish survivors of the Holocaust that became partisans in the only existing resistance organization that existed against the Nazi occupation. All three were also active in building opinion against the Holocaust and the Lithuanian participation in the holocaust as director of the holocaust museum in Jerusalem for twenty years, librarian at the Yiddisch library in Vilnius and a writer about the Jewish and partisan resistance who moved to Israel when the harassment become to strong when the state prosecutors started the juridical proceedings on this 90 year old women. Only Jewish partisans were selected in spite of that they formed only a smaller portion of the ethnic groups in the armed unite partisan resistance. While trying to put Jewish survivors of the Holocaust and freedom fighters to court the state also started to celebrate the persons responsible for the Lithuanian participation in the holocaust. Specially prominent was the official burial of the interim government leader who signed anti Jewish laws and hos Police battalions started the first mass murder of 5000 Jews in the capital Kaunas in the holocaust after the Nazi attack in 1941 when Nazi control was not fully established.
What makes this new kind of using the holocaust so efficient that it works without any kind of denial of the holocaust, it simply posits communist crimes at equal level of Nazi crimes within the framework of excluding crimes against humanity committed by constitutionally democratic countries of liberal or other regimes. Thus the mass murder in concentration camps of some 40 000 workers and small peasant after the civil war in Finland in the summer of 1918 are as much excluded as the 1 million victims of French colonialism within the EU Project 1957-1962 in what then was inside France in its Southern provinces in Algeria or in general victims of colonial and neocolonial atrocities to this day. In this way constitutional democratic capitalism can be separated from capitalist dictatorship who then are combined with Communist regimes and put in the category of regimes organizing genocide. Under German initiative this is also the basis of the new EU history project including rewriting text books and a House of European History in Brussels.
But the most aggressive ideology is put forward by the Prague declaration and its Lithuanian initiators together with such governments as the Hungarian, Estonian, Latvian and Czech Republic with substantial support from the Swedish government, some circles in Germany and the leading Green Finnish politician Heidi Hautala (many years the most popular politician in Finland).
My point is the PS2 here can make a difference. We have a unique position as having knowledge about some of what happens and can bring up strong criticism both from a Western European and CEE perspective.
And we have an ally which for certain is legitimate and not anticapitalist, genuine Jewish interest. The neoliberal CEE governments on their hand push their obfuscation of the holocaust and often antisemite politics by strong defence of Israel with aDusneylanmd approach to the holocaust combined with aggressive attack on the real existing holocaust survivors.
So a special investigation in this new kind of European antisemitism and way to use the holocaust might be a way for PS2 to make a unique contribution to the way new kind of racism emerges in the neoliberal Europe of today linked to some Russophobian tendencies as well as propaganda against system criticism.
Tord Björk