By Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, January 2nd, 2012 
Minutes ago I received this open letter from prominent critical Hungarian intellectuals via Andras Bozoki (author of an earlier post on the transition from democracy, who will present an update in the coming days). The message speaks for itself, warning of a looming European political crisis. -Jeff
The decline of democracy – the rise of dictatorship
The undersigned, participants of the erstwhile human rights and democracy movement that opposed the one-party communist regime in the 1970s and 1980s, believe that the Hungarian society is not only the victim of the current economic crisis, but also the victim of its own government. The present government has snatched the democratic political tools from the hands of those who could use these tools to ameliorate their predicament. While chanting empty patriotic slogans, the government behaves in a most unpatriotic way by reducing its citizens to inactivity and impotence.
The constitutional system of Hungary has also sunk into a critical situation. As of the 1st of January 2012, the new constitution of Hungary along with several fundamental laws came into force. Viktor Orbán’s government is intent on destroying the democratic rule of law, removing checks and balances, and pursuing a systematic policy of closing autonomous institutions, including those of civil society, with the potential to criticise its omnipotence. Never since the regime change of 1989 when communist dictatorship was crushed has there been such an intense concentration of power in the region as in present-day Hungary.
Institutions with the authority to hold government activity in check have met a similar fate: Fidesz continuously deprives such institutions of their autonomy, blackmails them for survival, discharges professional management, takes unlawful decisions and moulds these institutions so that they can no longer control and correct government activity but, in sharp contrast to their original function, they serve to augment unbridled autocracy. With the removal of the checks and balances, the whole state has become subservient to the government, or rather to the prime minister. The Parliament and the president obediently comply with the dictates of the cabinet. By having their staff radically reshuffled and implementing laws curtailing their competence, the Chief . . .
Read more: New Year’s Message Sent by Former Hungarian Political Dissidents, Budapest, 2nd of January, 2012
By Kacper Szulecki, December 22nd, 2011 
He never was a politician. He never wanted to be one. In this, he embodied the post-communist dream of an anti-political politics. Many, very many Czechs could not forgive him just that. When they put him at the Prague Castle, when they saw him in the legendary president T.G. Masaryk’s seat – they wanted him to play a statesman. And play he did, throughout his life he was a man of the theater. But he was a playwright, not an actor. As time went by, voices were heard that he is not fit for the position he holds. When people now say “he was an intellectual, a playwright, and a politician – in that order” it sounds more like a judgment than a description. Yet, little of that domestic criticism seemed to trickle through the borders of the Republic, and so the discrepancy between the international appreciation and the domestic disenchantment grew. Disenchantment is a good word. It was not Havel that changed. It was the Czechs who changed their expectations. He enchanted them with his charisma, his life-story and charm. And they (many of them) later did everything, to escape and deny that enchantment, as if they were ashamed of it. Inarguably, they owe him a lot. And so do the other nations in the region, because to our luck it was him and not any other former oppositionist that became the face of Central Europe in the early 1990s.
Havel appeared in Czechoslovakia’s public life in the 1960s as a writer – a young, avant-garde playwright. He was a declassed bourgeois, a descendant of a great Prague family. His grandfather – Vácslav Havel – was an architect, a leading representative of Czech modernism. His uncle Miloš established the famous film studios on the Barrandov hills. The father, Václav M. Havel, a friend of Masaryk’s, apart from building houses was also building institutions – the Czech Rotary and YMCA. If for the Czechoslovak Communist Party there ever was an . . .
Read more: Citizen Havel Leaves
By Hana Cervinkova, December 21st, 2011 
While I cannot claim the privilege to have been one of Václav Havel’s friends, he loomed large in my life, first in my teenage years when I was coming of age in Communist Czechoslovakia and later through my extended sojourns abroad – in the United States and now in Poland. Václav Havel is profoundly irreplaceable. Together with millions of other Czechs, I owe him my freedom.
The season’s first snow was falling heavily last Sunday afternoon when I was making my way to Wrocław along winding, mountainous roads returning from my family house on the Czech side of the border. The going was very slow as the line of cars, mostly with Polish tags, headed back toward Poland after spending a weekend in the Czech mountains. My small son was sleeping in the back seat. In the quiet of the ride, I listened to Václav Havel’s voice recorded five years prior when he spoke on Czech National Radio about the place theater held in his life. Czech radio stations were responding to the news of the former President’s death with rebroadcasts of past interviews, as if they wanted to extend his presence among us.
In this moment of deep sadness when time seemed to have stopped altogether, my thoughts turned back to an important moment in my childhood. I must have been eleven when I decided to take part in a school recitation competition. To help me prepare, my mother taught me a poem by the Czech Nobel Prize laureate, Jaroslav Seifert. In the poem, Seifert commemorated the day when the first Czechoslovak President Tomáš Garyk Masaryk died. Masaryk, like Havel, died in early hours of the morning. The poem, which I still remember, is entitled, To kalné ráno – The Grey Morning. My mother read the poem out loud to me repeatedly until I knew the words by heart, stopping to take breaths before each softly sounding refrain: “Remember my child, that grey morning.” Thanks to Havel, I realize today that my mother’s choice of Seifert, . . .
Read more: What Václav Havel Meant to Me
By Esther Kreider-Verhalle, December 15th, 2011 
One Russian blogger has dubbed his country’s current developments “Russia’s Great December Evolution,” a quip on the Great October Revolution of 1917, and many mass media have eagerly reported the signs of a Russian Winter, following the Arab Spring. Interestingly, almost all Russia watchers who for years have categorized the new Russia as an increasingly authoritarian state where democratic reforms have ceased or failed altogether, are warming up to the possibility of a more democratic Russia.
However, some very significant developments that have been mostly overlooked by both researchers and journalists are aspects of social transformation in the past twenty years combined with long existing germs of democracy. These phenomena have convinced me that democratic ideas and practices exist in Russia. Hence, I was happy to see that during one of the recent demonstrations a participant carried around a sign that read, “We exist.”
Yes, of course it is important to note that Russia’s current political system can be described as a façade democracy or managed democracy, whose leaders are neither interacting with the citizens nor showing any interest in letting them participate in a meaningful way. Nor have these leaders been capable to respond appropriately to social change. This Potemkin political system ignores but has not killed the citizens’ democratic values. Developments such as changes in work ethic, entrepreneurialism, increased foreign travel, and the rising use of new (social) media all need to be taken into account when analyzing the political values of Russians in their daily lives, and ultimately, understanding the country’s political reality.
Part of that political reality is the understanding that Russia’s aspirations for democracy go far back, thinking mainly of the alternative political culture that Russian emigrants and Soviet dissidents helped flourish, even though it was not manifested publicly. Soviet citizens had learned to cope with many of the practical difficulties and hardships of daily life through an effective system of social informal networks. Over time, Soviet citizens had created varied responses to . . .
Read more: Russia’s Democratic Ideas and Practices
By Igal Bursztyn, December 13th, 2011 
This is the second part of a two-part post on new developments in Israeli and Palestinian film. Part 1 provided the historical and aesthetic background. Today, the new developments are considered. -Jeff
One of the first attempts to undermine and transcend Israeli cinema’s tendentious rhetorics and contents was Avanti Popolo (Rafi Bukai, 1986). It takes place in Sinai during the 1967 Six Days War. Two Egyptian soldiers (acted by Palestinian actors Salim Daw and Suhel Haddad) lost in the desert without water, discover two bottles of whiskey in a UN abandoned jeep, which they drink to survive. Khaled is an aspiring actor in Cairo fringe theater. He would love to act Hamlet but instead has been given the part of Shylock, the Jew, in Shakespeare’s “The Merchant of Venice.” As the two wander, thirsty and drunk in the desert, they run into an Israeli patrol. Their captors refuse to share a can of water with them. Khaled stuns them as he desperately quotes Shakespeare tinged with an Arab accent “I am a Jew! Has a Jew not eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions, fed with the same food…”
An article by the Palestinian poet and critic Anton Shammas has brought to my attention that
“the two allegedly Egyptian soldiers lost in the desert talk behave like typical Palestinians. They represent the Palestinian to the Israeli cognition through the back door, through a brilliant, humane, humoristic and most of all clever cinematic distraction. Bukai, maybe intuitively, felt that the only way in which the Palestinian could touch Israeli conscience and raise his interest would be through a softened, retouched image of the ‘Egyptian’, who has existed significantly in this awareness since the days of the Bible.” (Shammas Anton, ‘He Confused the Parts’ in Bukai Rafi, Avanti Popolo, Kinneret Publishing House, 1990. Hebrew)
What strikes me about Avanti Popolo, is its yearning for a disinterested and universal “promesse du Bonheur” according to Stendhal’s famous definition of beauty, for Shakespeare, capable of transcending Israeli/Arab differences and conflicts. Avanti Popolo was followed . . .
Read more: Promesse de Bonheur in Nowhere: Fantasies of Art & Beauty in Israeli and Palestinian Films, Part 2
By Igal Bursztyn, December 12th, 2011 
This is the first of a two-part post on developments in Israeli and Palestinian films: Today a reflection on the historical and aesthetic background, tomorrow on new developments. -Jeff
“The promise of happiness” bequeathed by art and beauty (Stendhal) does not seem to have much political or social relevance in the grim perspective of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict today. For most Palestinians, happiness probably depends on getting rid of the Israeli occupation, if not of the Israelis themselves, For most Israelis, happiness may consist of being relieved of Arab threats, if not of the Arabs. Artifacts of both cultures, especially their respective cinemas, tended to reflect this irrelevance till the late 20th Century.
Recent developments in Israeli and Palestinian film share a new, unexpected theme: an outspoken yearning for high-art and beauty. In Atash (Thirst) by Tawfiq Abu Wa’el, an Arab village girl, oppressed and almost raped by her father, obsessively reads classical poetry. In Rafi Bukai’s Avanti Popolo, an Egyptian soldier captured by Israelis in the 6 Day War Sinai quotes Shylock’s monologue to save his life. In Elia Suleiman’s Divine Intervention, a beautifully stylized fashion-model causes a military checkpoint watch-tower to collapse. In Yoav Shamir’s documentary, Checkpoint, Israeli soldiers and Palestinian civilians in a routine search are accompanied by a beautiful Italian opera tune coming from a radio-transistor. These (and many more) works juxtapose art and beauty with bleak, everyday reality, creating an unanticipated, almost utopian vision in which art and beauty transcend reality, thus becoming critical (and self-critical) comments on their respective Israeli and Palestinian societies. They “help sketch new configurations of what can be seen, what can be said and what can be thought and, consequently, a new landscape of the possible” (Jacques Rancière).
*****
In 1899, Shaul Tshernichovski published “Facing the Statue of Apollo,” one of the most influential poems in modern Hebrew literature:
Youth-God, sublime and free, the acme of beauty…
I came to you – do you recognize me?
I am a Jew, your eternal adversary…
I bow to life and courage and beauty…
The outspoken idolatry of the poem . . .
Read more: Promesse de Bonheur in Nowhere: Fantasies of Art & Beauty in Israeli and Palestinian Films, Part 1
By Minas Samatas, November 3rd, 2011 
The crisis here in Greece is not just financial, but also social and moral. People suffer, while the political elite and the establishment survive, untouched, although they are responsible for the current state bankruptcy. Given the history of the recent past, after the bloody civil war (1947-1949), during the police state (1949-1967) and the military dictatorship (1967-1974), and especially after the dictatorship up to the present, the crisis is not surprising. Greek tragedy has returned.
After the end of the dictatorship, democracy was restored and Greece joined the European Union (EU) and eventually the Euro-zone for political reasons, not based on economic fiscal criteria. As a consequence, the Greek people enjoyed thirty five years of stable democratic life and relative prosperity, albeit a false one. The state apparatus, dominated by the two political parties, the conservative “New Democracy” and the socialist “PASOK,” was thoroughly corrupt and mismanaged with a highly elaborate system of patronage. There was little real economic development. The economy was based on tourism, EU agricultural subsidies and other EU funds. Many Greek citizens, based on their political connections, were employed in the inflated public sector, and avoided their tax obligations, violated building regulations, and received permits and easy loans from the state controlled banks.
Through loans or from EU funding, these were good years for Greeks and their European partners, especially the Germans who took advantage of the great Greek party, i.e., Athens 2004 Olympics. Their outrageous cost and the ensuing corruption seriously contributed to the present debt crisis and the actual bankruptcy of the whole post dictatorial state and society. Beyond the Olympics, European and other multinational corporations have fully exploited Greece’s corrupt and disorganized system so as to multiply their profits in relation to other countries. The real party was in arms deals in the billions, which involved huge kickbacks. The Greek Parliament covered up the Siemens’ kickback scandal and several others. No one has been sentenced to jail. No one has been punished.
With the international fiscal crisis and aggressive international markets, the good . . .
Read more: The Crisis in Greece: Tragedy Without Catharsis
By Irit Dekel, October 18th, 2011 
Gilad Shalit is home today, after five years and four months as a captive of Hamas. My initial reaction, as an Israeli, reflecting on these developments in Berlin, looking mostly at Israeli written press online: I think it is wonderful that Shalit’s mental and physical condition is good enough for him to be able to appreciate his return.
As for the “home” he will find, others have written about the Israeli society he left in contrast with the one to which he returns. I wish instead to comment on two significant symbolic questions: Was the “price” paid for his return justified? And, the more difficult question which requires the help of a philosopher to address: what is the nature and meaning of his homecoming?
The first issue concerning the “price” paid for the safe return of a soldier seems to me and to most of the Israeli public as a no- brainer: one has to save the life of a soldier sent in one’s name. This issue has been covered in the German press I follow in Berlin, praising the commitment of the Israelis to their own people. However, the Israeli press’ apparent need to declare Hamas inhuman concerns me.
I am happy that Shalit is healthy, and recognize that the call in the Palestinian street today to capture other “Shalits” so that other prisoners will be released is obviously morally wrong. Yet, the parallel Israeli use of “price tag” to refer to the urge to hurt Palestinians, as well as the attacks upon what is conceived as the memory of left wing and secular Israel, specifically focused upon the Rabin Assassination, are no less morally wrong.
The attacks, about which Vered Vinitzky Seroussi has extensively written, seem to appear at moments of peaceful interaction and are deeply problematic. Last week, graffiti on the memorial site read: “free Yigal Amir” [Rabin’s assassin]. Perhaps the positive lesson from the discourse on “prices” is that it cannot be read in a vacuum: talking . . .
Read more: Gilad Shalit Comes Home
By Nahed Habiballah, October 17th, 2011 
The recent parliamentary elections in Poland allowed many to heave a sigh of relief. Once again Law and Justice, the party known best for propagating religious conservatism, war language and conspiracy theory has been pushed back to the opposition. It is also the first time in Poland’s history of a democratic state that the ruling party, Civic Platform, has managed to stay in power longer than one term. So should democrats be cheering?
A popular feeling among the voters was that there was no one to choose from. Once more people left their homes to choose a lesser evil, that is Civic Platform, whose leader, Donald Tusk, promised the politics of love, but said nothing about the much needed changes. Indeed, Poland has been lucky in the crisis managing to keep her economy growing, but after the Civic Platform’s first full term, the country’s internal issues, including employment and retirement reforms, are still waiting to be approached. Will the ruling party be more courageous this time?
Yet significant change has occurred. While the center and right look pretty much as they did before, a notable shift can be seen on the left side of the political stage. The post-communist leftist party with a bureaucratic leader lacking any noticeable ideology lost a significant number of votes to a new movement centered around Janusz Palikot, a charismatic businessman turned politician. Palikot gained attention as a member of the Civic Platform, but was thrown out of the party for his foul tongue and press conferences in which he used plastic guns and dildos as his unconventional props. Yet, beyond the show, Palikot’s efforts to improve regulations for small business and his open aversion to the Catholic Church’s omnipresence in political life, resonated with the public. Still, the high number of votes his movement received came as a surprise both to the voters and Palikot himself.
Now, after more than two decades of democratic rule, Poland shares similar ills with its neighbors: . . .
Read more: Elections in Poland: More than the Lesser of Two Evils?
By Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, October 14th, 2011 
I think that the form of Occupy Wall Street expresses its content, as Scott Beck showed in his earlier post on the occupation. I observe, further, that the way people use social media contributes to this form, as does the setting of the occupation. And I believe deliberating about the movement and connecting the debate to other political, social and cultural activities are keys to the democratic contribution of the movement to broader politics in America and beyond.
Jenny Davis in her post last week makes cogent points about the role of social media in social movements in general and in Occupy Wall Street in particular. Her key observation is very important. Digital activism is not only a means to the end of embodied social action. It also is an end in itself, a new type of politics that can make the previously hidden visible and can contribute to what she calls “the zeitgeist,” what I would prefer calling the prevailing common sense. I would add that it can constitute a space for free action, a public, a point made by Judith Butler in a recent lecture. This is especially telling as David Peppas and Barbara note in the two comments to Davis’s post, because the occupation doesn’t have a simple meaning or political end. The act of protesting, as well as the act of posting, makes the world look differently, and looking at the world differently is what is most needed at this time, to face up to stark social realities that have been ignored and develop the capacity to act on this. It is interesting how the way this happens is structured by social media actions, no longer a monopoly of the mass media, while the power of the movement, is quite material. It’s embedded in a specific geography and its link to political culture.
The place of the occupation in an important way contributes . . .
Read more: In Review: OWS, The Ground Zero Occupation
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