One should look upon the
forthcoming European elections against the background of the recent events in
Ukraine. The protests which toppled Yanukovich and his gang were triggered by
the government’s decision to give priority to good relations with Russia over
the integration into the European Union. Predictably, many Leftists reacted to
the news about the massive protests with their usual racist patronizing of the
poor Ukrainians: how deluded they are, still idealizing Europe, not being able
to see that Europe is in decline, and that joining European Union will just
made Ukraine an economic colony of Western Europe sooner or later pushed into
the position of Greece… What these Leftists ignore is that Ukrainians were far
from blind about the reality of the European Union: they were fully aware of
its troubles and disparities, their message was simply that their own situation
is much worse. Europe’s problem are still rich man’s problems – remember that,
in spite of the terrible predicament of Greece, African refugees are still
arriving there en masse, causing the ire of Rightist patriots.
But much more important is
the question: what does “Europe” the Ukrainian protesters are referring to
stand for? It cannot be reduced to a single vision: it spans the entire scope
from nationalist and even Fascist elements up to the idea of what Etienne Balibar
calls égaliberté, freedom-in-equality, the unique contribution of Europe to the
global political imaginary, even if it is today more and more betrayed by the
European institutions; plus, between these two poles, the naïve trust into
liberal-democratic capitalism. What Europe should see in Ukrainian protests is
its own best and its own worst.
The Ukrainian Rightist
nationalism is part of a renewed anti-immigrant populist vague which presents
itself as the defense of Europe. The danger of this new Right was clearly
perceived a century ago by G.K. Chesterton who, in his Orthodoxy, deployed the
fundamental deadlock of the critics of religion: “Men who begin to fight the
Church for the sake of freedom and humanity end by flinging away freedom and
humanity if only they may fight the Church.” Does the same not hold for the
advocates of religion themselves? How many fanatical defenders of religion
started with ferociously attacking the contemporary secular culture and ended
up forsaking any meaningful religious experience? And does the same not hold
also for the recent rise of the defenders of Europe against the immigrant
threat? In their zeal to protect Christian legacy, the new zealots are ready to
forsake the true heart of this legacy.
So what are we to do in such
a situation? Mainstream liberals are telling us that, when the basic democratic
values are under threat by ethnic or religious fundamentalists, we should all
unite behind the liberal-democratic agenda of cultural tolerance, save what can
be saved, and put aside dreams of a more radical social transformation. So what
about the liberal-democratic capitalist European dream? One cannot be sure what
awaits Ukraine within the EU, beginning with austerity measures. We all know
the well-known joke from the last decade of the Soviet Union about Rabinovitch,
a Jew who wants to emigrate. The bureaucrat at the emigration office asks him
why, and Rabinovitch answers: “There are two reasons why. The first is that I’m
afraid that in the Soviet Union the Communists will lose power, and the new
power will put all the blame for the Communist crimes on us, Jews – there will
again be anti-Jewish pogroms…” ”But”, interrupts him the bureaucrat, “this
is pure nonsense, nothing can change in the Soviet Union, the power of the Communists
will last forever!” ”Well”, responds Rabinovitch calmly, “that’s my second
reason.”
We can easily imagine a
similar exchange between a critical Ukrainian and a European Union financial
administrator – the Ukrainian complains: “There are two reasons we are in a
panic here in Ukraine. First, we are afraid that the EU will simply abandon us
to the Russian pressure and let our economy collapse…” The EU administrator
interrupts him: “But you can trust us, we will not abandon you, we will tightly
control you and advise you what to do!” “Well”, responds the Ukrainian
calmly, “that’s my second reason.”
So yes, the Maidan
protesters were heroes, but the true fight begins now, the fight for what the
new Ukraine will be, and this fight will be much tougher than the fight against
Putin’s intervention. The question is not if Ukraine is worthy of Europe, good
enough to enter EU, but if today’s Europe is worthy of the deepest aspirations
of the Ukrainians. If Ukraine will end up as a mixture of ethnic fundamentalism
and liberal capitalism, with oligarchs pulling the strings, it will be as
European as Russia (or Hungary) is today. Political commentators claimed that
EU did not support Ukraine enough in its conflict with Russia, that the EU
response to the Russian occupation and annexation of Crimea was half-hearted.
But there is another kind of support which was even more missing: to offer
Ukraine a feasible strategy of how to break out of its socio-economic deadlock.
To do this, Europe should first transform itself and renew its pledge to the
emancipatory core of its legacy.
In his Notes Towards a
Definition of Culture, the great conservative T.S. Eliot remarked that there
are moments when the only choice is the one between sectarianism and
non-belief, when the only way to keep a religion alive is to perform a
sectarian split from its main corpse. This is our only chance today: only by
means of a “sectarian split” from the decaying corpse of the old Europe can we
keep the European legacy of égaliberté alive. Such a split should render
problematic the very premises that we tend to accept as our destiny, as
non-negotiable data of our predicament -- the phenomenon usually designated as
the global New World Order and the need, through “modernization,” to
accommodate ourselves to it. To put it bluntly, if the emerging New World Order
is the non-negotiable destiny for all of us, then Europe is lost, so the only
solution for Europe is to take the risk and break this spell of our destiny.
Only in such a new Europe could Ukraine find its place. It is not the
Ukrainians who should learn from Europe, Europe itself has to learn to
incorporate the dream that motivated the Maidan protesters.
What message will then the
Ukrainians get from the European elections?
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