Robert Fico: The Seed of Violence | International

Europe is losing competitiveness. It is far behind the United States and China in the technological revolution. No one takes the EU seriously as a foreign policy actor because the Twenty-Seven are unable to reach an agreement on Ukraine, on Gaza or on the role that Europe should play in the fierce struggle for global hegemony that Washington and enter Beijing. These are the three big challenges we face in the near future, but they are not part of the conversations weeks before the European elections. There will be hardly anything discussed in the campaign other than the height of the ultra-conservative wave, of populism, of the polarization that is plaguing all public opinion on the continent, of if the European People's Party wants to agree with the most representative extreme right. Ultimately, the succession of crises of the past fifteen years has left unprecedented political disarray: all major economic crises sooner or later become major political crises. Moreover, in the East we have been seeing for years in many places an illiberalism with an authoritarian undertone, including hate speech: countries dominated by conspiracy regimes in which the opposition is demonized, the media are stripped of their ability to influence private media, civil society and independent courts, and sovereignty is defined by the determination of leaders to resist any pressure to conform to Western ideals of political pluralism, government transparency and tolerance of strangers, dissidents and minorities, according to the definition of the intellectual Ivan Krastev. The increasingly polarized Slovakia of national populist Robert Fico is a clear example of this dynamic.

But the problem goes far beyond Slovakia and Eastern Europe. The list of extraordinary events that have occurred in the past decade is astounding: there are several far-right parties ruling the EU, the UK is out of the club, Hungary is experiencing an authoritarian turn and most countries are experiencing strong political polarization and high electoral volatility. That cocktail only needed a few drops of angostura: violence has invaded continental politics, making it even more difficult to talk about the major medium- and long-term challenges. To the German Social Democratic Member of Parliament Matthias Ecke literally got his face smashed in when he put up election posters in his city of Dresden. It is not an isolated case; it was preceded by the attack on a German environmental activist, Kai Gehring, of the attack suffered by the Spanish ultra Alejo Vidal-Quadras, from endless disturbing news here and there, from violent actions by the far right in Stockholm to the burning of election posters in the house of a Belgian socialist councilor. That crescendo remains unstoppable: the attack on the Slovak ultra Robert Fico – from a 71-year-old writer – sets the bar almost to the sky. Fico is one of the Prime Ministers of the EU who has led peace for more than sixty years and who now has a war in the neighboring countries (Ukraine), another war very close (Gaza) and the snake's egg, of violence, that is inside broods. The least important thing in this case is that Fico, together with the Hungarian Viktor Orbán, is one of the most uncomfortable leaders in Europe because he breaks the consensus of support for Ukraine. War suddenly returned with Ukraine. Now the violence is suddenly returning.

This is the worst possible EU, apart from all the other Europes that have been tried: they were all very, very violent. In June, the EU risks its competitiveness, its ability to compete with the United States and China, and the possibility of once again being a foreign policy player at the height of its legend. And from now on, the peace of the past 60 years. Stefan Zweig writes in his autobiography: The world of yesterday: “Europe was my actual homeland, the country my heart had chosen,” just before it entered a world war. Zweig proposed a shocking subtitle for that monumental book: “The Unrecoverable Years.” And it was the violence that made them irredeemable. Historian Timothy Garton Ash He often says that what this Europe, in a state of permanent transition, tottering and burdened by discontent, needs least: 'resignation'. zweigiana”. But what you certainly don't need is the seed of violence; even less in politics, which used to be how a society dealt with uncertainty. An uncertainty that has been peaceful until now: be careful with it, because the essence of unhappiness is wanting what we already have and have not yet lost.

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