Holocaust was not a commonly used European expression, but entered through American English. And the term actually comes from the 1978-79 TV series Holocaust.
The commemoration of the holocaust was generally national-based. Most countries would see their own compatriots as the main victims.
Chirac in Paris 1995, Di Rupo at Kazerne Dossin 2012; and Rutte Amsterdam 2020.
French, Belgian and Dutch dimensional parts in the holocaust.
As time goes on, commemoration challenged → the disappearance of eyewitnesses. (Heidi Frid).
23 August, Black Ribbon day.
27 January, Commemoration of Holocaust day.
How can we commemorate the history without proper eyewitnesses? (What is the neccessity of living eye witness account?)
Colonialism in Europe lacked an adequate place in the European politics of memory. Structurally, colonialism was similar as a systematic form of genocidal tendencies as the holocaust (though holocaust and similar events happened with a different logic and at different speeds).
Which role does the holocaust face in regards to Gaza? Does it play a role even?
It is not possible to deal with stalinist history in Russia. Politics of memory are inherently related to the invasion of Ukraine.
What does it mean that historians continually revise, look at history differently? Is history arbitrary? Can we do with it what we want? No.
Rather, we need to adhere to the veto power of the sources. The sources are what limit any kind of historical writing. They are the limit of the world of history. However, the sources also do not require the interpretation to be a certain way, but certainly aimed in a certain direction.
Tanner is a foundational text to this course. Reread.
Populism:
There is on the one hand a nostalgic view of 50s, 60s – retrotopia. The idea that the times were different, and that we should go back there.
Populism could be understood as a kind of marker. Not all populist movements show all these characteristics. They insist however on representing ”the real people”. That there are people, the silent majority, who do not dare to march on the streets. So generally, it is anti-elitist.
It values often famous charistmatic leadership, rather than democracy.
Populism is however usually a term used for other people, and it is generally pejorative.
Its rhetoric is anti-establishment.
Is populism a relevant description of the current goings-on?
Could it be the case that we currently lack adequate conceptualisations of what is currently going on.
A phenomenon that has been ongoing for a long time is a decline in trust for liberal democratic government, at the very least in Europe. This holds true for most media agencies as well.
And this trust generally continues to decline.
Conspiracy theorists (Klärtänker in German lol) so on becomes common. A phenomenon where people think that the government as well as the media only lie. Whilst this is not entirely false, one must ask why conspiracy theories generally are so popular today compared to before?
It must be seen as the most radical manifestation of this lack of trust.
And so ”non-traditional” politics.
New style ”conservatism”, however this term doesn’t actually have much in common with conservatism generally.
Elon Musk embracing the goals of the AfD.
Similar with Milei, who began a disruptive kind of politics in Argentina, but also turned into an icon of rightist libertarian politics, despite being very hard to pin down politically. There are new kind of connections that lack the sort of common party lines which one is familiar with, but which can generally be described as a kind of ”anti-globalism”, headed by an ironically global elite.
There is a connection here with big tech and the advance of social media.
X was supprting and giving an advantage to the AfD as Elon supports it.
It seems to be a global phenomenon, present both in SA and the US.
Recently, in Spain there was a meeting in the patriot faction in European politics like Vlaams Belang, Orban, and SD and so on.
The thinktank ”freedomhouse” argued that 2024 was the 20th consecutive year of decline in global freedom. Before this, more countries were shifting to liberal democratic functions. Around 2004, however, we see a decline in this shift, and rather it seems as if democracy generally has only declined since then. Good to be born in the year of change.
Is populism a threat to democracy or is it a sign of decline generally?
For Muller populism is anti-elitist, but its prime concern is actually.. he stopped here…
It is not so much the elite, but anti-pluralism. It is the exclusion of certain rules. They declare other parties as illegitimate. The other parties do not speak for the people, and are furthermore traitors of the people. On the other hand, they exclude certain groups, like foreigners and migrants commonly.
They stretch the facts in interpreting election results often. No matter what the results say, they can always show a favourable interpretation.
Also, as he says, they colonise the state with their own guys. They make a state of the party.
Now we see a lot of examples of the kind of theory that muller was arguing for.
We have to pay attention to the national contexts of course. Like in Sweden, there is not really fear of techoncracy in the same way.
Culture wars usually ’help’ populism’s growth.
Grievance from before.
Problem of technocracy.
We are arguing about populism on three levels: as a phenomenon, as an analytical tool and as a normative approach.
Normative here in the sense of ethical.
We still need to look into geographic expressions as according to this however.
We need to look at the political economy of populism.
North and central Europe has a comparatively well-developed open welfare state which are able to cope with globalisation, but struggle with immigration → and so the populist economy (in a psychological sense) outlash goes against migrants. Eg. in Flanders, Sweden, Italy, Netherlands, Denmark and Finland.
There seems to be a different strand of populism found in the south. Here the welfare state often fails to compensate for globalisation. It is usually found in terms of more leftist populism which wishes to give money to the people, and which does not focus so much on anti-migration.
And the third strand being the anglo-american countries with their deregulated labour market, and their tiny welfare state, where unskilled landed workers lose out to skilled immigrants, which in turn towards anti-migration populism.
Since the financial crisis, left and right populism is dominant in Italy for example.
We could also look at populism in east-central Europe, which saw a shift from planned economies to market economies, which give rise to a new kind of populism, which focuses on the divide between the country side and the cities → extreme inequality and what are now the illiberal democracies.
Viktor Orban heads a small country, but he still heads an illiberal kind of democracy, where rule of law and freedom of the press is not properly present.
During the invasion of Ukraine, Polish and Hungarian politics split.
These populist politicians seem to have an easier time spreading right now. And perhaps all of this aligns to one historical kind of point. Perhaps regarding the new media and the economy of attention, and in regards to the ”risk society”.
To what extent then is populism new from the 50s? Did it exist back then?
Touwtje uit de brievenbus (Jan Terlouw).
A kind of rope that everyone could enter your house with, because there was a certain kind of trust back then so that anyone could come in and hang out and do stuff or whatever. Whether this was really the case is difficult to prove for the netherlands. But we need to focus on why there is now a narrative idealising this kind of trust and about why is it gone.
The Frankfurt am Main picture from the 60s depict a similar kind of nostalgia.
We could talk for ages about the kind of truth to these claims, but it is not really relevant.
So instead we can talk about the 50s and so on as the retrotopia, a world that offered both stability and progress. It was safe and stable, but also dynamic in a positive sense, everyone had material improvement.
Some terms that capture this nostalgia: Belgique de papa, Trente Glorieuses, a title of a film about the 30 years after WWII, the 30 glorious years of continuous progress. In Germany the Wirthschaftwunder, only 10 years after WWII.
Britain is the exception, not much happened that was good in that time in Britain lol.
Conway: how to explain the particular muted character of western europe during this time, muted in the sense as no longer being like during the age of extremes of the 30s.
The decline of the antagonisms of that time: right wing and left wing no longer worked constantly agianst each other. It is good for the simple reason that fascism had been ’stopped’, one could no longer vote for a fascist party in Germany for example.
Conway also furthers the role of the cold war as a pacifying force. Unifying the West against the East had an effect of creating group spirit.
There were two poles of power, and one either belong to one or the other.
It simplified politics. It wasn’t much of a question about which side one should align themselves with.
From this point onwards, there were no wars on mainland europe until the breakup of Yugoslavia.
The communists were rather strong in many countries of Western Europe after this.
The Marshal plan from the US, giving the US a very strong economic role in influencing politics. With the Marshal plan came certain secret as well as outspoken plans, such as liberalising the econony, but also to not allow communist parties or similar into government. Communism so on stopped being a political option. However, they were not seen as Soviet threats generally, because most of them were no longer aligned with Soviet politics due to the break up of the international.
In this background, the west had to make sure that the welfare state was strong where there was strong class struggle, in order to quiet the masses.
Conway argues that this generally considered boring age, was actually super-interesting in how much of a special case it is in history.
The caesueae of the democratic age for Conway:
The christian democratic party in Italy 1943, however this beginning is not entirely clear, but this is where it at least starts.
Social pact in Belgium 1944.
Koningskwestie of 1950. Almost led to civil war.
5th republic of France 1958. Redefined the strenght of the president.
GodesbergerProgramm SPD, 1959. The social democratic party left behind their marxist heritage and accepted market economy.
68 Revolution.
And then lastly the oil crisis of 1973.
How much social dynamism was there actually after WWII?
Destruction of political and social structures, especially those of the working class.
The physical environment was destroyed, holocaust etc. → high expectation for resistance movement within Europe.
”There were only two political systems remaining.” which too had a kind of passifying effect. But is also limiting. It leads to a situation where experiments and radical change become regarded as inherently dangerous. In West Germany there was a saying, ”If you don’t like it, go to the other side”, which characterises a way to create uniformity.
There was barely any infrastructure anywhere that still functioned well.
The dominant system in Europe before WWII was parlimentary democracy. After the war, many countries stayed monarchy, whilst in Italy it was voted away.
The Koningskwestie in Beglium however only led to the abdication of Leopold III. Was a rather young king, and had the belief that the spirit of the time was authoritarian, and so had the idea that the limited Belgian monarchy could be reinvented into a strong authoritarian monarchy.
When Belgium was invaded in 1940, he stayed in Belgium, contrary to other royal officials, and he also tried to talk to Hitler to get some kind of Belgian agreement. He did not mind an authoritarian Beligum with support from Nazi Germany. He had a very hard time defending himself after 1945, and so was asked to abdicate in favour of his son Baudoin.
During the vote, the main difference was between the central industrialised parts of Belgium, versus the rural flemish and Wallonian parts. The referendum said he could stay, but he still had to leave later.
The corporatist politics of the time: you organise society according to certain different lines, for example health insurance is based on a lot of (eg in Belgium mutualiteits), everyone is part of certain organistion that adhere to their profession. And all of them more or less have their own stabilising effect, they take out the heat of politics as some organisations get some slices of society, and so the creation of interest group organisations. But it is also clear why this is not contributing to liberalisation. eg. role of women: there was a uniform voting right for women and men at this point, women took power as lobbyists in the halls of power so they actively lobbied for their own interests, and so women were the ones who received much new welfare.
So it cannot really be said that women gained a lot during this time, but it cannot be said that they didn’t either.
In the 70s however, women received more clear political rights, such as opening of bank accounts and abortion and so on.
How was the nation-state rescued? European integration, as the saving of the nation state, through transferring some power to the European central apparatus in order to keep the really weak states alive. And so on, these countries gained new political legitimacy.
All this starts during the WWII and ends in 1973 as stated above.
Democracy was widened in the 60s, should people be able to vote in every corner of life? Like in schools etc.
This success holds the seeds of its own undoing. With the political specialisation that came with the corporatist system, not anyone can be a politican anymore, and only elite specialists.
The corporate systems cannot really deal with the strengthening of a middle class that is independent of it.
The promise of christian democracy: we don’t wanna change anything, we wanna keep things as they are so that you don’t have to worry. You know what you get.
This sort of politics, corporatist in nature, seems to now be gone. Now it is hard to imagine any politician doing well on such a party platform.
Long-tradition of catholic center-parties. They were longer in power than the fascists. The idea of christian/catholic politics is originally an 1800s idea, but is reinvented after WWII, as christian institutions played an important role during Nazism, both for and against..
They had a huge advantage, as they had no contenders right of themselves, fascists.
They earned a lot of the votes from allowing women to vote. Women voted mainly for conservative parties at the time, whilst it is more or less the opposite now. Women voted for Die Linke in Germany, whilst men voted for AfD.
They focused heavily on stability, family, tradition and harsh anti-communism, as well as lacking any direct affiliation with prior fascist parties. A vote for a christian democratic party allowed prior fascists to have a new party to focus on (damn man).
In Germany before WWII, the conservative party were instrumental for bringing Hitler to power.
Social-democrats and socialists were linked with what was happening across the border.
The ”no experiments” poster of Adenauer was one of the most successful party propagandas of all time → people were afraid of the kind of experimental votes they might have attempted before.
Conclusion:
Period of political stability.
But including exceptional circumstances (postwar recovery, rebuilding creates a lot of economic room for a boom, silenced right wing extremism and cold war.)
It is not very democratic. It is partial seclusion of large groups were women are only partially integrated; corporatism. Including more tension than is often acknowledged. Why does it lead to punk music at the end?