Antony Gormley, Between You and Me, 2009 [antonygormley.com]
Decisions on the financial, economic and institutional problems of Europe, crucial as they are for the future of the EU, must be measured against the strength they bring to democracy in Europe. The order of priorities as it stands must be reversed, and the central question of European democracies must be thus: “How are we to give life to Europe’s project of civilisation, based on peace, democracy, equality and the priority of the collective, plural and diverse above the identity of individuals?”
In this respect, the persistence of Roma ghettos in Slovakia, Romania, the Czech Republic and Bulgaria, the anti-Semitic murders in France, that of the Roma in Hungary and those of Turkish origin in Germany, the annual demonstration of the past SS in Latvia, the Utoya massacre in Norway, the stigmatisation of Muslims and the rise of racial discrimination are unacceptable cases, which much be denounced with vigour.
In particular, the decay of the constitutional state in Hungary and the authoritarian trend in the Orban regime must be fought with the same energy as the burial of national debt.
Above all, the policies of Germany and Europe regarding Greece will not be solved by endless austerity, which deepens every day the social hopelessness instrumentalised by the neo-Nazis, Golden Dawn.
Europe: democracy, or barbarism? An open letter to Angela Merkel
Benjamin Abtan (European Grassroots Antiracist Movement)In a chilling echo of history, extremist political parties across the Continent are feeding on the instability and hardship caused by the euro crisis. And nowhere is the phenomenon starker than in Greece.There can be no doubt of the Golden Dawn party's toxicity. Its symbol is uncannily close to the swastika; its members use the Nazi salute, and there are reports of black-shirted vigilantes attacking immigrants and those from ethnic minorities.
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