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Revisiting Mitteleuropa through all European Party VOLT - Arindam Mukherjee

If there is one thing apart from the Cold War that I find fascinating about Europe, that would be Mitteleuropa. They are like my personal choice of yin-yan for Europe; one real, the other imagined, and both vivid enough to have moulded opinions, ideologies, literature and culture across stretches as far as the eyes can see.

The stray pictures of Europe – those cobbled roads and café, the free-painters and the street musicians – would reach us not through Milan Kundera or Garton Ash books or essays (we are pre-internet generation), but through Sportsworld’s intense technicolour pictures of Mats Wilander, Ivan Lendl or Boris Becker dressed nattily, leaning against their snazzy coupe in the foreground. The exquisite architectural specimens or the quaint roadside view, would stay silently behind; and though we would never get to know them intimately enough for the lack of access to contemporary European essays, they would emit that mysterious aura of being a constant witness to something inexplicable that those sharp dresses or swanky cars perhaps tried to hide. Or rise above. I don’t quite know.

So anyway, Mitteleuropa sort of revived and occupied the centrestage once the ideological wall that kept those wonderful cobbled roads divided for almost half a century no more remained. When Berlin Wall came down and the 90s arrived, Europe was so overwhelmed that it seemed a little lost. So much so, that the triumph of the disappearance of a ‘totalitarian ideology’ and the sudden ‘dismantling’ of ideological boundaries overshadowed the pragmatic consideration of evolution/adaptation (politically/ideologically), and geography/ethnicity. It was the time for a delicious fantasy: one that touched nothing remotely real whatsoever but left some of the most brilliant minds and pens of Europe drunk forever.

Mitteleuropa, or Central Europe – a political-cultural distinction against the Soviet ‘east’ – as Timothy Garton Ash would famously opine, still holds my fascination. I guess a bulk of this fascination stands on the fact that this was a fantasy destined to die young from the start. Brad Pitt’s Achilles in the Wolfgang Petersen blockbuster Troy accurately angled this kind of an existence in his ‘Gods envy us because we are mortal’ dialogue. It is this beautiful, rich, intense “deliciously cluttered, romantic European civilization, suggestive of cobblestone streets and gabled roofs, of rich wine, Viennese cafés, and classical music, of a gentle humanist tradition infused with edgy and disturbing modernist art and thought”(1)… sitting spot in the middle of what pragmatists like Halford Mackinder considered a “crush zone” between the Atlanticist West Europe and the Eurasianist East. Premature death was only a matter of time. And out of the many conflicts that shape the future, the idea of Central Europe – one that took birth during the showdown between German and Czechoslovakian liberals during the First World War era – conflicting in its own merit for completely disregarding the rude physical aspect of geography or naïve enough to overlook the political motives of American unilateralism was to partially shape the Europe of today.

When the 90s began, Western Europe, emboldened by their triumph against Communism jumped headfirst into union of sorts. No one knew the outcome, but then, probably no one cared. There wasn’t the need to. History was over, as Fukuyama proclaimed, so perhaps it was time for rich celebration for the capitalist school of action. The fledgling democracies of geographical Central Europe, that were under the shadow of Communist Soviet Union during the Cold War – states for which was there was this insane urge to make the concept of Mitteleuropa a reality – quickly set their eyes on the Central European model. Or at least they thought.  

The premature death of Mitteleuropa, in hindsight, lay in its very concept. Pragmatists know and believe that such weavings of ‘Wilsonian’ idealism crumble fast in a world where there are political realities to be faced and negotiated with. The defeat of Germany in the WWs, or the disintegration of the USSR did not bring democracy to the far reaches of Europe or Africa – as was the infantile assumption of prominent liberal intellectuals. On the contrary, just like we know that the possible disappearance of the polar ice-cap could herald the ominous threat of the release of an unprecedented level of carbon dioxide, methane, and different forms of dormant bacteria and virus into the environment, once Cold War ended, the disappearance of the communist overlord opened up the ethno-religious divide that quickly left large areas in this newly ‘liberated’ Europe affected; issues that were otherwise unheard of from the Balkans to deep Central Asia during the time of Soviet Union. This catalysed quickly when overreaching arm of American Imperialism pounced on what it viewed as an opportunity to expand NATO borders across the heart of Europe, like the way it reached Middle East and North Africa to create a new enemy to justify its already obese establishment budget. As far as Europe was concerned, through these actions the death warrant of Mitteleuropa was signed.  

Neither Cold War nor Mitteleuropa lasted, but they left lasting impressions. In their animosity and affection; through those dreams and reality. And when Tony Stark – one of the guys behind Heartland Analyst wondered if I could write something about the rise of Volt; more than Volt, Mitteleuropa kept coming to my mind.

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The rise of the new All European party Volt is quick to remind the pragmatist in me about the concept and the fate of Mitteleuropa. The stage is right; Europe did gamble through monetary union, disregard it’s ethno-religious and culture divide and the resultant impact on society and economy… Europe did gamble through opening its door to American imperialism and NATO, to remain in a permanent state of war-alertness despite any existential threat whatsoever… Europe did gamble through its indifference towards farther east and south as erstwhile territories of Soviet Union or Yugoslavia descended into poverty and chaos… Europe did gamble through an ever deteriorating law and order situation that were quick to sprout from liberated states like Albania or Bosnia and equally quick to spread westwards. Europe made grave errors. It needs an overhaul. And Volt realizes that.  

Volt members aim to transform this disastrous currency union, this ‘asymmetric shock to the economy’, and this refugee crisis through prompting the citizens to organize themselves throughout Europe. Theirs is a pan-European movement, they say, that wants to change ‘how politics is done in Europe’, and they are spreading quickly across nations with the short-term goal to physically construct a true European political force and run for the European parliamentary elections in May 2019.

thenewfederalist.eu lists the priorities of Volt Party as:

•Fighting for reforms that transform Europe into a European democracy, capable to act and responsive to its citizens and strong because of it.

•Refusing to accept the untenable status quo in Europe… Instead, Volt values the voices of economists and political scientists who have been calling for fundamental reforms in these and other policy areas.

•Speaking truth to power: that political inaction is not due to ‘the people are not ready’ but because national elites do not want to relinquish what little of power they think the nation-state can exert in the 21st century

•Emphasising what unites Europeans rather than playing the game of those national elites who - for their own purposes - pit nations against each other…

•Fighting the historical dementia of nationalists as well as the political short-sightedness of status quo political mainstream

•Rekindling the imagination of Europeans by setting out a bold vision for Europe

•Instilling hope again: by taking action against all odds, by putting innovative ideas forward, debate by debate, conversation by conversation, election by election. (2)

On its face the mere sound of these people is wonderfully disruptive. Removed far from any conventional left or right ideologies, they promise to represent a new area where all the anti-status-quo ideas can find a foothold and take off from. And that is the point where the apparent impossibility of it sets in.

Europe could not unite through its currency long enough because (analysts think) it did not have an answer to questions of interest rate that could fit such diverse economies, like the way it did not have “the level of fiscal transfers between its states that characterized the USA.” (3) But I think that deep down, the different European identities, engaged in a continuous battle within themselves for more than two centuries, remain so fundamentally challenged that whether Europe had the genetic construct to chart a course that was above and beyond inflicting self-harm remains a fair guess. This, no body questioned. True, it is the memory of those two devastating wars that led to their eager integration… and yet, as Jean de La Fontaine famously observed, “A person often meets his destiny on the road he took to avoid it”. So while the United States of America built its “Americanism” over time, Europe remained a physical mix of Germans, and French, and Italians, and so on, bound together through an economic system – the ropes of which bruised different identities differently.

Volt aims a pan-European integration of mind and souls, like the way intellectuals dreamt of Mitteleuropa: a melting pot of tolerance, a vivid and colourful cultural appreciation. What Volt doesn’t specify is the lasting image of Germany in the minds of Europe, or how it is going to handle the north-south divide that haunts today. While personal memories of the two Wars are perhaps gone or are left shallow in the minds of the newer generations, to the homeless of Greece, or the unemployed of Spain, facing 2019 could well be strikingly similar to a youngster facing 1939. But this is a different kind of a frustration. To the 1939 youth, if he survived the War, the challenge would have been in the purpose: to never go back to be that kind of a Europe. But to the 2019 unemployed south European who grew up in excess and now suddenly finds himself staring at a blank, the challenge is the lack of sense. Volt doesn’t specify the insanely complex process of American intervention and ways to handle that, or about the refugee crisis that grips the continent. That there are larger and more insidious forces at work and waiting around the corner to either catalyse any disruptions arising out of the disintegration of the EU, or force through the orchestrated immigration crisis a common identity that had once united Europe against communist USSR and hide those elemental differences under the carpet again to just make the EU stick, Volt should know and be ready to tackle. And it is too early to understand whether this party of the well-meaning youths has what it takes.  

But, as long as these youngsters aim to battle a lack of sense that characterizes Europe of today in their effort to build a new and improved Europe, I think we should all wish them luck.

 

References

  • Robert Kalpan – Revenge of Geography
  • Newfedaralist.eu
  • Timothy Garton Ash Essays

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