{"id":53319,"date":"2024-05-18T05:22:11","date_gmt":"2024-05-18T05:22:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2024\/05\/18\/a-would-be-assassin-stirs-europes-violent-ghosts\/"},"modified":"2024-05-18T05:22:11","modified_gmt":"2024-05-18T05:22:11","slug":"a-would-be-assassin-stirs-europes-violent-ghosts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2024\/05\/18\/a-would-be-assassin-stirs-europes-violent-ghosts\/","title":{"rendered":"A Would-be Assassin Stirs Europe\u2019s Violent Ghosts"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"text-align:center\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1050\" height=\"549\" src=\"https:\/\/i2.wp.com\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2024\/05\/18\/multimedia\/18fico-europe-01-wgcb\/18fico-europe-01-wgcb-facebookJumbo.jpg?fit=1050,549&amp;ssl=1\" class=\"attachment-post-thumbnail size-post-thumbnail wp-post-image\" alt=\"A Would-be Assassin Stirs Europe\u2019s Violent Ghosts\" title=\"A Would-be Assassin Stirs Europe\u2019s Violent Ghosts\" \/><\/div><p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Dmitri A. Medvedev, the former Russian president and regular forecaster of a third World War, had no hesitation in comparing the would-be assassin of Prime Minister Robert Fico of Slovakia to the young man who ignited World War I. Europe, he suggested, was once more on the brink.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">The individual who shot Mr. Fico, a nationalist leader who favors friendly relations with Russia, was \u201ca certain topsy-turvy version of Gavrilo Princip,\u201d Mr. Medvedev said on the <a class=\"css-yywogo\" href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/MedvedevRussiaE\/status\/1791080214564372684\" title=\"\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">social network X<\/a>. Princip was the 19-year-old Bosnian Serb nationalist whose assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo on June 28, 1914, started what Churchill called \u201cthe hardest, the cruelest\u201d of all wars.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">It was on many levels a wild association to make. The Europe of empires that unraveled between 1914 and 1918 is long gone, as is the Europe that replaced it and produced Auschwitz. In their place the painstakingly constructed European Union of 27 members, including Slovakia, has been put in place with the overriding goal of making war impossible on a long-ravaged continent.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Yet, with elections to the European Parliament just three weeks way, ominous indications of brewing violence go well beyond the shooting of Mr. Fico, whose condition remains serious.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">A 27-month-old war is raging in Ukraine, outside the E.U. but right on its doorstep. It is increasingly, as in World War I, a conflict involving soldiers reduced to \u201cfodder locked in the same murderous morass, sharing the same attrition of bullet and barrage, disease and deprivation, torment and terror,\u201d as Tim Butcher put it in his book \u201cThe Trigger,\u201d an account of Princip\u2019s life.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">In significant respects, Russia is waging its war in Ukraine against Europe\u2019s liberal democracies. The question the attempt on Mr. Fico\u2019s life raises is how far Europeans are willing to go to wage war against themselves as extreme political polarization stalks their societies.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">The motive behind the shooting remains unclear, but it took place <a class=\"css-yywogo\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2024\/05\/16\/world\/europe\/slovakia-fico-toxic-politics.html?searchResultPosition=1\" title=\"\">in the context of a poisonous political environment<\/a> that the assassination attempt will only make more poisonous, in Slovakia at least, but potentially beyond.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Europe is increasingly divided, and dangerously so. As in Slovakia, that divide pits nationalists opposed to immigration against liberals who see in the far right a threat to the rule of law, a free press and democracy itself. In this political world, there are no longer opponents, there are only enemies. All means are good to attack them, up to and, recent events indicate, including violence.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">With so much political tinder about, a single spark may be explosive. The assassination attempt on Mr. Fico \u201cdemonstrates what such polarization can lead to, and this is something European societies, and the United States too, need to reflect on,\u201d said Jacques Rupnik, a French political scientist focused on Central Europe.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">The war outside Europe, and the political battles within it, fuel each other. Russian advances on the battlefield, an apparent Ukrainian assault on Russian-occupied Crimea, and a possible NATO deployment of trainers to Ukraine are reminders that escalation is always possible. The shooting of Mr. Fico also demonstrated that.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Mr. Fico opposes the power of the European Union, military aid to Ukraine, mass immigration and L.G.B.T.Q. rights. He is hated by liberals for these and other reasons. He is unpopular in the Slovakian capital of Bratislava, but popular outside it. In this, his political fortunes conform with the fracture in societies including France, Germany and the Netherlands, where the core fight is now national vs. global.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">It pits the forgotten living \u201cnowhere\u201d in industrial wastelands and rural areas who see immigrants as threats to their livelihoods against the prosperous connected global citizens living in the \u201csomewhere\u201d of the knowledge economy.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">The Ukraine war sharpens these fissures because nationalists across Europe are aligned with President Vladimir V. Putin\u2019s reactionary moral ideology. They join with him, and with Prime Minister Viktor Orban of Hungary, in portraying Western liberal urban elites as agents bent on the destruction of church, nation, family and traditional notions of marriage and gender.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Mr. Medvedev called the would-be assassin in Slovakia, who has not been identified beyond being a 71-year-old pensioner, as representative of \u201cthe Europe of detestable degenerates with no knowledge of their own history\u201d against which Mr. Fico fought.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">His shooting seems to reflect the shrinking middle ground in Europe\u2019s political clashes. \u201cYou might be psychologically, verbally or physically assaulted because of what you do or say,\u201d said Karolina Wigura, a Polish historian of ideas. \u201cIn our societies, it has become unbearable to accept that somebody else sees or defines something in a completely different way.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">On Thursday, Donald Tusk, the liberal Polish prime minister who returned to power late last year after defeating the governing nationalist Law and Justice party, <a class=\"css-yywogo\" href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/donaldtusk\/status\/1791073114861736169\" title=\"\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">posted on X<\/a> a threat from the previous day: \u201cToday, Slovaks gave us an example of what to do with Donald Tusk if he dismisses the CPK.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">This was a reference to a major airport project favored by Law and Justice, but questioned by the new government.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">When Mr. Tusk took office in December, Jaroslaw Kaczynski, the chairman of Law and Justice and Poland\u2019s de facto leader since 2015, called him a \u201cGerman agent.\u201d Such charges, effectively of treason, have become commonplace across Europe. The air is full of \u201cJewish agents\u201d and \u201cRussian agents.\u201d In the current campaign for the European Parliament election, Mr. Tusk and Mr. Kaczynski have been exchanging accusations of being \u201cRussian spies.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">The Slovakian interior minister, Matus Sutaj Estok, warned this week that \u201cwe are on the doorstep of a civil war.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Political violence has not been limited to Slovakia. In Germany this month, four people assaulted Matthias Ecke, a prominent Social Democratic politician who was hanging campaign posters in Dresden, leaving him with a broken cheekbone and eye socket that required emergency surgery. Mr. Ecke is running for re-election to the European Parliament.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Rapid technology-driven change, the proliferation of social media where any accusation goes, and the unraveling of any agreed notion of truth have all contributed to the succumbing of civility to brutality.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">\u201cThere is a pervasive feeling of loss,\u201d Ms. Wigura said. \u201cThe different becomes a threat.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">But the main factor in the slide toward violent confrontation has probably been the rapid rise in immigration \u2014 some 5.1 million immigrants entered the European Union in 2022, more than double the number the previous year \u2014 which has sharply divided opinion across the continent.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">\u201cThe European Union is seen as unable to protect its own borders,\u201d Mr. Rupnik said. \u201cThat has led to nations saying, OK, we have to do it ourselves.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">It has also led, in Germany, France, Italy, Sweden, the Netherlands and Slovakia itself, to the rapid rise of xenophobic far-right parties offering jingoistic hymns to national glory. They often have roots in fascism, albeit without its militarism or personality cults, at least up to now. The barriers that once kept these parties \u2014 like the Alternative for Germany or the National Rally in France \u2014 from power have eroded or crumbled.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">These parties are expected to perform strongly in the June 9 elections to the European Parliament, which is a relatively powerless institution but one still important for being the only directly elected body with representatives from all European Union countries. In France, polls show Marine Le Pen\u2019s far right National Rally getting about double the vote of President Emmanuel Macron\u2019s centrist Renaissance party.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">The climate was combustible before the assassination attempt on Mr. Fico; it is more so now. The realm of the possible has grown broader. Postwar Europe has a peace culture, already shaken by the war in Ukraine. It is unused to its leaders being targeted in this way. Almost four decades have passed since Olof Palme, Sweden\u2019s Social Democrat prime minister, was assassinated in Stockholm in 1986.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">\u201cI don\u2019t know about World War III,\u201d Ms. Wigura said, \u201cbut it does not look good. There are fewer and fewer spaces where you can speak your mind. The situation is much more dangerous than it used to be.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">The placid normalcy of postwar Europe seemed unshakable, history\u2019s painful lessons had been learned. But as Russia\u2019s revanchist war in Ukraine has demonstrated, the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 was not bloodless after all. Europe\u2019s malevolent ghosts, it seems, have stirred.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<p><br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2024\/05\/18\/world\/europe\/a-would-be-assassin-stirs-europes-violent-ghosts.html\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Dmitri A. Medvedev, the former Russian president and regular forecaster of a third World War, had no hesitation in comparing the would-be assassin of Prime Minister Robert Fico of Slovakia to the young man who ignited World War I. Europe, he suggested, was once more on the brink. The individual who shot Mr. Fico, a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":53320,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2024\/05\/18\/multimedia\/18fico-europe-01-wgcb\/18fico-europe-01-wgcb-facebookJumbo.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[52981,9789,51111,4855,1390,27853],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53319"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=53319"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53319\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":53321,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53319\/revisions\/53321"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/53320"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=53319"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=53319"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=53319"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}