Tariq Ali
"The Future of Europe"
Introduction: Srećko Horvat
SUNDAY 25 NOVEMBER 2012 – TIME: 20:00
Pefkios Georgiades Amphitheatre, Cyprus University of Technology (ΤΕΠΑΚ), Limassol
The European Union is designed to be a union of bankers, not people, and therefore is doomed to fail. It is the union of making profit which was expanding very quickly, and without alternative social politics. Rationally speaking, it would have made more sense if France, Germany, Belgium and the Scandinavian countries had formed the core of Europe with a clear social and economic politics that would not be neoliberal. And then any country that would want to join them, would have to meet these conditions. However they did not do this, but they adopted neoliberal methods and now they are paying the price for that decision. Europe still has not looked up to Latin America, although, there, social movements have been going on for twenty years. This is because Europe lives in its own bubble. In my essays and books I have long been advocating the opinion that the European left has to observe what is happening in South America. This is not exactly a revolution, but awfully big movements for social and structural reform of society. Political awareness in countries such as Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia and even Paraguay has grown a lot and I think they are years ahead of Europe. South America is still in the process of evolution, there are participatory movements in all these countries. The very fact that there is the idea that every citizen should participate in how the society will be organised is itself very important. And, most importantly, I believe it will be difficult to return to some form of neoliberal capitalism, because they already broke that line.
USEFUL LINKS:
Tariq Ali: The Rotten Heart of Europe
Tariq Ali on the Future of Greece
Tariq Ali is a historian, writer, film director and activist, one of the key figures of the British left.
He studied political science, philosophy and economics at the University of Oxford and was one of the leaders of protests against the Vietnam War. Inspired by his role in the movement, Mick Jagger dedicated his song Street Fighting Man, and John Lennon did the same with Power to the People. Ever since the sixties he is a member of the editorial board of the New Left Review. He has published over 20 books, among which are: Can Pakistan Survive? The Death of a State (1991), Street Fighting Years: An Autobiography of the Sixties (1987), Clash of Fundamentalisms: Crusades, Jihads and Modernity (2002), Conversations with Edward Said (2005), A Banker for All Seasons (2007), and The Obama Syndrome: Surrender at Home, War Abroad (2010)
Srećko Horvat, Croatian philosopher and activist. He published seven books, including, Against Political Correctness, Totalitarianism Today, The Discourse of Terrorism, and various articles published in Monthly Review, Le Monde Diplomatique, Eurozine, and translated into German, French, Hungarian and Polish. He translated several books from German and English into Croatian, among which are the works of Slavoj Žižek, Norbert Elias, Frank Furedi, Peter Sloterdijk and others. He is the director of the Subversive Forum, an annual conference and activist meeting held traditionally in May in Zagreb, gathering renowned personalities such as Zygmunt Bauman, David Harvey, Terry Eagleton, Slavoj Žižek, Tariq Ali, Saskia Sassen, Gayatri Spivak, Samir Amin and others, serving as a network and platform for progressive movements and organisations from Eastern and Western Europe.
>>> Part of NeMe Conference - Through the roadblocks: realities in raw motion (Nov. 23-25 2012)
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