Central European Forum 2012: Truth and Love
For the fourth consecutive year, writers and social scientists from Europe and the USA gathered at the Astorka/Korzo Theatre in Bratislava from 15 to 18 November 2012 to participate in Central European Forum, a conference organized by the non-profit Project Forum jointly with the Prague-based Václav Havel Library and a variety of other partners as part of events marking the anniversary of the 1989 Velvet Revolution.
Central European Forum 2012 was inspired by Václav Havel’s conviction that truth and love will prevail over lies and hatred, that remaining faithful to our own values as well as believing in love that upholds the truth of others, are the two key principles without which a pluralist world cannot, in the long run, exist. Individual discussion panels focused on the following issues: lies in the form of corrupt structures thriving in the countries of Central Europe, old and new forms of hatred, racism, xenophobia, and collective egotism. The panellists sought solutions to the problem Václav Havel himself identified in the first year of the Central European Forum in 2009: was it a fatal mistake for those who transformed Central Europe from authoritarianism to democracy to cede power to experts in economics?
This year’s 37 panellists – hailing from 18 European countries and the US –included Czech writer and programme director of the Václav Havel Library Jáchym Topol, Polish author Andrzej Stasiuk, Ukrainian writer Oksana Zabuzhko, Serbian writer Vladimir Arsenijević, Slovenian writer Drago Jančar, the distinguished Hungarian writer György Konrád and award-winning Czech novelist and translator Radka Denemarková, as well as Adam Michnik, Polish dissident, historian and editor-in-chief of Gazeta Wyborcza, the biggest independent daily newspaper in Central Europe, Miklós Haraszti, Hungarian dissident, journalist, and until March 2010 OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media, living legend of modern sociology, Zygmunt Bauman, former dissident and sociologist Jiřina Šiklová, Russian conceptual artist Anna Yermolayeva, and Czech philosopher and cognitive scientist Ivan M. Havel.
The conference was accompanied by a series of fringe events including two exhibitions, a preview screening of the Hungarian film ‘Just the Wind’, winner of the Silver Bear award at this year’s Berlinale, a screening of Alison Klayman’s documentary film ‘Ai Wei Wei: Never Sorry’, a concert by the Slovak ethno-fusion band After Phurikane, as well as events organized by our partner organizations, such as the White Crow (Whistleblower) Award ceremony.
OPENING
Thursday 18 November 2012
Central European Forum 2012 got underway on Thursday 15 November 2012 with the opening of Peter Župník’s photo exhibition. After actress Anna Šišková welcomed the audience and participants to the Astorka / Korzo ‘90 Theatre, the conference was formally opened by Jáchym Topol, programme director of the Václav Havel Library, quoting Daniel Kroupa’s introduction to a recent anthology „The Power of the Powerless and other essays“, in which he said: „Havel’s essays speak mostly to those who want to act.“ Those who knew Václav Havel remember him for his dispassionate attitude combined with a reluctance to stop tilting at windmills, as expressed in his statement: „It is worth doing things you believe to be right, even if you have no certainty that something will come of it.“
PANEL I – LIES
Thursday 15 November 2012
Martin M. Šimečka and his five panellists, Giacomo di Girolamo, Oksana Zabuzhko, Tomáš Němeček, Leonidas Donskis and Zygmunt Bauman, discussed the ways in which lies manifest themselves in their respective countries – Slovakia, Italy, Ukraine, the Czech Republic, Lithuania, and the UK – as well as some universal mechanisms of lying and their impact on democracy.
Opening the discussion, Martin M. Šimečka recalled: „After November 1989 we were dazzled by truth and thought that lies had vanished, but now it seems they have come back with a vengeance.“ He presented some recent examples from Slovakia and referred also to the infamous leaked 2006 statement by Hungary’s former Prime Minister Gyurcsány: „We have obviously been lying for the past eighteen months to two years”. This may, in fact, have been the first time he had actually told the truth but he was sacked as a result. “The irony of it is that even if you admit to lying, you end up paying for it.”
There used to be a big difference between lies and truth, in the view of Italian journalist Giacomo di Girolamo: „Those who spoke the truth were respected, while those who lied were condemned. These days politicians use lies to improve their standing.“ Successive Italian governments have boasted of having defeated the Mafia but this is not true, it has just started to operate in a different way: „It has become grey and inconspicuous. The grey zone has changed its character. It no longer uses its old methods, such as extortion, kidnapping, and drugs, and it is no longer based on family ties. The new mafia is more predatory and dangerous, it has corroded politics.“ A new anti-corruption law is being prepared but politicians are afraid and the legislation will be toothless. At the same time, there is talk of making slander a criminal offence. „I am a journalist and I write about facts. Facts are not a crime. But I might end up in prison for slander. Never mind, at least I will lose some weight,“ said Giacomo di Girolamo, explaining that there is an absence of public opinion in Sicily, which makes fighting against lies particularly difficult. Another problem is the fact that his local dialect, spoken by five million people, does not have a word for truth. „But I don’t care if it takes a long time for the people to tire of lies. I know I will never tire of seeking the truth. Everything that I do is done for my own happiness: revealing the truth makes me happy and this happiness is more powerful than lies.“
„You need intellectual courage to talk about lies nowadays,“ said Ukrainian writer Oksana Zabuzhko. She recalled the slogan of the Orange Revolution: „No to manipulations, No to falsifications, No to lies!“ sung to a hip-hop melody that had resonated for three weeks, providing the most succinct explanation of why millions went out into the streets. „The Orange Revolution was a moral referendum, a mass plea to introduce morality into politics. We thought democracy was a remedy against lies but this proved to be a naive belief.“ People in Ukraine believed that after the Orange Revolution public opinion could no longer be ignored but instead a new type of politician has emerged, of the Berlusconi variety. „The new post-modern breed of politicians are salesmen who trick people into voting for them. Politics in Ukraine has been taken over by two rival clans of oligarchs and it is difficult to draw a straightforward distinction between truth and lies. What you see on the political stage is a number of continuously produced simulacra: sham politics and sham sensations. New professions have emerged, specializing in lies and in creating a sham reality that nobody, nobody at all – neither the politicians nor the consumers – really believes in, yet people keep consuming it. People keep watching the show, which is one of the most enigmatic aspects of our present life.“ However, Oksana Zabuzhko pointed that „lying is hard: you have to remember what you said. It is actually more practical to be honest.“ What weakens the power of lies is their lack of creative potential: lies can only produce copies, simulacra of reality and it is encouraging that „in spite of the huge amount of money and energy that has been invested in spreading lies, people still have an internal barometer capable of detecting them.“
Citing the example of an incident in the Prague metro recorded by CCTV cameras, Czech journalist Tomáš Němeček outlined what he called „his biggest failure of last year“. He was one of many people who had believed the version of events that presented a Roma man assaulting two women, only to discover that it was based on edited footage. When the complete recording was released a rather different picture of events emerged. „It was a story of a complete misunderstanding on both sides and hard to tell if it was a lie or a manipulation.“
Although it is sometimes difficult to establish the truth, „lying is difficult and it is much easier to tell the truth.” He noted that the most trusted institutions in the Czech Republic are the army and public radio, and conlcluded by quoting Hercule Poirot: „‚If you let people talk for long enough, eventually they will tell the truth.‘“
Lithuanian philosopher Leonidas Donskis revisited the period immediately following 1989 when many people in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union had hoped that truth would prevail. However „what started as a drama ended up as a farce. Everyone had a skeleton in the cupboard and lies have become a survival strategy for politicians who realized they had to rewrite their biographies.“ Unlike in the Czech Republic, where Vaclav Havel became president, former dissidents in Lithuania had been kept away from real politics, but people like Viktoras Petkus, an ordinary man who had spent 20 years in Soviet camps, are proof that it is hard to break the backbone of a decent person. „Lies have become part of political entertainment, with some politicians turning into buffoons, stand-up comedians. We now have entertainment politics and politics of entertainment. It is all a game. And while lies have always been part of politics (starting in ancient Greece) the difference is that in the past people used to have private secrets.“ Leonidas Donskis described lies as an infantile condition: „We assume that people are incapable of truth.“ The difference between truth and lies is that „truth is impossible in isolation, whereas lies isolate. Living a lie is difficult and isolating. A lie is a dangerous thing because you deny people the right to shape your life. How long can you deny reality?“ Democracy is the only system of government that admits its own imperfection. Today the greatest danger for democracy is not tyranny but the distortion of democracy, its falsification and perversion from within.“
Polish-born British sociologist Zygmunt Bauman went further back in the past, recalling a time when people believed that honesty was good for business. Businessmen believed their customers would reward their honesty and come back for more, a way of thinking reflected in Leeds Town Hall, built in the late 19th century, in a frieze bearing Latin and English texts, including HONESTY IS THE BEST POLICY. Morality and reason used to point in the same direction but that is no longer the case: „ We used to say that lies have short legs but with time having short legs ceased to be a disadvantage. Resistance to lies has weakened considerably since morality has lost its most powerful ally – rationality. This has had three serious consequences: „1) Truthfulness is now seen as a sign of naivety, the assumption is that clever people cannot be truthful. 2) We are experiencing “lie-fighting” fatigue, overwhelmed by the hopelessness of it all and feel like throwing in the towel. 3) We have adjusted to the necessity of lying, to lies being common and invincible. Lies have become the rule, truth is now the exception.“ Zygmunt Bauman stated that we have become used to the fact that governments cannot deliver on their promises, and while there is some truth to the famous quotation that “the optimist proclaims that we are living in the best of all possible worlds, while the pessimist fears this is true” and, in spite statistical data showing that people like Václav Havel are in a minority, he believes that we must not give us hope. As Martin Luther said: „Ich kann nicht anders“, showing that the fight for truth is an inescapable feature of humanity: „Even if you believe that lies are invincible it is in no way an argument against trying to defeat then.“
PANEL II – HATRED
Friday 16 November 2012
Dutch journalist Chris Keulemans opened the discussion on hatred, which, as it happened, took place on the International Day of Tolerance. This was, at the same time, a time of rampant hatred and lies, as witnessed by a demonstration held earlier that day in Bratislava and in the wake of a wave of protests against all around Europe against lies told by the governments. He invited the Andrzej Stasiuk (Poland), Vladimir Arsenijević (Serbia) and Jens-Martin Eriksen (Denmark) to give examples of hatred from their own countries, and to reflect on wider issues related to hatred and intolerance.
Hatred is the only thing the recent Independence Day demonstrations and counter-demonstrations in Warsaw had in common, said Polish writer Andrzej Stasiuk, suggesting that hatred is present in all societies and all human beings; in fact people might “need hatred to construct their identity and to find their place in the world.” “Fear, love and hatred are fundamental things, parts of the human personality. In the past hatred found an outlet in wars. People say that we now live in a wonderful world, Europe is proud of having managed without wars, however, we don’t know what is happening to those feelings. We have yet to find a way to deal with them. ” Andrzej Stasiuk believes that people in this part of Europe are perhaps even more familiar with violence and hatred than people in the Balkans: “The past has never gone away and when I think of Poland I am always transported back into this Russian-Polish-German-Jewish hell, or rather, our Polish-Polish hell.” On a recent visit to China he was struck to see a society which, while hardly a democracy, is very dynamic and where the people seem happy, which raises some provocative questions: “Maybe democracy is just another fetish? Although it may sound terrible, what if democracy is not the end of it all? The Chinese are not interested in our democracy, they are interested in our technology. Maybe the West can manage to create a new system that will impress the Chinese?”
Croatian writer Vladimir Arsenijević said it would be hard to pick an example of hatred and violent intolerance: “Every society is filled with hatred, it is just a matter of how it is controlled. In the 1990s hatred exploded in ethnic struggles but in the last decade it has turned non-ethnic and now in Serbia its main target is gay people.” Recently a small Gay Pride Parade was confronted by thousands of violent opponents. What is striking is that this attitude is most prevalent among the young generation. “I was shocked when young people [during a debate at a secondary school] said hatred was necessary, as without it there would be no love either.” Although the Balkans are synonymous with hatred, in fact the hatred only dates back to the 20th century. “In the Balkans it is difficult to draw dividing lines – the ‘leopard-skin’ structure of the society has produced the greatest problem, since people from different ethnic groups know each other well and yet they hate each other. It is the hatred of small differences, which springs from the fact that we recognize ourselves in the Other.” So many people are disenchanted with democracy that it can’t boil down to extreme right-wing elements, Vladimir Arsenijević feels. “What we see is people who are stuck within their ethnic system, for example in Bosnia: if they can vote only for their own ethnic party, democracy reinforces ethnic identity. We have seen democracy twisting and turning into unthinkable things.
The Prophet Muhammad cartoon crisis in Denmark has now been replaced by the massacre in Oslo as the most egregious example of hatred and violence in Scandinavia, raising the issue of Anders Behring Breivik’s sanity and motivation, said Jens-Martin Eriksen. “It is now more important to talk about the Christian terrorist who shot over 70 young people although some people tried to downplay his political motivation, claiming he was a lunatic.” “His ideas were not those of a lone lunatic but Christian fascist ideas,” said Jens-Martin Eriksen, explaining that Breivik was motivated by counter-enlightenment ideas and pointing out that “the Guardian Council he proposed to rule the world was a Christian version of Iran’s Guardian Council.” “When culture becomes ideology you get culturalism.” Some tenets of our culture will have to change to meet human rights standards. Jens-Martin Eriksen sees the root of all evil in this expectation that all cultural markers have to be met: “Culture is never an argument, it has only been made into an argument.” He cited Bosnia as an example of a country where democracy works only formally, with the three political parties divided along political lines; the situation in Malaysia is similar. “When politics become ethnic you take politics out of politics and it becomes perverted.”
PANEL III – STUPIDITY
Friday 16 November 2012
David Auerbach, Miklós Haraszti, Ivan M. Havel and Drago Jančar discussed issues ranging from stupidity, the advantages and disadvantages of computers, Internet anonymity and the future of journalism. Moderator Thierry Chervel opened the discussion by asking whether the child in Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tale who stated that the Emperor has no clothes was stupid or heroic and whether the same question could be asked of dissidents under communism, such as Václav Havel.
To begin with, blogger and software specialist David Auerbach shared a quote from Robert Musil: “Anyone who wants to talk about stupidity, or profitably participate in a conversation about it, must assume about himself that he is not stupid; and he also makes a show of considering himself clever, although doing so is generally considered a sign of stupidity! If one investigates this question of why making a show of being clever should be considered stupid, the first answer that comes to mind is one that seems to have the dust of ancestral furniture about it, for it maintains that appearing not to be clever is the better part of caution.”
“My brother loved the absurd and he would have relished the idea of a panel on stupidity being dedicated to his memory,” noted philosopher Ivan M. Havel; however, Václav Havel spent all his life inveighing against stupidity, “particularly hidden stupidity, which is the far more dangerous kind.” However, “in addition to “stupidity and wisdom there is a third, important point of the triangle – which we might call jester’s wit.” Miklós Haraszti defined the communist regime as “enforced organized stupidity. The protest had to start as a fight against self-censorship, i.e. stupidity inside oneself, only later expanding into a fight against institutionalized censorship. If the fight against stupidity is not directed against oneself it will be futile, as it will only perpetuate organized stupidity.”
Drago Jančar pondered how the Internet changes the ways we write and read. “The more I use the Internet the more amazed I am at the world I live in, at how much hatred is in the air.” We are confronted with incredible amounts of aggression and stupidity, bred by anonymity but at the same time, stupidity in itself is a subject that many find fascinating, judging by the number of people who Google the term each day.
Robert Musil found stupidity exciting but in his day it may have been easier to ignore, David Auerbach pointed out. “One can be wrong without being stupid but one can also be stupid without being wrong,” he said, citing Robert Musil again, this time on two kinds of stupidity: ’The higher, pretentious form of stupidity stands only too often in crass opposition to this honourable form. It is not so much lack of intelligence as failure of intelligence, for the reason that it presumes to accomplishments to which it has no right.”’ David Auerbach attributed the first kind to computers, suggesting that the second is represented by humans using computers. He noted that computers enhance communication and provide more information, both good and bad. “The problem of modernity is a justifiable loss of certainty over what we believed to be true. In the 19th century Jacob Burckhardt thought we were entering a world of oversimplification, and that is even more true now.”
Ivan M. Havel identified three phases of stupidity in recent history: the first, in the 1950s, when many people succumbed to the idea of communism; the second was in the 1970 when the regime no longer demanded faith, only pretence and people said what they were expected to say and what wouldn’t hurt them, rather than what they believed. “The third phase is the crisis of the horizon. People got used to looking only 3-4 years ahead, to think only of immediate benefit rather than what will happen to us in 100 years.” Returning to the subject of stupidity: “It is not computers that are stupid, stupidity is a feature of human beings,” said Ivan M. Havel declaring himself a chronic optimist: “In 20-30 years we will have come to terms with computers, just like nowadays nobody discusses the advantages and disadvantages of book printing.”
Looking back, Drago Jančar finds it hard to imagine what anti-communist dissent would have been like if the Internet had existed. Former Yugoslavia had a certain amount of freedom – the borders were open and the press was freer but the political system was not ready and therefore the Internet would not have helped.” In Miklós Haraszti’s view, Twitter is good for expressing what you are against, not what you are for. As for the role social media have played in the recent wave of revolutions, David Auerbach thinks it is vastly exaggerated – “The roots of the revolutions were the same as those of other protest movements but the Internet made it easier to spread the information to the outside world.” On the other hand, Twitter and Facebook helped people organize relief in New York in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, which David Auerbach regards as tangible positive effects.
“Stupidity is mobilized by anonymity,” claimed Miklós Haraszti and the ultimate stupidity is confusing the anonymity of the Internet with the anonymity of voting. “At least half the joy of reading a good argument lies in knowing who is making it – if columnists have names you know they are no calumnists.” Ivan M. Havel also believes that real discussion is possible only face-to-face, not under conditions of anonymity fostered by the Internet. Miklós Haraszti believes it will take some time for “an elite club of responsible journalism” to develop on the Internet, akin to what exists in the print media. However, it will coexist “alongside an ocean of endless rubbish.” As someone who has been an anonymous blogger for many years, David Auerbach mounted a conditional defence of anonymity: “After all, the authors of the Bible are anonymous.” As for the Internet, he concluded that the question is “not whether it makes people stupid. The main challenge is if we can become better.” Drago Jančar finds the aggression and stupidity of the Internet frightening and warns against overstating its importance: “It is not the greatest invention in history. The biggest invention is the alphabet.”
PANEL IV – CHANGE
Saturday 17 November 2012
In a session chaired by Hungarian journalist Esther Babarczy, Zygmunt Bauman, Leonidas Donskis, Juraj Buzalka, Aitor Tinoco i Girona and Peter Pomerantsev discussed the causes and effects of the worldwide street protests of the past two years as well as the impact of technology and economy on politics.
Anglo-Polish sociologist Zygmunt Bauman opened the discussion by looking back at the revolutionary movements of his youth, when people had different views on what was to be done but never felt the need to discuss who would do it since “we trusted in the sovereign power of the nation state to make things better on its territory and to take care of its citizens.” This faith in the nation state remained unshakeable under communism with its 5-year plans, and in the US with Roosevelt and the New Deal, but starting from the late 1960s and early 1970s the state “suddenly no longer seemed able to deliver on its promises.” This was followed by a “30-year consumerist orgy introduced by Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, instructed by Hayek and his ‘invisible hand’ of the market, in which we spent not only money we didn’t have but also money our grandchildren didn’t have.” The collapse of the banking system in 2007 and the rising poverty and inequality led to a wave of protests, but the main difference between this crisis and the Great Depression of the 1930s is that in the past we believed there was an alternative whereas now we feel hopeless. “The question of what is to be done now plays second fiddle – the key question is who will do it. The previous union of power and politics at the level of the nation state is no longer there, much of it has evaporated into cyberspace, beyond the control of states. However, politics remains local, limited by the boundaries of nation states.” Zygmunt Bauman, who sees the current mass rallies as a sign that we have lost the ability to act and a symptom of a desperate search for a means of solving the problem, concluded his brief presentation by playing the devil’s advocate: “I am impressed by these expressions of frustration, which represent a powerful force, albeit a negative force, though very effective in totalitarian countries (e.g. in Libya and Egypt). However, the positive impact of movements like these remains to be seen. So far we have seen no proof of their ability to build a future. Yes, they can clear the building site, but can they build something new?”
Lithuanian philosopher and Euro MP Leonidas Donskis recalled the post-Soviet euphoria in the Baltic states, particularly the 70-kilometre human chain linking Vilnius and Tallinn. It was a time when people passionately believed in the state but the past twenty years of “accelerated history and change have brought about an acceleration of frustration and disappointments.” Many Lithuanians have become disenchanted with their state although “in fact, no state can respond adequately and nowhere in Eastern Europe is there an alternative vision”. In the past all movements and revolutions followed a utopian vision but now utopias are dying, succumbing to reality. “Once a utopia is implemented it becomes an ideology.” What we are seeing today is a movement of resentment, people no longer understand the world around them and human rights may be the last surviving utopia, claims Leonidas Donskis. “We don’t live in a utopia but in a world of resentment, a strange time when responsibility has become a rare commodity.” Lithuania is no longer a territorial nation since so many of its people live abroad; this calls for new approaches: “we have to be adequate globally and plausible locally, which is very difficult to reconcile.”
“We are not against the system, it’s the system that is against us,” declared Spanish activist Aitor Tinoco i Girona introducing his country’s protest movement, which started in 2011 and arose from the dire economic situation, with 53% youth unemployment and general unemployment at 22%. His movement, Real Democracy NOW! has three main mottos: the radicalization of democracy, cutting across issues and generations; the refusal to be goods in the hands of politicians and markets and the fight against the kidnapping of democracy by the Troika; and reclaiming the streets, creating a new imaginary of the body politic. “The utopia of representation is dead. We represent a new way of thinking and doing politics.”
Russian-British journalist Peter Pomerantsev described the struggle of the Russian opposition to reframe their protests in the strange situation of a “post-modern dictatorship that does not allow them to act using the usual opposition strategies”. As a case study, he introduced Putin’s chief ideologue Vladislav Surkov, who “owns all the ideologies instead of suppressing them – wherever you want to stand or oppose him he is already there, owning the space and the language”. The way Russian opposition countered this was by making politics more concrete and by focusing on micro issues, e.g. specific roads or forests threatened by developers. “They have introduced the concept of public space that previously had not existed in Russia.”
Slovak social anthropologist Juraj Buzalka outlined the relationship between the markets and social protests and quoted Martin M. Šimečka’s essay introducing the Central European Forum, in which he suggested that “the essence of this world is located outside political regimes”. He pointed out that, as Stephen Gudeman has said, our everyday life has never before been so profoundly penetrated by the markets and we have willy-nilly adapted to the penetration of market principles.
The discussion moved onto the impact of the protest movement. Aitor Tinoco i Girona sees the change of political culture and enhanced participation thanks to the Internet and social media as the movement’s greatest achievement. “The Internet is a common space and its open character is important since by overcoming fragmentation and atomization it facilitates the emergence of a net consciousness.” The movement represents a new form of organization, commitment and action and aims to generate constituent processes. However, Zygmunt Bauman pointed out the paradox of all social movements, i.e. “the necessity of institutionalization, a trap that destroys the power of movements.” Leonidas Donskis suggested that social movements may be segments of future political parties but it is a trap: “Social movements revive Seelengemeinschaft (a community of spirit) but once institutionalized, their narrative is hijacked and they are left with nothing.” Juraj Buzalka commented on the adequacy of institutions in a world where the nation state has changed profoundly while we still evoke institutions of an agrarian character. Peter Pomerantsev bemoaned the fact that his generation suffered from the belief that all change was necessarily good. “Luckily, Russia is exhausted with the word ‘change’ – there is a healthy scepticism toward change and Russia is growing out of revolution.” The opposition has only become effective after a distinct change of consciousness – they have succeeded in reframing the discourse, which is a huge shift that has pushed Putin’s regime into a corner.
While Martin Luther King famously said “I have a dream”, Zygmunt Bauman instead has a suspicion. The first suspicion is that the “USSR wasn’t destroyed by dissent but by an elite that was fed up with the burden of administering far-flung countries.” The other suspicion is that “the dissent in the West is radical but it has come at the wrong time.” Paraphrasing Sigmund Freud’s adage that all civilization is a trade-off between security and freedom, he noted that in the past too much freedom had been sacrificed for the sake of security, whereas today the pendulum has swung to the other extreme: “We have surrendered too much of our security for an unprecedented degree of freedom”. He characterized our present-date situation as one of “ignorance (we are unable to assess the future), impotence (we are unable to do anything about it) and the resulting humiliation.” In the course of history the pendulum swung between freedom and security: “The closer people came to absolute freedom (the extreme being absolute chaos) the more nostalgia they felt for security. And vice versa: the more security they achieved (the extreme case being slavery) the more they longed for freedom. We are beginning to experience something of a freedom fatigue, yet we are not ready to sacrifice freedom for more tranquillity. Populist parties capitalize on this swing of the pendulum, hiding behind a return to historical roots.”
PANEL V – EXPERTS
Saturday 17 November 2012
Addressing the 2009 Central European Forum Václav Havel regretted that in the wake of the Velvet Revolution, we made the mistake of placing our trust in economists and ceded to them some of our intellectual and political responsibility. Lajos Bokros, Pascal Bruckner and Adam Michnik explored the power of experts in the world today.
Panel chair, German political scientist Ulrike Ackermann, pointed out in her introduction that all the main issues of this year’s conference could be related to the European Union: love of Europe and its institutions has turned into a hatred of Brussels, while the northern countries hate Europe’s south, blaming it for the crisis; and there is widespread loathing of the elected elites who are accused of lies. Altogether “Europe is a barometer – the mood of the people has changed and Europe has lost much of its global standing while the rationale behind austerity measures, demanded by experts, is being fiercely disputed by the public. One of the first examples of restrictive measures was the so-called Bokros package introduced by Hungary’s then Finance Minister in 1995, which involved a reduction of social services and lowering of real incomes. Although highly unpopular at the time, the reforms – which bear an uncanny resemblance to the current austerity measures pushed by the EU – did revive Hungary’s economy.
Lajos Bokros, who now serves as a Euro MP, argued that experts and politicians play an equally important role in democratic polity. “Problems arise when politicians see themselves as omnipotent and omniscient and push aside the experts, and vice versa.” There needs to be a balance because both extremes are dangerous: the example of Chile under General Pinochet showed that a country ruled by experts can succeed economically but will fail politically if it is a dictatorship, while in present-day Hungary, “part of the ruling elite believe themselves to be omnipotent and omniscient and feel they don’t need experts. What we see in Hungary now is a marked deterioration of democracy.” As for the current economic problems within the EU, unelected experts appear to play too prominent a role (e.g. the Troika). However, the crisis has not been caused by experts but by politicians who rushed into creating the common currency without harmonizing financial policies and without taking into account the very different political cultures in the South and in the North. European Union as a political project can survive only if people understand the political implications of economic policy.” However, in spite of the EU’s many defects, Lajos Bokros believes we should highlight its achievements, which “give us the confidence to believe that the current crisis will be resolved. The Nobel Prize is an acknowledgment that for 60 years there has been no war among the members of the EU. Other key achievements include the enlargement of Europe, the single market and the Schengen zone, which everyone who remembers the border fences (e.g. in Devín near Bratislava) will appreciate.”
French philosopher Pascal Bruckner believes it is not necessary to be an expert on economics to see that Europe is in a mess, “a mess that is does not affect only Europe but also countries such as Colombia or Ghana. It would be too easy to blame supra-national capitalism – we have created our own situation (…) We were under the illusion that after the defeat of communism the economy could be left to its own devices. Maybe that’s when the problem started: Europe was a house we shared and we lived in it as in a fairy tale, expecting prosperity out of nothing.” Pascal Bruckner believes it was a mistake to enlarge the EU and to admit every country that applied, provided they could prove they had a modicum of democracy – “Why not admit everyone, including Azerbaijan, Morocco or Brazil? We now discover there is no such thing as Europe; Brussels is just bureaucracy.” Europeans really did believe that victory over fascism and communism meant the end of history and that the rest of the world would follow us, but now, in 2012, “the Third World countries are slowly emerging from misery and poverty while we are sinking in vanity.” “We still live in our fairytale and we are paying for it today. The crisis is a wake-up call for Europe – either we change or we collapse.” Pascal Bruckner is not convinced that the past 60 years have been a huge achievement, even in terms of keeping piece – “It’s great we didn’t go into war with one another but what did we do for Yugoslavia? If we want to save the market economy we have to control Wall Street and the City of London and must not let them control us.” In conclusion, he warned that the future would be bleak: “It was a big mistake to cede power to the experts and allow politicians to withdraw. Do we want to continue like this or do we want our children to live well? We should cancel the debt rather than slowly kill Greece.”
Polish journalist Adam Michnik had supported the reforms introduced by Leszek Balcerowicz, since it was an extraordinary time and when people felt they could endure any hardship just to get rid of the legacy of communism. They trusted the experts although this trust didn’t last long. At the time of Balczerowicz’s reforms “Poland was at rock bottom and needed a powerful kick-start. If you’re crossing a river, you need to make a huge leap rather than small steps but that doesn’t mean that for twenty years you can move only by leaps.” Clearly there are situations when austerity is necessary and it is understandable that the much poorer Slovaks don’t feel like paying for high pensions in Greece.”
However, if experts were allowed to be a law unto themselves, it would be dictatorship but “those politicians who call themselves experts can’t do whatever they like, otherwise the electorate show them the red card at the ballot box.”
Adam Michnik does not see a big difference between experts and politicians in real politics: “Was Goebbels a propaganda expert? Or was Beria an expert in dictatorship? Once an expert becomes a politician s/he has to be judged as a politician. The key question is: Who are more dangerous – experts or fanatics, dictators or idiots. I am concerned that my country will fall into the hands of fanatics who believe they know everything,” said Adam Michnik, asserting his belief in the European project, in spite of all the existing problems: “Yes, it is a fairy tale but a beautiful one, so why drop it? It is more likely that the UK will fall apart (if Scotland gains independence) than that the European Union will.”
PANEL VI – FEAR
Sunday 18 November 2012
Writers György Konrád, Radka Denemarková and Robert Menasse discussed freedom and democracy as well as the causes of fear and ways of fighting it. The Panel chair, editor and translator Jana Cviková, defined fear as a physical response, a moment that forces us to decide whether to fight or to flee. “Before 1989 I would not have believed that a time would come when I would not have to be afraid to express my opinions, while these days we are afraid to drown in the multitude of opinions. Is this fear a symptom of the freedom fatigue mentioned by Zygmunt Bauman?“
Locating fear in the context of power, Hungarian writer György Konrád began by explaining the way power uses language: „Power consists of words – words are the building blocks of power that have to be constantly repeated so that the citizens learn them by heart and repeat empty clichés, in a ritual which is necessary to avoid chaos“. „Repetition is said to be the mother of wisdom but it is also the mother of obedience.“ In an undemocratic society „anyone who dares to use different words, to write a text that is not just repetition, becomes suspect. Power punishes any deviation from the prescribed text and this is what constitutes censorship, which is part of the language of power.“ György Konrád pointed out that twenty years after the fall of communism Hungary has a new “partocracy” and the country is ruled by a populist ideology. It is a system for which Croatian writer Predrag Matvejević coined the term „dictocracy“. „Wherever democracy lacks deep roots, wherever people have not learned to mock the stupidity of power, the stupidity takes over society. However, I hope that people will wake up and start thinking independently.“ Censorship, in turn, generates fear: „If I break the unwritten rules I have to fear reprisals. Under a fully-fledged dictatorship it is a question of life and death, under its less harsh variety it is a question of material survival.“
Czech writer Radka Denemarková warned against being seduced by „fraudulent words that try to force us into a system which is the road to hell“. This is particularly dangerous in the Czech Republic where many people are now afraid of living their own lives often preferring to adopt second-hand experience. She warned that self-censorship can be equally dangerous: „People set their own boundaries which they are afraid of crossing, they are afraid of taking a different look at things.“ The time that has elapsed since 1989 is too short and people have not yet fully recovered from communism: „Society is like a human being who may get out of prison but remains a psychological wreck.“ The terms Left and Right have lost their meaning and political parties have turned into entrepreneurs‘ personal projects, and what makes Radka Denemarková particularly afraid is the fact that „we have become a prosperous society but the prosperity has had an aggressively stultifying effect, driving out solidarity. People who are less lucky are being pushed to the margins, as if they suffered from some contagious disease.“ Once we get rid of auxiliary labels (national, religious or those referring to political affiliation) human behaviour is the same. „We must not allow fear to break us and we must not be afraid to speak out about issues such as pain, illness or death, which are shared by all the peoples of this world.“
For Austrian author Robert Menasse, fear means “living in the shadow of a threat we cannot define. Fear as a social phenomenon is very widespread, it is a symptom that society has lost something important.“ In recent years we have experienced a paradigm shift and people have started demanding a return from individual to collective identity, linked to the past. People are turning to the past, which they find easier to imagine than the future. „This breeds fear and that, in turn, is a boon for populists“ and their promises of a wonderful future. In the past they used euphemisms (as in 1984) but these days they resort to empty clichés. „And this is where our chance is: we can occupy this terrain in future and start writing the truth.
The discussion then moved on to European issues. Robert Menasse believes we are losing track of what democracy means and what makes things more complicated is that in the Europe of the European Union politicians are elected nationally but are expected to be involved in the politics of 27 countries. György Konrád noted that each region has its own collective identity but being European is now an intrinsic part of it. We have to get used to consciousness having several levels and to Europe as a varied, multi-storey structure. „We must not be afraid and we have to keep adding more and more storeys.“ Rather than a multi-storey building, Radka Denemarková sees the EU as a village comprised of individual little houses, whose inhabitants have to find a common language. As long as they fear the uknown and inexplicable they will seek security in their national flag. The mindset of people is changing but we see all over Europe that experience cannot be transferred and that every nation wants to see itself as a victim of history.“ Pondering the nature of democracy Robert Menasse pointed out that it ought to guarantee the rights of the minority rather than the majority. „For me democracy is a compromise with myself as an enlightened citizen, a category that will always be in the minority, but the question is how to prevent us from being eradicated.“ He concluded by warning that “referendum democracy” is certainly not a solution. „If it were to be introduced in Austria, within two weeks the death penalty would be reintroduced and within four weeks we would see trains transporting foreigners out of Austria.“
PANEL VII – LOVE
Sunday 18 November 2012
Do old people deserve our love and respect? This was the subject of the grilling to which writer Svetlana Žuchová subjected Czech sociologist Jiřina Šiklová.
Jiřina Šiklová began by dispelling a myth: „sex in old age is the same as when you’re young, except slower and less frequent“. She sees no reason why old people should deserve love solely on account of their old age. „They do deserve our respect, but we don’t necessarily have to follow their advice since we may well find that their experience may not be applicable in today’s world. As Czech comic Jan Werich once said ‚Every old idiot was once a young idiot.‘ We might feel today that we are not treating old people well but if good relations with the old were something natural there would have been no need for the 4th commandment: ‚Honour thy father and mother.‘“ However, old people also bear responsibility for the state of the world today, even though they are reluctant to admit it. Jiřina Šiklová believes that these days aversion to old people is more common than love because their numbers have grown and they have become more visible: „Europe is dying out and we are facing a shortage of grandchildren and great grandchildren.“ Old people may have enjoyed more respect in the past but old age is a relative concept: the eponymous “Grandmother” of Božena Němcová’s classic Czech novel was only 54 years old. „Imagine a present-day 54-year-old mother moving in with her children without any money and no pension? She would be asked whether she had thought of retraining, and how good her English is.“ However, old people often spread stereotypes about themselves: „Those who lose their power tend to present themselves as poor wretches in order not to cause resentment. This is typical minority behaviour.“ Moving on from the issue of old age, Jiřina Šiklová pointed out that love and truth, as championed by Václav Havel, have lately been the target of mockery in Czech society and the adherents of this motto have been disparaged.
PANEL VIII – PROTEST
Sunday 18 November 2012
Milena Bartlová, Anna Daučíková, Anna Ermolayeva, Bertrand Ogilvie and Alison Klayman engaged in a lively discussion on the relationship between power and free artistic expression, as well as on love and censorship inspired by the Pussy Riot trial, chaired by Michal Hvorecký.
Giving the background to her recent article on Pussy Riot, Czech art historian Milena Bartlová explained it had upset her that their case was being compared to the Plastic People of the Universe trial held in the communist Czechoslovakia of the 1970s: „This comparison domesticates the Russian protest and thus diminishes its power.“ The only thing the two cases had in common was how few people in their respective countries knew about them. „However, the Pussy Riot protest is much more forceful than the Czech underground, which was about artistic freedom, while the nature of the Russian women’s protest is strongly feminist and antireligious and their art is almost a matter of life and death.“ She added that „art, specifically visual art, is a great tool of protest because it presents what society is silent about while being ambiguous at the same time.“
Slovak artist and art academy teacher Anna Daučíková also regards the Pussy Riot protest as authentic art. „It is great art and a great project, and if it was the work of my students I would give them an A.“ The high IQ of the Pussy Riot protest both in terms of form and content consists in the choice of venue („they have entered the iconostasis and a ritual with their own iconostasis and ritual“) as well as in the actual lyrics, which „are critical of the state of affairs whereby women’s role in church is present only through the Mother of God figure and of the cooperation between the church and power as well as of the fact that the only supernatural forces and ritual can get rid of Putin.“ Anna Daučíková, who lived in Moscow in the 1980s, recalls this period as a time when, paradoxically, she felt freer there than she had in Prague or “in our doctrinaire, prudish” Bratislava. „Back at home we blamed everything on the occupiers, in Russia we had only ourselves to blame and that imbued our stance with purity.“
Russian video artist Anna Ermolayeva placed the Pussy Riot action in the context of the protest movement that had emerged in Russia over the past year. Initially only a few hundred people took part, following the rigged election and the Putin/Medvedev switch thousands of people went out into the streets. „When I first saw it, I cried for joy“, said Anna Ermolayeva who now lives in Austria but has participated in, and filmed, the protests. She used an extract from her most recent video to showcase ingenious new forms of protest such as the „toy rally“ in Barnaul. „It was a micro-protest that achieved maximum effect using minimal means.“ Admittedly, as someone living abroad she is in a privileged position compared with Russians and can afford to be more vocal. „Politicians are restricted by the framework of politics but the artist plays the role of a court jester.“ She has tried to exert a direct influence on events in Russia; for example, most recently she has been trying to organize press accreditation for students protesting outside Russian courtrooms.
US documentary film maker Alison Klayman was struck by a number of similarities between the tools used by Pussy Riot and the politically engaged art of Chinese artist Ai Wei Wei, the subject of her feature-length documentary: „Both use conscious provocation, engage with international media and invite domestic criticism.“ She believes that the language of art and politics is more universal than any differences. In her film she tried to show Ai Wei Wei’s artistic and activist persona and the contrast between a media star and a politically committed citizen. „For Ai Wei Wei communication is key, and he tries to involve others in it even though most people in China have never heard of him. He is talking less of political reform than about honouring an individual’s life.“ However, the regime regards him as enough of a threat and would erase every mention of him on the Internet if he weren’t hot. „And although the censorship is effective, it does not mean that his message is not relevant.“
French philosopher Bertrand Ogilvie moved from Pussy Riot to the more general issue of the relationship between art, politics and their common impact. „What we are basically talking about here is art engagé. However, it is a profound misunderstanding to relate art to knowledge“ because, as a matter of fact, artistic activity deviates from the framework defined by knowledge and education toward gesture, action and an act of will. „The basic difference between knowledge and understanding on the one hand and art on the other is that art generates a new world. “ For Bertrand Ogilvie the emblem of this year’s Central European Forum, Peter Župník’s photograph of fallen leaves in the shape of a heart, triggered a chain of association between art and politics. The image of leaves suggests our desire to introduce love into politics. The leaves evoke a number of other associations: „They might be blown away by the wind or a street sweeper, but they can also cover up traces of blood. The dark pavement surrounding them suggests mercantile relations but paving stones can also be ripped out and thrown at the police. All this illustrates the capacity of art to take us into substrata of our consciousness and thus to transform us. This is the role played by all original art – it proves that nothing is decided in advance or firmly configured.”
For Milena Bartlová the shape of the leaves also evoked the little heart Václav Havel used to add to his signature, and the fact that the conference is taking place in November, on the anniversary of the Velvet Revolution. „However, it also suggests that we have gathered together like a herd that is trying to protect itself.“ Betrand Ogilvie defined what makes art truly political: “Art is outside the zone of positive anthropology and takes us into the zone inhabited by every child before it learns to speak a language, before it becomes integrated in a language and a culture. In the same way, art offers us a place for ‘de-identification’, thus enabling us to become someone else.”