Europe is in danger.
From all directions will criticism, insults, övergivanden.
the building of Europe! Let us reconnect to our ”national soul”! Rediscover our ”lost identity”! Such is the agenda shared by the populist forces that washes over the continent. As if the soul and the identity is not usually was a product of the demagogernas fantasies.
Europe is under attack from within by false prophets, who are drunk with resentment and delirious of their new chances to be in the limelight. Europe is abandoned from the other side of the English channel and the other side of the Atlantic by the two powerful allies, who twice saved the continent from suicide. Europe is vulnerable to the increasingly unabashed påverkansoperationerna from the Kremlin’s principal. Europe as an idea, the will and the symbol is falling apart in front of our eyes.
Such is the adverse climate that, in may 2019, will surround the elections to the european parliament. Unless things do not change, unless nothing pops up to fördämma the rising, the swelling, insistent tide, unless the continent will not soon be hit by a new motståndsanda, so will these options be the most devastating we have ever been with. Victory for sabotörerna; shame for those who still believe in Erasmus, Dante, and Goethe, and the Comenius heritage; the contempt for the intelligence and culture; the explosions of xenophobia and anti-semitism; disaster.
this text is among those who refuse to resignera the face of this looming collapse.
We expect ourselves to european patriots (a larger group than many think, but often, unfortunately, too silent and dejected…) who understand that what is at stake here, trefjärdedels century, after fascism had been defeated, and thirty years after the fall of the berlin wall, a new battle of civilization.
Our european memory, our faith in the great Idea we inherited, which we believe has been the only force strong enough to lift Europe’s population to a level higher than themselves and their martial past, which remains the only force respectable enough to ward off the new totalitarian attacks reminiscent of medieval misery – all this forbids us to give up.
a new movement.
Therefore, this appeal to act in the valkväll we refuse to give away to dödgrävarna.
Hence this call to once again raise the torch for a Europe which, despite their mistakes, their advertising and their occasional cowardice, remain a second home for every free man and woman on the planet.
Our generation did wrong.
supporters of the 1800s which is repeated, like a mantra, ”Italia farà da sé” (”Italy will take care of itself”), we thought that the continent would agree by himself, but we pushed ourselves, without our work.
We have lived with the illusion of a necessary Europe, a Europe inscribed in the things themselves, of nature, of a Europe that would build itself without requiring anything of us. For so was, kept telling us, ”history’s direction”.
We must cut the ties to this feeling of tursamhet.
We must dismiss this mindless, otänkta and soulless Europe.
We have no longer any choice.
We now need to persuade Europe or drown in populismens waves.
on several fronts of the autocratic, identitära attacks, we must rediscover the voluntary political commitment or accept that descend into resentment and hatred.
It is important that we are now sounding the alarm about the soul and the spirit arsonists, who, from Paris to Rome, with stopovers in Barcelona, Budapest, Dresden, Vienna or Warsaw, playing with freedom’s fire.
For it is what is at stake: beyond the oddly impassive Europe is looming on the horizon, beyond the failing european conscience that threatens destroy everything that once made our communities strong, honest and successful, is a challenge we have not faced since the 1930s- a challenging of liberal democracy and its values.
Copyright: Libération/Bernard-Henri Lévy. Translation: Hanna Fahl. The text is also published in, among others, The Guardian, La Repubblica, El País, Público, Die Welt, Le Temps, NRC Handelsblad, Aftenposten, Népszava, Gazeta Wyborcza, Politiken, Hospodářské noviny and La Libre Belgique.
