The rich have always flaunted their wealth. It was rarely good enough to enjoy financial success, you had to be conspicuous about it. They build enormous homes for everyone to gawk at. They throw lavish parties. They commission paintings, statues, biographies. They endow institutions so that their...
In a discussion concerning a new law that restricts the attribution of French visas to North Africans, French President Emmanuel Macron accused Algeria’s leadership of the crime of using the history of French oppression during the colonial period as an excuse for fomenting what he deems an...
Between September 17 and 19, Russians went to the polls to elect the State Duma. The voting period was officially increased to three days and introduced electronic voting for the first time due to measures intended to contain the spread of COVID-19 currently raging across the country. Third...
July 2021 was marked as the hottest month of the year in Tbilisi, Georgia. While the temperature outside hit around 33˚C at 10 am on July 5, the day when the pro-LGBTQI+ “March of Dignity” was scheduled to take place, it was a counterprotest by conservative and radical-right actors that...
Earlier this month, the US, UK and Australia announced an unprecedented agreement to provide nuclear-powered submarines to the Australian Navy. The move provoked outrage from France, which had been negotiating the sale of conventionally-powered submarines to the Australians. French ire led to...
Whether financial crisis, migration or the coronavirus pandemic, the past decade has shown that Germany cannot easily implement its international goals without the European Union. This fact is hardly taken into account in the German cybersecurity strategy adopted on September 8. Is Big Tech...
In recent months, I have had the privilege of helping curate an exhibition, “This Fascist Life: Radical Right Movements in Interwar Europe,” which is running from October 2021 to February 2022 at the Wiener Holocaust Library in London. Just as the Science Museum’s new show, “Our Future...
A news story that falsely claimed that the COVID-19 vaccine caused the death of an American doctor was the most viewed article on Facebook in the US for the first three months of 2021. Instead of going public about the platform promoting such misinformation, Facebook held back on publishing the...
Friedberg is an inconspicuous town with roughly 30,000 inhabitants in a rural district in the middle of Germany. It lies at the hinge of the metropolitan region of Frankfurt/Rhein-Main, where the European Central Bank is headquartered. In recent years, this town where urban and rural life collides...
Right-wing opposition to the European Union, rooted in the perception that integration and all kinds of international cooperation are a threat to the nation-state and its sovereignty, is evident and self-explanatory. Excessive protectiveness of national interests lies at the heart of far-right...
On September 26, German voters will go to the polls to elect a new Bundestag. The election marks the end of the Merkel era. It is supposed to ring in a new beginning, an Aufbruch, as they say in German. What is largely missing, however, is Aufbruchsstimmung — a certain positive mood fueled by...
