Dmitri A. Medvedev, The former Russian President compared the man who shot Prime Minister Robert Fico of Slovakia to the man who started the First World War. This suggested that Europe was once again on the brink.
The man who shot Fico, a nationalist leader who favors friendly relations with Russia, was “a topsy-turvy version of Gavrilo Princip,” Medvedev said on X, formerly Twitter. Princip was a Bosnian Serb nationalist who assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo on June 28, 1914, triggering the First World War.
The Europe of empires that collapsed between 1914 and 1918 no longer exists, as does the Europe that replaced it and produced the Holocaust. In its place arose the laboriously built European Union of 27 members, including Slovakia, with the aim of making war impossible on a long-devastated continent.
However, signs of brewing violence go far beyond the shooting of Fico on May 15.
Europe is increasingly divided. As in Slovakiathis division pits anti-immigration nationalists against liberals, who see the extreme right as a threat to the rule of law, freedom of the press and democracy.. In this political environment there are no longer opponents, only enemies.
The attempted assassination of Fico “demonstrates where that polarization can lead,” said Jacques Rupnik, a French political scientist. “This is something that European societies, and also the United States, must reflect on.”
Fico opposes EU power, military aid to Ukraine, mass immigration and rights LGBTQ. He is unpopular in the capital, Bratislava, but popular outside of it. This chimes with the national versus global divide in places like France, Germany and the Netherlands. It pits the forgotten people living in industrial wastelands and rural areas who see immigrants as threats to their livelihoods, against the prosperous global citizens who live in the knowledge economy.
The 27-month-old war in Ukraine deepens these fissures because nationalists across Europe are aligned with the moral ideology of President Vladimir V. Putin, who portrays Western liberal urban elites as agents bent on the destruction of the church, the nation, the family and traditional notions of marriage and gender.
Medvedev called the potential killer in Slovakia, identified as a 71-year-old former coal mine worker whose motives remain unclear, a representative of “the Europe of detestable degenerates without knowledge of their own history” against which Fico fought. .
The assassination attempt against him appears to reflect the shrinking middle ground in European politics. “You can be attacked psychologically, verbally or physically for what you do or say,” said Karolina Wigura, a Polish historian. “It has become unbearable to accept that someone else sees or defines something in a completely different way.”
The main factor in the slide towards violent confrontation is probably immigration: some 5.1 million migrants entered the EU in 2022. “The European Union is considered incapable of protecting its own borders,” Rupnik said. “That has led nations to say: OK, we have to do it ourselves.”
It has also led in Germany, France, Italy, Sweden, the Netherlands and Slovakia to the rapid rise of xenophobic far-right parties offering jingoistic anthems to national glory. The barriers that once kept these parties, such as the Alternative for Germany or the National Rally in France, out of power have eroded or collapsed. These parties are expected to do well in the June 9 European Parliament elections.
The placid normality of post-war Europe seemed unbreakable and that the painful lessons of history had been learned. But the malevolent ghosts of Europe, it seems, have awakened.
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