I posted this on my (private) Facebook page a few weeks back, just to vent. Since it resonated with quite a few people, I am reposting it here.
I thought it was a platitude, but given the sea of self-congratulatory discourse about Europe (here’s an example for those who read Italian, but there are plenty) we seem to be surrounded with, maybe it bears saying after all. So here you go.
Europe is not a worthy ideal because the region has had the best art, philosophy, and literature in the world, or because its history and its present constitute a beacon of civilisation, freedom, and rights. It is not the only part of the world that has distinguished itself for amazing creativity and innovation, and it has been on the wrong (very wrong) side of history for much longer than it has not. If Europe is worth championing as a political ideal, it is because, however imperfectly, it represents the quite opposite thought: that we can gather around an acknowledgment of our mistakes, a reckoning with our crimes, and create something better because of it, motivated by the desire not to repeat those mistakes and those crimes. In that, its founding values are unique, and maybe uniquely modest. De facto, that has only happened fairly superficially, very selectively, and often hypocritically – but it has been one central regulative ideal for the past 80 years, and one still worth supporting. If you go on and on about how great Europe is and always has been, you actually betray that very ideal.
{ 39 comments }
otto 04.28.25 at 10:07 am
Interesting post. I think the EU has always been presented in part as “Europe learns from its big mistakes”, quite rightly. I dont think however that requires a generally miserable attitude towards the European past or present, which would supporting European integration like some sort of Maoist “struggle session”, likely counterproductive for policy institutions that already have limited popular appeal. The EU should also be supported by people who think Europe is great and enjoy celebrating its particular music, literature, religions etc.
BTW the EU can also be just straightforwardly presented as a “pretty good practical solution” to trade politics/other international externality concerns, without taking any position on European history and its crimes etc.
Ray Vinmad 04.28.25 at 10:25 am
Even thinking about Europe as the villain of the world makes Europe seem central to the world. I am guessing that idea of world spanning inevitability would be one of the things to get away from, even if it is conceptually difficult to do this with the Eurocentric worldview people tend to have, and also because Europe has shaped the whole world., But making European culture part of some narrative of world-historical inevitably is one of the mistakes of the Euro-enamored rightwing.
Or maybe I think this because I am thinking about the USA in its particular moment as fading now. If I had to explain the value of the USA in case it all burns up in the current fire I would want to think ‘why did this nutty and sometimes very horrible thing but also fascinating society happen the way it did–this US culture, this whole process of US rise?’ Thinking about it from a distance helps to genuine appreciate what it was–what it would look like from many years later. Almost the way you would appreciate a person more holistically if they were dead and gone.
Most of what is of value in the particulars of any place or culture or period are arbitrary because it didn’t have to be this way–and something else could have existed instead that was equally valuable. What is valuable about any contingent thing like a political culture might be similar to what is valuable about any unique event or landscape–just that it exists can be valuable. We can champion it because it’s there. It doesn’t have to instantiate any universal or timeless thing of value. Maybe it would be good to get distance from it to see it more clearly–the way that people do with an ancient culture ‘the vanished kingdom of such-and-so.’ Look at all the wacky and terrible things they did! Why did they do these? Even if Europe is not disappearing.
To clarify–I’m asking if Europe has to be valuable as a political culture in any universally recognizable sense (thought that’s an option) –or just valuable to the Europeans themselves, for some very specific reasons, and concrete interests they have. And whether it is valuable in the future might be clarified by the process of focusing on what they might continue to want to happen. The specifics were arbitrary just like the specifics of a species are arbitrary–but they can still be valuable anyway. The worth to all of humanity at large is that it is a demonstration of what people can do together–both in its admirable and cautionary tale aspects.
MisterMr 04.28.25 at 1:59 pm
If I understand the problem correctly, the question is id the EU project is an “antinationalist” project or just another form of “nationalism” on a slightly bigger scale.
On a logical level I would also prefer the EU to stay as a form of antinationalism, that is to say not just another nationalist identity but the rejection of identitarianism; in practical terms though I wonder if it is possible.
That said, I don’t think that it is productive to belittle this way european culture: european culture isn’t magically superior to other cultures but isn’t magically inferior either, and while it is true that europeans were for a long time the oppressors this due to them having better/more weapons (or more aggressive germs according to Jared Diamond), not due to being more evil than others (because there is plenty of aggressivity going around, and not just in europeans).
steven t johnson 04.28.25 at 3:09 pm
It seems to me that many who talk of Europe are using it as if it was a synonym for Christendom (not even literally true historically.) Those who talk of the EU often seem to talk as if the EU were solely Schengen, not Maastricht. But I think those are inextricable.
wrdo 04.28.25 at 3:26 pm
Huh. Personally, I always thought of Western Europe as the worst villain of the world. Wait, no, not Europe, but Europeans; as the guys dropping atomic bombs on peaceful cities or napalming god knows how many thousands of villages in N.Korea and Vietnam, were Europeans living outside of Europe.
But then someone suggested that I read about “Unit 731”. And yes, it’s the same sort of thing. So, it’s Europa and Japan, I guess. And no, it’s not “our mistakes”. I think it’s exactly what we are; the most rational group of people.
Gareth Wilson 04.29.25 at 1:54 am
Wrdo, what happened a few years after the napalm, a few hundred kilometers West?
Moz of Yarramulla 04.29.25 at 4:05 am
I think the Europe worth defending is the Europe of ideas. Some have been bad, others are quite good, and there are also excellent modern ideas, like the welfare state and open borders. But mostly the good part is the ongoing ferment of new ideas and critique of existing ones.
One less appreciated upside of the European tendency to say “that’s nice, it’s ours now” is the willingness to take ideas from outside and rework them for local conditions, then give them back.
There’s also a degree of looking at the alternative centres of the universe and saying yeah nah. The Middle Kindom? The Beacon on the Hill? The Central Soviet?
And as I said in response to a piece on a new mine in Norway, I’d be happy to have such a thing under my house if it was regulated by the Norweigans, but I’m in Australia and I wouldn’t trust the government here to run a cake stall in the interests of its citizens (“back in the ten least corrupt” shouldn’t be a huge achievement)
wrdo 04.29.25 at 8:09 am
@Gareth Wilson
Unlike the atomic bombs and napalming, the subject of significant controversy; have you read Chomsky? Perhaps an example, an illustration of the Western propaganda skills?
engels 04.29.25 at 9:17 am
I think the thought that Europe has been on the wrong side of history is about imperialism and WW2 whereas the thought that the EU is born out of acknowledgement of this relates only to the second, which could seem less than satisfactory if you’re still living with the consequences of the first.
Tm 04.29.25 at 11:16 am
“Which Europe is worth defending?”
I would say there is only one Europe and that is worth defending. More precisely, there is a set of European institutions – in particular the EU and the European Court of Human Rights – that while imperfect are worth defending, and they need defending because they are under attack by Putin and Trump, and by internal fascists allied with them.
MisterMr 04.29.25 at 11:43 am
A more reasoned answer:
For those who can’t read it, the article linked in the OP is about an italian pop singer (famous in the 70s-80s so now quite old) that, during a pro-EU manifestation, said “I tell you Socrates, Spinoza, Descartes, Hegel, Marx, Shakespeare, Cervantes, Pirandello*, Leopardi*, Manzoni*: do the others have this?” [* authors of italian literary tradition].
If I understand this correctly, the singer was saying this to boas the EU, however the implication that other cultures are somewhat worse caused some significant blowback.
Now, if we want to speak of the bad side of european tradition, I’ll take the examples of Mussolini (there are certainly many other european assholes but I think Mussolini represents very well what the OP dislike about Europe).
Now the problem is that, while Mussolini was an italian ultranationalist who also boasted the superiority of italian cuilture/race, and somehow a consequence of the political and economic situation of Italy post WW1, it is evident that characters like him abound not only in Italy, not only in Europe, but generally everywhere: it seems to me that this kind of ultranationalism is the fruit of an industrialized countries in some specific economic situation and not of specifically italian or european cultural values.
So I think we should distinguish between two different kind layers of culture (inspired by the distinction between base and superstructure):
At a lower level, close to the economic “base”, a “quasi-base”: those cultural habits that are strictly intertwined with the modes of production, such as the fact that in an industrial or postindustrial economy most people go to school, or that in an agricultural economy people have to live always in the same place and thius build legal concepts about ownership of places etc.
At an higer level, all that cultural elements that are part of the moral identity of some people (such as religious belief for example) but that do not have immediate influence on the base. With the example of relicion, it is evident that we can have industrialized countries that are Christian (Protestant), Christian (Catholic), Muslim, Shinto and whatever.
Up to some time ago, many Europeans believed that stuff like industrialisation (quasi-base) were a consequence of their own culture so that other people like e.g. the Japanese could never industrialize (sometimes even the Protestants had similar prejudices VS Catholics), but today it is obvious that this was bull, so it makes more sense to keep the “quasi-base” stuff distinct from the “moral identity” stuff.
Now the problem is that Mussolini (or other nasty people like, e.g., Columbus in his time) were mostly a product of the quasi-base, not of the moral-identity stuff: the specific social pressures that put into power a Mussolini depended on the problems of transition to industrialisation and high unemployment, not so much on Catholic beliefs (eve if one can say that the RC was connivent with fascism, this is not the same of being the cause of fascism, and surely it is possible to have e.g. Shinto fascists).
Same with Columbus: the economic pressures of early capitalism pressured him and other european to exploit slavery, not Christianity (even if many Christian thinkers were connivent).
So in this sense IMHO it is wrong to blame the bad stuff on european moral-identity culture, and if we more correctly blame it on quasi-base, we have to accept that most of the world now has the same quasi-base cultural habits.
However, while it is wrong to blame european moral-identity for e.g. fascism, there is another side to this: specifically fascism arose because there were many social problems in Italy and people didn’t know how to solve them, so Mussolini offered a nationalist solution that avoided, at least apparently, the class struggle inside of Italy, by redirecting the problem outside (and later against minorities).
So the problem is not so much the moral-identity part of european culture, but the weaponisation of this moral-identity to displace the internal conflicts on others.
Now the problem is, can we avoid this kind of weaponisation? A solution could be that of not having moral-identity cultural elements at all, but inreality this is impossible: people have moral/psychological needs so that they will aleays identify as say muslims, or sicilians, or whatever, and at this level of abstraction all these moral-identity cultural thing have the same values, we can’t just say: no. Catholicism sucks because of A, B and C historical events where the catholics were the bad guys.
What we can try to avoid is the weaponisation as such when this kind of identities are used as a way to create an “enemy”, and it is true that at its birth the European project was for this.
But unfortunately also Christianity at its birth had a lot of this inside, and yet has been used to spark hate more than once, so all we can do is to be vigiland against this kind of deviations, but I don’t think it is possible to have a moral-identity item that can’t be abused, anymore than it is possible to do without moral identity items.
wrdo 04.29.25 at 3:34 pm
“…relates only to the second”
I remember when I was a kid, the most amazing stories I read were tales of Spanish conquests in America. Pizarro, with a few dozen of comrades, capturing Incas’ divine emperor, demanding rooms full of gold and silver as condition of his release, getting it — and then killing the emperor anyway! What other culture could boast such a combination of bravery, dedication, and total absence of any scruples?
notGoodenough 04.30.25 at 9:19 am
It seems rather odd to me to view Europe (or, indeed, anywhere) through the frame of exceptionalism (either in a complimentary or pejorative sense). Tautologically, people are people and systems are systems – if one wishes to point to a heritage of artists/philosophers/scientists/etc., then surely the more important point is “what systems promote people being able to undertake those activities and are they being developed?” (as well as, naturally, “what systems hinder people being able to undertake those activities and are they being developed?”). Or, to put it simplistically, I am less interested in whether a society has produced skilled people than if it structured in a way to enable people to develop those skills. After all, surely a society which has artificial barriers of oppressive hierarchies or is structured towards exploitation is inherently antithetical to fostering talent?
MisterMr 04.30.25 at 9:34 am
@wrdo 12
Unfortunately, more or less every culture in the world.
Note that I’m saying every “culture”, not “everyone”: most spaniards weren’t Pizarro, he was likely a very ambiguous person, but the economic situation in Europe was such that these people were given money, power and authority, because european kingdoms were racing one against the other for trade routes and similar.
To put it with another example: probably in every country in the world there is someone as deranged as Adolph Hitler, but normally these people do not get into power; the economic situation in Germany in the 30s was such that Hitler got into power, but German culkture wasn’t all that more nazi than other europeans countries (nor were them historically more antisemite than others).
Other non-european countries maybe don’t have antisemitism proper, but often will have their own ethnic hates, their own untouchables etc.
Now there are bigger differences in that say the kind of economic race that happened between european kingdoms wouldn’t happen in a hunter-gatherer culture, or the kind of economic malaise that happened in Germany in the interwar pperiod, but these relate to the “quasi-base” part of culture.
MisterMr 04.30.25 at 2:58 pm
@notGoodenough 13
“After all, surely a society which has artificial barriers of oppressive hierarchies or is structured towards exploitation is inherently antithetical to fostering talent?”
In modern days, probably yes; in ancient days, when there was lower economic productivity, probably the slavery of many was a precondition for the flowering of the few, i.e. probably if Aristotle had to fech his own food he wouldn’t have been Aristotle.
That said, the problem IMHO is not just that this or that society produces more philosophers, but that this or that historical cultural figure/item becomes part of the psychological self image of many, so that if we e.g. have an argument about who is the best writer, Zola or Manzoni, I might take the side of Manzoni just because he was italian and I studied him in high school.
My point is that this kind of cultural identification is not something that we can easily do away with, because people do need cultural identification apparently, but contemporaneously it shouldnt be mixed with other more material determinants of lifestile.
notGoodenough 05.01.25 at 9:18 pm
MisterMr @ 15
I don’t disagree with your point (though I confess the notion of playing “top trumps” with “significant people” strikes me as fundamentally a bit absurd and arbitrary anyway). However, just to clarify – the point I wished to make (which I don’t think is in conflict) is less about producing more philosophers (or scientists, or artists, or…) but rather more about producing the conditions which allow people to engage in those (or other) activities. As you (correctly, in my opinion) point out, it is difficult to be a philosopher if one is largely devoted to toil. In principle, therefore, if a society does value philosophy/art/science/etc. then surely it should be arranging itself to maximise the opportunity for people to pursue those endeavours – not necessarily to have more people doing these things, but to minimise the number of people languishing in fields if they find that unfulfilling. In short, my point is that if a culture truly values something, then it should be promoting that thing – it seems to me that a brief analysis of present day capitalist societies (and the directions they seem to be heading in) may allow one to draw some conclusions about that…
wrdo 05.03.25 at 7:00 am
“more or less every culture in the world”
Another story comes to mind: the battle of Alesia, the last century BC. Gaius Julius Caesar, the nicest fellow by all accounts, champion of the common man, according to the incomparable Michael Parenti, on one side; the valiant Vercingetorix, also a European, on the other.
So, Caesar puts a siege on Alesia, builds a wall around the city’s own wall, and waits for the city defenders to run out of food. Standard stuff, nothing to see here. But then suddenly Vercingetorix&Co. send their women and children outside the city wall, hoping that Romans will take them (as slaves, I suppose?) and feed them. The nice guy Caesar refuses to take them, and since the valiant Vercingetorix refuses to allow them back into the city either, they’re slowly starving to death between the walls, in full view of both parties. End of story.
Every culture? No, only the most rational, most utilitarian one, methinks.
engels 05.03.25 at 12:10 pm
Another story comes to mind
Just to be clear: your generalisations about the tendencies of billions of people over thousands of years are based on two anecdotes?
wrdo 05.04.25 at 7:33 am
No, it’s based on a lifetime of observations and reflections. The atomic bombs and villages burned with all the villagers in them I already mentioned (5). Scientific experiments. Plenty of material. And empirical observations of which culture is inevitably winning, speak for themselves. But okay, I’ll shut up now.
Tm 05.05.25 at 9:50 am
wrdo: “Personally, I always thought of Western Europe as the worst villain of the world.”
Are all Western Europeans equally villainous or are there differences? Where does Western Europe end exactly? And more to the point: Why only Western Europe? Are you not impressed with Ivan the Terrible and his successors? How about Stalin?
Any chance this not very coherent rant might be related in any way to Putin’s current line of propaganda? “the most rational group of people” – is that meant to exclude Putin and Trump? Was Hitler among the rational people btw?
Tm 05.05.25 at 8:32 pm
Ladies and gentlemen, the new German minister of culture war (not a joke, he’s designated for a cabinet position) Andreas Weimer:
„Der Zweite Weltkrieg wirkte für das koloniale Selbstbewusstsein wie ein Verbrennungsofen der europäischen Ansprüche – machtpolitischer, wirtschaftlicher, kultureller und moralischer Natur.”
I won’t try to translate this train wreck of a political manifest but the gist is that he regrets that the Nazis wrecked European colonialist ambitions. The return to naked colonialist propaganda and ideology is a common characteristic of many fascist movements, whether in the US, UK, France, Germany, Spain, Russia, Turkey. It’s anachronistic but really important to their identity.
lurker 05.06.25 at 5:07 am
“Why only Western Europe?” Tm, 20
I’d guess because of colonialism, and colonialism is when boats. No-one ever remembers Alaska, there were boats involved, so it should count even if the conquest of Siberia and the Cirkassian genocide do not.
engels 05.06.25 at 9:43 am
colonialism is when boats
I thought the argument was that Americans dropped the bomb and Americans are “Europeans living outside of Europe”. Also, science is bad.
How did the Aborigines reach Australia?
https://theconversation.com/how-to-get-to-australia-more-than-50-000-years-ago-96118
engels 05.06.25 at 10:03 am
Anyway I think we can all agree that dividing the human race into k moral types based on continental origins is an idea with a really great history which has nothing to with the worst episodes of Europe’s…
wrdo 05.07.25 at 6:48 am
I can’t really make sense of 24, but I know of one 19th century philosopher, whose name sounds conspicuously like your pseudonym, who used to talk about “reactionary peoples”.
engels 05.07.25 at 7:26 pm
I’m opposed to racism but I use a pseudonym of a historical Marxist thinker who held some racist views… game over and checkmate, me.
Tm 05.07.25 at 9:23 pm
Tell us more about „reactionary peoples“, comrade wrdo…
AcademicLurker 05.08.25 at 2:09 pm
“The universal war which is coming will crush the Slav alliance and will wipe out completely those obstinate peoples so that their very name will be forgotten…The next world war will wipe out not only the reactionary classes and dynasties but it will also destroy those utterly reactionary races…And that will be a real step forward.”
From a tract Engels wrote in 1849. Lovely guy.
engels 05.09.25 at 8:36 am
Given I’m just a random dude on the internet with the same name this is almost on the level of “Goldberg, iceberg, what’s the difference?” now but okay.
AcademicLurker 05.09.25 at 3:28 pm
engels@29:
To be clear, I wasn’t suggesting that you want to exterminate reactionary races, I was just answering Tm.
steven t johnson 05.09.25 at 3:30 pm
AcademicLurker@28 In 1849, wasn’t the Slav alliance basically what was called the Holy Alliance? The Russian intervention crushed the Hungarian revolution. How offensive of Engels to be so reactionary! Fortunately the memory of the Tsar is still cherished, while the memory of Engels is not.
There may be some sarcasm in this comment?
AcademicLurker 05.09.25 at 6:04 pm
steven t johnson@31
Surely the Tsar, who ultimately gave the order to intervene in Hungary, is covered under “reactionary dynasties”.
engels 05.09.25 at 10:15 pm
Apologies for the misunderstanding, Dr Lurker.
Tm 05.10.25 at 11:40 am
Slav alliance??
The Holy Alliance was an Alliance of the Monarchs of Prussia, Austria, and Russia. Since we have gotten this far in this bad joke of a “race science curious” (that’s the term nowadays right?) thread, let’s also point out that the Czars of the period had more German than Russian ancestry. This is not an endorsement of race bullshit!
steven t johnson 05.11.25 at 1:47 pm
Tm@34 In 1849, the Slav alliance was the Tsar savaging the revolution. I know that the defeat of revolution is a liberal ideal, therefore considered nothing to provoke Engels (the original) into a fit of bad temper. I disagree. As to race science? I’m not the one who has assiduously checked up on the bloodlines of the Tsars!
Jan Wiklund 05.11.25 at 2:19 pm
Sadly, the ability to acknowledge its own faults is diminishing in Europe, at the same speed as political decisions from the top about what has really happened in history.
In 2019 the EU parliament decided, by majority vote, that Germany and the Soviet Union shared responsibility for the second world war. The old colonial states were of course innocent.
It also decided, but I don’t remember which year, that the mass starvation in Ukraine in the 30s was a crime against humanity equal to the Nazi extermination of Jews. The British-induced mass starvations in India between 1880 and 1945 were of course not mentioned.
It seems that Europe is involved in a politically decided mass whitewashing.
Not the least instace of that is that it – correctly – judges the Russian invasion of Ukraine as a crime – while it defends the Israeli genocide in Gaza. Ukrainans are Europeans and thus sacrosanct. While Gazans are only Asians that could be killed at pleasure.
Gareth Richard Samuel Wilson 05.12.25 at 3:30 am
Depending on the exact year of the vote, maybe British-induced mass starvations really weren’t the EU’s responsibility. At least, not anymore.
lurker 05.12.25 at 6:45 am
@steven t johnson, 35
The views Engels had on the political backwardness of the Slavic nations came from the failed revolutions of mid-19th century Europe.
https://marxists.architexturez.net/archive/marx/works/1849/02/15.htm
Nationalism was good when it was a revolutionary enemy of reactionary empires, hence German nationalism that would have destroyed Austria and Prussia was good. Poles, Hungarians and Italians were also revolutionaries in good standing. The smaller peoples that failed to rise to the occasion were counterrevolutionaries and enemies, doomed to vanish.
Tm 05.12.25 at 8:40 am
And I thought we had survived the worst of trolling on CT. Important lesson: Things can always get worse.
Comments on this entry are closed.