Hans Kundnani is an affiliate fellow within the Europe programme on the Royal Institute of Worldwide Affairs (Chatham Home) in London and a visiting fellow at The Remarque Institute of New York College. He’s the writer of Utopia or Auschwitz. Germany’s 1968 Technology and the Holocaust, The Paradox of German Energy and Eurowhiteness. Tradition, Empire and Race within the European Undertaking.
Inexperienced European Journal: In your e-book Eurowhiteness, you talk about Europe’s civilisational flip. What do you imply by that? When did it start, and when did it change into obvious?
Hans Kundnani: It isn’t solely clear when it started. It could not even be obvious now, no less than to lots of people. I began fascinated about the civilisational flip round 2020 and 2021. However on reflection, the essential juncture was the refugee disaster in 2015. Within the twenty years between the top of the Chilly Conflict and 2010, the EU had been in expansive, offensive mode. It was optimistic and outward-looking, and imagined a world that might nearly be remade in its personal picture.
The phrase that captures this finest is the title of a e-book by Mark Leonard of the European Council on International Relations, Why Europe Will Run the twenty first Century. This hubristic, optimistic interval got here to an finish with the eurozone disaster, the Arab Spring in 2011, after which the Russian annexation of Crimea in 2014. Europe begins to see itself as being on the defensive.
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So the change is already there within the first half of the 2010s, however then with the refugee disaster in 2015, this defensiveness takes on a unique form. Not solely does the EU see itself as being surrounded by threats however, after 2015, it additionally perceives these threats in civilisational phrases.
That’s the civilisational flip, when threats are not seen in an ideological manner or in a geopolitical or realist manner, however within the context of a Huntingtonian “conflict of civilisations” (the place conflicts occur between civilisational blocs united by tradition), as threats in opposition to a European civilisation that have to be protected.
Your e-book argues that what underlies this flip is “Eurowhiteness”. What’s Eurowhiteness and the place does the time period come from?
I borrow this time period from József Böröcz, a sociologist. He makes use of the phrase in a really explicit method to talk about the interior hierarchy inside what he calls the “construction of whiteness”. He differentiates, roughly, Western Europeans from Central and Jap Europeans and Southern Europeans, who’ve an aspirational want to change into absolutely white. I exploit it in a barely totally different manner.
For me, Eurowhiteness is an ethnic/cultural concept of Europe. My argument is that there are each ethnic/cultural and civic currents of concepts of Europe going again to the Enlightenment no less than. Specifically, I speak about Eurowhiteness to recommend that Europe and whiteness have one thing to do with one another, which is kind of apparent when you concentrate on it, although it’s not one thing individuals wish to speak about. The thought of a post-war European id, centred on the EU, is one which plenty of pro-Europeans wish to consider has nothing to do with whiteness. However I argue that the ethnic/cultural model of European id endured after World Conflict II, and influenced and knowledgeable European integration itself.
Through which of in the present day’s EU insurance policies do you see the civilisational flip?
It’s principally seen in migration coverage. Since 2015, Europe has in impact been constructing a wall within the Mediterranean. In different phrases, it’s not that totally different from the coverage that Trump pursued whereas he was US president, besides that, as an alternative of a land border with Mexico, it’s a sea border with North Africa. Human Rights Watch says that EU migration coverage could be summarised in three phrases: “Allow them to die”. Since 2014, [almost 30,000 people have died or have gone missing] within the Mediterranean. Greater than [3000] in 2023. The Mediterranean is the deadliest border on the planet.
The ethnic/cultural model of European id endured after World Conflict II, and influenced and knowledgeable European integration itself
Since Ursula von der Leyen grew to become European Fee president in 2019, there’s been a European Commissioner for “selling our European lifestyle”. It was initially for “defending our European lifestyle”. There was a silly argument within the European Parliament about that verb, however the true drawback is just not the verb, however the phrase “our European lifestyle”. The job of the Commissioner for Selling our European Manner of Life is, no less than partly, to maintain migrants out. It makes it very express that migration isn’t just a tough coverage drawback to handle however a risk to the European lifestyle.
This language of civilisation can also be creeping into European overseas coverage. The far-right tends to bang on in regards to the risk to European civilisation from migration, however the centre proper more and more makes use of the identical language to debate European overseas coverage. In all of the debates about European sovereignty, strategic autonomy, and a geopolitical Europe, there’s this actual sense that Europe must defend itself from threats perceived in civilisational phrases. […] My concern is that the far-right and the centrists are more and more pondering in the identical manner.
Discussions of race inevitably lead again to colonialism. Within the instant many years after World Conflict II, the founding members of the EU have been all white European empires who banded collectively as they have been shedding their colonies. Why is the post-imperial a part of the EU’s origin story usually forgotten?
There may be an empathetic reply and a extra cynical one. Let me begin with the cynical reply. The EU has mythologised itself partly as a aware technique of what I name “region-building”, which is analogous to nation-building within the nineteenth century. The parable tends to be a comforting, constructive story about your historical past that ignores a number of the realities. After the colonial histories of France or the Netherlands had come to an finish, they consigned it to a “reminiscence gap”, as historian Tony Judt places it. They type of moved on and tried to neglect a painful, tough historical past of humiliation. Colonialism was one thing that they only needed to maneuver on from.
However I’ve a barely totally different and fewer cynical interpretation of why it will get forgotten. From the Nineteen Sixties onwards, the Holocaust began to change into a central collective reminiscence inside the EU and for pro-Europeans. Tony Judt writes that Holocaust recognition is “our up to date European entry ticket”. The disconnect between the reminiscence of the Holocaust and the forgetting of colonialism is hanging, and I’d argue that there’s a structural dimension to that disconnect.
The Holocaust and the Second World Conflict match very neatly into the present narrative of the EU as a peace mission. It is a story that pro-Europeans inform about what the EU has carried out, from the Schuman plan to overcoming the centuries of battle between France and Germany that culminated in World Conflict II. What that story does is to encourage Europeans to consider their histories nearly solely in relation to one another. It’s the historical past of Europe as an inside story of how European international locations interacted with one another during which the remainder of the world is totally forgotten. The exterior classes of European historical past, what Europeans did to the remainder of the world, but in addition conversely the affect that the remainder of the world had on Europe, particularly Africa and the Center East, are erased.
Enthusiastic about European historical past as a closed system brings Europeans collectively. It permits them to consider themselves as a “group of destiny”. However if you begin to herald the historical past of European colonialism, it has nearly the other impact. It begins to drag Europeans aside. For instance, France has to consider its historical past in Algeria, West and Central Africa, and Indochina [today’s Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam]. In the event you begin to consider your historical past as being a part of a unique group of destiny, that of your former colonies, you’ve a duty to them. […] Participating with the historical past of colonialism encourages Europeans to suppose by way of different communities of destiny.
Do you suppose that the response to the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine has additionally been responded to in civilisational phrases?
I believe it’s pretty clear that the battle has been framed in fairly a civilisational manner. The distinction between how Ukrainian refugees and refugees from different components of the world are handled may be very hanging. At first of the battle, von der Leyen stated, “Ukraine belongs to us”. That language would by no means be used about Algeria, Morocco, or Syria. I additionally suppose that Russia is being constructed as a civilisational “different” in opposition to which Europe defines itself, and there’s a protracted historical past to that concept.
There are different methods to have a look at the battle although: in a realist manner and even an ideological, neoconservative manner – that’s, as a part of a world wrestle between democracy and authoritarianism.
Is it attainable to separate supporting, say, European sovereignty from exclusionary discourses? Are you able to not assist European strategic autonomy and possibly even a European military with out slipping into defending racist border insurance policies?
There are no less than two alternative routes of fascinated about a geopolitical Europe, and there could also be others too. The primary may be very realist. In a world of nice energy competitors, Europe additionally must be a continental nice energy alongside China, america, Russia, and so forth. It is perhaps exhausting for pro-Europeans to suppose in that manner as a result of it requires them to desert the excessive ethical floor, the pro-European ethical superiority because it have been. However there’s nothing improper with that realist framing.
There may be additionally an ideological framing freed from ethnic, spiritual, or civilisational connotations. That is an argument in regards to the world wrestle between authoritarianism and democracy, which hawkish individuals within the UK and US take into consideration. I don’t agree with that studying, however no less than the civilisational factor is absent. A robust Europe with a coherent, efficient European overseas coverage doesn’t must be a terrific civilisation.
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