anyone who hears 1968 and doesn’t immediately think of The Dreamers is a much less shallow person than I am [ed]

This article is from Eureka Magazine’s print edition. You should be able to find one of the 500 copies of our FORTRESS EUROPE edition in a common room near you, but if you’re summering away (darling!) we’re publishing all of the articles online anyway, so you can carry on wandering around various European cities listening to Joni Mitchell!

BY DORA DIMITROVA 

In May 1968, students and workers in Paris were embroiled in a revolutionary struggle against the French capitalist state, in a general strike that brought the city to a complete standstill; factories and public facilities were occupied and brought under the direct control and management of the workers themselves.

It was a broad and meaningful movement, a manifestation of people previously disenfranchised and alienated from wider social forces and political institutions that dominated their lives realising their own strength and capacity to decide their own destinies.

With the 50th anniversary of May ‘68 coming up soon, what lessons can the student movement in Britain (and elsewhere) draw from the French experience?

The thing to remember above all else, in my opinion, is the role and positioning of students within the movement itself. As a factory worker reported to The Times during the strike, “The students came first. They acted as a spark.”The revolutionary events of May ‘68 began with a student occupation of the prestigious Sorbonne University, which soon exposed wider issues that existed in French society, such as income inequality, inadequate housing, and cuts to social welfare. In other words, the students sparked a shift in consciousness in the wider population, and their success and militancy gave hope and encouragement to the workers who would go on general strike ten days later.

In the wake of the UCU pension strike in 61 universities around the UK, the student movement has  resurged in a way not seen since the pushback against tuition fees in 2011. In this lies an embryo of potential for sweeping change in society at large, which is why it’s so important for students today to stand in solidarity with striking workers and build links with other organised movements.

Having said this, it’s important to acknowledge that trade union legislation passed in the Thatcher era and left unreversed by Tony Blair’s New Labour has acted as a massive brake on the revolutionary potential of trade unions, by making it more difficult to strike. As a result of this effective disarming, in 2012 trade union membership had halved since 1980, dropping to the lowest levels since the 1940s.

i can’t remember where this came from, nor do i understand enough about italy to make a judgement upon whether it’s in poor taste. But still, Beppe Grillo ladies n gents! 

This article is from Eureka Magazine’s print edition. You should be able to find one of the 500 copies of our FORTRESS EUROPE edition in a common room near you, but if you’re summering away (darling!) we’re publishing all of the articles online anyway, so you can carry on watching Call Me By Your Name as the Tuscan sun beats down outside your window in your charming summer villa!

BY DORA DIMITROVA

The results of Italy’s last election (held on the 4th March) have generated much discourse and debate amongst media pundits, largely focused on the issue of populism - what it is, why it arises, and how to counter it. But what do we actually mean when we talk about populism, or when we define a specific party or movement as populist?  

The results of this election represented a staggering collapse and defeat of the traditional political forces of both the centre-right and the centre-left, and conversely a resounding victory for so-called populist parties. Berlusconi’s Forza Italia only got 14% of the votes, making it the junior partner in a right-wing coalition with the League, who got 17%. The centre-left coalition, led by the Democratic Party (PD), was perhaps the biggest loser of this election, winning just 23% of the vote; a dismal result from any point of view, as they held an absolute majority in the last parliament after the 2013 elections.

The biggest winners of this last election, on the other hand, were two populist parties: the Five Star Movement, who emerged as the biggest single party with 33% of the votes, and the League. The former was founded in 2009 by the comedian Beppe Grillo on a vague anti-establishment platform including elements of environmentalism, euroscepticism, e-democracy, degrowth and anti-globalisation. The League, formerly Northern League, is a nationalist, eurosceptic and anti-immigration force that used to campaign for a federal system in Italy and even a secession of the rich, industrial North from the poorer South as a means of sowing division between these two parts of the country. Currently, the  largest common denominator between the Five Star Movement and the League is their racist, anti-immigration rhetoric.

In his book On Populist Reason, from 2002, the post-Marxist political theorist Ernesto Laclau uses as his starting point the thesis that populism is a vague concept that has eluded precise theoretical definition within academia. What is perhaps more interesting however, in the context of Italy’s current political landscape, is Laclau’s idea of ‘empty signifiers’.

An empty signifier is a word or phrase that evokes a generic connotation of popular justice and fairness. It is empty insofar as its distinctive feature is a rejection of otherness,  allowing a hegemonic group identity to be constructed. Its sociolinguistic emptiness, according to Laclau, is what allows populist movements to fill it with whatever political content is expedient in a specific context.

These empty signifiers have been clearly visible in Italian politics for several years now: rottamazione from Matteo Renzi’s Democratic Party, onestà from the Five Star Movement, and ruspa from the League. Rottamazione, meaning “scrapping” in the context of getting rid of an old car to get a discount on a newer model, was Renzi’s slogan for his planned shakeup of the political establishment. Onestà, meaning “honesty”, has been used in direct association with the figure of Grillo himself, portrayed as a trustworthy and relatable everyman, in contrast to the stagnant and corrupt establishment which the League’s ruspa (“bulldozer”) is also bent on destroying. As we can see, what all these signifiers have in common is an avowed discursive opposition to the political mainstream, whether left or right.

What I see as the problem with Laclau and his so-called post-Marxist contemporaries is that, being heavily influenced by postmodernism and poststructuralism, they have a tendency to over-emphasise discourse as the main element that structures political interactions, but fail to account for its root cause, despite complex structural explanations of how it is generated. Ultimately, the language people use to talk about politics is a reflection of the environment in which they live. The reason people look towards parties promising onestà, or to bulldoze away the establishment, is that traditional parties have time and time again tried, and failed, to meet new challenges with more of the same politics.

Catherine Deneuve, from before she was problematic .

By Dora Dimitrova

If you didn’t get that very subtle and obscure reference in the title, fret not! It’s probably good that you’re reading Eureka this week, though, because where else would you be getting the 411 on the juicy facts that matter in a highly condensed format permeated by someone else’s cynicism?

Shithole-gate

“Asteroid of awfulness” is the phrase Emily Thornberry, the UK’s Shadow Foreign Secretary, used to describe Donald Trump in regards to his latest outburst of poor judgement and blatant racism. The statement in question had the US President referring to Haiti, El Salvador and African states as “shithole countries” and questioning why his glorious homeland has to put up with migrants/refugees from these places, apparently adding that he would rather welcome immigrants from Norway. I wonder if he would be able to point out Norway on a map… This new discussion on whether Trump is a racist (I think we can all take an educated guess) comes on the back of a seemingly never ending flood of scandals coming out of the White House. Unfortunately - albeit predictably - POTUS commands a great deal of political clout among the global élite, as shown by recent reports that PM Theresa May will attempt to engineer a reconciliatory meeting with him at the World Economic Forum in Davos later this month, in order to clear the air between the special partners following the cancellation of Trump’s planned state visit to London.

Get your hand off my knee

Awfulness is not contained to the States, however: we have plenty of it here on ye olde Continent, too! France really takes the trophy this week, with a group of French actresses, including the star Catherine Deneuve, denouncing the #MeToo movement in an attempt to defend men’s right to annoy and seduce women, which they claim is “essential for sexual liberty.” To quote or repeat their arguments would be to give these women a platform they simply do not deserve, but one particularly jarring detail I cannot bear to leave out: one of the signatories of the open letter, Brigitte Lahaie, stooped so low as to claim that some women actually enjoy being raped. To answer the question of whether this apologist, “I’m not like the other girls” narrative is politically or culturally relevant in 2018, I would like to point the reader in the direction of 2017, when Deneuve walked a red carpet with Roman Polanski, charged in 1977 with the statutory rape of a 13-year old girl.

#2Corrupt4EU?

The EU has a new President! And surprisingly, it’s not a crusty old white dude! Take a step back Donald Tusk, Jean-Claude Juncker and Antonio Tajani (and let’s not forget everyone’s favourite technocrat, Mario Draghi): here comes Bulgaria! For the first time since its accession to the union in 2007, the small Eastern European state is taking up the task of the EU Presidency, with big shoes to fill given the consensus within the Brussels bubble that the Estonian presidency that just ended was successful. The priorities of the Bulgarian Presidency priorities include youth, the digital economy, relations with the Western Balkan countries, and security and defence. Two major potential disruptors: the country’s apparent inability and/or unwillingness to tackle corruption and mafia ties at the highest levels of government, a relic of the “post-communist” transition era; and the far-right Patriotic Front, the junior partners in the coalition government whose co-spokesman once described Romani as “ferocious apes.”