How can you tell the communicative of Europe without the cathedrals and Shakespeare? – asks Prof. Andrzej Nowak in a book conversation Piotr Legutko. Yeah, how?
Courtesy of Esprit Publishing home we present a fragment of the book “In the trapping of past and geography”
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Prof. Andrzej Nowak: This is the phenomenon of utmost ideology of political communication, which replaces past as a communicative of the past. I do not appeal to Kościuszko, even Chopin, who is undoubtedly a common value of planet culture, I deliberately mention the largest, not Polish, creators of European heritage, which I besides as a Pole have much to thank for. due to the fact that the home of European past lacks not only Mickiewicz, but besides Bach, Cervantes or Goethe.
I will remind you, due to the fact that we have already said that the canon of political correctness, with which we are acquainted already at the beginning of visiting the museum, assumes that there are no higher and lower cultures. Europe could so make nothing more valuable than cultures in another continents. Secondly, which is besides clearly expressed in the guide's communicative recorded on the tablet, Europe's "appearable" cultural wealth was due to the fact that it colonized, force conquered the world. We hear that colonialism is simply a large responsibility of all Europe, including its parts, which have nothing to do with colonial heritage. And that's a immense forgery of history! It is characteristically reflected hidden and inactive very strong, it is just as on the hand in this museum, arrangement: higher – lower, in the interior European hierarchy.
Eastern Europe, ‘younger’, ‘worse’, is to perceive and learn from older and smarter. There is not a word in the communicative of this home of European past that any of the countries that form the European Union present have fallen victim to colonialism, besides from non-European nations. To set an example, what do Bulgaria, Serbia, Romania, gotta do with the collective guilt of Europe, the crimes committed in the colonial conquest of another continents? After all, not only have these countries never led colonial expansion outside Europe, but they themselves have been victims of colonial exploitation and conquest led by the non-European empire of Islam, Ottoman Turkey for centuries. The same is actual for Hungary or Poland. Poland was for certain the subject of an imperial exploitation and conquest policy led by 3 European empires: Russia, Prussia / II Reich and “enlightened” Austria. Ukraine, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia – what are these countries active in the crimes of European colonialism? Only participation of victims of colonial practices from Russia, Sweden (Finland or Estonia) or Germany.
Of course, 1 can discuss relations between the Crown (Polish) and, for example, Ukraine in the times of the First Polish Republic – whether there was an component of colonial Polish control. possibly we'll get back to that. However, it can surely be said that no of the countries of east Europe (except Russia) listed here have a part in the colonial heritage of Western Europe. These 9 western EU countries were colonial empires: the United Kingdom, France, Spain, Portugal, the Netherlands, Germany, Italy, Denmark, yet Belgium, whose king – his monument stands before the home of European past – and its officials and thousands of Belgian townspeople are liable for killing respective million black people in Congo.
And now from these countries with the darkest cards of colonialism, the instruction comes to the people of east Europe: you are to inspire guilt for European colonialism, and if you do not put penance bags on your chest, you are not pounding in your breasts, you are one more time giving evidence that you are darkers, reversers, you are not keeping up with the moral advancement that we, in Belgium, in the German CDU or SPD, in the European Parliament, set out... Yes, this is what I heard at the conference in Brussels on the heritage of force in Europe. It is clear to me that it is not the Belgians who have a problem with King Leopold – a genocide, but Poles and another “easters” with their unrecognized participation in European colonialism, enslavement and exploitation of countries of today's global South...
But let's get back to the tour of the Brussels home of European History. Only erstwhile a symbol of revolution appears on this way – a female leading the people to barricades, on the celebrated canvas of Eugène Delacroix, and immediately after it the large Marx on the image – we get a sign of this right direction, this right way towards progress. And indeed, in various variants: social democratic, social democratic-liberal in the west of Europe, and revolutionary-Marxist-Leninovian in the east of Europe, that is, Russia, this paradigm of advancement besides develops in the 20th century. From the 18th to the 20th century there is continuity, from Rousseau and Marquis de Sade to Lenin and Lennon, despite all the storms, conflicts, 1 can see this continuity of advancement regardless of the geopolitical game, from the war clash of large forces, erstwhile they fight each another for a "lifespace", or alternatively for that eternal: who will be higher, and who will be lower, who is master and who is servant...
So we climb stairs, whose fancy plan vividly resembles the plan of a giant monument of the 3rd International, to decorate the revolutionary Moscow after 1917. We fall into the core of the darkness of the 19th century. Nationalism and capitalism are raging here. Nationalism symbolizes books that teach hatred – among them the first Polish accent: the Trilogy of Henryk Sienkiewicz. This is not a rivalry between the insatiable imperialisms of members of this performance of large powers, which we spoke of, but only dangerous nationalisms, which are symbolized here by Sienkiewicz, are to be liable for the gigantic slaughter of the first and then the second planet war. The next phase of this communicative about the improvement of the European thought is to look at russian communism as a fascinating experiment: an effort to build a new, just world. However, this effort is carried out under hard conditions: the terrible “white” terror, counter-revolution, capitalist intervention, must be answered with “red” terror. Here comes the second Pole at this exhibition, and the first one, whose image we can admire: it is Felix Dzierżyński. It surely appears in a much more affirmative context than previously presented by its nationalist book Sienkiewicz.
The interwar period is, on the 1 hand, a crisis of parliamentary democracy, fascism, the improvement of authoritarianism (among another things, Piłsudski's figurine), but besides a consequence to these threats in the form of the pacifist movement and pan-European organization projects. So we have an eternal conflict of good and evil. It concentrates in the civilian war in Spain. The forces of evil, of course, represent Franco. Good forces – Republicans and supporting their russian Union. It's a fresh planet war. However, the voice from the tablet does not explain how it happened and why the so-far-supporting forces of the good russian Union allied with Hitler in the Ribbentrop–Molotov pact. The critical arguments about Stalin's pact with Hitler will be learned only by those who talk Polish, due to the fact that 2 (untranslated into any languages) cuts from the Polish press present it. In the communicative of the Second War there are “Nazis” and there are their victims. A series of photographs to illustrate civilian casualties in the Second War opens – guess what? A photograph of the family, evidently affected by the tragedy of the German family, driven out of 1945. They go on, and rightly, killing guerrillas in Belarus, starved to death captives from the Red Army, many another categories, and at the very end is the smiling face of the young, elegantly dressed and hairless Polish woman: she leaves the camp of displaced people (dipists).
The message is clear: the suffering of civilians during the Second War – it is Germany that was driven out first. A cup of coffee. There was any anti-Nazi resistance, yes. I noticed French and Norwegian (although Quisling is besides mentioned). You can't see Polish. There's besides a Holocaust. But not at all dominant in this narrative. Rather, he returns as a informing and an accusation. Or alternatively an chance to hit again with a "moral--civilizer" rod in the head of European "Easterners".
On 1 wall the model memory of the Holocaust: German and Austrian. On the second, opposite, problems with memory in others (cooperators), it is especially in Poles and Ukrainians. Illustrates these problems of the case with a copy of the book by Jan Tomasz Gross about Jedwabne...
There is of course no place for John Paul II and his function in restoring the subjectivity of Poles and others enslaved by communism.
There is only a sinister shadow of the Catholic Church in the form of a copy of Humanae vitae – condemning the contraception of Pope Paul VI's encyclical. It is smashed with creepy abortion pliers lined next to it. To which inhuman torments the Church is forced to fight for her rights of modern women - we are to consider this, not whether the Church, in the form of John Paul II, played any function in defending human rights behind the “iron curtain”.
Seventy percent of the full communicative of 1989 in east Europe is occupied by Germany: from the escape of the citizens of the GDR through Hungary to the “fallover” of the Berlin Wall. Solidarity is only a tiny background, the "round table" is already more important. This is the perfect and memorable consensus of the people of a new, wonderful Europe.
The text comes from the book:“In the trap of past and geography” – Piotr Legutko, Andrzej Nowak
Publishing house: Esprit
