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 creator of Utopia or Auschwitz. Germany’s 1968 Era and the Holocaust, The Paradox of German Energy and Eurowhiteness. Tradition, Empire and Race within the European Venture.
Inexperienced European Journal: In your e-book Eurowhiteness, you focus on Europe’s civilisational flip. What do you imply by that? When did it start, and when did it develop into obvious?
Hans Kundnani: It isn’t fully clear when it started. It might not even be obvious now, a minimum of to lots of people. I began fascinated by the civilisational flip round 2020 and 2021. However looking back, the crucial juncture was the refugee disaster in 2015. Within the 20 years between the tip 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 would virtually be remade in its personal picture.
The phrase that captures this greatest 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 special 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 now not seen in an ideological method or in a geopolitical or realist method, however within the context of a Huntingtonian “conflict of civilisations” (the place conflicts occur between civilisational blocs united by tradition), as threats towards 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 option to focus on the inner 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 need to develop into totally white. I take advantage of it in a barely completely different method.
For me, Eurowhiteness is an ethnic/cultural thought of Europe. My argument is that there are each ethnic/cultural and civic currents of concepts of Europe going again to the Enlightenment a minimum of. Specifically, I discuss 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 discuss. The concept of a post-war European identification, centred on the EU, is one which quite a lot of pro-Europeans wish to consider has nothing to do with whiteness. However I argue that the ethnic/cultural model of European identification persevered after World Conflict II, and influenced and knowledgeable European integration itself.
Through which of at present’s EU insurance policies do you see the civilisational flip?
It’s largely seen in migration coverage. Since 2015, Europe has in impact been constructing a wall within the Mediterranean. In different phrases, it’s not that completely 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 will 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 earth.
The ethnic/cultural model of European identification persevered after World Conflict II, and influenced and knowledgeable European integration itself
Since Ursula von der Leyen turned 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 downside just isn’t the verb, however the phrase “our European lifestyle”. The job of the Commissioner for Selling our European Method of Life is, a minimum of partially, to maintain migrants out. It makes it very specific that migration is not only a tough coverage downside 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 concerning 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 considering in the identical method.
Discussions of race inevitably lead again to colonialism. Within the instant a long time after World Conflict II, the founding members of the EU had been all white European empires who banded collectively as they had been dropping their colonies. Why is the post-imperial a part of the EU’s origin story typically forgotten?
There’s an empathetic reply and a extra cynical one. Let me begin with the cynical reply. The EU has mythologised itself partly as a acutely 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, optimistic story about your historical past that ignores among 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 simply needed to maneuver on from.
However I’ve a barely completely different and fewer cynical interpretation of why it will get forgotten. From the Sixties onwards, the Holocaust began to develop into a central collective reminiscence inside the EU and for pro-Europeans. Tony Judt writes that Holocaust recognition is “our modern European entry ticket”. The disconnect between the reminiscence of the Holocaust and the forgetting of colonialism is putting, and I might argue that there’s a structural dimension to that disconnect.
The Holocaust and the Second World Conflict match very neatly into the prevailing narrative of the EU as a peace challenge. It is a story that pro-Europeans inform about what the EU has executed, 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 virtually completely in relation to one another. It’s the historical past of Europe as an inside story of how European nations interacted with one another through 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.
Desirous about European historical past as a closed system brings Europeans collectively. It permits them to consider themselves as a “neighborhood of destiny”. However once you begin to herald the historical past of European colonialism, it has virtually the other impact. It begins to tug 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]. For those who begin to consider your historical past as being a part of a special neighborhood of destiny, that of your former colonies, you will have a accountability to them. […] Partaking with the historical past of colonialism encourages Europeans to suppose when it comes to various 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 feel it’s pretty clear that the struggle has been framed in fairly a civilisational method. The distinction between how Ukrainian refugees and refugees from different components of the world are handled could be very putting. At first of the struggle, 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” towards which Europe defines itself, and there’s an extended historical past to that concept.
There are different methods to take a look at the struggle although: in a realist method and even an ideological, neoconservative method – that’s, as a part of a worldwide wrestle between democracy and authoritarianism.
Is it doable to separate supporting, say, European sovereignty from exclusionary discourses? Are you able to not help European strategic autonomy and possibly even a European military with out slipping into defending racist border insurance policies?
There are a minimum of two alternative routes of fascinated by a geopolitical Europe, and there could also be others too. The primary could 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 likely to be exhausting for pro-Europeans to suppose in that method as a result of it requires them to desert the excessive ethical floor, the pro-European ethical superiority because it had been. However there may be nothing fallacious with that realist framing.
There’s additionally an ideological framing freed from ethnic, spiritual, or civilisational connotations. That is an argument concerning 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 a minimum of the civilisational ingredient is absent. A strong Europe with a coherent, efficient European overseas coverage doesn’t should be a fantastic civilisation.