Once I was invited to provide this ‘Speech to Europe’ on Judenplatz, there was a private motive why I used to be delighted to simply accept. That’s my circle of relatives’s historical past. My son and spouse had simply acquired their Austrian citizenship, they usually had acquired it as a result of my spouse’s household had escaped Austria, or no less than a few of them escaped, together with my spouse’s grandmother, Malita (Miriam) Schertzer. She was pushed out of Vienna to Palestine in 1938, on the identical Youth Aliyah with which my very own grandmother had escaped Germany. For us, this ‘Speech to Europe’ was additionally deliberate as a personal go to to Miriam’s metropolis, and to her college, the Brigittenauer Gymnasium, now the Gymnasium am Augarten, the place there’s a acquainted memorial commemorating Miriam’s Jewish classmates who didn’t escape, and have been ultimately deported to Auschwitz. Miriam’s dad and mom have been additionally despatched from Vienna to Dachau and Auschwitz, and survived it – ultimately reuniting with their daughter in Israel. I nonetheless keep in mind assembly Miriam, attempting to impress her with my German, and with tales concerning the Europe to which she by no means returned. How shy, shocked and completely satisfied she was, that aged girl from the small Moshav in Israel, who had began her life as Malita in Vienna.
Lengthy earlier than rumors of an argument about this speak began, I knew that we have been coming right here not simply with an understanding, however with a really private information, by acquaintance, of the importance of this place – and with a really rapid feeling that non-public, insufferable recollections have immense public significance right here. We all know in addition to anyone the deep roots that this location, Judenplatz, has to this metropolis, to this continent – and we additionally know in addition to anyone can that the roots of this place’s attain into our personal nation, Israel. That can also be why I refuse to dishonor this place – not by something that I’ll say or might have stated, and even much less so by reacting to makes an attempt to show a dialogue that needs to be about substance, argument, and respectful disagreement into a synthetic scandal.
It is rather important to have Lessing’s statue right here on Judenplatz earlier than me, me, in any respect of us, and immediately on the Holocaust memorial behind me. Lessing. Mendelssohn’s pal, was the one to ascertain the important connection between enlightenment and friendship. The liberal-democratic mates of Judenplatz and the buddies of Europe focus on their disagreements, the qualms and worries they could have, amicably. Motive goes hand in hand with friendship; populism and nationalism – with eggs and with shouting. Make no mistake: eggs are supposed to humiliate, and for that motive they’re harmful. Selecting the previous, motive, over the latter is to place the clamour apart, to stretch the hand to those that have criticized this speak and tried to disrupt moderately than protest towards it, and to maneuver on.
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‘You are more than your myths.’
When, in 2019, Timothy Snyder inaugurated the ‘Speech to Europe’ on Judenplatz, he coined this message as its motto. ‘You are more than your myths.’
I wish to be part of that message however ask once more what it means for Europe to be greater than its fable?
A technique to consider it’s to say that Europe should confront fable with historical past. That was Snyder’s suggestion; he claimed that if Europe was to fulfil its function as a logo of hope – and it is a logo of hope – then Europeans should select historical past as the alternative of fable. There are two methods to recollect, Snyder argued: one is thru the myths that ‘lead you back to the story of how you were always right’ – and that’s why myths are at all times nationwide, to not say nationalistic. One other technique to keep in mind is historical past, which lets you ‘take what you remember, add it to other critical perspectives, to recognize your responsibility’ as a crumbling empire.
I agree with Snyder that Europe have to be greater than its myths; agree additionally that historical past is vital, even obligatory. However I add that it’s not sufficient. To be greater than its myths, Europe should insist on the truth of beliefs. For in actual fact, historical past isn’t the alternative of myths. Motive is – if it could possibly take the authority of its personal beliefs severely. And the authority of historical past, additionally the kind that makes us acknowledge our accountability for the previous, can generally serve to undermine our beliefs.
Right here is one other technique to put it: historical past must be revered due to our dedication to beliefs. But when the beliefs themselves are revered due to our dedication to historical past, then this dedication threatens to render our beliefs into myths – nationwide myths. This risk now confronts Europe. It confronts European politics, and it confronts European mental life, because the populist proper is on the rise, abusing historic accountability. This problem ought to now be handled. Not by denying the authority of historical past, however by defending it – defending it by insisting on the truth of beliefs.
That’s what I’m going to speak about, however I should start in the beginning.
When the USA severed its ties from Europe and asserted its independence from European sovereignty, it did so by invoking the authority of reality, not historical past: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they were endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.’
Can we stand by the authority of those self-evident truths, asserted by the American Declaration of Independence, right this moment? It appears to me that many individuals, from so-called post-colonial critics to centrist liberal theorists, in actual fact are likely to reject this proposition.
At one finish of the spectrum, folks complain that the founding fathers have been themselves slave holders. That the assertion ‘all men are created equal’ actually means males, and completely white males. That’s, that Enlightenment universalism as it’s expressed on this well-known sentence is, at greatest, a masks that permits European males to discriminate, whereas congratulating themselves on holding quick to universalist beliefs. At worst: that these beliefs are in actual fact the ideology that causes Europeans to discriminate, exterminate and enslave.
The argument goes as follows: the cosmopolitan custom, which makes man, or humanity, the measure of all issues – the origin of worth – is indistinguishable from the custom that makes man ‘the master and possessor of nature’. And since that is so, the cosmopolitan custom that begins with the idea of the dignity of humanity, finally ends up, in apply, because the historical past that made Europeans into the colonizers of continents, the abusers of nature (now inflicting nature’s demise), and the homeowners of different human beings as slaves. The Declaration of Independence asserts not self-evident reality, however fable, since it’s the story that sells us the nationwide phantasm that ‘we were always right’.
On the different finish of the spectrum, amongst liberal thinkers of the political middle, folks usually fake to shake their heads on the denial of European Enlightenment universalism. However in actual fact, post-war liberal considering consists in a really comparable denial. When John Rawls, the daddy of American liberalism, says that justice is ‘political, not metaphysical’, he means simply that: self-evident truths like those asserted within the Declaration of Independence can haven’t any authority in trendy democratic societies.
‘Truth about an independent metaphysical and moral order’, Rawls argues, can’t ‘provide the basis for a political conception of justice in a democratic society.’ This can be a dramatic rejection of the Declaration of Independence: its self-evident truths have to be handled like faith: tolerated, revered as folks’s personal religion, exactly not acknowledged as the inspiration of legislation. It’s subsequently not simply the postcolonial or identitarian left that rejects the universalist ultimate of the European Enlightenment; in actual fact, there’s a broad consensus about this rejection between the left and the liberal middle. That it’s rejected by the rising identitarian populist proper doesn’t require a lot of an argument.
I intentionally went to questions imported from 1776 America as a result of it’s simpler to fake that they’re far-off. However now I’d wish to convey them again to the center of up to date European actuality. Whereas the Individuals by no means gave the self-evident truths asserted within the Declaration of Independence any authorized significance – by no means built-in them into the structure – post-war Europe did take that step, and it took it with this assertion:
‘Human dignity in inviolable.’
Holocaust memorial by Rachel Whiteread, Judenplatz, Vienna. Picture by Diana Ringo by way of Wikimedia Commons
That is after all the opening sentence of Germany’s Primary Regulation, however it’s extra than simply that. The very same sentence can also be the primary article of the European Union’s Constitution of Basic Rights. And the perfect of human dignity can also be the anchor of the UN’s Common Declaration of Human Rights, the mannequin for quite a few post-war European constitutions. (Although not the Austrian! Not for Hans Kelsen. Although should you ask me, it’s by no means too late.) The assertion that human dignity is ‘inviolable’, because the origin of legislation, posits a perfect of Enlightenment universalism that for our functions is equivalent with the self-evident truths of the Declaration of Independence. It affirms that human dignity is inalienable, and that the authority of legislation is relative to it. This locations the universalist or cosmopolitan custom a lot nearer to a radical, abolitionist democracy than is often acknowledged, however I’ll put this reality apart and as a substitute ask two questions:
First, is that this precept, expressing the perfect of Enlightenment Universalism, in actual fact an expression of Europe’s racism and colonialism? Ought to we defend and reenact the perfect of human dignity as the reply to Europe’s previous monumental crimes in the course of the interval of Empire – from the crimes of the Holocaust to these of colonialism? Or is such humanism in actual fact the reason for these crimes? Should the German Grundgesetz, just like the European Constitution of Basic Rights and the United Nations Common Declaration of Human Rights, be ‘decolonized’?
Second, if we do stand by the precept, do European liberal thinkers genuinely stand by it – and by genuinely I imply: even when that precept challenges their curiosity, their id, their innermost commitments? Or does the want to floor our dedication to human dignity in historic accountability additionally mark the bounds of this ultimate – thereby threatening to render it to fable?
I wish to take care of the query slowly.
Take one other take a look at this sentence: Die Würde des Menschen ist unantastbar. At first look, it seems to be much less like fable than an easy falsity. Human dignity is violable, and it’s being violated as we communicate. But when it’s not a false proposition, what may make it look like one can also be what makes it so poetic, even prophetic. One of many nice improvements of the biblical Hebrew prophets was a stylistic one (it seems like I’m drifting, however I’m not): they used to state the counterfactual, even the unattainable, as really true.
This stylistic innovation had the whole lot to do with their humanistic discovery. A proposition that asserts descriptively one thing that at greatest appears prescriptive (‘human dignity is inviolable’) not as an crucial, however as a reality, is strictly talking both false, or reaching out to explain a better actuality. While you perceive that, you perceive one thing very deep within the Hebrew Prophets, in Plato and in Kant, which supplies the laconic sentence, ‘Human dignity is inviolable’ the aesthetics of the chic. The being that’s able to making that assertion – and expertise the sensation that its poetic gesture creates – has dignity, and instructions respect.
You may suppose that what we generally name actuality – the one by which we purchase milk within the grocery store, by which Jewish households are massacred and burnt on the border of Gaza, by which a complete Palestinian inhabitants is being starved and bombed – that this actuality renders this ultimate a fable, and its poetics to populist kitsch. The choice which it’s is dependent upon us.
Now we would ask ourselves: if the perfect of human dignity is legitimate, what makes it so? I can’t deal with that right here however as a substitute ask what can’t make it legitimate. If the concept human dignity is inviolable is grounded within the determination of Europeans, Germans, Italians, Austrians to stay by that precept, then that explains exactly why human dignity is definitely violable. An unconditional declare can’t rely upon anyone’s determination: it’s all very nicely that, say, the German folks have determined to deal with human dignity as inviolable; however we all know that they will additionally determine in any other case.
This realization brings us to an vital level: that the precept of inviolable human dignity can’t rely upon nationwide sovereignty, on the choice or the need of a folks. Quite the opposite: human dignity marks the restrict of nationwide sovereignty. This level is vital as a result of it reveals the continuity between summary speak of dignity and two very concrete European tendencies.
The primary of those is for states to self-restrict their sovereignty by their very own prerogatives – by coming into federative constellations, for instance, or by submitting to worldwide legislation or worldwide and European courts. In keeping with its recognition of human dignity, Europe has moved from nationwide to worldwide to cosmopolitan legislation – that’s, from a type of legislation based on states’ final nationwide sovereignty, to a type of legislation that respects it, to 1 that questions it.
The second tendency is for constitutional patriotism, by which I imply right here a really broad concept: the popularity that belonging to a sovereign nation requires neither the correct blood nor the correct language, historical past or tradition: you belong to the German, Austrian or Italian folks by advantage of getting German or Italian or Austrian citizenship.
When, in 2019, Timothy Snyder stood right here and known as on Europe to be greater than its myths, he warned Europeans that ‘your little, implausible national myths’ permit you ‘not to see’ what was so distinctive about Europe, particularly ‘that the European Union is the one successful answer to the most important question in the history of the modern world.’ That query is: ‘What to do after empire? What to do with empire?’
There are, Snyder stated, two unhealthy solutions – make nation states, or have extra empire. ‘The European Union is the only new fruitful, productive answer to that question.’ I repeat that, as a result of to respect human dignity by checking nationwide sovereignty, and to exchange the nation with a powerful idea of citizenship, are the 2 important, modern components of Europe’s reply to that monumental query.
This reply changed the Hobbes-Schmittean attachment to a sovereign Leviathan as the reply to “war of all against all”, and asserted that dignity and never worry have to be the inspiration of human polity. To guard dignity by the rule of legislation, sovereignty needs to be questioned, criticized, even deconstructed – not asserted by sovereign nationwide Leviathans. When Hobbes spoke of the Leviathan, that image of a mighty legendary monster, he knew why: as a result of sovereignty requires the idolization of fable. A very powerful inheritance of Jewish considering on this continent, moral monotheism, was at all times tied to the critique of fable and its idolization: it’s value remembering this custom that was residing in Europe earlier than the warfare, earlier than its empire crumbled, and labored towards the parable of soveregnity in Cohen, Cassirer, Buber and Arendt.
However be aware: whereas right here lies the important expression of Europe’s profitable reply to its previous – the ‘most important question of the modern world’ – particularly the alternative of nationwide legendary Leviathans – European thinkers really embraced the precise reverse of those ideas insofar as Europe was trying exterior: to the victims of its empire.
If the crumbling European empire ultimately learnt to query sovereignty, the concept was additionally that for the colonized nations, sovereignty was the automobile of liberation. By the identical token, after the Holocaust and the systematic extermination of European Jewry, the concept was that Jews needed to defend themselves and restore their dignity, as a nation, by nationwide soveregnity – by the creation of a Jewish state.
And we have to be clear: At this second in historical past, they weren’t unsuitable.
When utilized to Europe’s victims, Europe’s reply can look like the mental baggage of empire, or just like the stays of a colonialist ideology that asks to go on imposing itself even after empire has ended. Does Europe’s profitable reply to the previous of empire apply to empire’s previous victims?
And right here is one other query: can Europe’s reply to its previous survive if we contradict that reply so far as its victims are involved? If we acknowledge that others have the correct to violate human dignity, we additionally acknowledge our responsibility to respect their proper to take action. Human dignity is then vital for us, however not inviolable. That’s the essential level; when you acknowledge that, externally, you additionally acknowledge one thing internally – you merely can’t declare human dignity as inviolable throughout the continent both. To supply a variation on Snyder’s level: that is a very powerful query concerning the reply given to a very powerful query in trendy historical past.
For postcolonial thinkers, limiting liberated nations by the cosmopolitan concept of humanity looks like a type of neo-colonialism: imposing the solutions of Europe on its victims, stopping their emancipation. With regards to the Holocaust, the objection is strictly the identical. Attempt suggesting that an Israeli structure ought to start out not with the sovereignty of the Jewish folks however with a dedication to human dignity: you’ll be accused of antisemitism for suggesting to make use of European cosmopolitan beliefs to query Jewish sovereignty, and the Jewish and democratic state – inviting expenses of antisemitism.
For one aspect, then, universalist politics looks like racism, or colonialism; for the opposite, like antisemitism. And since all sides right here view sovereignty because the zero-sum situation of their very existence, these doctrines are actually not simply in battle however on a collision course: it’s not as a result of the edges are so completely different from one other that the scenario is so violent and the controversy so heated, however as a result of they’re so comparable.
For a lot of on the left, definitely the postcolonial left, the Palestinian persons are the final word embodiment of the wrestle towards European colonialism. Whoever questions their proper to armed resistance, for instance by condemning Hamas’s assault on civilians, ‘relativizes’ or ‘contextualizes’ colonialism. What proper do Europeans have, so the argument goes, to criticize the usage of drive by those that should not protected by legislation within the first place?
Then again, in Germany however not simply in Germany, we see the identical although reverse concept: that Jews, represented by the state of Israel, embody human struggling and the correct to self-defense. Whoever calls for that the nation subscribe to a impartial liberal-democratic structure – asserting a state for all residents – and be accountable to worldwide legislation in actual fact relativizes the Jews’ proper to self-defense. Whereas Europe’s reply to its crumbling empire was to deconstruct sovereignty by asserting dignity as its restrict, its victims’ reply was to say nationwide sovereignty as inviolable. Either side pretends to embody one thing final, absolute, that relativizes the human dignity of these belonging to the opposite group.
This was clear within the responses amongst left mental circles to Hamas’ systematic, sadistic bloodbath of complete households, rape and burning. There could be no ignoring this: the tendency on campuses ranged from exhilaration at this act to tolerating it – or no less than insisting that the Palestinians had the correct of ‘armed resistance’ vis-à-vis their ‘colonizers’. In the event you argued that this was at greatest excusing genocidal antisemitism and at worst supporting it, the frequent response was that Hamas is just not an antisemitic group, as a result of the assault focused Israelis, not Jews as such. However Hamas’s constitution of 1988 clearly states: ‘The Day of Judgement will not come about until Moslems kill the Jews, and when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees, the stones and trees will say O Moslems, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him.’
There was an inclination to disregard this clause or declare that Hamas has given up on it. However it is vitally believable that this actual line concerning the Day of Judgment was current within the minds of those that performed the bloodbath. On 7 October fairly a couple of of them appeared to have thought precisely that: that the Day of Judgment had arrived. Tolerating that is widespread, and you will need to say that this toleration proceeds precisely from the concept of the sovereignty of the colonized. The identical folks – college students, school – who excused the bloodbath now chant ‘from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free’. Make no mistake: they don’t imply ‘democratic for all’, however ‘free from Jews’ – or, to be exact, they droop judgment, in an effort to keep away from the allegedly neo-colonialist assumption that they’ve the correct to determine for the Palestinians.
Nationwide sovereignty is handled because the inviolable automobile of liberation. As Yanis Varoufakis put it: ‘I was asked whether I condemn Hamas and said no. But I condemn all violence against civilians. I also don’t condemn the Israeli settlers. Additionally not Benjamin Netanyahu. I condemn us Europeans.’ In the event you ask me, this isn’t a technique to take historic accountability as European, however to cover behind it, and make a mockery of it.
The opposite finish of the spectrum operates by the very same logic. It’s most seen within the false tendency amongst a sure European liberal middle to deal with the Holocaust as a ‘universal’ signifier. As one creator has put it, Holocaust commemoration has turn out to be ‘universal’ or ‘cosmopolitan’ reminiscence. On this view, the occasion is a logo, not of a selected previous horror, however of any systematic violation of human rights. By the identical token, the Holocaust is now not the unique property of the nationwide teams immediately concerned within the historic occasion – Jews on the one hand, Germans, and Europeans extra broadly on the opposite; moderately, Holocaust commemoration performs a vital function reinforcing worldwide legislation and human rights, turning into ‘a potential symbol of global solidarity’.
At first look, this may occasionally look like a pleasant thesis about reminiscence or historical past as calling for common commitments. On nearer inspection, it ought to turn out to be clear that it has given universalism a nasty identify, by presenting universalism or reminiscence as a colonial venture. The way in which the Holocaust is commemorated is within the service of specific nationwide initiatives. This ‘universal’ image subsequently excludes from ‘global solidarity’ these for whom this image is something however accessible. Since Holocaust commemoration has been interpreted because the argument for Jews’ nationwide sovereignty, it doesn’t promote worldwide human rights, particularly not for these whose human rights might appear to face in the way in which.
One of the crucial important examples of this tendency is the perspective of the German authorities to the Worldwide Felony Court docket within the Hague (ICC). The establishment of worldwide legislation and worldwide tribunals licensed to prosecute warfare crimes developed within the rapid context of Nazi crimes. This can be a robust motive for Germany, taking historic accountability, to be one of many ICC’s primary sponsors. The German Overseas Workplace has gone out of its means previously to defend the ICC towards meddling by the Trump administration, stating that ‘any attempt to undermine the independence of the court should not be tolerated’. However when the prosecutor in The Hague began an preliminary investigation into warfare crimes allegedly dedicated by Israel within the Occupied Territories, Germany contended that the courtroom had no jurisdiction. Israel, it argued, is just not a celebration to the Rome Statute, which regulates the courtroom’s mandate, and Palestine is just not acknowledged as a state. When the ICC’s justices rejected that opinion – and with good motive: Palestine, they determined, had been acknowledged as a ‘State Party’ to the Rome Statute no matter whether or not it’s a state or not, that means that the courtroom has jurisdiction – a spokesperson for the German Overseas Workplace acknowledged that ‘our position on this case is unchanged. According to our legal position, the International Criminal Court and its Office of the Prosecutor do not have jurisdiction.’ The German Overseas Minister repeated the identical assertion.
To know how grave these statements are, it’s obligatory to place apart the query of the courtroom’s jurisdiction. That is concerning the courtroom’s authority, which to acknowledge means to take the Court docket’s determination as enough to alter Germany’s authorized place – thus limiting its sovereignty. The German authorities’s declare that the courtroom has no jurisdiction in Palestinian territories, regardless of the Justices’ determination that it does, denied not simply the jurisdiction of the Court docket over Palestinian territories. It additionally denied its autonomy and authority.
This can be a good instance of the highly effective affect of the acquainted although unofficial Staatsräson doctrine – which may solely be unofficial, since have been it not, it might battle with the structure. That is what it seems to be like when the dedication to Europe’s reply to its previous, if grounded in historical past, meets its restrict and turns into not simply not common however anti-universal. With its speak of Staatsräson Germany asserts its personal sovereignty to oppose the autonomy of the courtroom, in an effort to shield Jewish sovereignty from the courtroom’s authority. Since Germany is a chief sponsor of the Court docket, this constitutes a severe risk to this establishment.
That was 4 years in the past. We are able to now see the consequences of this questioning of the facility of worldwide legislation. Does the ICC have authority within the territory, as Gaza is flattened and starved, and Israeli cupboard ministers talk about coming into Rafah, since ‘we will not do half a job, but require full annihilation’? In the event you ask me, it’s too unhealthy that Varoufakis, as a European, doesn’t condemn such a press release.
This, then, is the query: Is Europe to consider the reply that it has given to a very powerful query of contemporary historical past as its personal reply solely? As one that could be good right here, however that elsewhere isn’t simply unsuitable but in addition illegitimate? Or is that already to betray Europe’s reply – writing the primary sentence within the historical past of this reply’s decay, additionally inside Europe, and handing over the argument to Europe’s enemies?
Take into account the opposition to this speak, right here on Judenplatz. Is the concept illegitimate that saving Israel and Palestine from falling right into a yet-worse dystopia requires us to think about a transition of the area within the route of a European constellation, following the identical patterns of that nice European reply, with sub-sovereign nations becoming a member of a (con)federative frequent structure for the entire area? Is that this federative concept, which requires taking severely Immanuel Kant’s warning that peace talks and peace agreements ought not turn out to be lies – lies that result in zero-sum wars that undermine the very chance of peace – is this concept illegitimate?
If the European reply is delegitimized on this means, how does that mirror on Europe? How does permitting the dehumanizing logic of complete warfare in Israel and Palestine have an effect on Europe’s personal Jewish and Muslim residents? Does this not hand over the argument to the populist nationalist proper, which is on the rise throughout us, asserting nationwide sovereignty, questioning worldwide legislation, and claiming a citizenship primarily based on ethnic affiliation?
This, then, can be my name to Europe: insist on the truth of your beliefs. They’re all of the extra vital due to historic accountability, however finally, as cosmopolitan beliefs, they can’t be understood as being depending on or restricted by historic accountability. At this darkish, troublesome juncture at which politics and considering have now arrived, we should reject the tendency on all sides to undermine Europe’s beliefs by a really irresponsible means of understanding historic accountability. That’s the solely technique to preserve Europe’s historic commitments, and to stop these commitments themselves from turning into nationwide types of legendary considering.
This speech was hosted by the Institute for Human Sciences (IWM), Vienna, and Vienna Festwochen. It was delivered on 7 Might 2024 regardless of makes an attempt by Vienna’s Israelitische Kultusgemeinde to cancel the occasion: a frontrunner of the Kultusgemeinde claimed that, had he been ‘30 years younger’, he would have come to the speak to ‘throw eggs on Boehm’, which might have plausibly been interpreted as an invite for others to behave. The speak, which required police and Verfassungsschutz safety, was performed amid protester disruption.
