{"id":46600,"date":"2019-04-01T11:00:32","date_gmt":"2019-04-01T00:00:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/?p=46600"},"modified":"2019-04-01T10:34:32","modified_gmt":"2019-03-31T23:34:32","slug":"when-european-politics-becomes-personal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/when-european-politics-becomes-personal\/","title":{"rendered":"When European politics becomes personal"},"content":{"rendered":"
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More often than not, Europe is invoked in abstract terms, such as when politicians argue that European sovereignty is the only path to security in a world dominated by great powers. But as the original Brexit deadline of 29 March drew nearer these past few weeks, the idea of a European identity became more concrete; the political suddenly became personal. Behind the cacophony of parliamentary arguments over \u2018backstops\u2019 and \u2018indicative\u2019 and \u2018meaningful\u2019 votes, there are some 16 million British \u2018Remain\u2019 voters who are in deep fear of losing their EU citizenship.<\/p>\n

Some of those Remainers no doubt participated in the march in London<\/a> for a \u2018People\u2019s vote\u2019 last month, which drew more than a million people and represented the greatest public outpouring of pro-EU sentiment that Europe has witnessed in years. I, for one, have only ever seen EU flags waved with that much passionate intensity in Ukraine\u2019s Maidan Square in 2014 and in Central and Eastern Europe after the collapse of communism. But whereas those pro-democracy protesters were dreaming of a return to their European past, today\u2019s Remainers are dreading a post-European future.<\/p>\n

I share their dread. Having grown up in Brussels with a British father and a German-Jewish mother who was born in France, it is my European identity that brought unity and meaning to my family\u2019s history. My relatives were peppered across Manchester, Luxembourg, Paris and Bonn, and one of the most influential people in my early life was my grandmother, a Holocaust survivor who was orphaned at the age of 10. To escape the claustrophobia of her conservative upbringing in W\u00fcrzburg, Germany, she taught herself seven European languages. And later in life, she resisted the crippling pains of old age by reciting from memory poems by Dante, Heine, Keats, Kipling and Wordsworth.<\/p>\n

When I returned to the United Kingdom as a student in 1992, I embraced my British identity and immersed myself in the country\u2019s history and culture. By reading historians such as Linda Colley, Eric Hobsbawm and Norman Davies, I learned that British history actually has little to do with \u2018splendid isolation\u2019. It can be understood only as part of a European story.<\/p>\n

The British elite have always been European\u2014in terms of both identity and heritage. Belonging to the House of Windsor, Queen Elizabeth II is partly of German descent. Moreover, Britain\u2019s language derives from Latinate and Germanic influences, just as some of its greatest literature is set in Italy, Denmark and Greece. And in the modern era, British leaders have always embraced a European identity when the chips were down. Even Winston Churchill, that great imperialist, was willing to sacrifice the trappings of global empire for the sake of Europe by declaring war on Nazi Germany and proposing a union with France.<\/p>\n

More recently, Europeanisation has been transformed from an elite privilege into a mass cultural phenomenon. Thanks to falling travel costs, tens of millions of people on both sides of the English Channel go back and forth in each direction every year. Even in the remotest parts of the UK, supermarkets are stocked with Italian pasta, Greek olive oil, French cheese, Danish butter and Spanish wine. Some two million Britons<\/a> have settled in other EU countries, while three million Europeans have taken up residence in the UK.<\/p>\n

Back in the 1990s, I led an initiative exploring how Britain could rebrand itself<\/a> for the modern era. The idea was to frame Britishness as a forward-looking civic identity rather than the atavistic ethnic chauvinism that former prime minister Margaret Thatcher had championed.<\/p>\n

By emphasising Britain\u2019s creativity, dynamism and deep historical connections to Europe and the world, I hoped that marginalised Britons\u2014the young, ethnic minorities, Londoners, Scots, the Welsh and the Northern Irish\u2014might begin to see it as their home too. To my surprise, the findings from the project<\/a> were picked up by the governments of both Tony Blair<\/a> and David Cameron. But 20 years later, the same groups of British citizens who were belatedly brought into the national story now fear that they will be excluded once again. Brexit Britain has become a place of narrowly defined exclusive identities.<\/p>\n

After the referendum in 2016, my own fear of losing European citizenship led me to apply for German citizenship. Some of my Jewish friends have pointed out the irony of seeking refuge in the country that tried to exterminate my ancestors. But reclaiming a birthright that had been stolen from my family turned out to be a deeply moving experience. It was as natural for me as it was for my grandmother, mother, and aunt, who made the extraordinary decision to return to Germany in the 1950s.<\/p>\n

My mother was a professor of German literature, so I learned early on about Germany\u2019s painful reckoning with its past and its journey back towards European civilization. This, too, informed my European identity, which rests not just on the pillars of British and German history, but on a synthesis of hope and fear. When my grandmother taught me about the Enlightenment ideal of prizing reason above all else, she was drawing not from a distinctly British or German tradition, but from a European one. She also taught me to appreciate the idea of Europe as a refuge from our own family\u2019s tragic history.<\/p>\n

That, in fact, has been the motive of the European project: to engender shared ideals and prevent a return to the continent\u2019s murderous past. The EU was created to transcend national histories of Nazism, fascism and communism. But today many people are so afraid of the future that they seek to recreate a national past that never was.<\/p>\n

Still, one can find hope in the fact that the upsurge in pro-European sentiment in the UK is proving contagious. In the run-up to the European Parliament elections this May, record numbers of people<\/a> are proclaiming a European identity. But as the political becomes personal for more people, the challenge will be to ensure that this European identity is inclusive and forward-looking, rather than hopelessly nostalgic.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

More often than not, Europe is invoked in abstract terms, such as when politicians argue that European sovereignty is the only path to security in a world dominated by great powers. 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