Show solidarity,live solitarily: the Nazi ‘New Europe’ as a ‘family of peoples’

Abstract

This chapter first investigates how the German Nazis used the term ‘European solidarity’ and demonstrates that the term meant political loyalty between European ‘peoples’ (Völker) in National Socialist discourses. Second, assuming that the Nazis’ objective in showing solidarity with or demanding loyalty from other nations was to increase strength in what they believed to be a conflict with ‘international Jewry’, it examines the logic of the Nazis behind including other European countries into their own camp in that conflict. It will be argued that the Nazis developed a sense of belonging with non-German Europeans based on three ideas: (1) the racist myth that all Europeans belonged to the ‘Aryan race’; (2) a Europe-wide consensus of the extreme Right on anti-Communism, antisemitism, and anti-democratic and ultra-nationalist worldviews; and (3) the existence of cross-border relations within Europe which led to shared experiences. The article draws on primary sources as well as on secondary literature about National Socialist concepts of Europe and about transnational academic, cultural and social relations in the National Socialist sphere of influence.     

Democracy: The unfinished journey, 508 bc to ad 1993

The aim of this article is to give an account of hope as it was understood by Józef Tischner a public intellectual and a prominent chaplain of the Polish Solidarity movement, which led to the fall of communism in Eastern Europe in 1989. The idea of hope was one of the basic ideas of the Solidarity movement, around which the daily experiences of its members were organized. The author thus offers insight into the intellectual history of the Eastern European dissidence movement of the 1970s and 1980s. Referring to Tischner’s biography she describes some of the ways in which Western ideas crossed the Iron Courtain. Using the example of Tischner’s dialogue with, and critique of, Thomism, she explains how dissidents’ interest in phenomenology interacted with the heritage of European thought. The author shows that despite Tischner’s distancing himself from Aquinas’ thought, he remained under Aquinas’ influence, and his own ideas were not as different and incompatible with Thomism as is often believed. Given the rising interest in the question of the relation between hope and democracy today, the question of the meaning of hope is pending.     

Notions of solidarity and integration in times of war: the idea of Europe, 1914–18

Abstract

This article argues that the First World War did not just aggravate nationalist sentiments but also encouraged intercultural exchange and a better understanding of other societies and ways of life. Indeed, the wartime prevalence of notions of solidarity and integration requires more attention and careful analysis. The essay explores three key issues, focusing in particular on solidarity practices and transnational interaction. It investigates military alliances, the collaboration between national independence movements, and the role of neutral countries as refuge and gathering place of pacifist groups and intellectuals. Many of these actors discussed and promoted forms of at least regional cooperation in post-war Europe.     

Introduction: writing the contemporary history of European solidarity

Abstract

This introduction outlines the possibilities and perspectives of a history of ‘European solidarity’. While – given the high frequency with which the term is used in contemporary political debate – this is most certainly a hot-button issue, the topic has long been neglected by researchers on the history of European integration and European ideas. The reasons for this lack of empirical studies lie in the vagueness and the normativity of the term. This introduction thus conceptualizes ‘European solidarity’ as an analytical tool for research and discusses three major approaches to its historicization: first, deconstructing ideas and discursive notions of ‘European solidarity’, a term that has been omnipresent in primary sources in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries; second, investigating concrete practices of ‘European solidarity’, for example in welfare-state policies or in the work of civil-society actors; third, looking at historical limits of ‘European solidarity’ which help to bring contesting perceptions and motives into view. Finally, the introduction addresses the question of the analytical benefits of a history of ‘European solidarity’: it points among other things to new periodizations that help to avoid a teleological orientation in European historiography, as well as to the detachment of the European integration process from the institutionalization of the European Communities.     

European solidarity: a semantic history

Abstract

‘European solidarity’ is one of the most frequently used words in contemporary public discourse, but what does it mean? This article investigates the historical and semantic background of the term in English, French, German, Italian and Spanish since the French Revolution, when ‘solidarity’ became a political keyword for the first time in European history. With the founding of the Holy Alliance in 1815 the idea of ‘European solidarity’ as an instrument for achieving political order on the continent emerged. A historical longitudinal analysis via the Ngram Viewer reveals that the frequency of ‘solidarity’ follows or depends on certain crisis moments in history, such as revolutions, wars or economic troubles. ‘Solidarity’ belongs to the history of emotions and propaganda but is not a stable value system that consolidates political culture. It also seems to play a greater role in the national rather than in the European context. As a European political expression, ‘solidarity’ is not genuinely European but borrowed from the national political vocabulary. Moreover, the article outlines the semantic field of ‘European solidarity’ by showing linkages between ‘solidarity’ and other words.     

Between Utopia and Tradition: William Morris’s A Dream of John Ball

ABSTRACT

William Morris, author of the famous nineteenth-century utopian novel News from Nowhere, thought it both possible and desirable to develop a utopian vision that could be affirmed by many individuals. However, Morris also recognised that achieving such utopian unity was not easy. There is, at least potentially, something personal about utopian visions; they are shaped by idiosyncratic desires that cannot be shared. Through a reading of Morris’s A Dream of John Ball, I argue that Morris offers a temporal solution to the problem of utopian unity. The central characters in the text, medieval priest John Ball and a nineteenth-century socialist agitator, come to recognise their shared adherence to the same image of a new society. This is achieved through the mediation of tradition: Ball and the agitator overcome their differences by committing themselves to disappointed hopes elaborated in past struggles that have been handed down to the present. Morris’s articulation of utopia and tradition—the sense that visions of the future can be made shareable through reference to the past—offers the possibility of a transtemporal solidarity of utopians and the bringing together of the dreams of a plurality of individuals.     

Spatiality,sweatshops and solidarity in Guatemala

Uneven development in Guatemala has been fuelled by international investment flows and a 1984 law that established a patchwork pattern of each factory as its own free-trade zone. The spatial and social flexibility of this form of labour regulation requires workers to be creative in defending their rights. Our paper explores the creative potential of transnational worker/consumer/student alliances, or mixed coalitions as we call them, to influence global production. We analyse one international solidarity campaign (1991-1999) focused on a shirt factory of Phillips-Van Huesen, the world's largest manufacturer of men's shirts. A co-ordinated strategy linking Guatemalan workers with the US-based anti-sweatshop movement led to the approval of the first collective bargaining agreement in the maquila sector in Guatemala, yet long-term results proved illusive. The factory shut down shortly after the contract was signed and production moved to lower-wage maquilas in the same city. The struggle at the Phillips-Van Huesen shirt factory illustrates the importance of critical geographical knowledge for labour organizing and solidarity politics.