Political violence is not an isolated event. Polarization and radicalization have long taken hold in the European political debate. The shooting of Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico is the latest warning. As was the murder of British Labor MP Jo Cox in the midst of Brexit tension in November 2016 or the death of Swedish Foreign Minister Anna Lindh, stabbed in a shopping center in Stockholm in 2003. Now almost a year ago the former president of Slovakia Zuzana Čaputová, worried about the death threats she had received, announced that she would not run for re-election. “The people threatening to kill me are using the vocabulary of some politicians,” Čaputová said at the time, pointing to the belligerent rhetoric of Robert Fico’s party.
Sign up for the International newsletter What seems far away matters more than ever
Sign up for it
The strengthening of the extremes, the hardening of the language and the verbal violence against the opponent strain the electoral campaigns and the political dynamics in the European Union.
The German police have counted more than twenty political attacks since the beginning of the year. The most serious happened earlier this month in Dresden when youths linked to the extreme right attacked Social Democrat MEP Matthias Ecke while he was putting up posters for the campaign for the European elections in June, causing him serious injuries. According to police figures, physical or verbal violence against elected representatives in Germany has almost doubled in the past five years, reaching 2,790 recorded incidents in 2023. In France, the figures are similar and also on the rise. This violence is noticeable, above all, at the local level. More than 50% of French mayors declare themselves victims of uncivil behavior and hesitate to run again. Also 40% of the mayors of Germany say that they or their relatives have been insulted, threatened or physically assaulted.
This polarization has direct and contradictory consequences on the democratic system. While it is true that studies show that it can have a mobilizing effect on voters, they also indicate that this effect is driven by emotions and that they therefore mobilize against, by opposition, to explicitly reject what other options represent policies Polarization means the end of the “permissive consensus” on issues central to European construction. But not only. What there is is a deep crisis in the system of political representation. In a context of institutional mistrust and social unrest, the distance between representatives and represented widens and the forces that know how to exploit fears grow.
This week, the European Commission again urged major social networks to step up efforts to limit the algorithmic amplification of disinformation and hate speech online.
But misinformation does not spread on dry land. Its ability to penetrate public debates, to confuse or erode many times existing socio-cultural divisions, points to previous vulnerabilities. Abuses of power, dysfunctional political systems, corruption, inequalities and exclusion are breeding grounds for misinformation, but also for genuine mistrust.
The conflict and challenge tothe state in which political and social are an essential part of pluralism in deliberative democracies. But the exploitation of emotionality, the logic of confrontation and the identification ofenemieswhether tangible or symbolic, have perverted this opposition.
2024-05-18 20:29:00
#Political #violence #European #Union
