 Hello everyone and welcome to the fifth episode of the School of Resistance, a live stream format that invites experts on change around the world to discuss valuable alternatives for the future and to create a blueprint for politics of resistance. Today's episode is called Beyond Europe, Building Transnational Futures. The idea of Europe is in a state of emergency. For years, the call for a deeper democratization has been voiced by progressive forces, but facing the catastrophe of climate change, humanitarian disasters at its borders, and an out of control economic order, time is running out. We are very happy that we will discuss this today with the co-founder of DM25 and philosopher Streczko Horvat, and the political scientist and founder of the European Democracy Lab Ulrike Gerro to speak about possibilities beyond the nation state. My name is Kasia Wojcik and I'm happy to introduce our guests to you today. Hello, Ulrike. Ulrike Gerro is a political scientist and publicist. She's a professor in her own department of European politics and democracy research at the Donau University, and founder of the European Democracy Lab in Berlin. Streczko Horvat is a creation philosopher, author and political activist. The German weekly der Freitag called him one of the most exciting voices of his generation, and he has been described as a fiery voice of dissent in the post-Eugoslav landscape. I am the co-founder of the Progressive Movement DM25 and council member of the Progressive International. Before we start this conversation, I quickly want to remind you of the possibility for you all, the audience, to engage in the conversation by asking questions. For everyone who is watching live, you are welcome to send us your questions by emailing to schoolofresistanceatantigans.be, or by commenting on the live stream on the Facebook pages of Antigant or IRPM, or on Twitter via the hashtag schoolofresistance. Okay, Streczko. To start the conversation, I would like to quote from your essay, The Apocalypse Already Happened. If there is one poem that comes to my mind when I see the images of red and orange skies above California, the devastating wildfires in the midst of a pandemic and the rapidly disintegrating United States. When I look at imploding Europe with the fire and Moria refugee camp and rising racism, authoritarianism and various conspiracy theories, it's the poem Darkness by Lord Byron. The poem, I had a dream, which was not all a dream. The bright sun was extinguished and the stars did wander darkling in the eternal space, railess and pathless, and the icy earth swung blind and blackening and the moonless air. Streczko, can you elaborate on that idea of imploding Europe with the fire and Moria, whether it shows actually the dissolution of the European idea, or whether it represents that very idea. Yeah, first of all, hello everyone. Hello, Kasia, and nice to see you and nice to see Ugritya again. It's been a while since we've seen each other physically, but let's hope this can compensate it to a certain degree. Although we all know it can't. So, yeah, thanks for reading so beautifully. I think The Poem by Lord Byron, which is the first poem which came to my mind, I think, last week or two weeks ago when both at one continent, the Californian wildfires were exploding and it were images of the apocalypse and so on, and at the same time the fire in the refugee camp Moria in Greece broke out. And this was the first poem which came to my mind because it's beautifully, but in a dark way, and the poem is called Darkness, of course, shows something which happened already, but in a different century. It embodies what is happening today. And this is, I think, the big importance of poets and poetry today also because they can capture the future in a way and they can understand the apocalypse, the revelation in its original Greek meaning. What is interesting with this poem and I'll come from history to Moria, and I won't take too long because I'm interested in a dialogue with you and Ugritya. What is interesting with this poem is that it was written in a year which is called The Year Without Summer, in 1816, which is a year which no one remembers today anymore. But if you read Byron, if you look at paintings from that period like William Turner, if you read Mary Shelley, for instance, Frankenstein, which originated in that year, you will see that it was an important year. Why was it an important year? Well, a year before that year, before 1816, Napolon finally returned to Paris from Elba. A year before that, Lord Byron got married, got a daughter, and his wife wanted to divorce him. So in 1816, he fled to Europe with the intention to never return back to the UK. And on his way to the Lake of Geneva, he stopped in Waterloo because Napolon was obviously his big hero and idol, which is another story. There were others like Hegel and so on who were also inspired by Napolon. In any case, to cut a long story short, he comes to Lake Geneva and at noon it is dark and they have to light up the candles. And he's in a very interesting company together with Percy and Mary Shelley, and they gather at the fire and start talking stories. Very similar to what happened already in Italy in a different century, when they come at all. When the plague forced people to come home and by narrating stories to survive this period and to give a sense to it. So in the same way Byron is in Lake Geneva, and why was it a year without summer? Because a year before an obscure volcano in Indonesia erupted, which was the strongest volcanic eruption in the last 10,000 years. Millions of ash, etc., and so on, didn't reach just the atmosphere but the stratosphere. And as a consequence of it, there was no summer, there was no sun, a coherent permanent cloud was above Earth, which had different consequences. One of the consequences was that agriculture completely failed, that the price of bread went higher, that you had food riots, you had hunger. And the only good thing which is left from that year is art. You can see it in art today. And how does it relate to the Californian fires and to Moria? First of all, I think by going back to these stories, by going to have this kind of long perspective, which Rodel, for instance, was exploring and many others of the World System theory, by having this broad long-term perspective, I think we can revive hope, because we can see that something similar happened in the past. What is happening now in California, this kind of sunset, what we call Blade Runner, you know, but it's actually much closer to Lord Byron. But it's also important because it shows that a catastrophic situation, in this case, it was a natural catastrophe, no influence of humans. In our case, it is what is called the Anthropocene or what I would rather call the Capitalocene, the influence of humans or capitalism on the climate. So we have a possibility to change, but in this time, it also led to social unrest, political revolutions. And that's my point, that the current moment with the pandemic, with the fires, with climate crisis and so on will also lead to such moments. And to answer and shut up, Moria, what is the Moria the sign of? To paraphrase, but you when asked what is Sarkozy, the sign of, it is a sign of the failed idea of Europe. It is the sign that Europe is at the same time a beautiful idea, but at the same time Europe is also based on genocide on Holocaust and at this moment on forgetting about the refugees. It is also at the same time, if I can put it in the perspective in the long perspective, in the same way after the eruption of Mount Tambora, you had various conspiracy theories. You had, of course, hunger as a consequence of hunger and further unemployment, misery and so on. You also had witch hunting, you had racism and so on. And I think Moria is just one of the symptoms, not just of the failure of Europe, but it's also a symptom of the failure of a global system called capitalism. Thank you. Ulrike, you heard what Srecko said, the failed idea of Europe. You, on the other hand, in the manifesto for a European Republic, a performative project you co-authored. The idea of a European citizenship applied to everybody touching European soil is mentioned. For me, this is something very hopeful in times of Moria. Can you elaborate on that and what would need to happen in the political sphere that Srecko already explained is so loaded and dark to make this possible. Kasia, Srecko, thanks for having me here. And I listened to you very carefully, Srecko. Thanks for all these 18, 15 mementos and Lord Baron, I wouldn't know. And I totally agree and couldn't agree more on this sort of apocalyptic moment, which basically comes at a single time. The fires, the melting, I mean, it's interesting that we have the fire and the melting of the polar water. And we have Moria and we have the pandemic. Basically, if you go back to the sins of, you know, in the Bible, the sort of the biggest sins, then you have the sin flute, you have the friar, you have a pandemic. So there is a lot of apocalypse apparently here. The only thing I may perhaps disagree is that if you say 18, 15 was passed and we are now. So we could have a learning curve that after the aqua aqua aqua Calypso sort of we go over it. I rather have a say linear non non linear sort of way to perceive history. Yeah, so what is past what is future what is present. Yeah. But this also generates hope. We have been there. We are there. We will be there. But the we are doing always the same. That's my point. Yeah, I think mankind at similar at some situations always comes to peak points and the peak points are the crisis and the crisis is to decide and Shreco gave us the decision moment. Yeah, the decision sort of if we are Anthropocene, what do we do about it if we are capitalist system. Do we have an idea which system we want to create I mean what I mean you're not trying for the first time to go out of capitalism. It's not the real question is what next what should come after. How do we organize it. What is the political system, and so on so forth and I'm spending a lot of time on these questions and now to your question Kasia on the who lives in Europe is Europe only idea has the idea failed and what about this pledge that we had that everybody touching European soul should become a European citizen. I agree with Shreco that this sort of Europe is only an idea is true for the worse or for the better. It's only an idea because we see that in reality we cannot match it, but the very fact that it is an idea keeps us running worse would be to have no idea. So we should never give up on the idea of Europe you see my point and that is basically what the utopia gives to you, keeping the idea. Yes we fail, but it's a little bit Samuel Beckett yeah fail better try harder, fail harder. Yeah. So, I think the very fact that we have the idea of Europe which is crossing borders, which is what you have in your title today beyond Europe is the permanent strive for doing it, which is to overcome frontiers and borders. So I'm very happy that we have the idea, although I admit that Shreco is right when he says we fail on the idea. And this basically dialectic yeah so we fail, but if we stop trying, then we really failed. And so we never stopped trying that we never stopped trying that would be my thing so now touching the European soul has a very real reality. Ken Balibar, who I admire a lot wrote a marvelous, marvelous book which I can only recommend to all people, which is some new to sit by yonder the rock. And the book is from 2003 already the book is 17 years old and could not be more actual. And what he does there is he creates the topos of European apartheid. And the topos of European apartheid is that body bar says we have roughly today 25 million people who legally live in one of the EU member countries of the European Union say the Moroccanians in France or the Turks in Germany or the Ukrainians in Poland, and they work there and they live there and they are legally there. But if you are not having a citizenship of an EU country, basically you are not European citizenship. So granting European citizenship is an addition to when you already have a citizenship of an EU member country. But if you are legally living a Moroccan or Moroccanian legally living in France you don't get European citizenship. And what we wanted to do with this manifesto, what we wanted to do with this sort of speech act, is that we say, who works in Europe, who lives in Europe, who literally puts the feet on the soul of Europe is part of the European community, which is joining Europe as the soul, as the territory, but which is also joining the idea of Europe, and then you should be granted all rights. You should be granted similar rights for everybody who is living here. That was the idea of the manifesto, obviously is a utopia, but still just to make this little circle. What happened to be now, I wouldn't know the English word, but Nebel Klegerin at the European Court of Justice, I supported a case at the European Court of Justice. And this case that we just filed on 20th of August this year has the claim that the European Court of Justice states that European citizenship is permanent status and cannot be withdrawn. And the first case that this will be very, very current is the moment Brexit will happen. Because what we want is that the Brits stay European citizens, although the UK as a state will be leaving the EU under Article 50. If we succeed, I don't know what the court will say, but if we succeed in getting permanent status for European citizenship. I think we have an entry to make the utopia coming a little bit closer and to go for a system in which we have use Zuli applying on the territory of a future Europe, which is everybody who's here belongs to Europe in the sense of belonging, which is placing feats on earth, living here, working here and contributing to the European idea. Thank you, that is a beautiful idea, but I'm wondering in the last days, the migration pact paper came out from the European Union, which is severe. And so I'm really wondering is, I don't see that utopia happening like me, you know, I see it's, it's actually getting worse. Okay, I'm not in denial. I'm not in denial, and I'm not naive. A real question is this wording of Wachlaw Havel, what is hope? Hope is not that things get better. Hope is that you do the right things, even if things don't get better. And actually, Kasia, that's what we are doing here. We are discussing it. We are having a school of resistance, which is we are completely into the Havel sentence. Yeah, I'm perfectly fine in admitting that things probably won't get better in short time in Europe. Not because the pandemic, the social stress, the Brexit, whatever. I mean, I do not need to enumerate the problems Europe is in today. We do not need to look to Hungary, Poland, I mean, Strecco, whatever. Yeah, so you do not need to do this, but hope can only be based on our activism. That's why we went to the court. That's why we are doing the things we do. That's why you have a school of resistance and I'm happy and proud to be part of it. That's why we are doing this speech act, which we are doing right here, which is, yes, we assess that things probably won't get better in some time soon, but because we talk about it, we create the hope that we can change this. And let me say a last sentence. We've been arguing also in German TV with a lot of stress, by the way, in a prominent TV talk show last week, that the 13,000 people from Moria come straight to the European Union, which created a little shitstorm, as you can imagine. And I have been arguing that we should have legal ways of escape, and we should give the asylum stamps in the embassies across the Mediterranean so that we create legal ways to come to Europe. I argued also for European green card like the US, because the US was a dream country, everybody wanted to go for decades, everybody wanted to go to the US and get a green card. So I think Europe should do something there. So I'm all in favor of doing these things. And I argue that we should, if we do not want camps, that we should perhaps think about creating towns. Because in sociology, you say segregation is a form of tolerance. I just wanted to give you the, and I wrote this piece in Le Monde Diplomatique years ago about towns for refugees. And I want to bring it again into the discussion, which is we are much focused on integration, and integration is whether we discuss it in this way or not stressful for many people. And I do not want to kill or to destroy existing communities in Western societies, because if the refugee policy always impacts most on the socially disadvantaged people, then it cannot work. So we have a wealth distribution problem, which is there. But to say, can we imagine what is the Europe of the future? What is the utopia? Does it be this integration at all price sort of thing? Or could we imagine that we recreate basically what we had in the past, which is a town of Prague, where you had the Bohemians there, the Jews there and the Germans there in one town, but more or less segregated. Today, we don't like this. Today we say this is parallel society. But I just want to offer, and perhaps adventurous, perhaps disputed, perhaps innovative thought, to rethink the way we want to structure the territory of the European Union, and to think of forms of living together without stressing everybody with integration, but rather thinking in parallel worlds, in parallel peaceful worlds. Well, I still would like to stay at that point of utopia, because I'm, I'm still wondering some things. And that's one point that Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission mentioned in her state of the Union speech, a utopia actually for me for the European Union. And Ursula von der Leyen poses for example to increase the target for emission savings to at least 55% by 2030. And what are the alternative proposals, other than the ones formulated by governments who had the chance to change things in the last 20 years. I have listened to Ursula von der Leyen, I have to say. And Ulrike, do you believe it is possible to create alternative futures within the current political and economic order. Then we need to discuss what is the within. I'm the last to criticize Ursula von der Leyen. She's not my party, conservative, what do you want. Firstly, I must say, I like the speech. First, because it was a very rushed in advance speech, it was a very daring speech. If you go carefully about where she places Europe between the US and China, if you go carefully down the speech and you recall the wording that she applied for instance for the first time there's an official speech in which the head of the Commission says China is an economic competitor and a strategic rival. We would still talk about China as a strategic partner, and we were all into EU-China partnership discourses. Now we are in strategic rivalry. I do not want to rival with the Chinese, but I just want to say that if we are talking about European autonomy and sovereignty, and the way that Europe emerges also as a potential economic power, modernized, sustainable energy sort of power, we need to revisit in a way the world of the 20th century and we should not allow, it's not about rivaling with the Chinese or not liking the Chinese, but it's also about protection, what is happening here. It's not allowing China to buy European companies and the whole thing or to eat into the European stomach, if I may say so, through the new Silk Road, or to buy the strategic goods of Europe. Actually, I like power or I think at least that power is neutral and it's neither good nor bad, but if you want to become a political entity that saves human rights and an entity that can guarantee legal ways for refugees to come to Europe, the economic and social systems that keep together our societies, we will need to think about the emergence of sovereignty and of autonomy. Now, you say, can we trust von der Leyen? I don't know, I don't know, and probably not because she has a hard time, we should not forget that she has a hard time, but the real question is, is she the ugly guy? And there my answer is no, the ugly guys are the heads and state of government, the ugly guys are the frugal four, the ugly guys are Orban and Mazowiecki, the ugly guys are those who are not wanting Europe. So, can we change from within the system? I guess we can do a lot of change from within the European system. And that is why precisely in the manifesto you kindly quoted and Sretzko signed the manifesto two years ago. He's not a co-author but one of the supporters of the manifesto, but I don't have it here to read, but the last sentence is the council needs to be abolished. The council needs to be abolished. So the EU system, if we say, can we reform from within? The real question is, who is the EU system? Is it the council, the commission, the parliament? The parliament is fine. The commission which we should call government in the future is fine. ECB is fine. Actually, ECB now gives us 1.8 billion to do all these rescue things that we are doing. The council is the problem and the heads of states and the council blocking things is the problem. So, I know there's a lot of talk and many may have heard about this hashtag CTOE. Sretzko, I don't know whether you heard about it, but citizens take over Europe. This huge citizen bundling activity where Nicolo Milanese is in and Lorenzo Marcili is in and they have created and the European Democracy Lab took part of it. And there is a network of now 56 European civil civic organizations building a network which is called hashtag CTOE, citizens take over Europe. And every Wednesday they have a zoom, like we have a zoom here and they write a European constitution as citizens assembly. This is great. And the real question is, again, will von der Leyen be the person if we give her something, will she lift it up to power or will she be against it? And my guess is she won't. We need to feed her. So, I would more say if we really want change, it has to come from both sides. It has to be wanted bottom up, but it has to be done top down. And the more we can get together, von der Leyen driving the EU forward and bottom up people doing all this activism. And the next we can touch the, you know, this Nokia moment touching people, yeah, and von der Leyen and the citizens at some point or the commission can come together. That would be my wish and the last sentence on this 55 degree. I had had a couple of talks with the climate people in the European Parliament but also with, I know it's not good to say the black rock people and those people who finance the whole climate green investment stuff. Everybody is saying it has been calculated, it can be done 55 percentage points of reduction of CO2 emission can be done. There was a lot of mathematics before to do. And there was a lot of pressure that we increased actually from 40% to 55% and those who are really into the business, they all say it can be done. There was the pressure for markets, the pressure from financial markets, energy folks who pressured that 55 is the minimum we should do if we want to go over this, you know, melting polar caps and the whole thing. And again, the problem is not the commission, the problem is the national heads and states of government. So I repeat that the manifesto, the last sentence, the council needs to be abolished, we have a chance. Sretiko, would you like to answer to that? What's your idea about the state of the speech? Well, unlike Ulrike, I would forbid some people to use the word utopia, because I think it's similar when you give a lighter, a fire starter, a lighter to a pyromaniac, you know what the person will do. So, when you give the word utopia to Ursula von der Leyen, she will destroy the very concept of utopia. I think we shouldn't speak about mandatory solidarity, I also don't know what does mandatory solidarity mean, it's contradicting abjecto. I think the current plan of the European Commission is not ambitious enough, but I think they are living in dreams that in 10, 20, 30 years, the measures which they are proposing now will have any effect. I think it's very similar to that project in Venice, which you could have seen very well last year in November, when the big floods came to Venice and you had Aqua Alta for three times, I think. And you know the problem is that you have a project which is called Moses, which was supposed to stop the flooding. Besides corruption, the problem was also that Moses was built for a future which doesn't exist anymore. And I think the same, the measures of the European Commission are measures for a future which will not exist anymore because I think we are rapidly approaching the future where I think even if I like the idea of a leak about citizenship, I think it's not utopian enough, you know, and it's not utopian enough because I think in a few years already, we will be faced with numbers for which even this kind of program will not be sufficient. When I talk about numbers, it won't be 15,000 refugees, it won't be a million, it will be hundreds of millions of refugees coming from Bangladesh or from the global south because of climate change and this will happen in the next 50 years according to scientists. I think we have to radically transform our idea, not just to go beyond the nation state, but to start to conceptualize our problems as planetary problems, as problems where even these kind of measures which are now proposed by the European Commission are already not sufficient. And you know, everyone is speaking about the Orban essay these days, where again for the 100th time he proclaimed the end of liberal West and we have to turn to the East, but at the same time he's cooperating with Donald Trump and wishing him luck for the reelection in November. But I think Ursula von der Leyen and Viktor Orban, besides belonging to the same political family, are two sides of the same coin. You know, the more austerity you impose, the more greenwashing, they call it a green deal, but it's not really a green deal and so on, the more you try to pretend that you are fixing the situation, you know, this kind of cosmetic changes, the more Orban's you will produce, in the same way that the liberal establishment produced Trump, basically, you know, instead of choosing Bernie Sanders. And I think this is the basic problem of the European Union, that, you know, we don't have this option, a third option, I don't call it the third way, God forbid, but the third option which wouldn't be neither Orban, neither Ursula von der Leyen. And just one comment, because I think there was a slight misunderstanding, I also don't have a linear conception of time. On the opposite, you know, I'm very close to Walter Benjamin and to his destruction, the construction, but rather the destruction of the concept of progress, where progress is not something towards a point in time towards which we are going, progress is a catastrophe. And also if you go outside of Eurocentrism and Europe, you will find different conceptions of time in Senegal in Madagascar and so on, there is a different sort of temporality, which is not the capitalist temporality. So I think, thanks for mentioning this. I think the concept of time, especially in times of COVID lockdown and so on, we all had a transformation of an understanding of time, but also with all these zooms and the screen new deal and onlineization, we also again have a colonization of our times, because we are all living in these small boxes behind the screens. And our time now, there is no real difference between public and private leisure or work, everything is mixed up, and yet we are the lucky one, we are the ones as in brexit, poimand, in akiboran and the ones who can still eat and drink and have a zoom, but this is a luxury. I totally agree, just one word, I would also say there is no such thing as progress. We are doing the ever same sort of problems of mankind under different technological surfaces. And now we are trying to cope with the ever same problems of mankind under a technological surface, which is the digitalization surface. I also would like to say I agree with Schretzko obviously that this sort of greenwashing sort of policy may not be enough radical, but now Kasia, bring us together to discuss, okay, what then? I'm happy to do in a way both, to defend Raza von der Leyen, then to go against her because she is not the real evil, there are many more other evil people in the system, if that was the question. But I'm very happily shifting to Schretzko to go to the real question, which is the real question, which is our understanding of time, where are we now? What needs to happen and how can we be possibly more radical if today, for instance, German industries are already saying, look, we spent all the money on the pandemic. There's no more money for climate protection now, there's no more money for the social, this is all gone, we spent the money on the pandemic where we can easily say perhaps this was a purpose, right? Yeah, because we are spending really a lot of money on the pandemic too, and it goes to pharmaceutical industries, whatever. But there will be a real question sort of, if we can't spend money anymore, what do we do then? And that is my question. The question goes straight to Schretzko as a philosopher, why it seems to be not possible to have a discourse on reduction, to have a discourse on decroissance, to have all these things, to have a discourse on how can we learn from the Africans? How can we learn their relation to nature? How we can learn from them their understanding of time? Because we also do this in these post-colonial features now, and it seems to me that the pandemic is in a way showing that we are living in a totally lethal system. And we should indeed really shift it around, but then the question is, and we come to the ever-same questions of humankind, do we do it peacefully, if so how? Do we do it with capital or against capital? Do we do a commune? Do we have a chance to do it against capital? Do we need to embrace the BlackRock people to go with us? And all these questions, and I'd like to push you on this one Schretzko. Yeah, thanks a lot. This is really fun and inspiring thanks to both you and Tasha. Well, I will give first an unphilosophical answer to your question. Why is this so? Well, the answer is class struggle. My answer is class struggle. But let me not quote Marx, but the Bible, you know, in the Bible you have this sentence where it is said, to those who have, it will be given even more, and they will live in abundance. And those who don't have, they will not even have the things which they had. And I think this is precisely what's happening today. The problem is not that there is not money. There is plenty of money. And believe in something, what Bifor would call semi-capitalism, where you can directly go into someone's bank account and just write one million, two million, its numbers, its semiotics, its science, financialization, capitalism. And in this situation, I think, yes, you pose the right questions. You know my perspective to a certain degree was also always, let's try to fight within as much as we can, even if that means running for the European Parliament, even if that means running for power in your local municipality, in your nation state or whatever. But you mentioned also two terms which I more and more prefer much more, which is autonomy and sovereignty. I think what the pandemic showed on the one hand is that the role of the state is stronger than ever. You can see that the state has and can have actually a big role. And that role doesn't have to be negative because the state can help with transferring refugees. They can use soldiers like Frederick Jamestown imagines in his American Utopia book called American Utopia. They can use the army to do good things. Instead to go to wars, the army can deal with the climate and so on. But I think what the pandemic showed is that we have to rely on something what Kropotkin called neutral aid. So the state is here and the state is becoming more and more a totalitarian state. The partnerships are springing like mushrooms all over the globe. And in this kind of situation, I think what is really important is to have support networks which are built from the grassroots level. So in the case of a complete collapse of society that you have this support network and we could have seen it through the early days of lockdown. Only a few months ago, but it seems like a century ago. You know, it's important what kind of relation you have with your neighbor. It's important to have friends who care about you if you're older and so on. Especially in a society where Margaret Thatcher's dictum there is no such thing as society came true because the state privatized health care system social care, everything. And now we have to rely on this network. So I would tend to agree with you that we need this kind of combined. Is it a strategy? Is it the tactics? I don't know, but a combined perspective where at the same time, yes, let's push both the European power in the European Parliament, let's push the European Commission and so on. But at the same time, let's start reinventing our own societies already on each level, you know, on a family level when it comes to love on a level of a local community. Here in my local community, I have people who are experimenting with solar power. They're building boats with solar power. It wasn't the state who gave it to them. They just bought it on the internet and put solar power on a boat. You know, you can do these things. We are really living in the 21st century, but the problem is now we come back to this kind of politics that we obviously need a Green New Deal, which is not the Commission's Green New Deal. We obviously need a Green New Deal, which is not just Europe's Green New Deal. We need a planetary Green New Deal. And when I say a Green New Deal, this term already is hijacked. In the same way, many things are hijacked by capitalism because a true genuine Green New Deal would be one which would be a decolonizing Green New Deal. Not a situation where, you know, in Germany you drive electric cars, but at the same time there is a civil war in Congo going on because you need lithium batteries. Or you go green Elon Musk with Tesla in the United States, but you have a coup d'etat in Bolivia because they have vast resources of lithium. So I think the Green New Deal is also becoming very misused in the contemporary times. So in that way, I think the idea is right, that we need massive investment and we need to use the state in order to invest into clean energy, sustainable energy and so on. But I think it has to be much more radical than the Green New Deals which are being proposed by the current establishment. Maria, I may say, I react in one sentence. I totally like it. I don't know whether you are familiar with the writings of Ingolfo Bludon, who is a propo, and I give it to the public listening here. Ingolfo Bludon is a political scientist at Vienna University, and he writes books about what you have been saying, Stratzko, which is the non sustainable sustainability talk, yeah, which is sort of we are luring ourselves into the next technological revolution. But basically what we have is conflicting goals because we want to have climate protection and digitalization and digitalization creates ever more need for electricity. And then we call it green electricity, but it goes for we do no longer do the fossil stuff but we go for the lithium stuff and at the end of the day is the same sort of erosion of Mother Earth. Yeah, so to be too short. But I want you to push on one thing if you and I'm very happy that you said power is can be good can be bad but it's can be up. And then the state is back. I just wrote a book because I had the same assessment the status back with this pandemic. Yeah. But I wrote the book to say okay if the state is back, and we want to go beyond Europe and over the nation state. Why don't we do a European state. And why don't we do make sure that this European state is the state that we want who cares for the social division who cares for the structural sort of social discrepancies you know all the Piketty stuff that Piketty is kindly writing for us. And so I just wrote a book, 100 pages we should create a European state. And then, and by the way there's a very interesting quote quote from Max Weber, who said in and I looked this up in 1912. In the General Assembly of the German day of sociologues and Max Weber's quote runs like the national the nation state is nothing else. Then, when at a moment of time, citizens decide out of a sentiment to create a state that is basically what a nation is. We say, okay, can't it be that within this pandemic in this apocalyptic moment, we the European citizens, 500 million, we decide out of a sentiment the sentiment of solidarity the sentiment that we should change things. And say okay, let's create a state and if we were to do this, it would be our moment of a nation state obviously not a competing state because you want to go beyond Europe, but a constituting state and then let's go. The question would be and that is, I hope you can answer you have an idea. We would need to make sure that it does not happen what you sketched out and I totally agree that we do only in the sense of what you, the right arm of the state which is totalitarian authoritarian police arming and so and security, but then we do the right arm of the left side or the left arm in the sense of what you is writing the left arm of it. And there is a fundamental question here, why today, we tend to do so much the right arm of a state, and we are no longer capable to do the left arm of a state in the sense of what you write. Wonderful. It's a very good question because I think we, they are, especially the last two or two decades ideas how you can use the state in a progressive way. I mean from universal basic income, which I would prefer what we call in the m25 universal basic dividend, not to get the money from taxpayers but from shares from companies. For that you need the state again in the same way for the Green New Deal you need the state again. And, but I also want to come back to what you mentioned previously you mentioned China. You know, and this is something which concerns me a lot. Not only what is happening in China currently with human rights violations and so on. But also at the other side, the discourse the narrative which is now beginning, not only in the United States you remember how Steve Ben on first said that it's a Chinese virus and so on but also in Europe as you pointed out. And I think this idea, although I would prefer probably no state. Going back to anarchism it seems, but this idea that we have this kind of European state I think it really makes sense, especially if you take into consideration the changing geopolitical environment you know you have a much stronger China than ever. You have a certain Cold War discourse. It's on the verge of a war in the Pacific if you want. And you have a situation in the Balkans I don't know if you saw the photos yesterday. I think that Grenel was really happy to tweet about it. You had this picture of a lake between Kosovo and Serbia, which is now called the Donald Trump Lake. You know that that's their peace project in the Balkans. And you know how all the peace projects ended up in Balkans in the same way when the Dutch troops came to Bosnia and so on. Now this is even more dangerous. You have a situation where China obviously is coming into Europe. Serbia has been dealing a lot with Russia installing QA cameras from China and so on. At the same time you have the United States represented by Grenel, you know, dealing with Kosovo and Serbia now presenting as a bloody war which is still ongoing to the voters in the United States because you need a fictional war somewhere there and let it be in Balkans. There are always wars in the Balkans. And at the same time the United States, like next week, Mike Pompeo is coming to Croatia on a European tour. So you can see that there are geopolitical interests from all the sides attacking Europe and the weaker Europe is the worst it will be for everyone. Because as long as you know you will have a country where Orban now will cooperate both with Trump, with China and Russia while the other parts will do something else. You will have something in Serbia, you will have a new Neo-Ottoman Empire in Bosnia and so on while Europe is imploding. So to that I would prefer a kind of unity in Europe, which would then again of course imply solidarity and helping the periphery and not extracting value from the periphery. As it was always the case also during the Austro-Hungarian monarchy and all the big projects, but to come to that stage I'm less optimistic because I think we are already sliding into a period where this moment of insecurity, this moment of crisis is not only leading to various conspiracy theories, it is leading to hunger. It is leading to hunger and billions of people will starve in the next years and the more you have this, it's like a vicious circle from which you cannot get out. The more of these social-economical problems you will have more racism, more witch-hunting, more nations turning against each other and so on. And I think it would be the responsibility of the current European leadership to present a way which would lead us out of this, which I cannot see. So my question to you is where do you see the progressive forces in Europe today at this moment? Do you see that they are changing the situation slowly or not? Well, then I give a huge thank you to Kasia for bringing us together because this is actually a very, very good discussion and if your question is do I trust in European leadership and where do I see us in the progressive forces? Then probably because we are talking in the School of Resistance, right, are we doing this? Then we should take over the European leadership, period. We should take over the European leadership and we should do it. I mean, then the real question is how can we do this? How can we do it with the citizens? I mean, citizens take over Europe. It's in the title, yeah? I mean, go to Lorenzo Marsili, who is organizing all these funding efforts, yeah? And I agree with you on the analysis. I think we will be, and the pandemic gives the pretext for doing so. The pandemic is an awful pretext to close borders. We are now against this, you know, second lockdown sort of thing. Spain is closed, Austria is closed, France will be closing, whatever, yeah? I mean, for everybody sitting here in this call, I don't know about you, but actually I'm working in Austria. My parents are in Germany. My son's in Paris. What do I do if I have lockdowns, yeah? We need to defend open borders. We need to defend the beyond Europe thing and we need to defend European citizenship. I totally agree. And I would like Kasia to go in here and to tell us about, and I think we need to be, in some point, very operative, yeah? I do not want to do into alarmism. That's not my point. But we are sitting in zooms. Sreco is where are you sitting now in which town today? It's not even a town. It's an island very far away. But I don't believe in islands. So if I was not on an island. Okay, whatever. Kasia is probably in Ghent, right? Yeah, I am in Grevenbrook, which is a small town nearby Cologne. But if now, and I think it's important because we are totally into Walter Benjamin. We are totally into doing the same thing under, and it's Walter Benjamin who actually said before any fascist revolution, there's a failed social revolution, right? Yeah, so we are again in the process that we failed to do the social justice revolution a decade ago during the euro crisis. And because we didn't do it by then, now we have this totalitarian sort of spin of the situation. I couldn't agree more. But if we are now into this technology because we are talking in zoom, which by the way is a Chinese thing. Yeah, let's just mention it. Then there's a problem. Do we have analog capacities? And I'm very serious about it. How will I be able to reach out to Sreco and to Kasia the moment the system is hijacking us. We know about IVY. We know about how it is when we are basically depending on smartphones, on control, on surveillance. And perhaps I'm now hysteric, you know, it's a female thing to be hysteric, but I'm one. I'm old enough to say this. Yeah, I wouldn't say just a female thing. I think the man can be very often very hysteric. But you understand beyond beyond to the charm and beyond the laugh, the little laughter, but are we serious about having, because you were talking about your solar panels, yeah. Are we having analog capacities? And what I want to do and perhaps this for the school of resistance, this is a call for help or a call for discussion. But what I am dreaming of, honestly dreaming of is that we pull together our energies in an attempt of resistance to do another case, to file another case at the European Court of Justice. And what I want to see is that in the European Convention of Human Rights, under the sentence of dignity, we place a sentence and the sentence is a right to have an analogical life. That you have the right to live without a smartphone and with all social access, which is voting and paying and whatever paying your taxes. Because what I see, if we do not want to go the Chinese moral scrutiny way is that we need at least to keep an analogical system to the digitalized system to defend the reversibility of things. You know, like with nuclear energy 100 years later, we are thinking nuclear energy was bad and we are basically destroying nuclear energies, at least in some parts of the world, right. But what I am fearful about is that with all this pandemic digitalization sort of thing, we are losing the analog sort of means of doing our resistance. And I would like to have this in the Human Rights Charter of the European Convention, that we have principally to keep it both ways, because if not we are losing the analog ways out. And I'm very fearful about that, I must say, and I'm saying this also as a women, and this is perhaps gender nonsense, if you may, but all this Elon Musk and Alexa and whatever. This is for me, the reestablishment of patriarchy under digital ways. Alexa, fill me the fridge is the new form of obedience in the digital world so it's the reestablishment of patriarchal through the combination of digitalization and patriarchal. So I want to have digital ways, non digital ways of living together. And I think if we are cashier really at a school of resistance. We should write novels about analog life, but we should also create our interaction in an analog way in whatever way I'm lacking fantasy but perhaps, you know, I wanted to ask a question about the analog ways but I'm seeing that our time is really running up so really seven, and I have some questions from the audience, which I really would like to give the floor to. And then there's a longer questions that's going to be clear. It is. I don't know if this is the right question for this forum, but we are looking at a situation where Europe is soon to be subjected to a savage new round of austerity. This is largely because the governments of Germany and other northern states. Germany and other northern states refuse to consider alternative methods of financing such as issuing bonds at a large scale, and they're overly afraid of taking on debt. How do we change the minds of the peoples and governments of the northern states, so that they realize that policies of solidarity with southern states do not mean a disadvantage for them. How do we make the CDU voters realize that the shots and will makes no sense. I feel like this is necessary to make any progress towards the Europe we need. Or do you see it another way. Let me start on this. I totally agree in the analysis. It's a decade theme in Germany for at least 10 years. I have been spending huge amounts of energy in discussing this question in German TV. I would dare to suggest that the CDU is changing. I'm not over optimistic. I do not want to defend the CDU. But I can capture as somebody who's into this discussion that Friedrich Merz Roland Koch sort of the hardcore guys at CDU who were all into this black zero stuff. Yeah, that they are changing. Perhaps I'm the wish is the father of my thoughts or the wish is the father of my words I'm happy to admit this. But if we're talking utopia if we're talking school of resistance. For me, as of today, things in the CDU seem to be slightly better. I'm not talking northern skates. The real issue is Austria. The real problem is Austria and Kurtz and Blümel and the Dutch and Rüte. Yeah, but I could capture tiny, tiny, tiny and I could detail on this. But I can see in Berlin and believe me I'm well connected even into CDU circles. I can see slight changes, slight, slight changes there. They are feeding the pressure. They are feeding the state building necessity they are feeding the geo economic and geo strategic implication. And Mr. Merz, who is one of the candidates for chancelry. I mean, he's black rock guy. Yeah, but black rock is now these are the people who are now telling every European finance ministry, go spending, go spending do the social. So if it comes from the business community, the pressure is a different one than when it comes from bottom up citizens. Again, I do not want to overstate the argument. I'm not naive. I do not want to be naive that that's all not but I can see the bush of a different discussion in Germany and we can only hope that next year with the election. There is a little change. Okay, and another question. Maybe, especially also because you mentioned China. What do you think about the policy switch about climate change politics China made this week. Well, it's, it's definitely much more ambitious than than any plans the European Union has. The European Union should look at itself into the mirror and ask itself if there is such a thing that it can ask itself. What is the problem with the current European policies and how does it come that the Chinese are more advanced when it comes to technology more advanced when it comes to thinking about climate and so on. Then again, I think if we are going to speak about the planet in planetary terms I think what we need more today is more cooperation with China, but also more cooperation with other states, you know, and not this kind of situation where we are all going back to the nation to come back to the very title of this event beyond the nation state. If you are thinking beyond the nation state I think we should also take into account the possibility of and the necessity of cooperating with China, which doesn't mean having a blind eye on the possibilities or the totalitarian characteristics of China. But so does the United States imperialism have very bad size and I can see many companies cooperating with United States. So, yeah, that would be my very short answer I can see that I'm already going into Byron's darkness, you know. Can I just add one sentence. I actually do not think that we are going back to the nation state I actually what I see in the 10 years to come is a division between towns and rural zones. And if you go media well sort of things we had all town walls right you remember or you could have the bridge that you were lifting. What I see more is a network of towns and the urban communities networking, and the real problem is the left behind rural areas. And so the problem of the nation state is already today to keep those together the rural areas and the town so discussing really about the nation state and not even so sure whether the return of the nation state is the thing we should fear most in a way it could be our best option to bring down the nation state also the Chinese one because if we want to be anti totalitarian that is my thing, we need to go decentralization decentralization and to rethink an order of the world, which is beyond Europe beyond the nation state, and which finds the entities, which are participating in whatever way, but I think these centrally decentralization is the only chance to bring down the totalitarian momentum of the state which is looming at the horizon. Thank you, Erica, to close off this wonderful discussion we spoke a lot about time today and concepts of time. I would like to end the conversation because I think it's beautifully written with a quote from stretch cause essay, which talks about time. And I want to ask you after this question, this quote to a last question, maybe of hope. It would be great if you could answer that. And thank you first of all. So, not only did the apocalypse as revelation already happen, it is the end itself, the destruction of the biosphere and mass extinction. That happens if we are unable to understand the revelation of the rapidly unfolding planetary events. And if we're not capable of radically reinventing the world and the time that remains. What does that thoughts stretch go mean for our activism. I have to think about the approach of indigenous activists saying that the apocalypse has already happened hundreds of years ago, and we're just realizing it right now. And how can we act with this idea of time that you stated so well. Yeah, thanks a lot. I don't know whether you can still see me, but I guess that's that's, I guess that's me. Well, you know, the last years I've been really preoccupied by a very underestimated philosopher from Germany, although I think he would consider himself an Austrian, because he lived in Vienna from 1950s until 1992. And this is Günther Anders, who, you know, might be more known as one of the former husbands of Hannah Arendt, of course. And Hannah Arendt was, of course, much more translated into English while Günther Anders was working in Hollywood studios and so on. And then he returned to Austria, which is perhaps a reason why he's not so known. I think that's how there is a beautiful story, a beautiful text by Günther Anders, which is called in German, the behind the two kunft. In English, it would be a future which we mourn, where he returns to the biblical myth of Noah and the big flood, you know, this proto-apocalyptic narrative and story, where Noah is going around and warning everyone that the flood already happened. And everyone thinks that Noah is crazy. And I think what we have to do today is precisely this gesture of what Günther Anders would call to become an apocalyptic in order to be proven wrong. And there, you know, in relation to time, what does it mean? It means a reinvention of the very concept of time. And behind the two kunft Anders talks about mourning the tomorrow's death. And I think what we have to do is precisely this, you know, we have to conceptualize the end, and the end actually already happened if we don't act today. And even if we act today, maybe it will end, you know, I think the crisis we are facing today is not like the crisis people faced in the 18th century. It's not like the crisis homo sapiens faced when he was, you know, painting in the caves and so on. It's a crisis which means not just extinction of humans. It's a crisis which means extinction of other species. It's a crisis which means extinction of the very concept of time, which we have today, because if there are no humans, where is time? It is us humans who give a meaning to time. And, you know, these last days, besides Günther Anders, I was also reading Pilić, Blanky and Panko physics and it's amazing that most of them agree on a concept of time which goes back to eternity, which goes back to the universe. This might sound a bit new age, a bit new age, but this is something that gives me hope today. You know, our problems are huge. But compared to the problems of previous generations or those who will not even be born, our problems are not so big. And even if mass extinction is, it already happened in a near future, we have to be happy to be alive and not to sink into hedonism, but to use our chance to reinvent ethics, to reinvent politics, to reinvent how we treat others, humans, other species and so on. I think that will be my message at the end, yeah. If I'm still here. And it was beautiful to talk to you Ulrich and to see you. And to your question, to your point, I completely agree. Now is the time also to reinvent the analog world. I mean, at the same time, not to escape the digital, because then they will take it over completely. We have to use the digital, but at the same time I think the physical attach, a kiss, a heart. This is something which might become very subversive. So, then let's do it. Let's go for the European Court of Justice and let's claim for the right of analog life. But the answer, the very short answer to Cassia is first stress score so much. Thank you for mentioning Wunder Anders. I happen to have been reading the same essay, and I just bought the Illish book. So I'm totally into the same things. So we will have to have a new conversation. We will have to have a new conversation and I can be very short, which is I'm doing a lot of yoga. And I'm going into the mystic literature like Jacob Böhme and Spinoza and these things. And what Sretko says for me, it's a truth. The instant is the eternity and eternity is the instant. The beginning is the end and the end is the beginning. There is no division and everything is one. And if you go down this more or less spiritual sort of perception of time, there is no time. So we are always one and we are always here and that is what gives me hope. And so, let's just go on. Thank you very much. So, yeah, regarding the analog situation tomorrow and the galettes blocking in the Rheinland for climate justice so everybody in Germany, think about that. And in one week, you're in Rheinland. Okay, block with us. In one week, the next episode will take place on the 1st of October at 8pm for everybody. And it will be titled our human rights are on fire towards a humane migration policy, and our guests will be musi serai and Muhammad al-Kashef. We're working with Watch the Met Alarm phone and Zebrücke on this episode. And I thank you all for tuning in. And thank you, Sretko. Thank you, Erika. I learned a lot and have a nice evening everybody. Wonderful discussion. Thanks to all. Thanks a lot. And thanks for doing the School of Resistance, a very inspiring project. Thanks, Kasia. And thanks, Ulbica. See you in the analog. Thanks. Thank you.