2024-02-11
ulrike fuss
book historian, process analyst and teacher // city co-lead of Volt Leuven, Belgium
I am nervous. To gain visibility I sent up to now articles to some of my LinkedIn connections. Some engaged in comments, other left the conversation inanimately. As of today, I will share my diary in the form of a newsletter, and hope you will subscribe. Never thought this would be so exciting.
2024-02-09
The climate becomes dense. Not the atmosphere in Volt or in my daily 'analog' experience, but the digital reality which is blowing up my mind. However, most likely not in the way the content creators intended. Last night was the famous Tucker Carlson interview with Putin.
I watched quite a bit of it without hearing anything that would not fit the narratives I had heard earlier. But I do not want to discuss Russian politics here.
I am much more worried to hear that there are European parliamentarians demanding to prohibit Carlson from entering Europe. There is a man doing nothing more than his job. Are we back in a time when the people in power are so afraid of words that they have to prosecute people for speaking up? While we have, on the one hand, protesters against suboptimal politics as a consequence of European legislation (the farmers), we see the masses marching in Germany to protest against the opposition.
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I am an anti-fascist based on the definition which was valid between 1945 and 1990. And I am convinced that democracy is the best form of government we have ever established.
A few days ago, I ordered the European election of the AfD (the German right-wing). The server where you could download it gave an error starting with 'forbidden' for more than two weeks. (You may wonder why.)
During our street action, I got confronted with the question of what our position is with regards to AfD or the Vlaams Belang. Volt keeps its distance from the right-wing. I can state that without any hesitation. The majority of us opposes any right wing parties. On the other hand, I am certain that quite a few of the Volters I met did never thoroughly study the arguments of 'the right' or could give a better reason than 'because they are Nazis'. I will invest a weekend reading their programs to find out more. It might be worth the time if we can convince people that we are the better alternative if they do not like the parties in the current political circus.
Personally, I agree with the statement that building a wall does not solve any problems but doesn't do more than shifting the focus away from the core issue. For me, it is scary when any politician has to fear for his life while the mob is chanting 'Kill the ...'. You may insert whatever political party replacing the three dots. THAT is for me a face of fascism I will never tolerate.