Five years after the pandemic, during which I revived this on-and-off personal blog, I intend to reinvent it as a space for analysis and reflections on global issues. Why? Mostly in the hope that, through reflection, I can resolve my own contradictions and conflicts. Also, to be read by people who, like me, are struggling to understand. My hope is that this will contribute to a wider discussion and debate, particularly among those on the left of the political spectrum.
I will offer no certainties. Moreover, I will challenge other people’s (and my own) certainties and fetishes. But I am also averse to dispassionate or neutral analysis. I will often try to detach myself to see things from different perspectives, but my optics are shaped by my history. Moreover, I believe in a free and equal society, and I consider fascism in its various forms an existential threat, as are climate change and the carving up of the world into spheres of influence or plunder.
This blog is, of course, triggered by the chaos unleashed by Trump’s election, which has cast a dark shadow not just on the USA—where democratic liberties, including the right to protest, are under threat—but also on the rest of the world, particularly Europe, Ukraine, and Palestine.
There are surely parallels between what happened five years ago and what is happening now. Both events were triggered by unprecedented developments that took time to fathom and that altered our actions and daily lives. Obviously, I am not a neutral observer—I come with baggage: that of a radical democrat and a European and global citizen. So, although I am Maltese and understand the reality I live in, I also view the world from an internationalist angle. And while I do not value European lives more than others, I gravitate toward an idea of ‘Europe’—an imagined community defined by a commitment to democratic values, albeit one to which I am both attached and critical. The best representation of this imagined community is the Manifesto di Ventotene, written during the Second World War by Altiero Spinelli and Ernesto Rossi. There is, however, a growing gap between the imagined community and the real one. Yet necessity can be the mother of invention, and a phoenix may well rise from the ashes and hubris of these times.
I am also generally averse to militarism and war-mongering. But I come from a political culture that reveres the World War II partisans who stood boldly and said: No Pasarán. To be in a position to do this, one must have the ability to hit back and march forward. My reflections will be full of doubts and uncertainties, along with the realization that any solution is temporary and imperfect. Even more so, they will begin with the recognition that all global state actors are flawed and potential villains. There are no knights in shining armour—only actors shaped by electorates in an age of misinformation produced on an industrial scale. They reflect the conflicting pressures of dominant elites, but also the influence of civil society and democratic struggles. While many imperfections can be tolerated in different circumstances, there are existential threats and viruses against which we need antibodies. This is a small contribution to collective sanity; which is the greatest antibody against the internal and external threats which are consuming us.
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