Re: <nettime> Bifo: Democracy is not possible in Europe & Reply by Varou

Moving and powerful text of Bifo, even though Yanis Varoufakis is right:

"renouncing Europe but not Italy, France, Greece, Germany, Britain etc.
only plays into the hands of those propagating the fantasy of returning
to the bosom of our benevolent nation-states"

the question is: how to refuse simultaneously the authoritarian Euroland and any sort of nationalism? The only answer is: with a new form of internationalism. On which basis? The fact that a human (I continue here another nettime conversation) is always more than a mere human, that a local place is fortunately more than itself, that a political fight contains an "ideological" surplus that connects it to other places, etc. We need a narrative able to give a face to this surplus, this "more than", and we also - more than anything else - need a people of tellers able to produce this Great Narrative.

Long life to the outernational to come!

Frédéric

2017-07-11 12:17 GMT+02:00 nettime's sinking ship <nettime@kein.org>:

https://www.opendemocracy.net/can-europe-make-it/yanis-varoufakis-franco-berardi/resignation-letter-from-franco-bifo-berardi-to-ya

Dear friends and comrades of the Democracy in Europe Movement 25,

Dear friends and comrades of the Democracy in Europe Movement 25,

After the shameful decisions of the Paris meeting of Minniti Collomb
de Maziere it’s time to understand that there is something flawed in our
project of re-establishing democracy in Europe: this possibility does
not exist. Democratic Europe is an oxymoron, as Europe is the heart of
financial dictatorship in the world. Peaceful Europe is an oxymoron, as
Europe is the core of war, racism and aggressiveness. We have trusted
that Europe could overcome its history of violence, but now it's time to
acknowledge the truth: Europe is nothing but nationalism colonialism
capitalism and fascism.

During the Second World War not many protested against deportation,
segregation, tortures and extermination of Jews, Roma, communist
militants and homosexuals. People had no information about the
extermination. Now we are daily acquainted about what is happening all
around the Mediterranean basin, we know how deadly is the effect of the
European neglect and of the refusal to take responsibility for the
migration wave that is a direct result of the wars provoked by two
centuries of colonialism.

The Archipelago of infamy is spreading all around the Mediterranean Sea.

Europeans are building concentration camps on their own territory,
and they pay their Gauleiter of Turkey Libya Egypt and Israeli to do the
dirty job on the coast of the Mediterranean sea where salted water has
replaced ZyklonB.

To stop the migratory Euro-Nazism is going to build enormous
extermination camps. The non governmental organisation, guilty of
rescuing people from the sea will be contained, downsized, criminalised,
repressed.

The externalisation of the European borders means extermination.
Extermination is the word that defines the historical mission of Europe.
Nazism is the only political form that corresponds to the soul of the
European people.

In the last twenty-five years (since when, in February 1991, a ship
loaded with 26,000 Albanians entered the port of Brindisi) we have known
that the great migration had began. Two paths were possible at that point.

Opening its borders, starting a global distribution of resources,
investing its wealth in a long lasting process of reception and
integration of young people coming massively from the sea. This was the
first path.

The second was to reject, to dissuade, to make almost impossible the
easy journey from Northern Africa to the coasts of Spain Italy and Greece.

Europeans have chosen the second way, and they are daily drowning
uncountable children and women and men.

Auschwitz on the beach.

With the exception of a minority of doctors, voluntary workers,
activists and fishers who now are accused of being the abetters of
illegal migrants, the majority of the European population are refusing
to deal with their own historical responsibility.

Therefore I declare that I’m not European anymore, and I declare
that I have never been European.

We have naively expected that the alliance of the British murderers
the French killers the Italian stranglers the German slaughterers and
the Spanish slayers could give birth to a democratic peaceful friendly
union. This pretence is over, and I’m sick of it.

Five centuries of colonialism, capitalism and nationalism have
turned Europeans into the enemy of the human kind. May they be cursed
forever.

May Europeans be swept away by the storm they have generated, by the
weapons they are building, by the fire they have ignited, by the hatred
they have cultivated.

Because of the aforementioned reasons I must renounce to the honour
of being part of the advisory board of DIEM25.

-------------

>From Yanis Varoufakis:

A few days ago, I received a letter from Franco ‘Bifo’ Berardi that
works like a punch-in-the-stomach type of wake-up call addressed to all
Europeans. To crown its tough message, Bifo concludes that his
conscience cannot fathom being a European any longer, given Europe’s
daily crimes against logic and humanity. Thus, Bifo concludes, he is
compelled also to resign from DiEM25’s Advisory Panel. Here are my
reasons why we, at DiEM25, refuse to accept his resignation.

Dear Franco ‘Bifo’ Berardi, dear friend, dear comrade,

Hannah Arendt once said that as long as one German died at Auschwitz
because of her or his opposition to Nazism, the Germans are not
responsible collectively for Nazism.

Your letter to us, renouncing the horrors perpetrated in Europe’s name
and resigning from our Democracy in Europe Movement (DiEM25) in protest,
offers Europeans the same kind of possibility of redemption that
Arendt’s ‘single-German-dying-in-Auschwitz’ offered the people of Germany.

You wrote a splendid and timely “J’ accuse” letter to Europeans as a
true, unreconstructed, fed-up, European. And in so doing you offered
Europe a small, tiny but important chance to save its soul.

It is very likely, as you fear, that Europe will throw that chance away;
that Europeans will fail to exploit the minuscule chance that you
offered. But it does not matter.

What matters is, first, that you, an authentic European, are putting
Europe in the dock while, at one and the same time, offering it a
precious chance of redemption. Only a true European radical, democrat
and humanist could do that.

Secondly, it matters that there are many others like you. And that
DiEM25, on whose Advisory Panel you have served, and from which you are
now resigning in a bid to shake up our collective and individual
consciences, is full of Europeans like you.

Europeans who, like you, are mad as hell with our Europe, as it is
and as it acts.
Europeans who, nevertheless, realise that to shed their ‘European’
label in disgust at what Europe is doing to its citizens and to the
citizens of the rest of the world requires also declaring that they are
no longer Italian, French, British, Greek, Italian… since it is the
nation-states of Europe that perpetrate, in the first instance, the
scandalous policies that you so powerfully, and rightly, denounce.
Europeans who, mad as we are at Europe’s crimes, understand that
renouncing Europe but not Italy, France, Greece, Germany, Britain etc.
only plays into the hands of those propagating the fantasy of returning
to the bosom of our benevolent nation-states; a fantasy that I know you
abhor and one that DiEM25 is railing against.
Europeans who, enraged by what is being perpetrated in their name,
are determined to demonstrate that the only way of being good citizens
of the world is to be IN and AGAINST this.

This is the reason we, at DiEM25, are proud of you and your “J’ accuse”
letter of resignation from our Advisory Panel.

And it is the reason why we do not accept it!

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