The demons of the 1920s

Let us imagine that the historical time has moved a little bit and that the European Union is only now planning to include the Central-European countries. How would that come out? Most probably, the European club would shelve the idea for some time. And it would have good reasons to do that.

The EU members would certainly be reluctant to grant club membership to, say, Slovakia, whose premiere governs together with radical nationalists and with a party that, back in the 1990s, inspired political scientist Fareed Zakaria to invent the concept of “illiberal democracy”; a country that is in a heated dispute with neighbouring Hungary over historical issues and over the Hungarian minority living on Slovak soil; a country whose prime minister uses strong language to attack free media.

The EU members would certainly be reluctant to grant club membership to, say, Poland, whose government calls Germany a “historical enemy”; to a Poland that graciously overlooks the anti-Semitism of the national Christian radio channel Rádio Maryja; to a Poland whose right-wing premiere (Jarosław Kaczyński) asserts that “people who after 1989 hoarded riches of unknown origin are the obstacle of freedom”, and accuses internationally respected democrats and former dissidents, Adam Michnik and Bronisław Geremek,…