The D-Word: Perspectives on Democracy in Tumultuous Times

[Music]

Welcome to today's book launch of The D-Word Perspectives on Democracy in

Demultious Times here at the recent Globe in Leipzig. So I'm

Constanze Blum. I'm a postdoctoral researcher at the

Institute Social Cohesion here and very happy to be moderating the

session today. Now today's event is held in the context

of the Drogfrisch series, so freshly printed, which was

founded in 2012 as a cooperation between the European

Network in Universal and Global History and the Leipzig

recent Globe. And the series offers a forum

for academic authors and for readers to to meet and to discuss current

contributions to regional transnational studies and

of course global history. Now today's launch of the D-Word

recently published with Nelson Mandela University Press

is, yeah, I guess not only fitting perfectly into this format but

also extremely timely because it addresses the globally perceived malaise

or crisis of democracy. And I just want to

highlight this is not the first launch of this

book but the first here in Germany and as we discussed earlier in the

northern hemisphere and deliberately also in

Leipzig as of course the regional elections here in

Saxony and Thuringen and Brandenburg have shown quite drastically the

democratic backlash with the far-right AfD parties' electoral advances.

But today we want to shift the focus from the often dominant Western,

you know, European and U.S. narratives on this issue to perspectives from

what the book calls the margins. And we have a wonderful

panel with us today as you can see. We are very privileged

to have with us professor Christi van der Westhosen,

one of the editors of this volume, which she has put together in collaboration

with C.P. Oedube and Suletu Joulobe. And we also have with us two of the

contributing authors and we warmly welcome

professor Rashid Boutayeb who joins us today from Doha online. So thank you so

much for being with us. And we also welcome

Dr. Svetlusa Surova who came yesterday all the way from

Bratislava. So welcome as well. And thank you also of

course to professor Ulf Engel who is going to provide a commentary

following the presentations by the authors. And you'll get a more

detailed introduction for each speaker before their respective

input. But yeah, before we start also maybe a special welcome

to a new senior fellow here at our institute,

professor Cheryl Hendricks, the executive director of the Institute

of Justice and Reconciliation in South Africa who's

recently arrived to live session and will be with us for the next

three months. So welcome and thank you so much

for joining the sessions and just arriving

in time. We'd also like to welcome Dr. El-Hassim Wan.

Yeah, former special representative of the UN

secretary general and the head of the UN peacekeeping mission in Mali amongst

you know a lot of other positions. So he'll be with us

here at the institute as well for the month of October if I'm correct. So

warm welcome as well to you. But yeah now without further ado

I'd like to give the floor to professor Christy who will

give us an overview of this exciting publication project and we then hear by

the contributing authors on their specific

chapters before the floor is given to the discussant and

then we open up to debate of course to the audience online and here. So

professor Christiana Westhausen is of course very well known here

in Leipzig. She was a visiting professor at this very institute in 2022

and is a member of our scientific advisory council.

She's an associate professor at the center for the advancement of

non-racialism and democracy at Nelson Mandela University in South

Africa and yeah as a transdisciplinary scholar

interested in identity difference ideology and democracy and with a

specific focus on post-colonial and post-apartheid approaches

she has published widely both academically and and popularly.

You know apart from the D work her scholarly books include

for example as a co-editor as well the Routledge International Handbook of

Critical Studies in Whiteness published in 2022 where we

had a similar launch here some time ago just to name one of her

many publications. So Christy it's so great to have you

and the floor is yours. Thank you so much

Constanze and thank you to colleagues here at the

Research Center Global Dynamics and particularly to

Prof Ulf Engel for

succumbing to my insistence that I that I launched the D word here. I'm

very appreciative of this opportunity to present this

work to colleagues here at this university.

I really enjoyed my time here previously and it's very wonderful to be to be back

in the city and also at quite an illustrious

moment as I understand we're celebrating 35 years

of the demonstrations on the Augustus Platz

that led to the the fall of the Berlin Wall.

So quite an illustrious moment to be with with you today.

Thank you for for joining us. So we know that this year

is also just in terms of the very recent history of democracy as

because we have to remind ourselves this is actually quite a young phenomenon

historically speaking the idea of democracy

and we're in well more than halfway through

a major watershed year one could say for democracy

given that something like half of the world's population actually went to the

ballot box this year. You had your elections here in

Germany, in South Africa we had very important

elections marking our 30 years of democracy

but many other countries as well and some of them

actually delivering unexpected results like India for example where Modi

actually came back with a reduced majority even though he was

hoping on the exact opposite. Britain of course with with quite an

interesting well the strengthening of of of the

Labour Party but if you actually drill down into the

numbers actually quite a thin majority for for Labour and so forth and of course

I think whether we like it or not everybody's got their eyes also on the

United States and and very

worried and and also I think generally nervous to see what will

happen there in November. So a very important year for us

as human beings on the globe.

So in a sense while we have struggles we've had

struggles to deepen democracy over the past many many decades

and to make democracy more and more inclusive we are

definitely also battling the worldwide rise of

authoritarian forces that Costanzo also just alluded to.

So we previously launched this book in South Africa

we've tried to showcase all of the

authors chapters that's why I'm very happy to

have Svetluza here today to speak to her chapter and then Rashid

online and I'm not going to run through the

previous launches but we had three launches in South Africa where we

basically managed to to get most of our authors to to explain more

about their chapters.

The idea for the book comes out of an international interdisciplinary

conference that we held in in 2021 with the title the state we're in

democracies fractures fixes and futures and out of that

came this book and and very much it's a very much an interdisciplinary

piece of work we're also spanning different

sectors in the sense of academia civil societies so people also

working as activists to advance democracy we wanted to

to bring one could say South Africans into conversation with

with both with scholars and activists and scholar activists

also from elsewhere in the globe and particularly

the European periphery particularly also reflecting on the Arab world which is

what Rashid is doing and and we've also got a chapter

that's titled queering democracy in Africa

and there we have four people who I would also describe as

scholar activists basically reflecting on advances but

also challenges in queering democracy on the African

continent. We also will be

let me just see what else I want to talk about specifically

so we've got four chapters looking at the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic

including Svetluzas because of course that's something

that we still have to reckon with there's a lot of work happening in this

regard but I would say in the global south less work

actually happening and this is this is an important area to fully understand

the ramifications of the COVID-19 pandemic also politically

and then just to give you a sense of the book itself

it's divided into four sections got a section on democracy and the law

practices of democracy and the politics of identities

democracy political culture and the economy and then we end off with a

section titled democratic futures

and in our opening chapter that I've written with

as related Jollobi and Sapiwe Dubé we address the disillusionment

with democracy as already alluded to these are

dark times for democracy across the globe

and this is also what we try to capture with with our cover art

which is by South African artist Ricky Diallo

which for me captures the kind of ominous moment that we're in in

terms of of democratic futures we have seen a mass withdrawal of

voters from electoral processes in various

contexts we are seeing an opportunistic politics

of populism that's trying to capitalize on the

socioeconomic misery that's been caused by neoliberal

capitalism and and particularly to try and roll

back the advances that have been made with representative and accountable

democracy during the 20th century just to home

in on on South Africa we have

an Afrobarometer finding that's shown over over several years

how a growing majority of South Africans are willing to sacrifice

democratic gains and agree to an autocratic

government in exchange for law and order housing and jobs

now for a young democracy of of 30 years this is very very troubling we but we

also see this elsewhere in the globe as mentioned and

interestingly resonances have been found with Latin

America as well with their with the America's Barometer

actually finding similar results for for Latin Americans for

example if we look at South Africa specifically

again voter turnout has dropped by almost 40 percent between our first

democratic election in 1994 and the democratic election

in in 2019 we have something like one in three

eligible voters declining to vote in the 2021 local government election

if we look at our election this year we actually have

a turnout if we count eligible voters not only registered voters but eligible

voters our turnout dropped below 40 percent

so what we argue in the chapter is that the crisis of democracy

can be read as a cultural fallout from the economic devastation of neoliberal

globalization the we regard the crisis of democracy

particularly as a problem of the behavior of political elites we think

that sometimes in some analyses there's a

kind of a suggestion that in a sense people who don't who can't

grasp democracy properly are making

wrong decisions and voting for the for the wrong people but we

we in our in our chapter argue that you actually see political elites

driving a particular opportunistic politics

to um to it's also a politics of distraction

to actually throw people of course in terms of the real source of

of socioeconomic misery and um and to pin uh very popularly the

the the problem on on frequently on foreigners

and this is something that you actually see across the globe

um you see resonances of you know of course here

and on this continent but in south africa it's very noticeable

we struggling with the phenomenon of uh xenophobia doesn't actually capture it

with phenomenon of afrophobia of of

basically attacks and and and violence aimed at people from the rest of the

continent of of africa who've arrived in south africa so you

see these kinds of um you see very explicit discourses

actually pinning um the the problems of the moment onto

onto foreigners so you get this this very explicit process of

scapegoating so basically we end off with with an

argument by saying that that uh what needs to be

to be challenged and what needs to be critically interrogated

is how the current neoliberal economic system

has actually brought us to this moment with

uh precarization of of vast swaths of populations that have

been left over to to wallow in extreme socioeconomic

misery and um and that that is actually where

where the attention um should be um let me

uh i think i'll i'm going to end on that note not to take up too much time

and looking forward to to questions and i have to say i find it

schlep all the way from south africa some books

and and they are available i will hand i will pass over my author's discount

so they will be available at a very very decent

price of 16 euros so just to to mention if anybody wants to alleviate my load

you know but i don't have to you know anyway but thank you

all right uh thank you so much um christy for this

for this overview and for taking us through the different um section of the

book and you know appreciating how many different

regions um have kind of fed into into um this edited volume so without um

further ado and of course before we get to questions um we will now move

directly to professor butaie who i will briefly introduce as well

so he is an assistant professor of social philosophy and ethics

at the doher institute for graduate studies he has previously worked as a

lecturer in philosophy anthropology and islamic studies at various universities

in germany and he has also authored numerous research papers on the ethics

and social philosophy of migration in particular

his most recent publications include christus oblige

and uh and modernity and counter vulnerability

so uh rashid uh you have the floor

good afternoon everyone and thank you for having me

first of all i would like to thank professor christy funderbest hoyzen

for her works engagement and solidarity and at the same time i apologize for not

being able to be there in light sick given what is

happening today the ongoing wars the alarming return of

the far right and various forms of tribalism that

besiege democracy from all sides including

the neoliberal one the german concept of guilt democracy

should democracy seems to be of great importance

and not only for the torturous of the past

and their victims surely it is impossible to imagine

a critical thought today that does not consider the forms of manipulation of

historical memory even within a country like germany

whose democracy is inconceivable as hyper mass

explains without this critical relationship with the past

what relationship should we build with the past

how is this past been used and misused politically

why is a democratic transition without a cultural transition

doomed to fail these are some of the questions

that have preoccupied me in my text undoubtedly the past and its cultural

and religious heritage still play a significant role in arab

and islamic politics today a quick look at the middle east and

north african political discourse reveals the negative presence of

religion in politics this uses contrast modernities

epistemological political and human rights achievements

authoritarianism in the region emphasizes particularity

over universal values to consolidate its powers

it realizes itself also as a cultural hegemony

that defends a ridiculous doctrine of religious

and cultural heritage therefore confronting authoritarianism

also requires the construction of a democratic counter culture

with a democratic relationship to religion

let's not forget that in the arab context the three manifestation of

politics represented by authoritarianism salafism

and sectarianism share an ideological interpretation

or an imagined past which defends a closed identity

and is also responsible for the failure of the modernization project

in these region the historical experience of germany and the experience

of a post-eruic policy is of great importance for the arab present

this is precisely what i have chosen to illustrate

using a philosophical political reading of german

and arab stamps he who wants to save his people

can only think heroically it says the slogan of a nazi stamp

the era of heroism ended with the construction of a democratic system in

germany after the second world war but it will

continue elsewhere and where heroism and glory are absent

from reality they will be sought in the past a real or

imagined one and among the dead this is depicted in many postage stamps

from egypt syria jordan and iraq for example celebrate

saladin who liberated jerusalem from the

crusaders indeed we can understand the past as a

weapon of the struggle against colonialism as nelson mandela

did still simultaneously mandela translates

it into the language of modernity law

as the south african sociologist prevon guini expresses it

the struggle mattered him and made him a man with

and not for tradition i would not have thought of writing this

book chapter if not for the small gift i received

from marcus knayer a german theologian and philosopher who

during a scientific trip to tunisia shortly after the tunisian revolution

will acquire a new tunisian stamp alien in every way to its arab context

that shows boazizi the street vendor and his cart

with a caption describing him as the martyr of the tunisian revolution

it was the first time i had seen a face other than

that of kings and presidents on an arab postage stamp

the well-known moroccan historian and tinka abdallah arwi

writes in his book on the concept of the state in the arab context

we discover state before discovering freedom

what needs to be aided to larvis wars is that the state is detached

from the people's destiny and may engage in prolonged and destructive wars

without consulting the people's opinion it is a separatist state because it is

an unfinished one in the language of the tunisian scholar

ali misrani it advocates a modernization that is against modernity

and its political and human rights values and does not

hesitate to falsify heritage and run it in the

ideological battles of the present thanks for your attention

all right thank you so much um uh rasheed um

and uh yeah we're very good in time i realize

so i'm very happy uh that uh to now give the floor to dr sweat loser surova

and uh we just briefly um present her she's the president and

senior researcher at the minority issues research institute headquartered in

bratislava in slovakia and as a senior researcher she investigates minority

policies in serbia and slovakia diasporic policies

and collective identities slovak minority in in serbia she's also

working on projects examining the impact of

covet 19 measures on human and minority rights in slovakia and the political

participation of minorities in serbia has been widely

published in this regard and dr is also an

expert member of the group of friends of minorities in the national council of

slovak republic which has you know prepared

expert analyses of approximately i think 70

laws that directly or indirectly concern minorities

so uh the floor is yours thank you hello to everyone uh let me

first just say that i'm very honored and happy to be here today with

all of you special thanks to professor when there

was reason and to the organizers of this event

in the chapter for this book the divert i have analyzed the official acts of

regional offices of public health during the first and second wave of

covid 19 pandemic in slovakia that especially targeted

marginalized roma communities and the reason why i did this because

slovakia has deployed heavily securitized responses towards these

communities during the first wave of covid 19 pandemic that resulted in the

so-called militarized quarantines of six marginalized roma communities

and during the second wave slovakia was one of a few if not the only EU member

state that continued with these kind of policies

and was closing houses apartment buildings streets and entire settlements

again so this was the puzzle that motivated me to do this study

i tried to collect all the official documents

uh that that ordered measures for marginalized roma communities and i have

collected 58 acts and this is a multi-case study so

each of these act i was treating as separate research cases so i have 58

research cases one for the first wave 57 for the second wave

um and i approached this topic from the political science

and rights-based perspective and i deployed qualitative research

design so in the study i was looking who ordered this measure

which actor what kind of measure was was ordered what was the nature of the

measure based on what kind of legal grounds it

was ordered and for what reasons and since these measures not that only

limited fundamental rights and freedoms of these people

they also violated them i scrutinized all these measures in terms of legality

proportionality and its duration their duration and

again racio behind this was that the legality and proportionality are the

very important elements of the rule of law and also

they can be very useful analytical tools to analyze

if the measures uh adopted during the crisis such as pandemic was were in

accordance with constitution and parliamentary law so

i i created database collected i changed all my research questions

i operationalized them into the indicators i collected data for

and the the result of my analysis um are that in the first way with one act

regional hygienist ordered for bait contact with the

more than 6 000 people live in living in six

roma settlements with the rest of the population

and of course my analysis showed that yes regional hygienists can

adopt this kind of measure but not during the public health threat of the

second degree and during the state of emergency

which was at in place at that time the public health threat of second degree

means that you need to take a special procedure based on a different

law that the this regional hygienist was acting

so because the right

regional hygienist exceeded its scope of competence

the measure was illegal and when it's something illegal then you don't do

other proportionality and other review and in the

second way of all analyzed 57 cases they had the same legal basis they were

basically copy paste just concerning different

roma communities and here in the second way

what has happened that all the measures in the first way

were unlawful and how the legislators dealt with that so instead of pointing

that executive cannot act like this limiting

fundamental rights they exceeded the powers

for ministry of health public health authority and regional

offices of public health but the constitutional court

said no this is not a way to do it you can't do it like that

revoke some provisions and even specifically said that

executive cannot adopt by subordinate legislation the the

norms that would set up the boundaries of limitation of

fundamental rights in other words they said that executive cannot limit human

rights because this power belongs on only to

the legislators but the damage was already done towards

the marginalized roma communities because the regional

hygienists were closing them as on the treadmill

and beside all of this they all these measures

did not included the termination date so they were just broad and then

at the end they were all revoked by arbitrary decisions of the

hygienist without saying what has changed in epidemic

situation in practice so

i don't know yes i have still five minutes but so the conclusions were

that in the first way the measure lacked legal basis the actor

who adopted did not follow procedure it was

illegal unconstitutional more than 6 000 people

had their rights violated in the second way

uh 57 measures again lacked legal basis actually what they did they said that

they act upon the law and protection of public health but

they ordered something else they ordered municipalities and cities

to control if these people adhere to the quarantine measures

ordered isolation at home but by based on the law they did not

have this competence to entrust these actors

so again the measure and and the execution of the measure was

illegal and more than 43 up till from 40 to 43 000 people

were affected with this measure and again illegally

so um yes quarantine is a standard measure for the protection of the

public health but it cannot be adopted without any constraints

it always has to be legal proportionate limited in duration

and also it has to be adopted in an open and transparent way which did not happen

in this case they did not have any data i even asked

all these regional hygienists i'm writing now article about that

and they did not have a data for that and did just

they it was based on the allegedly not adherence to the uh pandemic measures

of of these people

belonging to these communities so

besides all of this uh slovakia as eu member state of course has a

discrete competence in the protection of public health but

it has also other obligations that derive from the international law

concerning human and minority rights and most restrictive measures could not be

discriminatory or disproportionate to minorities which in this

case were so slovakia failed to um

to recognize the euro guaranteed rights for the most vulnerable uh people

and this has of course uh a huge impact for democracy human and

minority rights in slovakia thank you all right thank you so much

uh sweat loser and i think uh yeah this case shows

democratic backlash um it's not only against institutions but in particular

also against minority uh rights right and that there's new

administrative practices um under legal disguise that uh that

come up um i'd now uh like to give the floor to

um professor olf engel to provide reflections

comments and to maybe start our discussion off also with some

open questions um let me briefly introduce him olf engel is a professor

for politics in africa at the institute of african

studies in leipzig he is a visiting professor at the

institute for peace and security studies at adis ababa university in ethiopia

and a professor extraordinary at the institute for political science at

stellenbosch university in south africa and he's currently working on

the african union and challenges in the area of peace and security

as well as on theoretical perspectives for research on regional organizations

and regionalism in the global south olf you have the floor

thank you for your kind introduction and thank you for the great papers and

the really interesting book many chapters i truly enjoyed

reading um being a german social scientist i start off with two

slides two figures oh man if you please

give me the first one this is taken from the most recent bertelsmann

transformation index that looks into um a certain notion of liberal democracy

in uh almost 120 countries worldwide on a scale from one to ten um it

simply shows that the number of free and fair elections

association of assembly rights freedom of expression separation of power and

civil rights declined in the last um

well almost 20 years no 18 years and this is in line with findings that

you may have heard of larry diamond editor of the

journal of democracy who in 2008 stated that we are in a democratic recession

this is giving similar data for the african continent looking at a longer

timeline 1972 to 2023 freedom house index data

which has the advantage of running longer timelines

there are some mythological issues or ideological even

what it shows looking at

political rights and civil liberties is that

with the democratic transition the change in 1989 1990

we saw an improvement of all these data which is kind of

reflecting on baskets of sub-data on a scale from

one to seven and you can see on the left hand side that the whole

debate when it comes to africa still is below

the level of four which would qualify as a

partly free state or whatever and that we

importantly since 2006 have seen again a decline the recession

in the quality of data on democracy in um african countries so

as you can see from that democracies are of course difficult

to compare and the cases discussed in this volume

are really quite unique of course there are unfortunately rather successful

attempts by both liberals and authoritarian nationalists alike

to reduce democracy to liberal democracy you mentioned that at the beginning this

volume i think stands out because it's not the usual northern

political science talk about democracy or the lack thereof

it brings together different perspectives from mainly south africa

but also uganda slovakia and the arab world as we've heard

so what are the reasons for the global crisis of legitimacy provided in this

volume are there any commonalities and

i mean you already used that quote but i will repeat it

in the introduction christie and colleagues argue that i quote

opportunistic politics of populism capitalized on the socio-economic misery

caused by neoliberal capitalism if democracy does not deliver what it

promises to people support support for democracy dwindles

um however to me some conceptual questions still

need further debate and i'm just putting that up so that we can enter a debate

after first in global studies

the varieties of capitalism is a concept acknowledged long time ago

related to heil broner 2008 how does that relate

to a seemingly homogeneous understanding of neo

liberalism employed in in this book by capitalist neoliberalism certainly if

you think of it uh fetcher's neoliberalism in the early

1980s is quite different from neoliberalism

employed by the african national congress in the early 1990s

or is different from um what the german free democrats

propagate today as neoliberalism so that's an issue of

facing something becoming homogeneous to mine like secondly the question

becomes particularly important uh when considering the distorted

function of economies in parts of the global south

numerous examples of state capture patronage

clientelism are cited in this volume and this is little to do with neoliberalism

as the major there's a different problem behind it and you

are already in the role of elites in that thirdly the concept of the

developmental state is proposed by isaac kambouli one of the

contributors to this volume raises the interesting question of how

the past experience of building developmental states at least in africa

which all have been quite authoritarian fits with the quest for inclusive

democracy so i see a tension between for a developmental state and the practices

in the past of those states think of ethiopia run

and others finally the demos needs to be specified more precisely

that remain outside the institutions what exactly is the will of the people

and how can this be addressed by research strategies beyond activist

arguments so luza's chapter is a good example of

how this can be discussed but we still lack a better understanding

of for instance why the majority of south african voters

are did not take part in the may 24 general elections

20 62 percent who were eligible did not take part and this is a huge

decline if compared to the first elections 1994

and 1998 however over and above the volume is posing a

number of very pertinent questions which are addressed from different angles

it would be worthwhile to expand the inquiry beyond the country case studies

and empirically research similar or related questions in other african

countries in latin america and southeast asia

to name but a few global regions where democracy

is in retreat too and sitting here in leipzig today

on 10th of october i suppose we have enough reason to ask ourselves

how is it that a growing majority of the people

wants to abolish democracy by democratic means thank you

all right thank you so much um i think this

gives us already a lot of uh points to to further discuss and with you know

before um uh we open this discussion up uh to the

audience maybe um we give the panelists

a chance to uh to address some of the uh the comments um by olf angle and

is there anyone who would would like to start maybe a hand

tour to christy and then sweat loose and rashid can

can join in i trust olf to to um come with all the hard questions thank

you so much um

so um yeah i do think that neoliberalism definitely

uh like every you know like other ideological phenomena

um is a historically contingent phenomenon

and therefore it um it's not always the same in in all places and at all times

so the but we broadly um understanding as

neoliberalism here is uh well some you know in my other

writing i use a lot of wendy brown's understanding of

of like a more expansive understanding of neoliberalism as a

as a rationality but if you if you drill it down to

to economic policy then for me it refers to deregulation

liberalization informalization and so forth

um and the so the the the slimming down of of the state's uh

welfare functionalities the the boosting of of its security

functionalities and so forth the the idea of the state

as as becoming its primary function is actually to

protect um uh capital and and profit making

basically but of course you know within that very broad

sketch you will have different varieties and different

extents to which countries actually um employ uh neoliberalism and um in south

africa we have seen that the anc has

brought in quite a strong social democratic

dimension in the form of the biggest social security network on the african

continent with something like i think the last

time i looked it's for example we've got about

um i think it's almost half of our population now

are able to access some kind of social security support

so that is that is significant um and that's of course to try and ameliorate

the impact of of neoliberal capitalism but we have all the you know we've got

the commodification of of water we've got um

various uh uh other um uh you know if you look at uh just

capital flows and how and and exchange control and

and those kinds of of phenomena that one you know the

the over reliance on um foreign investment

um the you know all of those kinds of features

we find in this in the south african example so

um so it's so i do i do think that the you probably won't find anywhere in the

world a pure neoliberal um

a purely neoliberal state i think if you find different inflections

and it depends also on the particular historical development of that of that

state in our country of course um we come from a

from a uh a particularly

extractive um capitalist past with with um with almost like a murderous

kind of capitalism if and and the and i'm not saying that

lightly um you know given that our economy to is

by and large based on on minerals and particularly

deep level gold mining and the number of of

of miners who are black men who have sacrificed their lives for the

economy of south africa um because of of the the dangers

associated with that kind of but at the same time not only the

dangers the fact that um that um

there was a chronic underpayment of people so in terms of remuneration not

being properly remunerated to the extent that um

mine workers were receiving less income in 1970

than they were receiving in 1920 so so there you can actually see how that

system that that we call racial capitalism how it actually worked as a

super extractive super exploitive exploitative um system with a very clear

racial inflection and out of and and so the shift in

neoliberalism actually already happens under the national party

um in the late 1970s and i write about that in

my first book white power but you know so so it takes

so i think that i'm mentioning this historical context because i think

neoliberalism will pan out differently depending on

on the historical context um um then in terms of the of state

capture yes in fact the

the beneficiaries and the and the and what shall we call them

not the creators but the you know the state captures

and generally um are quite outspoken against neoliberalism

but one could also say that they actually involve a faction of the ruling

party that is um really part of the african

national congress in south africa that's particularly

uh opposed to to a more neoliberal faction in the party so neoliberalism

still playing a role there um but but your state capture is using

kind of a revolutionary to reconstruct the position themselves against

neoliberal capitalism then uh just um azik kambula's chapter i take your

point around the developmentalism on the african

continent um certainly it has been associated with

authoritarianism and in fact um frequently was used as

as as the ruse for authoritarianism in a sense that

a centralized state um is is the only way

to to drive uh development and um so what isaac kambula is is trying to

say is is it possible for us to have a

developmental state but that's framed within our constitution

and and i think that the the link there is that our constitution is

unusual for the fact that it includes socioeconomic rights

and and so the way i'm understanding his argument and i don't want to put words

in his mouth is that is that he's he's saying is there a

possibility for us to actualize those socioeconomic rights

um in in such a way that we actually create a developmental state that is

still democratic so it is in the democratic futures

section of the book so it is um you know isaac uh sort of challenge

challenging us um to to sort of think further

and um and trying to open a conversation on that um then the the uncounted

in terms of who they are just briefly um so in in our chapter we do try to

explain this mass withdrawal from the electoral process by south africans

the way that we understanding it is that the

that there's been such a disillusionment with

the with holding politicians to account

through the usual process of of elections that people have now

found other um or are trying other methods and that's basically

kind of um how it's playing out is is violent protests at community level

where south africa is a very protest intensive society some

um some say we are we've got more protests

than anywhere else in the world you know but you know we've got more of

everything than ever anywhere else in the world so that's why i don't

completely buy it but but one thing is true we are very protest intensive

and and i think the point is that people have decided to take it to

community level protests to make direct appeals

to um particularly counselors um and and um and then with the with the

hope that national level politicians will pay

attention and come and resolve the problems so we frequently actually have

that situation where a national level politician will go and visit

the specific community hear all about the grievances

promise x y and z and then nothing happens after that

and i think that's why we've also seen protests becoming more violent in an

attempt to to attract attention and and and have

some kind of impact in terms of change um but uh it it

that that shows you the level of disillusionment where where people feel

you know through a direct appeal you know i'd rather try and launch a direct

appeal through violence at community level and

and and hoping to to achieve some kind of

outcome and and these are because these protests are usually about

issues around socioeconomic um uh development

you know so so just to to answer i've made a little bit of a dent in in your

very hard questions thanks yeah thank you so much chrissy um at this

point is there anything um rashid and sweat loser would like to

add from your maybe from your cases or

perspectives or shall we go yes rashid

yes

not directly

i mean uh concerning the problem of neoliberalism

and neoliberalism and democracy i think

it's interesting to uh take a look on the writings of

the german uh economic soci uh sociolog volvgangstrek

that especially his work buying time on the delayed crisis of the democratic

capitalism the processes of the

economization of democracy and the democratization of

economy and at the same time i want to mention also the work of uh

social uh social philosopher uh nancy freza

uh for example in his short short book the old is dying

and the new cannot be born uh she thematized the divorce

in a context like the u.s american one the divorce between the politics of

acknowledgement and the social justice for freza we cannot

we cannot or we cannot criticize for example

the pathology the democratic pathology of

or the populism as as a pathology of democracy

without addressing the problems of social inequalities

yeah professor elf you mentioned a few important points that i would

like to refer to my to my work and uh showcase

their shortcomings such as you mentioned inclusive democracy

uh all these things that i was talking about my research happened in a

institutionally inclusive context of eu member state in 21st century

uh i didn't want to be dramatic in the first

expose but now in the uh loose discussion i can uh

tell you how that happened the police with army with the guns

came to the roma settlements they taped it

and regarded for days and weeks and nobody could have come out and

they didn't care what happened inside they said they

had to bring these measures to protect those people but in my

previous study on securitization and this militarized quarantine i

claimed that they actually exposed them to coronavirus

so again this happened now in the you know in the country we with the

good rankings from uh freedom house when it comes to democracy so

uh but that leads me to another uh

thing that we have democracy in normal times and then we have a crisis

and it's very very very important to look how democracy functions during the

crisis and what we know from the past uh that during the crisis always those

most vulnerable suffer the most and

that's why i think as christy said in her

opening words that is important to to more to do more research

about a covid 19 pandemic and its implications for democracies

so and then yes about these inclusive democracies

i wanted to say about you said that i will paraphrase that when

politicians don't deliver what they promise is that

can you know create these illusions but my case also shows how politicians

how i even write that in my chapter how you

expect that the people will follow the rules if you as a state

authority

do not act upon it you know because state authorities they can act

only based on the constitution as regulated by laws

and then they have the laws that they actually

vote for in parliament and they don't act in accordance with this law so what

we can expect from the people how we can even say you know and there

was all kind of debate however during the pandemic everybody were

blaming those people you know they didn't want to

uh adhere to the measures and they were calling them nasty names and so on

and then we have one of the a hygienist or doctor

who was all the time in the media saying how we have to wear

uh you know protection and distance ourselves dancing on some party

you know not distancing at all so uh so and that brings me you mentioned

to the third point and then i wanted to make a reference the

demos yes who is demos what they want and so on but we have to know that there

is like a people and there is like a people and in this case we see

that there is like a also second class citizens because roma were

treated like a second class citizens not during the crisis all the time but

this this uh this is the extreme to what this kind of

doing business as usual what can actually uh

to what kind of and can lead so um during the crisis or during the normal

times we always have to stick to the rules and always

the the rights of people have to uh be respected

and let me see that that that is all i wanted to say

thank you all right thank you so much um then it's time now to open up uh the

discussion um so please uh free free

to share your comments uh questions of course online as well um you can use

the chat function um and uh yeah i think we have a microphone

i already see one hand up that's very good and please uh briefly introduce

yourself with named institution the question so we have a first question

here

it's for the online guests as well so i'm joshua herbert

i'm a student at university at leipzig i've just started a masters in european

studies um from the uk as well um so i have a

couple of questions but the first most pressing one uh i want to sort of

aim towards under west houston um i agree with a lot

of your sentiment on the theories about um neoliberalism being a

root cause of sort of socioeconomic driving factor that sort of democratic

recession processions that we're seeing for

the best part of a couple of decades now i would say um

but it does seem as well at the same time while i think this is

not a particularly controversial opinion and you hear it sort of quite

widely in academic uh sort of circles it seems that time and time again up

until very recently now the political quote-unquote lessons that

are being learned from elections is almost the exact opposite that

sort of centrist neoliberal policies and politicians

are going to be the saviors of this sort of uh

lurch to the far right um i think that we see this in

a lot of countries the uk in particular uh sort of

labor going far more towards the sort of new labor

principles of the late 90s and sort of this idea that

we don't want extremists on either side so that wouldn't indicate anything

extremely towards the left so it's sensible centrism that will save the day

um and and even more poignantly i think in the french elections where

the coalition of the left um was the sort of driving factor that stopped

uh the pens party and now i think in the last month or so we've seen the

appointment of michelle banier as the new prime minister

who is far more centrist than anyone from that coalition of parties that were

actually successfully democratic um democratic so it just seems that time

and time again we're seeing in the sort of

big players of the european union or or the uk no longer in the european union

um that it seems to be the opposite lessons

that being learned that to combat extremist of the far right we

need much more solid center ground and that would be more business as

usual more neoliberalist policies that has i seem to be sort of understanding

what you're saying actually been the root cause of this

stuff for a long period of time so how do we combat that

being the lesson that is learned by politicians and

and political systems

great thank you so much can we take some more questions is that fine

can we accumulate some questions christie sure

oh yes please sure

thank you um to christie and the other authors of the book

um i haven't read the book we're just listening

and i also had the challenge of simply placing the problem

um on the shoulder of neoliberalism it seems to me that neoliberalism

and democracy in africa almost go hand in hand

in terms of the emergence that they are intrinsically linked there

and i'm wondering uh if the book pays sufficient attention to the forms of

democracy i it's a particular form of democracy that also comes

into africa the procedural form rather than substantive democracy

and how to unpack that a little bit more yes political elites um but

more and more i'm beginning to think around political culture

we have neglected um to look at political culture for various reasons in

the in the 50s and 60s um this was a particular focus of

modernization theory and it didn't sit well with us but i'm

wondering if there isn't something there that we need to go and uncover again

and then just in terms of south africa and the drop in voter turnout

um there's definitely a lack of trust and afrobarometer also shows this

trust deficits in uh political parties and institutions themselves

um and the isc we must remember was also under attack just before those

elections as well the credibility of those elections

were also at stake and then i'm playing around with this

notion of democracy as a conflict resolution mechanism

um and if it's failing um what does that say

about conflict resolution as a whole and the mechanisms that we need to

think about um so i guess i'm asking us to

unpack not just the economic systems as a challenge but

to to go to the political system as well and

construct that too

thank you very much cheryl any other questions at this point

and then um maybe let me add one um also that might be interesting

uh to hear from um from swed loser and rashid and you know

when you were exchanging with other chapter authors on different regions

different kind of national contexts um did you come across any cases of where

you felt oh this is quite similar or there's even some type of maybe

learning process between either pro or anti-democratic forces that are ongoing

between different regions between different of uh different of

the cases that you are that we're looking at um like maybe

mimicking of rhetoric or even like more substantial kind of exchanges

um so if there's anything um in your work that you came across

when you were doing your workshop or you know when you were engaging as chapter

authors um that would be very interesting and

now i hand uh uh flow back to to our panelists um

anyone who would like to start i know most questions were going to direction

south africa so maybe we can start there um

okay thank you thanks for those questions um

so well i think that the fact that the political lessons are not landing with

our political elites um is to do with our power relations

uh have been organized actually very effectively by

neoliberalism over the past 40 odd years and you've you've seen um

because for me neoliberalism is actually a

fundamentally anti-democratic phenomenon

and um and i i it is it has um worked as a system to

roll back the advances that have been made but

through particularly through social democracy

and um and what's what's happened is you've had

a massive redistribution of wealth you know upward

you know up up the the pyramid um and we're all familiar with the one

percent phenomenon etc etc so you have a completely

skew newly skewed readers uh

not really a newly skewed distribution of wealth

with the over over concentration at the top of the pyramid

and uh and we have our political classes running

basically with the economic um classes on this so with with your super wealthy

and so forth and in that sense of our politics

has become very much infected um by uh by this this

neoliberal way of of of looking at the world

for me it's been a very effective system to undo the gains

um made uh in terms of of uh democracy and human rights uh in the

wake of the second world war that it's been extremely effective in

that into and to um take us back to to a situation of

elites that are that are beyond account you know who are

unaccountable who cannot be called to account

and um and where political elites are actually buffering economic elites

you know from from the great unwashed which

includes in the neoliberal system um the middle class because if we look at the

middle class the middle class actually shrinks under neoliberalism

people actually drop out of the middle class

and a new kind of underclass which is not so new anymore because it's been

going on for for a number of decades has been created

that's been called um variously the precariat

um but i think the the the term the precariat actually captures

um this situation of of informalization in fact um and i think that the left have

have not been able to actually meet the challenge of this because

if you and i'm just thinking in terms of of south africa's left

which is very much still married to ideas around

um marxism leninism and so forth and um but yeah we've got a capitalism now

that is actually moved to the point where the worker has become superfluous

the worker is as so the whole idea of a of an organized working class then that

must be the motor force that will now bring us to a socialist

nirvana that is you know that that working class

cannot cannot form because the the worker

has has has been done away with um and we've got in south africa so that's

why i think that the global north have have a lot to learn actually from

how capitalism has been happening our neoliberal capitalism has been

playing out on the periphery of the capitalist world order and um and

in south africa for example the fact that we've got

almost 50 of our population because we've got two definitions the one is a

narrow definition that doesn't count people that have

given up looking for work but if you count both people who are

still looking for work and people who've stopped

we've given up looking for work so then we're almost at the 50 percent

um unemployment rate so and and our so we talked about

structural unemployment so basically in our system you you

the worker has become superfluous you know so

um and i and and of course uh technological changes have have

accelerated this process and ai is now bringing us in into

into a whole new uh situation around actually understanding what is

the future of the worker um so um

so i think basically the yeah you've got an and you've got your

political class that is that is acting at the best of your

of your economic elites um if if we look at um

you know the the u.s system at the moment for example with

um on the one hand a venture capitalist you know as as deputy president or

vice vice presidential candidate you know running with with trump um

carmelo harris who's who's well known um to be to be close to very particular

sections of of of capital as well and so forth

and i think that um that politicians at this point in time are not

they're actually disregarding um the will of the people

um the idea of course that neoliberalism could be centrist

is for me um not correct because neoliberalism i see actually as a

right-wing phenomenon because it is fundamentally anti-democratic

um and it's it's fundamentally against the participation of

of of people um and um and it's uh it's it's very elitist

in its outlook so um but but you're right that

this is how you know this is how our political spectrum has become so skewed

that the neoliberal actors who frequently call themselves socialists

still which you know that's the ridiculousness of

where we are now um are uh yeah so these are neoliberal

actors who call themselves socialists who regard themselves as centrists

but in fact they are serving a right-wing ideology

um so these are the complications that that we are in

um so and sheryl thanks thanks for your question as well um and i think that

um certainly in in south africa there has been a a

neoliberalization of our democracy um through through a an emphasis on

proceduralism um but i i would argue that this

actually comes in a sense the the

there's a strong strand in the ruling party that is

that became enamored with neoliberalism but that that we are also and this is

now part of this contradictory ideological moment

who are also Leninists and and i think neoliberal technocracy

links quite nicely into um the Leninist idea of

of uh of a vanguard party and a you know a

group of select kailas who who you know knows

definitely better than we do and um and and we should still we should

you know just be quiet and you know bring out our vote every five years

but the rest of the time leave the complicated business of government over

to to the political class and that's that

but that was a kind of a line from the ANC almost from

the word go in the late 1990s already so there's been an active attempt at

the demobilization of of of people in south africa um which goes

quite against the kind of discourse that one

that people frequently think that the ANC is busy with which is about

power to the people and all of that but it but in fact

um what you actually see is a discourse of of demobilization

and um and then um interspersed with with you know selective mobilization so

when we need the people then you know then the masses

you almost now come and and do our bidding

basically so um but it's it's it's when the leaders

side it's now time for the masses to make you know some kind of well point on

behalf of the ruling party um so yeah let me stop at that point

and maybe allow some of our other panelists some some inputs as well

thanks sure thank you um Rashid do you wanna respond to some of

the questions concerning the similarities between

the different context i want especially to mention

the conflict between eros and demos in east europe as in the arab world

in east europe it express itself in populism

in a nationalist catholicism in xenophobia

etc and in the arab world as i mentioned it in a

persistent authoritarianism that's why i we have to defend

also outgoing of the social philosophy of the modernity

from Marx until Bourdieu and don't forget also Jean Dewi

the idea that democracy is not only is not only

a form of government but it is a way of life an art or a kind of

societal education or in the words of a german philosopher

Axel Honnett the art of democratic ethical life and

democratish zitlish kites yeah i think in the neoliberal context

we are dealing with a democracy from above

and it seems to collaborate with the

the neoliberal erosion of social institutions

well there were similarities to those chapters that were dealing with

democracy and the law and there was one chapter that dealt

with the one case that end up on constitutional court in

south africa for scrutinizing the

if the measures were the petitionist wanted to

constitutional court to scrutinize from the to defend democracy

that if these measures were democratic or not

and difference i have to say it's really nice to see Rashid like this

i have to say that my chapter was ridiculously long and thank you

christopher for approving that and really horrible to read i don't

recommend to nobody

and but i have to say that Rashid chapter i

had the opportunity to read at the workshop before the workshop and i have

to say that was another chapter it was a belletry it was

so nicely written that i was looking what is this

scientific work or which writer wrote this it was really really nicely written

thank you Rashid for that experience i should add that it was it's definitely

not a horrible chapter to read i mean we we did slim it down somewhat

like it you know but the thing is there was um

it's part partly to do with the fact that you've got a very solid

database um that's actually built up so so there were a lot a lot of

details um and but that to me also speaks to the

substance of of your chapter you know the fact that it's really a substantial

chapter built on on proper data that apparently various power brokers in

the slovakian society are trying to get their hands on this database so

yeah so it's quite a quite a solid piece of work yeah but

not to quote it just to throw it to the trash to

to remove it not that so how about it well because of

suppression more to do with suppression as i understand you know

yeah they want to read get rid of their evidence and if i can say now as a self

promotion something small thing i really wanted to do this as a

for for the future i wanted to collect and document

everything what has happened because i know that because these measures were

published on the internet site you know and

that can be all gone one day but and every nobody will know what has happened

because slovakia actually sold this as i said to professor elf before this

um event as a success story this is a success story of the

slovak MPs in european parliament selling to to their

colleagues so they showcased how you should actually treat rova

and uh and the difficulty why nobody really wants to

talk or to pick up on this topic is because

in the state also you said we have demos we have elites

i agree with christopher you said in your expose how

it's important to look at that but we have also so many different actors

and doing this research as a political political scientist i

i was really um surprised to to see how many actors

actually were participating in this illegal

discriminatory activities and what was the striking finding is that those

people who daily help those roma those in those communities

they were the executors they did not say no

they could have said no no they were arguing to me because before this

chapter i did also allied interviews with all

these people who were making decision about

and these measures and implementing them and evaluating them and they were

saying to me you know like if we don't do it

you know maybe somebody else will do it and they will be worse than us

but in you know what kind of argument is this

i know i'm into germany now i don't want to put the salt on the wounds

from the last century but uh you know so they were saying we are

humanitarians we bring human aid where is needed really

you know so uh but many many things on on this uh study i have also learned

and understood as a as a political scientist

and what is most important that how i got the data

nobody asked me that because of course they know but

but actually they were willing to share because they were willing even to speak

with me because they all wanted to persuade me how this was the right

decision and and even those regional hygienists

that i mentioned uh i spoke with them that they brought

this decision and the end of the interview was please

don't think that i'm a racist i'm not a racist you know but i was not

there as a as a psychologist i was there as a

researcher and i i was listening to everything but

you know they had a need to precede me that they are good good people

but not me i think they were proceeding more themselves so

so that was one side of the story and the other side of story i just shared

with because you are all colleagues studying

that you know uh is some people were sharing

because they were in a political rivalry with somebody else

even in the same government i got the data for the for the other research on

testing from the first wave so they said it's

a lot of positively in those six marginalized roma

communities six thousand people and they said everybody is positive we

had to close them they didn't want to say say the exact number and then i asked

from the ministry of defense and they sent my request to the army

and they sent me their database not the number

the database so i could see how they classify what what was important how

they organized and everything which was for me like wow

and of course there were very little cases

you know positive uh 38 if i remember or not from six thousand people but

many times when i ask uh it's like even that they were in the same government or

colleagues that they wanted to share you know just

to do the harm to the others or so so it was actually i get got a lot of data

and just to finish what what with this because this is

you know it was published but i i was trying last year hard to get some

response from the government previous and this new to to remedy these people

to apologize to them maybe even to bring a law

because there is a similar situation in past happened to roma

women they falsely sterilized them and now in slovakia they try to prepare

a law for that and this is on that i think

on the same level but this was not yet successful

but i i hope that maybe something will change and these people will see the

justice because 50 000 people almost for several weeks to be held their

hostages it's not not acceptable

yeah thank you so much sweat loser i think it's always very important to also

have a glimpse into these um these insights these um yeah

practical yeah practical elements of of of the research and the interactions

with the with the people on the ground um thank

you so much and of course if you wanna support the important

documentation of of cases like this it was mentioned already there's some

hard copies available that you can purchase after this event i

think with christie uh so don't forget about that but we

have time for a last quick round of questions in case there's

still anything on your minds yes i see one hand up here

hi um i'm anna i'm from uni leipzig i just start my master in global studies

and um i will try to understand my question because they're in portuguese

i'm from brazil and i was uh i was thinking

i have a question for one of each i hope it's okay

i would like to ask to christie um i know you were

more writing about south africa but i come from south america

and i think we have a very similar colonial background

uh and um so i would like to ask to you like

what is the challenge and the limits of democracy

when we are talking about the global south because

um is country are countries that came from a colonial

background and then at some point democracy

yeah so how we can um think and manage democracy

when we don't have the learning experience but we are

getting this from outside and i think this is a bit connected with the

question i want to do to hash it i'd really like it

um like to talk about what uses with it we do from the past when we rebuild

democracy all the time and um so i would like to ask you how we

can think uh democratic reference when they don't

exist in the country so for example uh in the case of brazil um we still learn

democracy from outside yeah european democracy u.s democracy

how we can think about democratic past when we don't

it doesn't exist yeah we have natives and then colonial times and then

poor said democracy that was not built with the people

so i don't know if you have an answer and i said i studied history and i don't

think i have an answer for this but i would like to see if you have uh

some ideas how we could think about it and to switzerland i really really like

the exposition about kovit um it was very uh interesting i also

studied a bit of kovit uh in brazil for some time

uh in the bachelor and i would like to ask you

if you found um what ways you found to think about the

democracy when we are looking to these uh groups that are marginalized or

not even considered part of the people when democracy are not working for them

and if you see this this eugenist policy

you can also see this in other groups from the society for example poor people

or immigrants or if this is not something that you

get through it yeah that's my question sorry it was too much

thank you so much uh that's great one question for panelists so

um that will also be kind of rounding up for the discussion so kind

of the last words and i guess we go in the same order christie um

okay thank you yeah thanks thanks for that question

uh i think in the south african case the struggle has always been for democracy

so the imagination uh the political

imagination has actually centered on on the idea of democracy and there's i

don't think that the sense is that democracy is an imposition from

outside um so um the a and c

that's now ruling with a in a coalition government with a reduced majority but

they rule for the past well between 1994 and 2024

and um they are the oldest liberation movement

on on the african continent and i would say very much that

the political imagination that they carried with them was was

centered on democracy what happened with them in exile of course is a whole

other very long conversation that we can't go into now

but um inside the country if you look at the anti-apartheid

uprisings and the anti-apartheid movement

it was very much again built around the democratic

imaginary and so so i think there was a real sense from

you know so so the sense is that democracy is something that's

that is that is sought and and and that can be created through practices

you know by south africans and um and uh you know as racine was saying

that's also how we're approaching it in in the book we're also approaching it

very much as a practice um but the the um

in most recent times because we've got a constitution that

that uh you know entrenches certain rights that

um you know has got certain principles that are

quite liberal democratic but then we've also got social democratic dimensions to

to the constitution so there has been an attempt um

uh to to suggest that the constitution is some

somehow a western import or a western imposition

but that is being very much contested because

um we've had um i think one of our foremost senior councils

who's also an author um tim beca and kuka toyb is his name

he represented south africa actually in the case at the

um uh the case on against israel um now recently um

and and he's written a book for example where he traces the

the beginnings of of of the constitution to black lawyers at the beginning of of

the 20th century so um so very so i think there's there's

quite an intense contestation at the moment

around just handing democracy on a platter to to the west and to say

that democracy is a western idea i think um in fact you know i um

i regard it as an insulting idea that um african people can't imagine democracy

and can't practice democracy and i don't know if Dimitri wants to say

something about the special edition of comparative

that's just come out but um but but the you know that democratic

imaginary that you actually find in other post

independence african states as well and then what happens with the political

elites that's a different question but but i think that there's a disjunction

between the position of the political elites

and and how people understood this um moment this emergence into

independence and the kinds of of democratic rights

that they wanted to claim for themselves and then you've you've got a something

else happening with the political elites so for me that that differentiation is

is um very important and and this kind of research that

that went into the special edition let me do a little plug for it

comparative latest i think it's the latest edition

um read all about it um so this is um the do you want to say a

few words

um but yeah this post-independence moment and

this this um disconnect actually that you see emerging between

political elites and people

institution into africans yeah well i did do that indeed yes

okay but thank you for that thanks thanks everybody for

for the questions and the comments appreciated

thanks chrissy um Rashid

yes concerning the question of historical memory and how

to deal with it i mentioned in my text to two famous

philosophers namely Hapermas and Jacques Derrida and

maybe i want i want to mention now especially Jacques Derrida in his book

Rogue State two essays on reason in this book Jacques Derrida calls after

the 9/11 terrorist attack

his Arab friends to establish a democratic relationship to the

religious texts and to the historical memory

with the aim to overcome what he calls the logic of the brothers or in in

french language it means to overcome the

authority of brothers in politics law and society

and it's a old idea in in the french political philosophy

we find it especially by uh crudle for uh in his uh

in his conception of democracy as a empty place

of power but also as a system that

implies a social division and that's why i tried in my text

to defend the idea that we cannot we cannot establish

a democratic transition without a cultural transition

and thanks for all the questions

it answered yourself Anna thank you for your question i hope

that i understood good have uh was the view on the different type of

type of the minorities uh well uh first i have to say that this

members belonging to marginalized roma communities they are socially and

economically most disadvantaged so they face like

more than 50 percent of them face material deprivation

and the 86 percent for others you know so

they also live in in the houses without no running

water flesh toilets 30 around 30 percent uh they didn't have

access to sanitation disinfect disinfections

equipment so they are most vulnerable vulnerable also i don't want to use the

poor okay but they're most vulnerable in this

sense as well but during different times

political actors they use different kind of discourses against minorities in the

90s it was against hungarians and roma you

know they were seeing them as a threat to

national security roma during the covid were seeing as a

threat uh public health threat and before this

event we spoke a little bit with christy and i also

said that for example now uh the politicians from the

governing party but also many conservatives

uh and christians they see queer people as a threat to the

traditional family you know so this evolves during the time and

all the time changes but now the queer people

uh became as i can i say that what i said

then the new jews uh in in uh in slovak society which is

ridiculous completely because there is so little of them they don't have no

rights they cannot endanger nobody but daily

leads use this rhetoric against them what kind of threat

they pose and not only a socialist

but governing parties social democracy but they get uh support from these

christian democrats you know because they it's not that they are

well they think they have values that are not compatible

uh with the rights for queer queer people and also

what they try to sum under all this

queer rights for queer people under the label of

human rights so for example this government tries to forbid

the discussions or uh education about human rights in primary and

secondary schools

so i don't know if i answered your question but

seems you have yes thank you so much okay well i think we're coming to

an end of this panel discussion um now so i would like to

thank our wonderful panelists again thank you for being here thank you for

joining us online online thank you to our discussions as well

and of course to to all of you here in the room and and

online for for being part and we'd like to invite you now to

continue this discussion if you wish over some light refreshments in an

adjacent room just nearby and yeah so stay a bit engaged uh with

each other with the panelists and um have a nice evening thank you thank you