Europeans should move past former glory to face new reality
More than 70 world leaders gathered in France on Sunday to commemorate the end of WWI exactly 100 years after the armistice took effect. They reflected on progress and peace, with some noting the dangers of extreme nationalism, reminding us the world has come far since that terrible war and an even worse one that followed. US President Donald Trump and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin joined European leaders in Paris for the weekend ceremony marking a century since the guns fell silent. Earlier in the week, leaders of two other major protagonist nations in the war, German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier and French President Emmanuel Macron, met in the border city of Strasbourg to attend a concert in the city’s gothic cathedral to celebrate the modern friendship of former wartime enemies.
Macron also used the anniversary as a talking point about the mood of today. “I am struck by similarities between the times we live in and those of between the two world wars,” he told a French newspaper last week, adding that nationalism is a ‘leprosy’ spreading worldwide.
Elections across Europe have seen nationalist parties take more power as economic stagnation and waves of immigrants strain the status quo. A survey by a German think-tank coincidentally released the week before WWI anniversary celebrations shows nostalgia for previous times is on the rise.
The study found more than two-thirds of Europeans surveyed agree with the statement the world used to be a better place.
Respondents to the survey by the Bertelsmann Foundation were presumably thinking about the much more recent past of a generation previous, an economic golden age in the West when Europe was humming along with resolution, building infrastructure and a cooperative union of nations that held the promise of a kinder, more prosperous world.
But since the go-go decades of 1960s to the ’90s, Asia and its vast population has risen to compete in the global economy and the idealistic social policies of a new Europe have proven hard to sustain. A prolonged recession beginning in 2008 followed by a flood of immigrants starting in 2015 strained the EU to its core. Nostalgia for the old days seems to harken to time when ways of life were productive and followed culture-appropriate traditions. Nationalism is often mixed with yearning for an idealised past.
The survey by Bertelsmann in 28 EU countries found Italians the most nostalgic, with 77 per cent of respondents agreeing that life was better before, followed by France at 65 per cent, Spain with 64 per cent, Germany at 61 per cent and Poland with 59 per cent.
Isabell Hoffmann, Europe expert at Bertelsmann and co-author of the study, says “a high level of nostalgia within societies is quite normal — humans tend to be focused on the negative in their daily lives and very quickly turn a difficult today into a golden yesterday”.
But the number of nostalgic in the survey is “quite high and can be read as an indicator for higher levels of anxieties within the European public,” says Hoffmann. “The past 10 years have brought a cascade of different financial, economic, political and societal crises. When there is no crisis talk there is talk about how our life and our work is going to change because of technological advances. No wonder that more people have questions.”
The survey found that nostalgic Europeans tend to place themselves to the right of the political centre and the older they are the more nostalgic they feel. Young people under the age of 25 are the least nostalgic, while over 70 per cent of 56- to 65-year-olds polled think life was better in previous times. Across all age groups, women were less likely than men to be nostalgic.
Ruth Berschens, the German newspaper bureau chief in
Brussels, says the current nostalgia has a dark side.
“There have been times when Europeans looked back on their past and were filled with revulsion and disgust: Never again war, nationalism, hostility towards foreigners or persecution of dissidents,” she writes. “Today Europeans are glorifying their past with a nostalgia that ‘everything
The survey by Bertelsmann in 28 EU countries found Italians the most nostalgic, with 77 per cent of respondents agreeing that life was better before.
was better before’. Some seem to prefer going back to the 19th century, when the national state was still deemed a progressive concept on our continent.”
“But as long as Europeans look to the past with rose-tinted glasses, they can’t win the future. It’s time to return to reality,” says Berschens.
Aart De Geus, chairman of the Bertelsmann Foundation, notes nostalgia is understandable but poses a danger when exaggerated by political parties. “When people glorify their own past over time, this is above all human. But when parties exploit fears and uncertainties for their electoral success to conjure up a never-existing golden past — that is reckless,” he says.
The 100th anniversary of the end of WWI seems a perfect moment to reflect: Desperate, even brutish, conditions of earlier times are well behind us as longevity and quality of life greatly increase.
So listen quietly for a moment: The vast military graveyards of France still speak with their haunting voice, one that transcends the cacophony of today’s politicians. Europe has indeed come a long way.