EU-DIGEST

Europe and the culture of scapegoats

"What happens to Europe? Europe is the place today where the production of scapegoats, the industry of scapegoats is flourishing. We have so many scapegoats, we have a culture of scapegoats. An example: America is a scapegoat. When we don't know to which saint to appeal, as we say in French, we say it is the fault of America. When I was a young man, 30 years ago, I remember it was sort of acknowledged that Europe was a work in process, and that this process would go on to the end.The sense of history was that Europe would build itself, and that this federation of states, languages, nations, memory, and so on, would make itself.

that a few times already in the last 10 centuries, Europe was at the edge of building itself, but it crashed. And we are discovering that this could happen again: a great dream of a new entity just collapsing like a bubble, like a political bubble.

This is happening to our countries today, and it is part of the explanation for this strange state of depression in which we are. We have in Europe old nations. And as old nations, we have some old patterns of citizenship. And what is happening today is that these patterns of citizenship are falling into crisis at the same time.

The real clash of civilization, is not between Western civilization and the rest. No, the real clash is inside the rest. Inside Islam, the clash between the fascists and the democrats. Europe, is the front line, and maybe the main frontline of this clash of civilizations."