![Sample our Politics & International Relations journals, sign in here to start your FREE access for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5947/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Politics-International-Relations.jpg"})
Abstract
Accounts of a unifying European public sphere (EPS) can seem bleak in a social policy literature, emphasizing the need for coherent deliberative processes to legitimate the European Union as an enterprise in transnational democracy. The article confronts this impasse, arguing that a vibrant plurality of EPSs emerges once analytical pursuit is decoupled from normative associations with the EU project, and so from understandings of civil society and communicative democracy as axiomatic characteristics of an EPS. After discussing the limits of theorizing a singular public sphere converging on the EU, the empirical section of the article portrays a contrasting sphere of pan-European political traction, examining an ‘uncivil’ arena of anti-Muslim coalition-building and exchange. Noting parallels between this ‘uncivil’ pan-Europeanism and normative depictions of Europe's absent (civil, singular, and democratic) public sphere, the article suggests that a less pallid account of European political life emerges once the preoccupation with achieving deliberative coalescence yields to allow recognition (and study) of EPSs in the plural and contestual—as politically constitutive expressions of a multiplicity of open narrative claims and systems taking European conditions and destinies as their core.
Notes
If a theoretical advantage of deliberative democracy over liberal democratic or republican models is located in its escaping the simple traps of aggregative rule (Bohman, Citation1998, p. 400; Ivic, Citation2011, p. 15; cf. Elstub, Citation2010), the turn to practice clearly enlists the EUPS as a means of sorting, simplifying, and making governable the infinitely complex political properties of European social space. The public sphere becomes central to democratization not as a neutral ‘interface between state and society’ (Risse, Citation2003) but as an antidote to the social world's unruly political feedback—as a means of disciplining ‘streams of communication’ so these might be ‘filtered and synthesised in such a way that they coalesce into bundles of topically specified public opinions’ (Habermas, Citation1997, p. 360). The ideal of an EU polity experienced equally by all as a perpetually open, interdiscursive space needs to be tempered with this underlying demand that political views and interests of a European demos must undergo a significant and permanent degree of aggregative ‘streaming’, lest the deliberative machine short-circuit with the uncontained ‘noise of anarchic and pluralistic communication’ (Eriksen, Citation2005, p. 352).
Much has been written in recent years reflecting the importance assigned in the EUPS framework to harnessing a pan-European media in order to, in the words of a 2010 EU Parliamentary Committee report: ‘tell a common European story that goes beyond national and political biases’ to set out ‘the central elements of the new story of Europe as new generations grow up with the EU as the norm’ (European Parliament Committee on Culture and Education, Citation2010). As Martin Meyer notes, assigning great power in EUPS generation to this ‘quality press’ can seem at odds with the ideals of integrative openness as ‘the majority of discourses which authors see as indicative of a European public sphere are in reality nothing but elite discourses in which average citizens do not participate’ (Meyer, Citation2011, p. 175; see also Harrison & Wessels, Citation2009; Koopmans & Statham, Citation2010; Trenz, Citation2004a, Citation2004b; Triandafyllidou, Wodak, & Krzyżanowski, Citation2009).
The CoE has acquired roles as a kind of antechamber to the EU; a coordinative institutional frontier through which EU member states, but also political issues and unifying symbols (flag, anthem), have historically been ‘ascended’. In this integrative functioning and with its operational focus on rights and law, the CoE is an inviting lens through which to ask how elites do come together around ideas of European form.
The 12 governments committed to collaboratively implementing and monitoring the Decade's ‘Action Plans’ are: Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Macedonia, Montenegro, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, and Spain. In addition to state parties (of which half are not EU members), partners include intergovernmental and international bodies (e.g. UNDP, World Bank), EU or CoE structures or funds, and Roma civil society and rights advocacy organs.
CNN news broadcast, 29 July 2010. Available online at http://edition.cnn.com/video/#/video/us/2010/07/29/ricks.burn.koran.cnn
Muslim women are also routinely called upon to (often silently, invisibly) testify to Islam's barbarity as Islamophobic claims about civilizational rescue are themselves veiled as a ‘crusade to save Muslim women from Muslim men’ (Fernandez, Citation2009, p. 271).
The morbidity–vitality contrast gained gruesome expression in a 2010 Swedish Democrats campaign advert. This showed a frail white woman being overtaken by a racing horde of burka-clad Muslims pushing baby carriages and draining the coffers of the welfare state while the elderly woman lagged behind. The video can be viewed online (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m9VuW6vhV-E). Mosques, the other most visible sign of Muslim presence or demographic growth, are similarly targeted with suspicions about covert inner scheming or as resented manifestations of an ‘aggressive’ cultural confidence.
The title Norwegian terrorist Anders Breivik chose for his voluminous compendium/manifesto, 2083: A European Declaration of Independence, references the same date, supposing 400 years of appeasement between the heady days of Vienna and the coming battle of 2083.
One popular initiative in this respect has been Palestinian Media Watch (PMW) (http://www.pmw.org.il). PMW champions an aggressive Zionism internationally (largely in the USA), disseminating negative images of Palestinian political, educational, and cultural life, as well as negative images of Islam globally. Video and audio clips provided by PMW have been used extensively in far-right Islamophobic campaigning; for instance, in Geert Wilders' 2008 film Fitna (based almost entirely on PMW sources) or the 2006 anti-Muslim documentary, Islam: What The West Needs to Know.
Melanie Phillips demonstrates a further asset Israel offers in its role as a modern-day equivalent of the ‘Cricket Test’ once applied by Norman Tebbit to assess the loyalty and legitimacy of non-white immigrants in Britain. Some pages into her Londonistan Phillips (Citation2006) notes: ‘In Britain, hundreds of thousands of Muslims lead law-abiding lives and merely want to prosper and raise their families in peace’. But the concession is instantly qualified: ‘Nevertheless, moderation among the majority appears to be a highly relative concept considering their widespread hostility towards Israel’ (Phillips, Citation2006, p. xix). Henceforth, the word moderate appears in scare quotes and the 7/7 bombers of London's Underground are allowed to signify British Muslims at large.
A sense the EU's identity-building initiatives invite Islamist ‘awakenings’ among European Muslims is not limited to conspiracy theorists. A 2006 Economist editorial dismissed the ‘Eurabian Nightmare’ itself but linked an alleged rise in Islamist politics to an EU process leading ‘all Europeans, regardless of their origins’ to ‘find themselves “identity shopping” as the European Union competes with older nation-states for their loyalty’. The flipside to this scheme makes the same link between an EU identity quest and the rise of new Islamophobic forces. Betz and Meret (Citation2009) make a case to this effect by exploring the novel ties appearing recently between neo-Christian European identity politics, secular far-right nativisms, and anti-Muslim energies.
Statement by the English chapter of SIOE (http://sioeengland.wordpress.com/membership-and-donations/).
CAI charter accessible online (http://www.citiesagainstislamisation.com/En/3/2).
The EDL was formed in mid-2009 and is now the most visible anti-Muslim social movement in Britain (it is tied to Welsh and Scottish chapters). It is linked to the ‘Casuals United’ alliance of football-following gangs and has tried (if unconvincingly) to dissociate itself from more traditional far-right racisms of the British National Party or Combat 18 (Copsey, Citation2010; Garland & Treadwell, Citation2010; Treadwell & Garland, Citation2011). The EDL is structured as a network of regional and ‘community’ Divisions. It has had a strong Jewish Division from 2010 (led until recently by Roberta Moore, whose rhetorical extremism and suspected leadership ambitions led to an awkward split in mid-2011), and now also has smaller Sikh and Hindu Divisions, as well as an LGBT Division.
The ‘4Freedoms’ platform uses the .ning.com social networking architecture (http://4freedoms.ning.com/).
Ibid.
Ibid.
Statement by the English chapter of SIOE (http://sioeengland.wordpress.com/the-4th-empire/).
CAI charter.
Online discussion involving Alan Lake at ‘4Freedoms’ (https://4freedoms.ning.com/group/…/forum/topics/allies-and-partners).
Anonymous discussion at ‘4Freedoms’ (http://4freedoms.ning.com/group/russian/forum/topics/alliances?xg_source=activity).
Promotional ephemera, SIOE/SIOA. Available online at http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/atlas_shrugs/2011/06/united-we-stand-.html
Statement by English chapter of SIOE (http://sioeengland.blogspot.com/2008/01/new-sioe-england-site-and-anti-jihad.html).