Hello from Brussels, where re-arming Europe is in the air (and still blocking traffic).
I’m here for the DiEM25 event ‘WTF Happened To Europe?, which I hosted and helped organise. It featured speeches and a panel discussion with US political commentator Katie Halper, the economist Grace Blakeley, Melanie Schweizer (the German civil servant who was fired for speaking out on Gaza) and Yanis Varoufakis.
750 people came (full house! scary…) and the event was livestreamed (skip to 29 mins in). Among other topics we covered Gaza, Ukraine, the hard right, how to avoid being labelled pro-Putin and, crucially, tactics for activists who want to rebel. And apart from me confusing World War III with World War II and some chaos during the Q&A, it went great.
Below is the text of my opening speech. I think it’s a decent summary of what’s ailing us here in Europe, and the task we all have of pushing back.. especially in the face of increasing militarisation.
And here is the video:
As ever, grateful for your comments.
Cheers
Mehran
Hello hello hello, and welcome. I’m Mehran Khalili, and I’m your host for tonight. It’s great to be in Brussels with you all.
We’re here because something in Europe is broken. In ways that are making life harder, poorer, more uncertain, and more dangerous for millions of people.
Let me give you a quick tour of some of what’s broken with Europe.
Of course, I have to start with Europe’s role in what happened in Gaza. It may be out of the headlines, but we haven’t forgotten: Europe armed, funded, and shielded Israel as it carried out a genocide. nearly 50,000 people were killed, mostly women and children — though the actual number is probably much higher. The destruction of Gaza is beyond words… the UN says clearing the rubble will take at least 15 years. Yes, ceasefire is holding for now, but if the bombs start dropping again, we already know where Europe will stand — right behind Israel, just like before.
But what’s broken in Europe, goes way beyond its role in the Gaza genocide. Let’s look closer to home, where European countries are pouring billions of Euros into Ukraine — promising to fund its war with Russia “for as long as it takes”—while refusing to push for peace and flirting with World War III. (And I should add that opposing endless war doesn’t mean siding with Russia or Putin — just as standing against genocide doesn’t mean supporting Hamas.)
So back to Europe. It gets worse. Europe, as we’ve all seen over the past few days, is openly militarising. Its leaders are calling for a “war economy.” We’re back to “coalitions of the willing” and “boots on the ground”. The EU, a peace project, is now aiming to mobilise up to €800 billion Euros for weapons, tanks, and defence — without real debate, without consent.
But as the same time, everything else is getting cut. Schools, hospitals, environmental protections? Too expensive to invest in.
Europe’s economy is stagnating, and life is becoming really, really tough. Wages are flat, industries are collapsing, whole regions are in decay. 40 million of our fellow Europeans can’t afford to heat their homes. Younger generations here will be poorer than their parents—for the first time in modern history.
Meanwhile, China has lifted 800 million people out of poverty (admittedly at enormous social and environmental cost). But Europe is moving in the opposite direction.
I can go on: inequality is growing: the richest 10% of Europeans own two-thirds of the continent’s wealth. European cities are being hollowed out by corporate landlords and AirBNB, while homeownership has become a fantasy for millions.
And through all of this, Europe just follows Washington’s lead. On trade. On war. On military spending. It pretends to be independent, but has no vision of its own. And now that the US has shifted its focus elsewhere, Europe feels more impotent and irrelevant than ever.
And what does an impotent and irrelevant establishment do? It cracks down on dissent.
Say “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” in public in some parts of Europe, and you could be arrested, fined, or even imprisoned. Call Gaza a genocide, and you could lose your job — as you’ll hear tonight, because that’s exactly what happened to one of our speakers.
And how could we fail to notice, that The EU, under the pretext of protecting us from ‘hate speech’ and ‘disinformation’, is expanding its powers over what we can and can’t say.
And lastly, and perhaps even more worryingly, if elections in Europe produce the “wrong” outcome, they can now be cancelled — as we saw in Romania a few months ago.
All this, is why we’re here tonight. This Europe is failing its people, betraying its history, and silencing those who call it out.
This Europe is broken.
The good news is that there’s now a radical energy in the air. Something has shifted. More than ever, huge numbers of people are fed up with the way things are, and they want to fight back.
The bad news is that the only force effectively mobilising this anger is the hard right. They are winning—in Italy, Finland, Slovakia, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Sweden, Austria, and Germany. Hard right parties are either in power, or they are setting the agenda.
They exploit people’s justified rage — over poverty, insecurity, corruption — and they place the blame on immigration. They take real problems and turn them into a false war between people who should be fighting side by side.
They make Europe more hostile, more divided, more cruel.
But I have to give it to them. They have a plan, as disturbing as it is. And they’re executing it brilliantly.
So tonight, we’re asking—what’s our plan?
