I snapped this admittedly idyllic image earlier this week when I allowed myself (I know this wording sounds ridiculous but it is what it feels like) to take a few hours just for me and jump in the Danube while the water temperature is still almost bearable. The nature photo got me thinking. When everything changes, politically, economically and socially speaking, the leaves still turn orange and fall off the trees. You still wake up in the same apartment, make coffee in the same coffee pot, and open the same fridge to make breakfast. It is possible for massive changes to happen around us while our individual worlds and the nature around us do not immediately change. If you ask some of those people who stayed in Moscow why they didn’t leave earlier, they too might say something like their individual lives didn’t change under Putin: they woke up, went to work, spent time with friends.
Recently, I have been very worried (more so than usual) about the direction Europe is taking more broadly and Austria in particular. My experiences of this past year and a half have not increased my faith at all in the authorities’ ability to react to problems in real time. In fact, if often feels like they make a mockery of their jobs, as if their jobs as highly placed bureaucrats are just to sit in meetings and make speeches, rather than legislate and/or order any actual positive changes, whether substantive or procedural.
Austria at the moment reminds me of a good solid car, much like my ten year-old VW Tiguan, which was so reliable for so long, until one day she wasn’t anymore, and she started to require really expensive, complex repairs, but you still think of her as that reliable car that does not break down, so when the warning lights start going on one after the other, despite the huge milage on the speedometer, it is easy to understand how a car owner might say in complete seriousness, they truly didn’t see it coming.
The schools don’t work like they should. The hospitals don’t work like they should. The poorest people in society are not taken care of by the social state as was promised to those who paid all those huge taxes, businesses feel strangled by said taxes, and yet…if you question any of it, the new punchline is you do not believe in Austria like they do. Nationalists always steal flags and make them political to make up for their lack of substance. But to watch it happen in real time, it’s like an insult to voters’ collective intelligence.
Globally, and the historian Sergey Radchenko put it this weekend on Twitter far more eloquently than I could have, it feels like several autocrats have now realised no one country or international organisation is prepared to act as the world’s policeman at this very moment, and therefore these autocrats are seizing this moment to act brazenly in ways they previously might have believed would have serious potential consequences for their leadership and their countries.
More than 100,000 Armenians have now fled Nagorno-Karabakh for Armenia. Ethnic cleansing before our eyes, and yet it barely makes a newspaper headline. Is it because the Caucuses are too far? Not quite European enough? I think about what 100,000 refugees in one go means. That is far more than the total number of Ukrainians Austria ever took in. That is a humanitarian relief effort of Herculean proportions, and Armenia is already a very poor, tiny country. And yet the world barely shrugs a collective shoulder. This image of UN SUVs driving through empty streets feels like a metaphor for collective indifference to the plight of so many vulnerable people.
Do take a moment to read this harrowing, on the ground reporting from Armenia by Bel Trew of The Indepndent:
A People lost: The end of Nagorno Karabakh’s fight for independence
Then you scroll further down Twitter (I don’t know about you all but this is how I still consume most of my news) and see that the mess between Kosovo and Serbia isn’t getting any better, and some believe if you light a match it might really implode this time. Now this is Europe, but would anyone care? The Balkan six countries have been promised EU ascension talks for enough years to build entire economies out of being close but not exactly EU. I don’t need to elaborate further, do I, on what exactly is the backbone of these local economies? Their leaders use nationalistic rhetoric to fuel populist fires and cover up their own failings as leaders and being still outside the EU makes it easier to blame the collective “west”.
I find it curious this is all happening at once.
Putin gets to wage his war against Ukraine forever, it would seem, and no one has really managed to stop him in any meaningful way. The west is wary of a long war and seemingly endless requests for more weapons. No, Russia did not seize Kyiv, but it is still pounding an enormously long front line, day in and day out, with no end to fighting in sight. Ukraine has lost massive territory and is heavily mined. There is no visible timeline for a return to pre-war “normal” for most Ukrainians. This is an incredibly scary thought.
Azerbaijan decides to drive the entire ethnic Armenian population out of its borders, and seems to get away with it. And then trouble starts brewing between Serbia and Kosovo. The timing. I keep thinking about the timing. A geriatric election in the U.S. which has the entire political system there paralysed (the craziness of the last minute budget vote this weekend, and Ukraine aid fast becoming a hot button political issue), the EU really feeling more and more like a leadership organisation in name only, with individual countries also paralysed by their own upcoming elections, and traitors within. Hungary openly works as Putin’s errand boy within the EU, Slovakia’s election yesterday was won by a pro-Russian politician, and Austria has all but decided the far right will come to power next year, currently polling at a whopping 32% in recent surveys.
If you understand German, I really recommend this five part podcast series on the leader of Austria’s far right FPÖ party, Herbert Kickl:
Inside Austria: Herbert Kickl - Aufstieg eines Angstmachers
To me at least, it seems clear there is a pattern authoritarian leaders use to take power for a longer term. They are often democratically elected, and then once in office, they use all populist propaganda methods and control over the media to stay in office. In other words, they may very well be democratically elected the first time around, but once in power, they don’t want to face any ongoing democratic competition. They are not believers in democracy, per se. They believe in their own right to govern as the voice of “the people”. This is the part that scares me the most. Because it doesn’t feel like the west will simply hold elections soon. It feels like the entire system is in question. And if you look even at the U.S., where voters will be given the chance to vote between two candidates for president both decades older than the average voter, why would democracy look particularly promising as a means to an end for a young person feeling like no one sees or hears him or her?
The mood is grim.
For those of you not in Austria, the country’s conservative chancellor broke the internet this week when a video of him was leaked from a campaign event last summer at a winery in which he addresses ÖVP party supporters in a six minute monologue about how poor mothers should just buy their kids McDonalds hamburgers for €1.40 if they cannot afford or be bothered to cook a warm meal, that poor people are poor because they don’t work enough, and a little rant on the bureaucracies of the Austrian social-economic state and how they hinder private businesses (to be fair, in this particular section of his rant, I probably would agree with him).
Let them eat burgers! Austrian chancellor says low-income families should eat at McDonald’s
A whole Central European country talks about McDonalds burgers while 100,000 people in the Caucuses flee leaving everything they ever built behind, while the world watches and does next to nothing, and another powder keg heats up just a short drive from here. Oh, and Putin’s friend got elected yesterday while I was shopping in a lovely mall in Bratislava with my daughter. It is all very surreal.
So I keep thinking about the swans and the fall leaves. They will stay the same even when you wake up and the human world changed. How many people will be ok with whoever is in charge as long as their own individual lives do not change? If you look to Russia, you will see the answer. Or Trump’s America. How many people actually picked up and left? And if you leave, where do you go to?
I keep thinking about how the one thing Ukrainians have told me over and over as I interviewed them since the war began, is how few of them, only very few of them, actually believed it an invasion would actually happen. Those who did believe usually had access to inside information: such as a relative working in the army or police, perhaps they lived in a city close to the border. The vast majority of Ukrainians truly did not believe Russia would invade when it did.
I wonder if the vast majority of voters in most western countries truly believe their worlds have to be the way they always have been, and their votes don’t really matter. Clearly, one third of Austrians would be ok with a leader who refers to himself as the future “people’s chancellor” (if you read history, you remember who used the word Volk). And it’s not just Austria. All around Europe, faced with not having a real answer to the very real challenge of migration from desperate people from desperate countries, there is real talk of building walls. Yes, there are huge discrepancies within the system. In some countries, migrants must work, while in others they can live, once they receive asylum, on social benefits in line with those offered to locals. The Ukrainians are throwing a wrench in the whole system. They also have not been consistently categorised from a legal sense across Europe. In Austria, Ukrainians still do not (yet?) have access to the same social benefits as everyone else. There was a €60 per child payment paid out to low income residents of Austria this week, and Ukrainian moms jumped for joy when they received it. We were told by some they would not be eligible. The bureaucracy itself does not know what it is doing at times.
What frustrates me the most is when people within the political system agree that it is shitty but also talk as if change is impossible. As if elections happen to just change the names on the doors, but not with an expectation of actual action by those who are elected to pass laws and organise the government to function and meet the needs of the population. With that attitude, we are all screwed, because inaction on all fronts will inevitably open the door to radical voices with radical solutions.
So I have been thinking a lot about all of this and feel rather paralysed. I have found it hard to write when I don’t see many glimmers of hope. This week, I was invited to talk about the possibility of a press conference to address pressing topics for Ukrainians in Austria, for which I am very grateful, but as soon as I started to do those things I am terrible at (admin emails and organising different people with different views), I remembered what a lousy manager I am. I explained to the Ukrainians that we need voices who can speak for the group on issues ranging from education in schools to the limits on paid work for those receiving basic benefits and housing from the state. I try to recruit Ukrainians who are willing to speak publicly on behalf of the group. But then I receive messages like I got today which made me shake my head, paragraphs of detail from a mother determined to get a school for her younger son. And I explain that is not the point of a press conference. And she replies, well my mission is for my son. Fair enough. But if this was all about fighting for our own kids I would not have invested half an hour of my own time in all of this since March 2022.
Someone also recently used the word “activist” in my direction which was meant with the utmost kindness, but it made me recoil. I never set out to be advocating for anything other than what I believed was a) common sense and b) fair and c) transparent. Sometime in the process of advocating you really do have to stop an ask yourself, did anyone ask me to do this? Is it even appreciated by those in whose name I claim to speak? I try to ask myself those and other hard questions recently. I get annoyed when I receive messages asking me questions which could easily be answered with Google. I have no patience for “learned helplessness”.
People. People are sometimes challenging.
Some of us can get incredible amounts of work done if left to work in isolation. I know that doesn’t make a whole lot of sense intuitively. When I was delivering the grocery cards for so many months, I had a small sense of satisfaction every time I dropped an envelope in the post box and every time I received a photo of newly bought groceries and a few words of thanks. I have to learn to operate without that now, and choose what I will spend my time on. I am learning to set and define boundaries. This is difficult but necessary work on self.
I do not like in general the direction everything seems to be taking, and I don’t feel like enough people are genuinely worried about it. I suppose many believe the swans will still swim in the Danube and the leaves will still fall of the trees, and they aren’t wrong.
But ask a Ukrainian what he felt in early February 2022. I think about that, a lot.
Ask a Ukrainian in Ukraine how they feel now. Tired. They feel tired, but they cannot give up.
Read this very important reporting from Izyum (paywall free link) by Valerie Hopkins of the New York Times with incredible photos by Emile Ducke. Life is so hard for so many right now, we really have no idea.
In Izium, Ukraine, Fear Remains a Year After Russian Retreat
This afternoon I received a message from a woman in my Telegram group here in Austria. Her friend Taras was on the front and lost his left arm in combat. He and his wife are fundraising for his treatment and an eventual prosthetic. Would I mind if she shared the fundraised in the group? I share with you as well. There is a PayPal and an IBAN.
You read messages like this and feel ridiculous about ever complaining about anything.
So that’s what I am thinking about this Sunday early evening.
I watched a microcosm of humanity earlier today. A local running race my daughter and husband took part in. A Nordic walker reportedly cheated and “ran” instead of walking with his sticks. The accused was so old he didn't look like he could even run, but apparently several witnesses came forward after the race was over and made the claim. A court of one, the organiser, decided to honor their collective feedback. The offender was incensed, claiming, with his wife as witness, that the others and the organisers had misunderstood his technique. It was gaslighting at its finest. He spoke with such confidence and eloquence that I was left with the impression he genuinely believes his run is a walk.
Another individual obviously in a high tax bracket came over to complain about a five minute delay to the start of the awards ceremony. The sun was shining. It was a Sunday. No one had to be anywhere. It was of absolutely zero importance should the whole thing start even one hour later. And yet, there are always those who need to make their voices heard. To leave a bad taste in someone’s mouth, just because. Even at a Sunday morning charity run for a couple dozen neighbours.
One of the keys to greater happiness in this life is learning not to let those people get to you. I personally find it very challenging. I am surely not alone in being a feeler. Which has its advantages (empathy) and disadvantages (easily wounded). Those who lash out do not see the recipients of their outbursts as actual people, they just need to get anger off their chests, and take it out on whoever is nearby. I try to take a deep breath before I reply to people, even if it is to say I am sorry I cannot help and frankly I do not even understand why you are asking me this question and not looking up the answer yourself. I do not always succeed in taking this breath. But I try.
I ....the word "I" reminds me of a story I heard about Wittgenstein where each word he spoke was thought to contained encyclopedic knowledge by his students...the version I heard is that during one lecture, as he was walking out the door, he paused and muttered "Maybe..." Apparently, he stood lost in his thoughts for about 30 minutes, and when he finally came out of his self induced trance he realized that his whole class of students was waiting for whatever he was about to say next which was "never mind, I was mistaken". Afterwards, he simply continued on his journey. IMHO, the reason that this event was passed down into history was the patent absurdity of the moment. I have never found where this event was recorded, but I was told by somebody who studying for his PhD and he was a person of few words so I had no reason to doubt its veracity. Besides, it seemed very plausible. Your essay is proof of the dangers of being cognizant beings, and of the inherent responsibility of having free will.
I too have struggle on so many levels with what I consider the failure of the western countries to recognize the emasculating effects of too much concentrated wealth.
All I can say is that you are not alone.