Almost a year ago, Jean-Claude Milner published a text in K. taking note of the reconfiguration of relations between the United States and Israel – moving towards the latter being placed under trusteeship – and announced, while regretting it, the probable dissolution of Western Judaism in the American WASP sphere. In his diagnosis, Europe was hardly more than a negligible part, which “cares only about itself”: only the United States mattered. Today, as the Trump presidency seems to be setting in motion an imperial revolution of the international order, by challenging the principle of equality between nation states that was that of post-World War II reconstruction – of which the humiliation imposed on Zelenski at the White House was the grotesque illustration – Milner returns to update his diagnosis, in the sense of its confirmation. The perspective that emerges is commensurate with the situation, which is catastrophic, and there is no question of opposing any kind of irenicism to this. But the reader who does not tell himself stories, and is therefore devastated, will be led to become aware of this fact: in the face of the untenable nature of the situation, the European proposal once again becomes decisive. There can be no question of taking comfort in the hope that Europe, which had effectively fallen into political insignificance, will pull itself together in the face of the threat of its enslavement. But at the same time, it must be recognized that Europe is in fact important for the international order that is currently being redrawn, and therefore not only “for itself”. And, in the act by which it asserts itself, it is also important for Jews, as the place where the unity of the dispersed people can find its realization, in contrast to the tendencies which, in Israel, lead to the forgetting of the significance of Zionism for the whole of the diaspora, and, in the United States, contribute to the dissolution of the latter. From the point of view of Jews as well as from the point of view of everyone else, one should then conclude that Europe is still this democratic space resisting reduction to the logic of the balance of power. Under these conditions, it embodies the last perspective from which a political future remains conceivable.
This choice of a democratic future is the one that was made in mid-February in Austria, with the end of negotiations for a coalition between the conservative party (ÖVP) and Herbert Kickl’s sovereignist and authoritarian party (FPÖ). The disagreement concerned, beyond the maximalist desire of the far right to take over the main ministries, the relationship with the fundamental values of European politics and the way to position oneself in the face of Russian aggression. Finally, a pro-European government has been formed, led by Chancellor Christian Stocker and bringing together conservatives, liberals and social democrats, which is very much to be welcomed. Fearing Kickl’s accession to power, K. had asked Liam Hoare for a portrait of the man who proposed to build the “Fortress Austria”. We are publishing it in an updated version, as a testament to what Austria, and Europe, have escaped.
*
The Brutalist, after enjoying great success in theaters, has just won three Oscars. But how does Brady Corbet’s film capture the story it intends to tell, that of a famous Hungarian-Jewish architect who survived the Shoah, at the risk of distorting it? Albert Levy reviews this successful film, adding to the informed details of the architect the sensitivity of someone who knows that you don’t leave the United States for Israel simply because “The whole country is rotten”.
