Tag Archives: racism

March 2, 2018

Bulgaria (not) only for Bulgarians

by Rositsa Kratunkova  

At this year’s summit of G20, the newly elected French president Emanuel Macron stated that the problem with the slow economic development of Africa was civilizational. As an example, he noted that African women gave birth to 7-8 children, in which he saw a negative economic effect without accounting for its economic roots–the reason must be the “innate backwardness” of the people. Similarly, in Bulgaria the problem with the social and economic segregation of the Roma is viewed as civilizational, which can have negative consequences in the future such as becoming a burden to the social system. This se ..

December 11, 2017

In the Name of the Constitution: Ethnic Minorities and Technologies of Disenfranchisement in Bulgaria

by Jana Tsoneva  

Note from the editors: Starting next month Bulgaria will assume the presidency of the Council of the European Union. To acknowledge this momentous occasion, this month LeftEast will carry two texts by Jana Tsoneva analyzing the politics of contemporary Bulgaria. This article originally appeared in July on the Serbo-Croatian portal Bilten and is republished here with their generous permission. It is a habit of the lazy mind to associate only ex-Yugoslavia with ethnic conflicts, but in the late 1980s Bulgaria, too, was on the brink of an “ethnic war”. The post-1956 period regime was marked by the increase of ra ..

September 25, 2017

The Red and the Black: the Riddle of post-Soviet Racism

by Maxim Matusevich  

This text was originally published in Russian in the web-journal ReLevant: a Journal of Current Analysis. We are much obliged to Maria Brock for its English translation. Anyone who has crossed paths with Soviet immigrants in the West will have noticed the strange phenomenon of post-Soviet racism, which is all the stranger because the overwhelming majority of emigrants from the Soviet Union are “individuals of Jewish origin,” that is, people who not only faced quotidian and structural racism, but who also ended up fleeing from it. Dr N was pensively stirring his cappuccino, which had long gone cold. We were ..

October 13, 2016

Hungary: the Népszabadság Affair

by G.M. Tamás  

Note from the LeftEast editors: Last Saturday employees of  Népszabadság  newspaper, the widest circulated daily in Hungary, found themselves locked out of their workplace and told they were no longer needed. On the  Népszabadság  editorial team facebook page the team team wrote: “Our first thought is that this is a coup. We will soon come back with more” after the newspaper’s website , stopped working , and invited the public to join them to demonstrate at Parliament later that day. They were joined by some 2,000 people. This article is translated into English for LeftEast by Lolo f ..

June 28, 2016

Making sense of the Brexit tide of reaction and the reality of the racist vote

by lefteast  

Source: Workers Solidarity Movement, Ireland Words: Andrew Flood Illustrative head image: Collage of photos posted by diamond geezer ‏@diamondgeezer and daniel watson ‏@DWxLW in the days after Brexit. The Leave / Brexit vote in the referendum came in the end as a surprise, a narrow win for Remain was expected. This may be because the core Leave vote was in the run-down white working class communities of the now desolate English and Welsh industrial zones. A population trapped in conditions of long-term unemployment and poverty who no one really pays much attention to anymore. Some on the left have seized ..

April 26, 2016

VIDEO: Jock Palfreeman about Bulgarian Prisons and the Prisoners’ Association (Interview)

by admin  

Note from the LeftEast editors: This is an interview with Jock Palfreeman, an Australian citizen and prisoner in Blugaria, who is the founder of the Bulgarian Prisoners’ Association. In 2007 Jock was convicted for the murder of Bulgarian Andrei Monov although claimed that he was trying to help two Roma people that were attacked by a group of fifteen football hooligans. Many details about this night remained unclear to this day. The main witnesses–the two Roma–have disappeared. The surveillance camera footage that could show what happened this night has vanished without a trace. And even if Jo ..

October 27, 2015

Call for international meeting, manifestation and solidarity action in Slovenia

by admin  

For more than a week the so-called Balkan Route is passing through Slovenia. The Slovenian government intended to impose the entrance quota of 2500 refugees per day. Croatia answered by sending the refugees and migrants over the so-called “Green” border. This controversy between Slovenia and Croatia created dire humanitarian conditions for the refugees and migrants. The Slovenian government used this humanitarian emergency produced by states and what they call a chaotic situation on the Southern border to rapidly militarize the society and call for an EU summit on the Balkan Route. The results of the Sunday s ..

September 29, 2015

Call for Support: Hungarian Left-wing organizations demand adequate policies for the refugee crisis

by admin  

The crisis in Western Asia and North Africa keeps deepening. Neither the key North American and European actors in the one and a half decade-long armed conflict, nor their regional allies are willing to abandon the politics of brutal interventions, even if these are indefensible according to international law. The aim of maintaining political violence is clear: gaining control over the arms market, trade routes and sources of raw materials, most importantly oil. NATO and the great powers are responsible not only for aggravating the crisis, but for the civilian casualties of the armed conflicts and the millions of ..

September 25, 2015

The far-right as a counter-hegemonic bloc to neoliberalism? The case of Jobbik (II)

by Adam Fabry  

Note from the LeftEast editors: This article has been adapted for LeftEast from the original in Eszmélet 105. Follow the link to read PART I: From right –wing movement to the third force in Hungarian politics: Jobbik’s ascendence 1999-2010 PART II: ‘National rejuvenation’ and ‘social justice’: the ideology and praxis of Jobbik The two main main ideological concepts informing Jobbik’s worldview and actions are ‘national rejuvenation’ and ‘social justice’. The former derives from the idea of an ‘organic nation’, built on Völkisch, Christian foundations and encompassing the historical b ..

January 28, 2015

Dancing in Kosova

by Boiken Abazi  

Note from the LeftEast editors: this article has been originally published on the website of Vetevendosje site, and is reprinted in LeftEast with the permission of its author. This year a new documentary titled Dancing in Jaffa debuted to international acclaim and won awards in some international film festivals. It tells the story of dozens of Palestinian and Israeli children learning to ballroom dance together, portraying the idea that, as L. Bento explains in his recent article in the Huffington Post, “At the heart of every conflict lies a misunderstanding, often influenced by cultural biases and preconceived ..