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The presidential elections in Bulgaria between systemic nationalism and the anti-systemic vote

November 13th of this year saw the second round of presidential elections in Bulgaria. With an overwhelming majority, General Rumen Radev became Bulgaria’s fifth elected president. the outcome of the presidential elections in Bulgaria came to light. We take this opportunity to analyze the political assumptions surrounding the election results. There are multiple ways to interpret […]

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Banning the Veil in Bulgaria

Note from the LeftEast editors: this article has been published in collaboration with the Serbo-Croat web portal Bilten. Last April Pazardzhik, a Bulgarian town with a population of about 70,000, banned Muslim women from wearing veils. Pazardzhik was followed by Stara Zagora, and proposals for introducing similar prohibitions were made in over a third of […]

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Turkey in July: a Tale of Two Coups

Within days of the failed military coup attempt, president Erdogan announced his “good news” to the Turkish public: a state of emergency for three months. It’s been exceedingly difficult to identify with any of the protagonists of the last couple of weeks in Turkey. Essentially, what happened were two coups in quick succession: one—abortive military, […]

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Poland’s War on Historical Memory

The electoral victory of the Law and Justice Party (Prawo i Sprawiedliwość, PiS) has initiated a number of changes. Being a conservative party and appealing to right-wing resentments, historical politics were always an important part of the party’s policies. A ‘fair and honest’ historical politics were a way to build a new national identity and […]

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An Interview with Boris Buden – Antifascism as Platitude

By: Milena Ostojić (this text originally appeared in Lupiga.com). Boris Buden is a cultural theorist, translator, and publicist, currently guest lecturer at the Bauhaus-Weimar Universität. He is widely known for essays originally published in Arkzin, and later in the Barikade collection (two editions). In our conversation with Buden, we interrogated the question of antifascism as a […]

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15 years since the toppling of the Milošević regime and why the Left should celebrate it

It is 15 years to the day since the toppling of the Milošević regime. In Serbia there is much disillusionment with the results of the revolution. But here are some reasons to continue to celebrate it. First, as Lindsey German showed at the time in the article posted below, industrial workers were central to the uprising that […]

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A people divided: violent conflict emerging in Bulgaria

Over the last few days Bulgaria has witnessed opposing waves of mobilization that divide the country across ethnic and class lines. Since the 23rd of October, a student strike and sustained occupation has spread across six universities in the capital and other cities. The strike is the latest in a series of protests in the […]

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The future lasts a long time: a short history of European integration in the ex-Yugoslavia

„There is no alternative to Europe“ – is «la pensée unique« that dominates political life in the ex-Yugoslavia. As with the idea of a transition to the market, Europe is considered to be a destination that is to be still to be reached, a community of peace and prosperity. In fact, as we will show, […]

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VIDEO: Against capitalism, self-imposed colonialism and nesting orientalism – A Subversive Festival panel

Panel organized during the Subversive Festival, Zagreb 2013. The written versions of the interventions will soon be published on LeftEast.