“This continent is collapsing,” says Croatian philosopher Srećko Horvat at the start of Europe’s Forbidden Colony, a two-part documentary series coming to Al Jazeera.
“Often these phenomena are discussed as if they are forces of nature beyond our control,” says Horvat. “But as a philosopher I look for the root causes. What if the economic collapse, refugees and terrorism are actually all caused by something more fundamental?”
In the first episode, The Business of Colonisation, Srećko finds evidence that the colonial methods of extraction and democratic suppression that European nations once applied to much of the Middle East and Africa are now being practiced on Europe itself. “It’s a new multinational colonialism,” Wikileaks founder Julian Assange tells Horvat.
In the second episode, The Colonised Society, Horvat looks at how the people of Europe are responding, not just through terrorism and the rise of the far right, but also through the No Middle Man movement in Greece; the election of a housing activist as mayor of Barcelona; and the move within Germany to restore energy grids to public ownership.
Visiting Belgium, France, Germany, Greece, Romania, Spain and the UK, Horvat speaks to Welsh steel workers, French protesters, refugees in Greece, and the likes of Noam Chomsky, Nigel Farage, Slavoj Zizek, and Agnes Heller to present a nuanced view of Europe today.
It screens in two parts on Al Jazeera English.
What: Europe’s Forbidden Colony
When: Sun, 19 Feb and Sun, 26 Feb, 2017 at 2000GMT / 2100WAT / 2200CAT / 2300EAT
Info: http://pr.aljazeera.com/post/156396004240/al-jazeera-english-to-air-europes-forbidden
WS