The anti-communist moment: competitive victimhood in European politics

Máté Zombory

Revue d'études comparatives Est-Ouest, 2020, vol. N° 2-3, issue 2, 21-54

Abstract: Drawing on Pierre Bourdieu?s theory, this article argues that the field of the political debates about Europe?s ?constitutive historical legacies? was characterised by two positions, both inherently anti-communist: the cosmopolitan Holocaust memory framework of the post-Cold War Western European ?integrator position? and the heroic-national memory framework of post-Communist countries ?returning to Europe.? The interaction of these two positions was influenced by the conditionality of the enlargement process. The debate was thus not de-politicised, as often stated, but consensually anti-communist. The pan-European anti-communist moment hindered politico-ideological framings and changed political struggles into a mimetic competition between self-victimising actors in which claims were moralised and restricted to anti-communism.

Keywords: anti-communism; European politics; memory politics; victimhood; memory of the Holocaust; memory of communism (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
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