Radicalization and international disorder
- Binding: paperback
- Author: collective work
- Publisher: Instytut Zachodni
- PL ISSN: ISSN 0033-2437
- Publication date: 7 November 2022
- Number: 2/2022
- Number of pages: 196
- Size: A5
The crises experienced in today's Europe have the potential to inspire reflection, prompt a re-examination of value systems, trigger cleansing, and ultimately lead to strengthening, change and growth. Dramatic events and turbulent re-evaluations tend to test democracies and the world order.
Such tests are literal when the circumstances require the application of laws designed to guide emergency response. Every time circumstances arise that call for the protection of such elementary values as life, freedom and human dignity, people’s motivations and attitudes to put to further tests. As shown by the author, attempts to generalize such values back all the way to the time of the League of Nations. Confronted with criticism, the axiological foundations of democracy are thrown into sharp relief demonstrating an ability to embrace change and adjust to it. This precisely is the focus of the first article in the volume. The reasons for and the aims of such contestations vary, as do the ways in which they are communicated. In this respect, the Norwegian youth groups of the late 1960s are a far cry from today’s QAnon movement. Authoritarian tendencies remain alive as peace processes (in Israel) and even the idea of statehood (in the Reichsbürgerbewegung) are questioned. And yet, new institutions emerge, be it states or international organizations, including their unique instance that is the European Union. Such bodies consistently foster dialogue and promote education as instruments for growth and for building multi-faceted security.
Even the painstakingly-developed ability to cooperate and maintain solidarity in the face of challenges and threats remains an adequate response to crises. The radicalization and international disorder presented in Przegląd Zachodni can therefore be viewed as a response to the fact that efforts to achieve global well-being have become more effective.