Refugees make their way to the Serbia-Hungary border. Demotix/Geovein So. All rights reserved.Ivan Krastev and Jacques Rupnik have both written critically of the lack of compassion shown towards refugees by so-called “East Europeans”.
I don’t want to enter a direct polemic against them: both articles are very thoughtful and contain much that is true. Instead, I want to add a layer of complexity to the analysis. I am also very aware of the audience I’m addressing. Do I have an audience of fellow Czech or Eastern European citizens? For them my duty as an intellectual is to criticize harshly the xenophobia seen on social networks and our to castigate cowardly political elites. Or am I speaking to international audience? Towards you, I feel instead the need to confront prejudices and simplifications. Let me be clear. Here, I am doing the latter.
Krastev writes about this phenomenon: people in “Eastern Europe” thought the EU would bring prosperity but instead, they feel it’s now mainly been a source of problems.
