Europe’s alarming descent into extreme political acrimony and violence

Jamie Dettmer is opinion editor at POLITICO Europe.

Decades before the crack of two pistol shots in Sarajevo plunged the Continent into World War I, Otto von Bismarck famously predicted it would be “Some damn fool thing in the Balkans” that would likely spark Europe’s next major war.

That conflict left an estimated 20 million dead, and set Europe on course for yet another giant conflagration a quarter of a century later. American diplomat George Kennan later referred to WWI as the “seminal catastrophe of the 20th century,” as much of Europe’s subsequent political turmoil, disasters and horrors can, to some degree, be traced back it.

Reassuringly, however, some things have since changed. For example, while Juraj Cintula may have fired more bullets in his attempted assassination of Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico than Bosnian-Serb student Gavrilo Princip did in killing Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife in 1914, this episode of violence won’t send the Continent spinning off into another major war — adding to the one Russian President Vladimir Putin is already waging in Ukraine.

Nonetheless, historians in years to come may well assess this attempt on the life of a European head of government — the first since 2003 — as another way station along Europe’s alarming descent into extreme political acrimony and violence.

Britain has already seen two lawmakers — Jo Cox and David Amess — murdered since 2016. And Germany’s federal police reported last week that they documented a record 60,000 politically motivated criminal offenses in 2023. Thus, Cintula’s actions should certainly be a wake-up call for all who care about democracy and fear Europe being dragged back into a habitual past, where political violence was commonplace.

The so-called Belle Époque — which began after the end of the Franco-Prussian War in 1871 and continued until Princip’s violent intervention — is often memorialized as a period marked by joie de vivre, affluence, enlightenment, regional peace, economic prosperity, and notable technological and scientific innovation — all things we celebrated after the fall of the Berlin Wall and until the 2008 financial crisis and Covid-19. Events that made us understand that history had, in fact, not ended.

But as ever with historical memory, it all depends on who’s doing the chronicling — the beneficiaries or the losers; high society, the middling or the poor.

For instance, the golden age also had a dark side, with political violence permeating Europe well before the war’s outbreak. The era’s tally of assassinated leaders is mind-boggling, including the prime ministers of Greece, Bulgaria, Serbia and Spain (two), a Finnish justice minister and the monarchs of Greece, Italy and Portugal — as well as an Austrian empress.

As these assassinations unfolded, some reassured themselves by arguing they were the bloody handiwork of crackpots and wackos. “There are more kinds of fools than one can guard against,” remarks a character in Joseph Conrad’s period-set novel, “The Secret Agent.”

Today, it’s similarly hard not to categorize the 71-year-old Cintula — the politically fluid, sometimes poet, coal miner, stone mason and, ironically, co-founder of the short-lived Movement Against Violence party — as anything but unhinged. But cranks can often be canaries in the coal mine.

Much like recent years in Europe, the beautiful era saw the growth of political militias, movements leaning toward violence and aggressive nationalistic thinking too. Being an era of excess and outrageous income inequality, it was comparable to today, masking serious social and economic dislocation, which in turn fueled widespread resentment, with many seeking refuge in the great fundamentalist “-isms” of the time — fascism, communism, anarchism and nationalism.

For scholars like Indian essayist Pankaj Mishra, similarities between the so-called golden age and ours are clearly visible, as “much in our experience resonates with that of people in the nineteenth century.” However, in his book “Age of Anger,” Mishra warned that we’re presently witnessing economic-fostered shocks of even greater magnitude, with “dangers more diffuse and less predictable.”

Historians in years to come may well assess this attempt on the life of a European head of government as another way station along Europe’s alarming descent into extreme political acrimony and violence. | Kenzo Tribouillard/AFP via Getty Images

The jolts taking place under our feet today are forewarnings of political earthquakes to come — likely including the outcome of the forthcoming European Parliament election, which is predicted to see a surge in support for populist parties on the right. 

As fears mount over marginalization, mass migration, social injustice and being left behind, as expectations about the benefits of material well-being are dashed, rage is boiling — and the populists are benefiting, eagerly stoking the flames with incendiary winner-take-all language. From thinking we were unassailable after the West’s triumph over Communism, what voters now see around them is feckless war-making, institutional incompetence and that fact that their children will be living poorer lives than they are. They also feel disenfranchised, as decisions increasingly seem to be taken by global and supranational bodies that aren’t directly accountable to the electorate.

Europe’s centrist establishment politicians aren’t helping matters either. All too often, they’re disconnected from desperate voters exhausted by seemingly permanent crises. They’re all too quick to blame disinformation and demagogic manipulation for the rise of populism, rather than taking the inconvenient here-and-now challenges agitating ordinary families seriously — or doing so belatedly, giving populists room to maneuver.

Of course, enemies of democracy are doing all they can to discredit our global order with disinformation spread across social media, then amplified by a global network of fake news organizations operated by Russia, China, Iran and allies like Nicolás Maduro’s Venezuela. But the West’s democratic politicians shouldn’t be unwittingly aiding and abetting them — or the cynical and opportunistic populists on the right or left — by selling democracy short. They need to heed disaffection, be honest about painful choices and trade-offs, and make the democratic system work better.

Trying to trick voters can be added to the list of charges these politicians face. For example, promising to get rid of inheritance tax — as British Chancellor Jeremy Hunt did last week — comes across as cynical, as Conservatives regularly pledge to do exactly that before elections and then, of course, proceed to do nothing.

Meanwhile, refusing to come clean is another tactic sticking in the craw of many voters. As POLITICO noted two months ago, against the backdrop of angry farmers protesting across the Continent, EU leaders decided to keep enlargement talk to a minimum ahead of the parliamentary election, fearing it would only help populists.

“Let’s be honest: nobody wants to talk about this [enlargement] before the European elections,” an EU official told POLITICO. “Talking about less subsidies for European farmers is not something you’d want to put on your campaign slogans — or give as electoral ammunition for the far right.”

But this approach discredits democracy, adding to already present acrimony and anger, offering ammunition. And before long, it might not just be lone-wolf cranks we have to fear.