AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about the agenda
of the G20?
You’ve been participating in the alternative
summit.
And what is what you are proposing, and all
of the people who have gathered, to challenge
the G20?
SREĆKO HORVAT: Yes.
To come to that answer, first we have to understand
what is actually the current G20.
My thesis is that the G20 actually doesn’t
exist anymore.
I mean, when you look around me and you see
the police and you see that all these world
leaders are coming to Hamburg, you might,
of course, ask me, "How doesn’t it exist,
if we can see it with our bare eyes?"
But I don’t know if you watched the great
TV series which was called Young Pope, where
Jude Law is portraying a new conservative
young pope who doesn’t even believe in God
anymore.
I think the current G20 doesn’t even believe
that it’s a G20.
If there is one thing on which all the leaders
of the G20 agree today, it is that they disagree
on almost all fronts, when it comes, on the
one hand, Angela Merkel is proposing free
trade, Donald Trump, as we know, is proposing
protectionism.
But there is also a big division between the
Chinese and the Germans, who are supposed
to be the allies.
They cannot even agree on the concept of globalization
and free trade among themselves.
Then there is the Paris Agreement and climate
change.
Then there is terrorism.
Then there is new restrictions on the internet.
But what I think is important to say—and
here we come to the message of all of us who
are these days protesting, discussing, planning
what should our next steps be–is that we
shouldn’t only protest against Donald Trump
and the new dictators such as Erdoğan, Putin,
Saudis and the Chinese.
I think the answer to this is not what they
call now today the leaders of the free world—Macron,
Theresa May or Merkel.
It is the same as in the elections in the
U.S. Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump were
two parts of the same coin.
And the same goes for G20.
Macron, Merkel and Theresa May, on the one
hand; Donald Trump, Erdoğan, Putin, Saudis
and the Chinese—are two parts of the same
coin.
The austerity, the Washington Consensus, which
was adopted in ’99 by the G20, and then
especially in 2008 with a new kind of Washington
Consensus, is actually feeding the neofascism
which is rising all around the world, from
Poland, which was the country where Donald
Trump was welcomed just before G20, to Hungary,
to the country where I come from, Croatia,
or Serbia and many other countries.
I think what we are proposing, from the other
side, is that we have to get out of this double
blackmail.
We have to get out of this illusion and this
trap that the answer to Donald Trump is Angela
Merkel.
Unfortunately, the answer to Donald Trump
is not Angela Merkel.
We have to fight to create a third space,
which can only be a new progressive, radical,
international movement.
AMY GOODMAN: I want to go to President Trump
speaking yesterday in Poland.
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: The fundamental question
of our time is whether the West has the will
to survive.
Do we have the confidence in our values to
defend them at any cost?
Do we have enough respect for our citizens
to protect our borders?
Do we have the desire and the courage to preserve
our civilization in the face of those who
would subvert and destroy it?
We can have the largest economies and the
most lethal weapons anywhere on Earth, but
if we do not have strong families and strong
values, then we will be weak, and we will
not survive.
AMY GOODMAN: Srećko Horvat, can you respond
to President Trump?
SREĆKO HORVAT: What should I say?
When I hear that, it sounds like a déjà
vu from his inauguration speech, which was
a very apocalyptic speech.
But as someone who comes from Europe, as someone
who was raised in communist Yugoslavia, where
we created a system which wasn’t ideal,
but at least we had solidarity, equality,
self-management, a different economic system,
I must say the Western values Donald Trump
is talking about are not Western values at
all.
He’s erecting borders and walls—with solar
panels, by the way, on the Mexican borders.
Are these European values?
Are the values to bomb Yemen, to make lucrative
arm deals with Saudi Arabia?
These are, in my opinion as someone who comes
from the West, from Europe—by the way, from
Eastern Europe, which is not West, but it
doesn’t matter—these are, for me, not
Western values.
Western values have to do with the workers’
movement.
And the workers’ rights are being diminished
in the U.S. and also all around Europe.
Western values have to do with solidarity.
Western values have to do with opening the
door, if people who are fleeing from wars
are knocking on the door in the middle of
the night and want to survive, like all the
million Syrians and Afghanistan people, from
Iraq, Somalia and so on.
Western values are providing a decent salary
to all the people, and not in the way that
Donald Trump is talking about.
So when Donald Trump is talking about Western
values, it doesn’t have to do anything with
the West as I understand it.
AMY GOODMAN: Yesterday, the Polish president
was there with your president, the Croatian
president.
I was wondering if you can respond to that.
But also, talk about the movement that you
formed, together with Yanis Varoufakis, who
resigned as finance minister in Greece, certainly
had his confrontations with Angela Merkel
when it came to austerity being imposed on
Greece.
If you could respond to all of this, Srećko
Horvat?
SREĆKO HORVAT: Yes.
What we are trying to do with DiEM25, Democracy
in Europe Movement, is actually respond to
both parts of the same coin.
We don’t believe that the answer lies in
the rising populism and extreme politics represented
by Viktor Orbán or the Polish president or
even the Croatian president, who is very happy
to just jump around Donald Trump as a small
dog.
We also don’t believe that the answer lies
in the policies which are proposed and implemented
mainly by the German government, one of the
two countries of the G20, besides South Korea,
which has a surplus.
What we are trying to do is actually to unite
all progressive Europeans, not only those
who are part of the European Union, in a new
radical, progressive, international movement.
It comes out of the conviction that the concept
of the—that it’s finished with the concept
of the nation-state, that we cannot retreat
to the illusion that something such as national
sovereignty still exists in this world.
This is also the reason why we are opposed
to many leftist comrades who propose the so-called
Lexit position—you know, what was happening
during Greece, that a Grexit would be a solution;
what was happening during Brexit, even from
the left by our friends, like Tariq Ali, for
instance, but also others, that an exit from
the eurozone is a solution.
We believe that only by reuniting, by reforming—but
not reforming in the reformist sense, but
in the sense of something what in political
theory we could call a new constituent process—that
there is a possibility for a brighter future
for Europe.
This is the reason why at DiEM25 we are proposing
something what we call the European New Deal.
Yeah, as you can see, it’s pretty difficult
to talk here about such stuff, since the police
is moving all the time.
But we don’t want to live in such Europe
anymore.
AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to get your response
to German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who said
at this year’s [G20] summit in Hamburg that
she’s focusing on climate change.
She was asked Thursday what a compromise on
climate change might look like.
This is what she said.
CHANCELLOR ANGELA MERKEL: [translated] We
know the United States has withdrawn from
the Paris Agreement.
All others—or, at least as far as I know,
many, many others—are still committed to
the Paris Agreement.
And how that turns out is something we will
tell you at the end, when we have finished
the communiqué.
AMY GOODMAN: Srećko Horvat, Croatian philosopher,
your response to not only what Angela Merkel
is saying, but the position President Trump
has taken?
SREĆKO HORVAT: When it comes to the Paris
Agreement, I think the biggest scandal is
not so much that Donald Trump retreated and
his withdrawal from the Paris Agreement.
I think what we should do is that we should
go a step further and be even more radical,
to say that the current Paris Agreement is
not enough, because the G20 states still spend
more public money—four times—than any
other countries on fossil fuels.
What we should do, actually, instead of the
Paris Agreement, is, on the municipal, local
level, that all citizens have the power to
actually decide on climate change.
And this is still not happening.
So what I see with the Paris Agreement is
a very similar position to the position on
terrorism or war.
This is cynicism, I would call, as well.
So, even if Donald Trump—which is a science
fiction today, I think—would agree on the
Paris Agreement, I still think that the Paris
Agreement, as such, is also not enough, that
we should go much further than the Paris Agreement
itself.
AMY GOODMAN: Srećko Horvat, your final words,
as you stand there in the streets of Hamburg
today?
Over 100,000 people have been protesting the
G20 summit.
A number of protesters and police got hurt.
As you speak today, in a message to the world,
what you have to say?
SREĆKO HORVAT: Well, my message to all the
Americans and to all those who voted for Bernie
Sanders, even those who didn’t but who don’t
support the Donald Trump policies, my message
would be that Donald Trump—that was the
first step—rejected to go to the U.K. because
he was not welcome there in the U.K., because
big protests were planned.
Then he went to Poland, because he was welcome
there, because his allies in the conservative
Polish government organized buses of thousands
of people who would come to cheer him and
welcome him.
Well, tomorrow, in morning tomorrow—just
a second, because the police again is coming.
Tomorrow in Hamburg, I hope more than 100,000
people will show that Donald Trump is also
not welcome in Europe.
And I think it’s a historic day, because
it will be one of the biggest public demonstrations
against Donald Trump in Europe today.
But just with a little footnote: I don’t
think that it’s enough to protest Donald
Trump.
We should also protest the other part of the
coin, which is represented by the so-called
leaders of the free world.
Thanks a lot for being with us in Hamburg
today.
AMY GOODMAN: Srećko Horvat, I want to thank
you for being with us, Croatian philosopher,
one of the founders, along with Yanis Varoufakis,
the former finance minister of Greece, of
the Democracy in Europe Movement, also known
as the DiEM25.
We’ll link to your latest piece in The Guardian.
It’s headlined "We came to Hamburg to protest
about G20—and found a dystopian nightmare."
This is Democracy Now!
When we come back, we’ll talk about the
meeting between President Trump and Vladimir
Putin, the president of Russia.
We’ll be joined by the publisher of The
Nation, Katrina vanden Heuvel.
Stay with us.
