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- Herausgeber: New Island
- Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
- Sprache: Englisch
Heaven is where the police are British, the chefs Italian, the mechanics German, the lovers French, and it's all organized by the Swiss. Hell is where the police are German, the chefs are British, the mechanics French, and it's all organized by the Italians. RTÉ's Tony Connelly has produced an intriguing, thought-provoking, hilarious and sometimes poignant grand tour through European stereotypes. From the bailouts to the Euro-crisis, from the rise of Frau Merkel to the dalliances of the French presidents, Connelly does a brilliant job skewering the lies and truths of European stereotypes. A lot has happened in the nearly five years since Tony Connelly published the first edition of Don't Mention the Wars to great acclaim. In this revised and updated edition, Connelly revisits every chapter and explores the news and the rich parade of events that have happened in that time.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2014
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Don’t Mention The Wars
Don’tMENTIONthe
WARS
A Journey Through European Stereotypes New Edition
Tony Connelly
DON’T MENTION THE WARS
First published 2009, this edition 2014
by New Island Books
16 Priory Hall Office Park
Stillorgan
County Dublin
www.newisland.ie
Copyright © Tony Connelly, 2009 & 2014
Tony Connelly has asserted his moral rights.
PRINT ISBN: 978-1-84840-352-9
EPUB ISBN: 978-1-84840-353-6
MOBI ISBN: 978-1-84840-354-3
All rights reserved. The material in this publication is protected by copyright law. Except as may be permitted by law, no part of the material may be reproduced (including by storage in a retrieval system) or transmitted in any form or by any means; adapted; rented or lent without the written permission of the copyright owner.
British Library Cataloguing Data. A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Contents
Foreword
Introduction- Pictures in our Heads
Chapter 1- Germany
Chapter 2- France
Chapter 3- Spain
Chapter 4- Italy
Chapter 5- Denmark
Chapter 6- Sweden
Chapter 7- Finland
Chapter 8- Hungary
Chapter 9- Czech Republic
Chapter 10- Poland
Chapter 11- Greece
Acknowledgements
Bibliography
Foreword
The first edition of this book appeared when it looked as if Europe had survived the worst of the global financial meltdown triggered by the collapse of Lehman Bros. Indeed, by November 2009 some European leaders were congratulating themselves that the EU’s social model and its system of financial regulation had shielded citizens from the worst excesses of Anglo-American capitalism.
Had that been the case then national stereotyping might have remained what it was in the early 21st century: an ever-diminishing side-effect of what happens when a multiplicity of national groups share a crowded continent with an unhappy history. It was five years since the EU had taken in 10 new members, everyone was getting to know and, roughly speaking, like each other. The single market was facilitating the growing mobility of people, goods and services. Low-cost airlines were shifting tens of millions of passengers in and out of cities that belonged to other cultures. A single currency gave Europeans a tangible sense of belonging to something bigger than the nation state.
Stereotyping did, of course, still occur, but it was safely tucked away in the realm of humour and good-natured rivalry. It was certainly not the done thing, in the politically correct, enlarged Europe, for citizens of one country – never mind the leaders of that country – to publicly denigrate the citizens of another.
Then something happened.
A letter sent by the Greek finance ministry on 21 October to Eurostat in Luxembourg ruefully admitted that Greece’s budget deficit for 2009 would not be 3.7 per cent of GDP as signalled just a few weeks previously, but 12.7 per cent. In the economic crisis that followed, one in which the very survival of the euro and the EU itself were threatened, Europeans re-discovered the knack of insulting one another.
This updated edition, while sticking to the time-honoured stereotypes of our fellow Europeans that we hold dear, also examines the anatomy of euro-related bad blood. There’s a new chapter on the Greeks, who have been at the very epicentre of the disaster and whose national character has, in the minds of some (not all of them populist politicians or tabloid journalists), been responsible for ruining it for everyone.
While serious policy-makers have to weigh up the best for their voters, and to a lesser extent for Europe as a whole, they’re not only operating on the basis of stereotypes. But they are operating within earshot of the feelings (and resentments) of their voters. Since the euro – to an extent that no one anticipated – would mean that the behaviour of one group of ethnic Europeans could have devasting implications for another group, the single currency has recalibrated – or perhaps even reversed – the general course of European integration and oneness.
In short, the euro crisis has taken the fun out of stereotypes.
Tony Connelly, Brussels, April 2014.
