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[abroadstudiesoutlook]

Abroad Studies Outlook

www.abroadstudiesedu.com

[mariacallous]

In the 1990s, the feel-good first decade after communism’s implosion, headlines in Central Europe were dominated by the likes of Vaclav Havel, the charming playwright-turned-Czech president who championed civic democracy. Yet, from the start, extreme-right rabble-rousers and brooding nativists lurked in the margins. Decades of Soviet rule had reinforced illiberal attitudes that surfaced in my discussions with ordinary people as I crisscrossed the region as a young correspondent, eventually writing a book about the far right in post-communist Central Europe.

At the time, I believed that Central Europe’s entry into the European Union, which was still far off and uncertain, would nullify the region’s most destructive tendencies. After all, the bloc had accomplished this for postwar Germany, Greece, Portugal, and Spain—all of which had emerged from radical dictatorships to become healthy democracies. Countries didn’t revert to despotism after acceding to the EU. Right?

But in Hungary the unthinkable happened: A state that jumped through all of the hoops to join the EU in 2004 commenced a rapid decline into authoritarianism just six years later. Other member states have endured stretches of democratic backsliding, including Romania, Slovenia, Slovakia, and, notably, Poland during the 2015 to 2023 Law and Justice government. But their political systems and societies were resilient enough to fight back and depose strongmen. Hungary did not rise from the mat.

Two new books grant us vivid insight into Hungary’s descent into dictatorship—a feat pulled off so skillfully by Prime Minister Viktor Orban that it inspires awe—and uncover the mechanisms that made the regime’s rise possible, even as the undemocratic country has remained in a bloc designed to promote and deepen the liberal character of its members.

In Embedded Autocracy: Hungary in the European Union, Hungarian political scientists Andras Bozoki and Zoltan Fleck dissect the many-headed hydra of the Orban regime. Orban’s Hungary isn’t an old-school dictatorship that snatched power by a coup or jails opposition figures. As this astute book details, it possesses all the trappings of democracy, including regular, monitored elections; a multiparty opposition; and thus far, the peaceful transfer of power. Today, non-Fidesz mayors rule in the largest, western-most cities such as Budapest, Szeged, Pecs, and Gyor. For most Hungarians, this is evidence enough that their country is a democracy, regardless of the diagnosis of political scientists. This achievement is Orban’s magic, which relies not on spells but rather on the ruthless application of power.

Born in rural Hungary in 1963, Orban—a self-proclaimed “illiberal” politician—was once a liberal activist. He became an anti-communist student leader in the 1980s while studying law in Budapest and even took up a research fellowship at Oxford University on George Soros’s dime. Along with other activists, he founded the Alliance of Young Democrats (Fidesz) in 1988 as a Western-minded movement to promote freedom and democracy. (Bozóki was formerly a member of Fidesz but left the party in 1993.)

Orban has orchestrated every Fidesz twist and turn since, his keen populist instincts charting the course rather than any ideology. Between 1993 and 1994, he jerked the rudder to the right, and in 1998, Orban and Fidesz took the country’s highest office for the first time at the head of a center-right coalition. The Orban government, offering a taste of what the future held, stretched propriety to the limit by rallying the media to its cause, promoting loyalists in the state apparatus, and ingratiating itself with deep-pocketed bankers and industrialists.

In 2002, Orban committed a rare gaffe that resulted in defeat: playing more forcefully to the emerging middle class than to the much larger pool of older, uneducated, poor, rural voters—those ravaged by International Monetary Fund (IMF) and EU-driven market reforms. This group either shied from the polls or voted socialist left. It was not a mistake Orban would make twice.

Fidesz was out of office for the next eight years, and by the late aughts, Orban had transformed it from a conservative party to a populist vehicle that appealed not to a class but to a nation. He purged Fidesz of critical minds, centralized it around himself, and polarized Hungary’s discourse by casting political opponents as the nation’s enemies.

By 2010—six years after Hungary secured EU membership—Orban was raring to pounce. Bozoki and Fleck, though critical of Fidesz’s first turn at governance, argue that the descent into autocracy fell into place that year when Fidesz staged a spectacular comeback with a supermajority in parliament. Orban wasted no time in employing this mandate to hollow out the judiciary, rewrite Hungary’s legal code, and promulgate a new constitution. New laws made it harder for upstart parties to win seats and even easier for a large party, like Fidesz, to capture a legislative supermajority with less of the vote. And the refashioned legal code saw to it that Fidesz’s cronyism and subsequent amassing of power fell close enough within the law that it would not be sanctioned domestically.

Today, Hungary is a flourishing dictatorship. The regime has curtailed press freedom, marginalized the opposition, dismantled democratic checks and balances, controlled civil society, fixed election laws, and neutered criticism—ensuring that only extraordinary events, not elections, could oust it from power.

In Bozoki and Fleck’s telling, Orban’s genius was that he intuited exactly how Hungary was susceptible to this turn. The country possessed next to no democratic tradition before 1989. After the Soviets’ brutal crushing of the 1956 uprising, when Hungarians challenged the Stalinist regime, they fell in line again—in contrast to the Poles who fought communism’s enforcers tooth and nail. These “deep-seated attitudes” continued into the 21st century and contributed to Orban’s ability to entrench authoritarian rule.

“He could change the regime because society was not much concerned with the political system,” the authors write. “What people learned over decades and even centuries was that political regimes … were always external to people’s everyday lives.”

Rather than heavy-handed repression, Orban relied on self-censorship, suppliance, and patronage to keep his subjects in line. Those who toed the line were rewarded with jobs, directorships, and contracts. And, of course, he leaned on his own special cocktail of nationalist rhetoric: “He has provided identity props for a disintegrated society using tropes in line with historical tradition: a Christian bulwark against the colonialism of the West, the pre-eminent, oldest nation in the Carpathian basin, a nation of dominance, a self-defending nation surrounded by enemies,” the authors write.

Fidesz received a tremendous windfall in the aughts when the left-liberal government botched an economic transition based on neoliberal principles, rashly introducing free-market conditions to a society that was woefully unprepared for their fallout. The government created ever greater wealth disparities as it followed the “shock therapy” prescriptions of Western institutions such as the World Bank and the IMF, as well as the EU. In 2007, Hungary’s own debt crisis sent the country into a tailspin, a meltdown that the global economic crisis turbocharged the next year.

The socialist-liberal coalition of those years heaped blunders on top of blunders—such as the prime minister’s recorded admission that he lied to win the 2006 election—before crumbling. So thoroughly did the liberal partner in the coalition self-destruct that for a decade afterward, Hungary fielded no liberal party at all.

In the eyes of many Hungarians, the economic collapse discredited market capitalism, and liberal democracy with it. They understood it as one bundle that foreign actors had foisted upon them. Twenty years after democracy’s debut, the population welcomed a strongman who claimed to cater to “Hungarian interests” rather than those of elites in Brussels and Washington.

It is in the name of “national unification,” Fidesz’s blanket legitimation for nearly all of its reforms, that the party re-nationalized much of the industrial sector, as well as banking, media, and energy. Over the 2010s, Bozoki and Fleck write, Orban would decimate civil society and end “autonomy in public education, universities, science, professional bodies, and public law institutions.” Under these conditions, it is impossible to call any election free or fair, even if ballot boxes aren’t being stuffed.

Bozoki and Fleck’s fine book is buttressed by David Jancsics’s narrower Sociology of Corruption: Patterns of Illegal Association in Hungary, another work that understands egregious corruption as integral to the regime. At the book’s start, Jancsics, a Hungarian-born sociologist at San Diego State University, makes a simple observation: that corruption in Hungary today is on a scale unthinkable in the Soviet era.

This is quite a claim—in the 1990s, one of the most repeated reasons for Central Europe’s disgust with the Soviet system was its prevalent corruption. But the author backs it up. Although graft is still despised in Hungary today, because most people don’t benefit from it, Jancsics makes the case that it has once again been accepted as the way things are done.

Since 2010, Jancsics writes, “the Fidesz regime has effected a radical transformation of grand corruption patterns … in which complex corrupt networks are professionally designed and managed by the very top of the political elite.” Networks dominated by members of Orban’s inner circle now control not only political institutions, but also the economy, and “uninterruptedly siphon off a huge amount of public resources from the government system.”

These networks of Orban’s cronies and relatives are protected by a thick layer of shell companies that disguise the real owners of the businesses that profit from their proximity to government, Jancsics writes. And like the changes to Hungary’s political structure, the regime has fashioned laws to make its corruption legal.

Jancsics uses the example of the country’s $2.5 billion tobacco industry to illustrate this stripe of corruption. In 2012, the rubber-stamp Hungarian parliament passed a law that turned the sector into a state monopoly—purportedly to stop underage smoking—and decreed that all cigarette sales must occur under new concessions contracts. The government then created the national Tobacco Nonprofit Trade Company to oversee the distribution of new licenses. The company doled these out to members of networks close to the government. Two years later, another law passed stipulating that shops could only buy tobacco products from a state-owned intermediary. According to Jancsics, investigative journalists revealed that one person—Lorinc Meszaros, the then-mayor of Orban’s hometown—stood behind much of this scheme, which more than 500 shell companies helped obscure. Today, Meszaros is Hungary’s wealthiest man.

The crumbs of this hugely lucrative operation trickled down to lower-level party clientele. “It seems the legislators used the restructuring and reregulation of the whole tobacco market not only for the benefit of a few powerful oligarchs or proxy oligarchs but also for rewarding a large number of party clientele,” Jancsics writes. “Family members, spouses, siblings, parents, in-laws, friends, or even neighbors of people linked to the governing party won several concessions.”

The EU has not only watched this level of corruption unfold. As Bozoki and Fleck show, Brussels has been complicit in Hungary’s metamorphosis, supplying the funds to grease the regime’s operations. Like all of the EU’s Central European members, Hungary has profited immensely from EU cohesion funds, which are designed to bring the economies of weaker member states up to scratch. Between 2014 and 2020, Hungary received around $34 billion in EU funds, which Bozoki and Fleck argue has only solidified the ruling elite’s hold on power.

The EU finally got tougher in 2018, when it sanctioned Budapest for breaching the bloc’s core values. The following year, the European People’s Party, the European Parliament’s grouping of center-right parties, finally expelled Fidesz from its ranks. Over the past three years, the EU has frozen more than $31 billion to Hungary, including COVID-19 recovery funds, over rule of law deficits.

But this hasn’t forced Budapest to significantly modify any of its most flagrant abuses. Although there were loud objections from within the European Parliament, Hungary took over the rotating presidency of the Council of the European Union in July. Orban has continued to veto EU aid to Ukraine and increased its reliance on Russian fuels at a time when the bloc is striving to quit Russian imports. Perhaps more than any moves Hungary has made as council president, Orban’s friendliness to the Kremlin in exchange for cheap energy has weakened the EU as a foreign policy actor.

The EU is paying an enormous price for indulging Orban, not least by sanctioning a template for populist takeovers elsewhere in Europe. The bloc’s clout in terms of its ability to shape commerce, values, and policy coordination is obviously not as great as I once imagined. Hungary’s brazen disrespect and power plays have weakened it even further.

Now, the EU as we know it is under siege across Europe, where Orban allies hold or share power in the Netherlands, Finland, Sweden, Slovakia, Austria, and Croatia. These rightists want an EU with fewer powers and less centralization—a Europe of nations—and many look to Hungary for leadership. Even U.S. President-elect Donald Trump pays homage to Orban, whom he has called “fantastic” and a “great leader.” These other pretenders will hopefully come and go—as ruling parties and their leaders do in democracies—but history teaches us that Hungary’s embedded autocracy will not disappear anytime soon.

[argyrocratie]

"In “Memory Voids and Role Reversals,” Palestinian political science professor Dana El Kurd writes of her jarring experience, hearing of the October 7th massacres by Hamas while visiting the Holocaust Tower at the Jewish Museum in Berlin. She notes the historic irony of Holocaust survivors seeking security from future oppression by expelling another people from their homeland by the hundreds of thousands, ghettoizing them in enclaves enforced by military checkpoints, and controlling them with collective punishment.

The irony of a state formed as the “antithesis” to the ghetto using ghettoization as a strategy of control is not lost on Palestinians. This infrastructure of coercion went hand in hand, of course, with ever-present physical violence — imprisonment, home demolitions, air strikes and more.

She quotes Aristide Zolberg’s observation that “formation of a new state can be a ‘refugee-generating process.’”

This is not only true of Palestinians. The Westphalian nation-state, which has been the normative component of the international system since the Treaty of Westphalia, necessarily entails (especially since the post-1789 identification of nationalism with the nation-state) the suppression of ethnic identity to a far greater extent than the expression of any such identity. Every constructed national identity associated with a “State of the X People” has necessarily involved the suppression and homogenization of countless ethnicities present in the territory claimed by that state. At the time of the French Revolution, barely half the “French” population spoke any of the many langue d’oil dialects of northern France, let alone the dialect of the Ile de France (the basis for the official “French” language). The rest spoke Occitan dialects like Provençal, or non-Romance languages like Breton (whose closest living relative is Welsh). The same is true of Catalan, Aragonese, Basque, and Galician in Spain, the low-German languages and now-extinct Wendish in Germany, the non-Javanese ethnicities of Indonesia, and so on. Heads of state issue sonorous pronouncements concerning the “Nigerian People” or “Zimbabwean People,” in reference to multi-ethnic populations whose entire “identity” centers on lines drawn on a map at the Berlin Conference.

When I say official national languages were established through the suppression of their rivals, I mean things like the residential schools of the United States and Canada punishing Native children for using their own languages. Or schools around the world shaming students with signs reading “I Spoke Welsh (or Breton, or Provencal, or Catalan, or Basque, or Ainu, or an African vernacular instead of the English, French, etc., lingua franca). And so on.

And when we consider the range of artificial national identities that were constructed by suppressing other real ethnicities, we can’t forget the “Jewish People” of Israel. Its construction occurred part and parcel with the suppression of diasporic Jewish ethnic identities all over Europe and the Middle East. The “New Jewish” identity constructed by modern Zionism was associated with the artificial revival of Hebrew, which had been almost entirely a liturgical language for 2300 years, as an official national language. And this, in turn, was associated with the suppression — both official and unofficial — of the actually existing Jewish ethnicities associated with the Yiddish, Ladino, and Arabic languages.

The centuries-old languages and cultures of actual Jewish ethnicities throughout Europe were treated as shameful relics of the past, to be submerged and amalgamated into a new artificially constructed Jewish identity centered on the Hebrew language. 

Yiddish, the language spoken by the Ashkenazi Jews of Europe — derived from an archaic German dialect and written in the Hebrew alphabet — was stigmatized by Zionist leaders in Palestine and by the early Israeli government. According to Max Weinreich’s History of the Yiddish Language, the “very making of Hebrew into a spoken language derives from the will to separate from the Diaspora.” Diasporic Jewish identities, as viewed by Zionist settlers, were “a cultural morass to be purged.” The “New Jew” was an idealized superhuman construct, almost completely divorced from centuries worth of culture and traditions of actual Jews: “Yiddish began to represent diaspora and feebleness, said linguist Ghil’ad Zuckermann. ‘And Zionists wanted to be Dionysian: wild, strong, muscular and independent.’” 

This “contempt for the Diaspora” was “manifested . . .  in the fierce campaign against Yiddish in Palestine, which led not only to the banning of Yiddish newspapers and theaters but even to physical attacks against Yiddish speakers.” From the 1920s on, anyone in Palestine with the temerity to publish in Yiddish risked having their printing press destroyed by organizations with names like the “Battalion of the Defenders of the Hebrew Language,” “Organization for the Enforcement of Hebrew,” and “Central Council for the Enforcement of Hebrew.” The showing of the Yiddish-language film Mayn Yidishe Mame (“My Yiddish Mama”), in Tel Aviv in 1930, provoked a riot led by the above-mentioned Battalion. After the foundation of Israel, “every immigrant was required to study Hebrew and often to adopt a Hebrew surname.” In its early days Israel legally prohibited plays and periodicals in the Yiddish language. A recent defender of the early suppression of Yiddish, in the Jerusalem Post, argued that Diasporic languages threatened to “undermine the Zionist project”; in other words, an admission that actually existing ethnic identities threatened an identity manufactured by a nationalist ideology.

If this is true of Yiddish — the native language of the Ashkenazi Jews who dominated the Zionist settlement of Palestine — it’s even more so of the suppression of Jewish ethnic identities outside the dominant Sephardic minority. Golda Meir once dismissed Jews of non-Ashkenazi or non-Yiddish descent as “not Jews.” 

Consider the roughly half of the Israeli population comprised of Mizrahi Jews from Middle Eastern communities (including those living in Palestine itself before European settlement). Although the Mizrahim are trotted out as worthy victims when they are convenient for purposes of Israeli propaganda — the majority of them were expelled from Arab countries like Iraq after 1948, in what was an undeniable atrocity — they are treated the rest of the time as an embarrassment or a joke, and have been heavily discriminated against, by the descendants of Ashkenazi settlers. For example former Prime Minister David Ben Gurion described Mizrahim 

as lacking even “the most elementary knowledge” and “without a trace of Jewish or human education.” Ben Gurion repeatedly expressed contempt for the culture of the Oriental Jews: “We do not want Israelis to become Arabs. We are in duty bound to fight against the spirit of the Levant, which corrupts individuals and societies, and preserve the authentic Jewish values as they crystallized in the Diaspora.”

Current Prime Minister Netanyahu once joked about a “Mizrahi gene” as his excuse for tardiness. And an Israeli realtor ran a commercial appealing to “there goes the neighborhood” sentiments by depicting a light-skinned family having their Passover celebration disrupted by uncouth Mizrahi neighbors.

Nationalism and the nation-state are the enemies of true ethnicity and culture, and built on their graves. There’s no better illustration of this principle than the Zionist project itself."

-Kevin Carson, "Zionism and the Nation-State: Palestinians Are Not the Only Victims"

[fandomfluffandfuck]

Oh I'm sorry did I hear you're taking requests again? 🤭

Cute and fluffy high school Evanstan dating, please.

Imagine teenage Chris being all goofy yet charming and Sebastian's just smitten. He laughs at everything coming out of Chris' mouth. Then he's internally like "Jesus, calm down, you're being real desperate right now" but Chris is not thinking about that at all. Because he's so smitten with Sebastian himself, and he's like giving himself a pat on the shoulder in his mind, feeling real proud for being able to make someone actually laugh this much, and, it's Sebastian of all people too. But anyway, even though they're dating, they're still crushing real hard on each other, and try to hide the majority of it (and fail miserably, whether they realize that or not). But they're just so goddamn cute.

And then bonus point: imagine them marrying each other years later. They're each other's high school sweethearts. Aw maaan (in Anthony Mackie's voice)

Ugh, that doesn't count as anon's writing okay? That was a prompt. (Only If you're interested in it, of course) I would appreciate every single word you would write about this. Thank you!

This SO easily could be made much more fantastical and movie, a-la Not Another Teen Movie with jock Chris and popular boy Sebastian

But, just like you said, I love the thought of two dorky fucking theater kids giggling together and blushing so hard when their hands brush in the hallway or having awful all-tongue kisses before either of them knows how to kiss--it makes both of them cringe, it's so bad, but that's okay, they're bad together.

Too fucking sweet!

I can think of so many different scenarios for ✨them✨

When they're crushing hard on each other but have yet to admit it because Seb is a new student in Chris' school and they have yet to really meet--they've only seen each other's faces in the hall. Then, with butterflies, Sebastian always finds himself turning around sharply, spinning on his heel in a tight circle in the hallways. He would rather be caught dead than have to face his crush and stumble through an awkward conversation or get teased by his crush.

So, Seb practically runs through crowds of students to get away from Chris with that bright, shining smile and habit of making friends with anyone and everyone--jocks, theater kids, whoever. And because of Seb's bashfulness, Chris is convinced that that shy, sweet kid who doesn't talk so much in class because the other students make fun of his softened accent doesn't like him. Chris is a little heartbroken about it, too. He tells his older sister, Carly, and his Ma about it and they brush it off lovingly, surely, he's just shy and he'll come around, you'll have a class with him eventually and learn his name and talk to him. It'll work out.

It does work out.

After a first semester of evasion on Sebastian's part and hopeful intrigue on Chris', they end up in the same theater class together, same period, same teacher despite being in different years. Huh, Sebastian is a year younger than him. Chris didn't suspect that, but, hey, now the baby face makes more sense. Either way, suddenly, not only are they in the same class, now they're also playing silly theater games together, breaking the ice and laughing and bonding over the arts.

Chris learns, captivated by the other boy as he speaks, his voice soft and sweet with a lilt that flows over the syllables in a way that Chris has never heard before but is immediately obsessed with, that Sebastian is from Romania, lived in Germany for a short time, for an even shorter time was in New York City, and then came with his Mom (and probable, soon-to-be step-father) to Massachusetts. He's here. And, when Chris eggs him on and gets his mouth running, Chris also learns that for a while, Sebastian thought he should find a new name. An American name. He considered the name Chris.

Chris laughs because what are the odds? But he wishes he didn't because in an instant, Sebastian's smile dims and he grows quiet, unsure of his welcome. To apologize, Chris reaches out, setting his hand on his shoulder, and says so, "I'm sorry," he fumbles, "I just thought it was funny because then we'd have the same name. How funny would that be, dude? Hi, what's you're name? Chris. Oh, well, me too. Nice to meet you, Chris, I'm Chris." Chris finds his heart beating a little too fast, rambunctious as he does a voice for himself and for Sebastian, trying to cheer him up.

It works.

Sebastian laughs and, oh my god, Chris' whole world frickin' lights up. He's pretty sure he's in love. He's only ever felt so light and entranced the first time he saw a movie with Sandra Bullock or, god, Elisabeth Shue.

Keep it together, my guy, Chris shouts at himself in his head, his mind's eye suddenly awash with the incredibly uncool posters he has on his bedroom walls. A big, like, huge poster of Sandy and a smaller one of Elisabeth push a few run-of-the-mill posters of surfers and snowboarders that were too boyish for Carly to want out of her teen magazines. He needs to do something about those. He needs to be cooler. He needs Sebastian to like him. Ugh! not to mention the stuffed animals he still has. Some of them even sit on the side of his bed, their backs against the wall. He doesn't sleep with a teddy bear (technically), but they do sit there when he sleeps and sometimes he rolls over on top of them and crushes them in his sleep which makes him feel bad later even though he knows they can't feel it, they're not sentient, and--

Tighten up, c'mon, Chris urges himself, talking to himself in his head once more. He can't be spiraling out with this guy in front of him! He's trying to make conversation. He's trying to be cool.

Or... nevermind because their teacher interrupts any other chance of conversation with the next exercise.

After that first quick conversation, the boys are paired together more. Each time, they learn more about each other and, unbeknownst to the other, they hold tightly onto the information, willing themselves not to forget it so the next time they talk they don't stumble quite so hard.

Once, Chris is out with his Ma and siblings grocery shopping and he's interrupted in a not-so-serious argument with Scott about something that he can't even be bothered to remember when he hears--

"Uh, hi?"

Chris spins around and finds his face breaking into a surely dorky grin because Sebastian, it's Sebastian calling his name, unsure of himself, clearly, but confident enough to approach him and say hello and Chris might almost clobber him going in for a hug when Sebastian reaches for a handshake.

"Dude!" Chris says, pulling back to admire see his smile. He's wearing basketball shorts and a NASA sweatshirt, both bigger than he is, hanging off of him like hand-me-downs but Sebastian doesn't have any siblings so Chris wonders if they're his or his soon-to-be step-father's. Maybe. Maybe his mom still buys his clothes and insists that he can grow into them.

It's only when they're staring at each other, unsure of what to say, that Chris notices Sebastian's hair is wet and curling messily like he took a shower before spontaneously appearing in this grocery store on a Wednesday evening.

Sebastian is the one to break their silence, he also is the first one to get out of Chris' Evans'-typical-octopus-hold--what can he say, he's a hugger like his Ma--stepping back and going, "y'know, I don't think I'll ever get used to seeing so many bananas."

Chris is red.

Chris is thinking about bananas in a very, very inappropriate way. What could he possibly be talking about?

Sebastian, he notices, is turning red, too, but probably for very different reasons. Maybe. But he is definitely doing that thing he does when he's unsure of his place and his mouth is suddenly running away from him, talking about how in Romania and even to some extent in Vienna, there were never any bananas and little to no fresh fruit of any kind because of... of, y'know, he makes sure to look around before whispering communism.

Chris doesn't know much of anything about communism, just what they talked about in history with the Cold War so he just nods and tells Sebastian that he better buy a whole bunch then. Miracle of miracle, that makes Sebastian laugh. He confesses, turning his head and putting a hand over the side of his mouth so it's just the two of them--just Sebastian's warm breath on Chris' face, he's actually kind of sick of bananas now because of how many he ate when he first arrived in the U.S. Chris isn't sure if he's supposed to laugh or not, it doesn't seem super funny, it's a little more sad, but he laughs because Sebastian is telling him so theatrically that it must be a joke to him.

Sebastian gives him a secret smile, his hand still up to his mouth, and then scurries away to a disembodied voice just a few isles over, someone calling his name, heavily accented and musical, See-bass-tea-an. Chris lets it echo in his head and then tries it on his tongue, pronouncing the other's name the way it was intended, quiet, just to himself. See-bass-tea-an. That must be his Mom, calling for him, wondering where he wandered off to. And... right.

Yeah.

Chris should go back to his family, too, despite the stars circling his head like a cartoon character that's been hit with a mallet and is now wandering around in circles. Maybe it isn't love because Chris doesn't feel like this when he sees his favorite actresses on screen, this is... different. More intense. Definitely different. Maybe love. He stumbles back to Scott to half-heartedly, playfully shove him as the argument starts again.

They keep bumping into each other, talking in class but also in the hallways and at lunch. Sebastian starts sitting with Chris and his friends and it's great, the school year starts to fly by, until...

Everyone has been cast for the theatre department's third production of the year. Auditions are over, lines are being memorized, and rehearsals are underway. Chris was lucky enough to get the lead boy role and, on top of that luck, Sebastian was cast, too! So, now, they get to spend even more time together and it's great. Again, until...

The lead girl is out sick.

Nothing serious, just an unseasonal bout of the flu. It's nearly spring and it doesn't make sense but Chris would rather she stay home and rest rather than run herself into the ground before opening night is even here. Plus, this way, they don't have to practice kissing in rehearsals (which will never not be nerve-wracking) and Chris doesn't have to get sick himself, swapping spit. The only bad thing is that it means Chris is running lines by himself, making stupid, big gestures alone on stage (the teacher is running emergency runner-up auditions, just in case the lead girl misses more practice), pretending to grab a non-existent girl's waist and dip her to kiss her.

*Non-existent* and a *girl's waist* until someone shoves Sebastian out of the dark backstage where he had been waiting for his next cue as they do the run-through.

There he is, stumbling out into the light on colt-ish legs and suddenly Chris is bold enough, heart racing in his chest--encouraged by the voices of his Ma and sister and friends--to grab Sebastian and do the scene with him. Sebastian doesn't know his lines, and he's giggling because of it, but it doesn't matter. He's watched Chris do it enough to know when to react and how to move, swaying with him, gasping when he needs to. And Chris, just, does it.

Chris kisses Sebastian.

In the middle of the stage, standing in a blinding, sweltering spotlight, just as himself and not as his character, Chris kisses Sebastian's soft lips and, holy fuck, Sebastian is kissing him back.

Chris doesn't know what to do. He didn't think this far. He... he dips Sebastian like he was supposed to dip the girl but he doesn't kiss him as he dips him, feeling Sebastian scramble to hold onto him, afraid of falling. Instead, Chris whispers, their lips still brushing, "there's a spring dance in a few weeks, would you come with me?"

Sebastian's eyes flutter open and stretch wide, processing his question. Chris has never seen such a pretty, glittering color as what's entrapped in his eyes--they're blue, grey, almost green in the stage lighting. Absolutely mesmerizing.

His fingers dig tighter into his shoulders as Chris lifts them both back up to standing, "r-really?" Sebastian asks, his voice soft. The words are just for them. Not the characters they're playing. "Like, as your date? Not just because we're friends?"

Chris nods, confirming, "as a date."

Sebastian's verifiably soft lips split into a dazzling grin, kittenish and heart-stopping, "okay."

"Okay," Chris echoes, stuck in the magic of the moment. This feels like a movie, standing center stage where the boy gets the g--boy.

The boy gets the boy.

"Gentleman," their teacher claps her hands together once from the auditorium seating, shocking them both, leaving them to slide apart, a scant few inches between them, "that's enough goofing around." She twirls her finger in a circle, her voice gentle but without room for argument, "let's run it from the top."

Before Seb is whisked off the stage by a few of their mutual friends laughing and mostly quietly hollering, oooohing like middle schoolers rather than the high schoolers they are, he shoots Chris another one of those secret smiles and, god, Chris has forgotten every single one of his lines.

Do NOT get me started on the sheer amount of teasing that would happen if they did get married eventually, or just were long, long-term boyfriends and then were in Marvel and met Mackie. The jokes. Too much. I would love that.

[drsonnet]

"Today, in this upside-down world, we feverishly await the final vote in the U.N. General Assembly on the genocide in Srebrenica, while Gaza has been destroyed, and its people starved and denied water." (Illustration by Erhan Yalvaç)

Of villains, heroes and the final act

Of villains, heroes and the final act | Opinion (archive.org)

BY FARHAN MUJAHID CHAK - MAY 14, 2024

A UNGA resolution condemning the Srebrenica genocide is developed by countries like Germany and the U.S., despite their complicity in the ongoing genocide in Gaza by supporting Israel

Ino longer believe in fairy tales, although I once did.

Raised with ideals of sacredness in life, I was taught to honor the sanctity of humanity, to champion international law, and to cherish freedom of speech as the cornerstone of societal progress. I believe the Geneva Conventions were a manifestation of our collective conscience that mandated the rules of war and held nations to account. Women and children; hospitals and schools; the elderly and infirm were inviolable. I was taught that "peaceful protest" was the quintessential liberty of a sophisticated society that understood the relationship between civic activism, social change and progress. I listened, attentively, to the lofty rhetoric and was enthralled. I would utter high-sounding words on democracy, equality and freedom, and those grand glutinous words stuck to my teeth. I was – in a way, smitten.

Head-over-heels over values that deeply resonated in me, yet I slowly became disillusioned. It became evident those hollow words were never meant to be believed, only used to establish authority and reproach others with their inhumanity. Justice was not blind, and race, color and creed mattered in the application of the law. It is in this troubled context that the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) will vote on whether to declare July 11 "The International Day of Reflection and Remembrance of the 1995 Srebrenica Genocide." The complex intersection of the ongoing genocide in Palestine, the war on students and free speech on university campuses across the United States, Canada and Europe, and the former genocide in Srebrenica deserves closer scrutiny. The U.N. vote on the Bosnian genocide could not come at a more condemnable moment in world history.

On May 1, after considerable delay, a draft U.N. resolution on the Srebrenica genocide was submitted to the president of the 193-member U.N. General Assembly. Recall that in 1995, the town of Srebrenica was a U.N.-declared safe zone promised protection by a U.N. Dutch force. Dozens of able-bodied Muslim men in the town were asked to disarm, which they did. Despite that, fanatical Serb forces overran the safe zone and murdered 8,372 Muslim men and boys. Such is the perverse reality of the world we live in, that a U.N.-mandated safe haven, supposedly protected by U.N. forces, was invaded by terrorist Serb forces and a genocide ensued under their watch.

Bizarre irony

Now, a UNGA resolution on the Srebrenica genocide, partially modeled on a similar resolution for Rwanda, has been developed by several countries including Germany and the U.S. Absurdly, both are collaborators in the genocide currently underway in Gaza by direct military, economic and diplomatic support for Israel. This is the bizarre irony of being complicit in an ongoing genocide and putting forth a U.N. Resolution condemning the same.

What is the point of passing a resolution on genocide and turning a blind eye to one going on for the whole world to see? Sadly, villains need masks and no better cover than virtue. It is politics, not ethics, that is driving the U.N. Srebrenica vote. Of course, this does not diminish the necessity of it or the need to condemn the Srebrenica genocide and its denial. Still, the larger macro-level betrayal of the Geneva Conventions and International Human Rights Law by the U.S., U.K. and Germany is an indictment of the Western-led global order.

It is that outright duplicity, the sheer savagery of the genocide in Palestine, and the silencing of dissent that has provoked a whole generation of young people on campuses throughout the West. After all, they, too, were told stories about diversity, inclusion and pluralism. They were taught to condemn discrimination based on ethnicity, religion or gender. About equality before the law and the inviolability of non-combatants. They were raised to feel empowered and encouraged to peacefully organize and express their opinions. And, that society benefits when individuals exercise their civic duty. Now, they are witness to the flagrant disavowal of the moral archetypes that were instilled in them. They feel duped and are protesting, as heroes do, the enabling of genocide by their universities. Idealistic and courageous, they are sacrificing their education and careers to condemn the genocide in Palestine. Except rather than being celebrated, thousands of students have been beaten, harassed and arrested. Condemned for believing in the values that they were taught.

Now, we seem to be in the final act. One of impunity – if you will, in which we close our eyes to the genocide in Palestine, condemn students who protest it, and negotiate ways to commemorate a past genocide in Srebrenica – when ignoring it while it happened. Today, in this upside-down world, we feverishly await the final vote in the UNGA on the genocide in Srebrenica, while Gaza has been destroyed, and its people starved and denied water.

Yet, no matter the outcome of the resolution, it will not stop future genocides. Still, if nothing else, it will forever be a testament to the twisted dystopian reality in which we live and be a symbol of the urgent need for a new world order. Maybe, one faraway day, we can muster the will – for whatever purpose, and pass a U.N. resolution condemning it. Or name a highway after the martyrs. We will tell noble stories about those who were killed since it seems our twisted world only after their death feigns to honor them.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Professor of International Affairs, Visiting Research Faculty at Al Waleed Center for Muslim Christian Understanding at Georgetown University

[anger-and-red-flames]

imagine you re a German leftist organization and you re sending out leaflets saying its antisemitic to accuse Israel of committing a genocide :)

but ofc you also claim its antisemitic to view jewish people as an ethnic collective, and someones jewishness as an inherent, unchangeable characteristic.

which of course never gets criticized about Israels birth right trips or the way "jewish born" people can easily obtain Israeli citizenship.

like damn this is a "leftist" organization and I m so tired of how inconsistently people apply their own antisemitism definitions and how we are day after day keeping quiet about the Palestinian genocide, in which German weapons are being used in.

people are accusing groups of Palestine solidarity anti imperialist groups of being antisemitic because of the way they are focusing on Israels crimes - but oh my god in which other genocide are German weapons being used, germany is being sued for genocide at the icj, we are the only major non us ally Israel has left.

so of course as German anti imperialists and anti militarists we are focusing on the genocide our government is facilitating, and calling people "antisemitic" for doing so is absurd and doing a disservice to the actual threats jewish people in germany are facing.

a nazi tried to shoot up a synagogue a few years ago in the city of halle, and local "antifascists" are focusing more on stopping a teenage trans girl from attending a pride event than on stopping the fucking nazi protest against the event.

and yes, there is antisemitism among those calling themselves leftists, and in the one major case I know off the other anti imperialists immediately educated and heavily critiqued the girl - and in the case where people where on the way of accidentally perpetuating the "jewish people as demons" trope I talked to them and explained the history which makes this trope so insidious and dangerous, and, surprise, people thanked me and changed the text.

meanwhile nazis are beating up queer, jewish, muslim and leftist people, but what are the "anti antisemitism fighters" focusing on? Universities where some students are saying "yallah yallah intifada" or jewish academics publicly calling out Israel. germany is banning jewish scholars from working, jewish artists from performing, accusing jewish people speaking out in solidarity of Palestine to represent an "antisemitic ivory tower".

and this stupid leftist organization remains silent because standing with the fucking international law and humankind might be inconvenient. I hate it here.

[save-the-villainous-cat]

Things to remember when studying in Germany for University as an international student?

I’m not an international student so I can’t really give you any advice on that I guess.

But just some info on Unis in general.

1. Public universities are tuition-free but semester fees are from like 100€ to 300€ (mine is like 260€) so you should rather focus on housing and your study visa when it comes to money.

2. Most Unis have Studentenheime which are basically just dorms — those aren’t necessarily cheaper than an apartment, though.

2. Language depends on which Studiengang (course of study) you choose. I study biology which means all my modules are in German.

3. Modules mostly consist of lectures and a practical course. That depends on your Studiengang and your university, though.

4. Don’t choose medicine. It’ll fuck you up.

5. Depending on your modules, you will either have to take a final exam (100% of your grade) at the end of the semester or you’ll have to write a Hausarbeit (percentage of your grade depends on your prof/module) or something else. But those are mostly the two main ways of grading you.

6. Do not trust Deutsche Bahn. Ever.

7. Depending on your modules you’re not obligated to go to lectures at all. The profs do not care at all.

8. Depending on your Studiengang, you will have to take a test to prove your German skillzzz

9. No one will remind you to do your work. No one will run after you. No one will force you to study. But people will help you if you ask them.

10. Make friends. Connections are important. Don’t mind old people staring at you. Spend your afternoons at cafés with your friends (that’s what I do at least and I’m doing pretty well…)

11. Don’t be afraid to quit. If it’s not for you, then it’s not. You have no time to waste.

[the-light-of-stars]

Multiple palestinian, jewish, german and international leftist organisations, among them members of the BDS movement and Jewish Voice for a Just Peace, have been organising an event for the discussion and education on matters of palestinian liberation and human rights under the title 'Palestine Congress'.

German politicians and media have been repeatedly calling this event things like "terror event" or "event to spread 'imported antisemitism'" (a racist term common in the current german discussion referring to the idea that antisemitism in germany stems from and is being spread by immigrants and not from ethnically german citizens) and have been calling for a boycott and ban of the event and repercussions against its participants, and have already enacted repercussions against jewish organisations like Jewish Voice in the name of supposedly 'fighting antisemitism' , an argument the german government and media keep bringing up as a moral pretense to justify their continued support of Israel as their second biggest supplier of weapons, and which in the past months and years has lead to the arrests of many protestors, a very large part of them jewish.

"Broad resistance against 'Palestine Congress'"

A broad alliance [of people] from politics and civil society has called for a protest against the 'Palestine Congress' that is supposed to happen in Berlin at the end of the week.

"Berlin must not become the center of terror glorification", emphasized the alliance and explicitly referred to an appeal by the youth organisations of the political parties Grüne [greens/progressives], SPD [social democrats], FDP [liberals] and CDU [conservatives] as well as the youth forum of the German-Israeli-Society (DIG) and the Jewish Student Union Germany.

Famous supporters of the alliance are among others the parliament members Alexander Throm (CDU), Wolfgang Kubicki (FDP), Kevin Kühnert (SPD), Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann (FDP) and the former Berlin senator of culture Klaus Lederer (Linke [the left]).

This sentiment and call for protest was shared by the president of the Central Council of Jewish People in Germany who was quoted on the organisation's twitter account:

" Dr. Schuster regarding the planned Palestine Congress in Berlin: 'This event is a parade of anti-zionism and very certainly will not find any answers for the suffering of the civilian population in Gaza. On the contrary: Those who disregard the terror of Hamas and with it also the murderous strategy of the organisation against its own civilian population discredit themselves."

This of course is referring to the popular (in german media and politics) talking point that the deaths and otherwise suffering of civilians in Gaza was not caused by Israel but by palestinians themselves, specifically this argument states that Israel is only defending itself and is intentionally being tricked or forced into killing and starving civilians and breaking human rights conventions by Hamas as some sort of palestinian strategy to discredit the israeli government and that it is not doing this out of its own volition, and that the Gazan civilian populace acts as 'shields' for Hamas that Israel is forced to attack against its will for the sake of self defence.

German media and politicians love calling Israel the victim and treating palestinians as both the perpetrators and collateral damage , at most offering a fake 'oh the situation for the civilians is not good' while cutting off aid to Palestine and increasing weapons sales to Israel.

Of note for this particular situation:

The Palestine Congress is organised by multiple palestinian, jewish, german and international leftist organisations, among them also the jewish organisation Jewish Voice for a Just Peace.

Just recently a german state bank had frozen the organisation's bank account, thus freezing thousands of euros the organisation had meant to use as funding for the Congress. The bank also had demanded a detailed list of all of the organisation's members, including data such as their names and home adresses.

"The repression of the german state against the Palestine solidarity movement are escalating daily, they range from prohibition of demonstrations to police raids, and now the bank account of a jewish organisation was frozen in the name of fighting antisemitism - by the Berlin Sparkasse, a financial institution under public law." , said Wieland Hoban, chairperson of 'Jewish Voice' to jW on wednesday.

The unconditional support of Israel, that may be sold as a moral imperative but that serves real political purposes, leads to a 'dehumanisation of palestinians' and a declaration of war against everyone who calls for equality and freedom for them. "Who thinks they're ensuring jewish safety by doing this is gravely mistaken." so Hoban."

[generational-atrophy]

Hi if its ok to ask for a hc with the hetalia guys

What if they have a s/o whos a fashion student/designer who dose elegant, modern and femenine looks and also likes sketching to stress relif . Hope its not confusing ^^' and love the hc and stories you make with the hetalia characters

Whenever reading luds its fun

(Allies + Italy X Reader) Fashionista, artistic S/O!

(Feminine) Headcanons ~ A/N didnt do germany n japan bcs they would be like ok 👍love u. Do ur thing and thats it jskhkjj. req that seperately ig

Trigger Warning: None, just fluff!

Thank god you’re around because otherwise, Alfred would walk outside in neon shorts, a novelty t-shirt, and sandals with socks. Luckily he has deep pockets, so the two of you can go on shopping sprees together all the time. He’ll wear whatever you tell him to, just make sure he doesn’t buy another pair of pizza pants.

He does love how feminine you are though. As much as he hates to admit it, he internalized a lot of 50s ideals. It’s always been his fantasy to have a ladylike wife, someone who can smooth his rough edges, someone graceful and caring. Once he realised you exemplify those traits, he had to have you.

Your hobbies are the exact opposite of his, but he’s always happy to listen and support your interests. Any art you do, regardless of how much you like it, is ending up framed on the wall, too.

Arthur cares quite a lot about fashion, too! Although his tastes are a bit vintage and very conservative. He’d be very interested in your studies, every time you get home, he’ll ask you a million and one questions about the newest developments. And if you make your own clothes, he’ll pull some strings to get you your own studio. After all, what kind of idiot wouldn’t support the future head of the fashion industry?

He loves how elegant you are, too. He’s always been attracted to ultra-femininity, so your indulgences in that part of yourself always excite him. It’s nearly impossible for him to keep his hands off you when you wear those cute dresses…

He’s also always had a thing for femme fatales, but you didn’t hear it from me…

Oh, mon Dieu! You’re the perfect partner for Francis! He’s absolutely over the moon about having an artistic S/O! He wants to see all of your work, everything you’re studying, and everything you want to make! All your thoughts, your ideas, your aspirations, he wants to know all of it. There’s nothing better for creativity than in-depth discussions, right?

One annoying thing though, is just that… he really loves your work. So he is constantly requesting that you make more. It’s very motivating when you’re going through art block, but… it’s not like you can design all of his clothes! Of course, since he’s also very skilled in that area, he’s very willing to help you whenever possible though. You need fabric? Your machine broke? Just need a second pair of eyes? He’s there. (And his advice is usually pretty good!)

Definitely gonna take you on a lot of dates to art museums and the like.

Well, Yao has never been that big into fashion… but nowadays his people are really getting into it. Now that he has you, you can make sure no one calls him lame and outdated! (And then he gets to spoil you with clothes you love along the way. Win-win!) With your guidance, everyone will finally envy him and his beautiful wife again. Wait- Sorry, he constantly forgets you two aren’t married yet.

He’d love to work side by side with you. He has very different artistic pursuits, but spending that kind of time together is always nice. Both of you lost in your own little worlds with the only words being exchanged being occasional compliments. He’s really latched onto your own ways to relieve stress…

Also, because of how graceful and elegant you are, he’s like… obsessed with you. He thinks of you as some kind of goddess, and he’s always trying to please you to make up for how lucky he feels.

Oh, how cute! He absolutely adores your work! While you’re busy designing and sewing, he loves bringing you little snacks and drinks while you're busy- he doesn’t wanna interrupt, really… he just can’t resist getting a little peak at whatever you’re working on. Whatever it is, he’s proud of you!

Since you like sketching to relax, he often takes you out to beautiful places. Whenever you’re stressed, or upset, or scared, he’s throwing you over his shoulder with your sketchbook and bringing you to a flower field. Maybe he’ll even start drawing himself! Although, you’re basically the only thing that inspires him.

Although he isn’t usually very attracted to ultra femininity, there’s something so pure about you that constantly makes him fall more and more in love. You’re like his sister, but not unstable and homicidal. And not his sister.

A fashion student? Well, you’ve come to the best! Not him, exactly, he dresses like someone you’d see on r/peopleofwalmart, but his country at least. He could probably even get government loans for you to buy as much fabric as you need. And if you need a model, he’s been told he’s very average.

He would be able to help with your sketching, though. His classical training isn’t usually something that can be easily passed on, but he’s very willing to sit down and teach you anything you want. If you’re not as serious though, he respects that. Leaves more opportunity for him to be the one sketching you.

Your femininity is what drew him to you in the first place. He’s never been able to resist pretty people, and seeing how you carried yourself… and what you wore… it’s a wonder you two are dating now considering his accidentally creepy introduction.

[abroadstudiesoutlook]

Study abroad

www.abroadstudiesedu.com

9446005177

[ladali12345]

How to Choose the Right University in Germany for Your Study Abroad Journey

Studying abroad is an exciting opportunity that can significantly enhance your academic and professional journey. Germany, known for its high-quality education and diverse cultural landscape, has become a top choice for international students. However, with so many options available, choosing the right university can feel overwhelming. This guide will help you navigate your decision-making process and find the best fit for your goals, highlighting the top universities in Germany, along with tips from a study abroad consultant.

1. Identify Your Academic Goals

The first step in choosing a university in Germany is to identify your academic and career goals. Are you looking for a program with a strong emphasis on research, or do you prefer a more practical approach? Different universities have varying strengths; for instance, some are renowned for engineering, while others excel in business or humanities.

Research Programs: Explore the specific programs offered by different universities. Look for those that align with your academic interests and career aspirations.

Check Rankings: Consider the rankings of the top universities in Germany in your field. Institutions like Technische Universität München (TUM), Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich (LMU), and RWTH Aachen University are often recognized for their academic excellence.

2. Consider Language of Instruction

While many universities in Germany offer programs in English, particularly at the master's level, it’s essential to verify the language of instruction for your desired course. If you’re proficient in German, consider programs taught in German, as they might offer deeper insights into the local culture and job market.

English-Taught Programs: If you prefer to study in English, ensure the university provides a range of courses in your field of interest. Many top universities in Germany cater to international students with English-taught programs.

3. Evaluate University Reputation and Accreditation

The reputation of a university can significantly impact your future career opportunities. Look for universities that are recognized internationally and have strong ties with industry partners. Accreditation from relevant educational bodies is also crucial as it assures the quality of education.

Accredited Programs: Check if the program you are interested in is accredited by relevant institutions. This can enhance your employability and make your degree more valuable globally.

4. Assess Campus Life and Support Services

Campus life plays a vital role in your overall study experience. Consider the university’s facilities, student support services, and extracurricular opportunities. A vibrant campus culture can enrich your personal and academic growth.

Student Support: Look for universities that offer services for international students, such as orientation programs, language courses, and counseling. These resources can help ease your transition into a new academic environment.

5. Location and Cost of Living

Germany is home to diverse cities, each with its own unique character and lifestyle. Consider the city where the university is located in terms of cultural offerings, job opportunities, and cost of living.

Urban vs. Rural: Larger cities like Berlin, Munich, and Frankfurt offer a bustling urban environment with numerous networking opportunities but may come with higher living costs. On the other hand, smaller cities may provide a more affordable living situation and a closer-knit community.

6. Explore Financial Considerations

Understanding the cost of tuition and living expenses is crucial for planning your study abroad journey. While public universities in Germany often have low or no tuition fees for international students, additional costs such as living expenses, health insurance, and travel should be factored into your budget.

Scholarships and Financial Aid: Investigate available scholarships and financial aid options. Many universities offer scholarships specifically for international students, which can significantly ease your financial burden.

7. Seek Guidance from a Study Abroad Consultant

Navigating the complexities of studying abroad can be daunting, but a study abroad consultant can provide invaluable support. They can help you with:

University Selection: Consultants can offer tailored advice based on your academic background, interests, and career goals, helping you identify the best-fit universities.

Application Process: They can guide you through the application process, ensuring you meet all requirements and deadlines, and help you prepare for interviews or entrance exams if needed.

Cultural Preparation: A consultant can also offer insights into cultural differences, helping you adjust to life in Germany more smoothly.

Conclusion: Your Path to Success in Germany

Choosing the right university in Germany is a crucial step in your study in Germany journey. By identifying your academic goals, evaluating language options, and considering university reputation and support services, you can make an informed decision that aligns with your aspirations. Don’t hesitate to seek assistance from a study abroad consultant, who can provide personalized guidance throughout your application process. With careful planning and research, you can embark on an enriching study abroad experience in Germany that paves the way for future success.

also read:

Understanding the Timeline for Applying to German Universities

Documents Required for a Germany Student Visa Application

[lennies-blog]

Sky Sport Interview Special - "Hardenacke meets.. Episode 3" with Mick Schumacher

English Translation below the cut 😊

Peter Hardenacke: „‘Hardenacke meets…‘ Episode 3 and from a very special place at that! We are in Kerpen, at the Michael Schumacher Kart Centre, and are meeting his son, Mick Schumacher. We’re excited!”

PH: “Mick! I’m glad we found the time to talk! A very special place, Kerpen, hometown of your dad, Michael. I think the name ‘Kerpen’ is immediately connected to the Schumacher family! What does it mean to you?”

Mick: “Ehm.. childhood is the best word I believe I can use. Because I was here very often as a child, I drove karts here – well not here exclusively, also at the track in Kerpen-Manheim – and it was a very lovely time, a time where you didn’t think too much and just had fun.”

PH: “So Kerpen is a piece of home for you in a way? You’re on the road a lot with Formula 1, the US is a location for you, Switzerland.. Where would you say is home for you?”

Mick: “Switzerland, really. Just because I grew up there and we have our house there. Therefore, it’s home. But I definitely see this as my second home and have my friends here, so I love to be in this part of Germany.”

PH: “What were you like as a child? As a student in particular?”

Mick: “What I was like as a child? Well, someone who has been very distracted, because he had something really nice and that was karting. That’s where my thoughts have always been, even in school. And I always went here or to another kart track near straight away and was allowed to drive races and I knew from a very young age that I only wanted to race and luckily it went in that direction.” 

PH: “We’re going to come back to that later – but staying at that, your time at school..”

Mick:  *laughs* “I’d rather forget about that!” 

PH: “I’d love to see that in front of me! How was Mick as a student?”

Mick: “Ah! How was I as a student? Well, I really liked German and English, because I was better at that than most of the others, ehm, but my absolute favourite subject was sports! It was always quite nice, school, of course, but my favourite was being at the racetrack or at home.”

PH: “And karting, when did that start?”

Mick: “Well, I had my first kart at 2 ½ years old, 2 years old and drove around the yard with it and a bit later at 4 years old it got cross tyres, a chain saw engine (I have no clue if it’s the right translation, never heard of it) and I got a quad on top of that, the motorbike at 5 years old.. I then had a nice arsenal to choose from, but always used the kart. At home we had a little hill, where I always came at with verve and jumped over it with the kart! I loved that! And a bit later the kart grew and with it the urge to drive. I started my first race at 8 in Spain, if I’m not mistaken and.. yeah, I never stopped racing since.”

PH: “And when have you known ‘That’s going to be it!’ regarding the direction you want to go to.. Because I think Michael never really wanted that for you both? I watched the documentary about you in the intro he said, ‘Oh well, if possible, it would be great if they would do something else!’, right?”

Mick: “Yeah, but I never wanted to do anything else! *grins* My dad asked me when I was 11 years old if I’d rather come here to play football, to hang out with friends and my answer was very clear that I wanted to do it, to do it properly, and decided the following year to drive international or to start at bigger national races and then also race internationally, Europe Championship, World Championship, ESK and what else they had back then. And that was basically the start to ‘professional racing’.”

PH: “And the decision was made here, right? Where you discussed it?”

Mick: “In Kerpen, in the KS Imbus.“

PH: „And what were the changes for you then? You already said it all got a bit bigger, also with all journeys, but regarding what you invested or were allowed to invest yourself, was that a big change?”

Mick: “Yeah, along the lines of not taking your helmet off and going off to play again, but rather think about it, what you can change to get faster, think about the driving itself, what I can do better – of course, at that time I was around 11, 12 and you don’t really think about (physical) training as it is way too early for such a small body – but just simple thoughts afterward and not running off, talking to the mechanic about what to do with the kart to get faster.”

PH: “How big was the influence of Michael at that time already? Could you learn something about how he works, which approach he had to some things?”

Mick: “I think at that age you don’t really perceive what happens around you. Of course, I knew that Papa was a racing driver, but what all that entailed wasn’t that clear, yet. And.. I always knew that I wanted to do it, but I didn’t know how hard it was actually going to be. So, I know what Papa meant by saying ‘Rather do something else!’, but in the end, I am incredibly proud to have taken this path and seen it through until the end. And without his support, his tips, and everything I wouldn’t have ended up where I did.”

PH: “What kind of feedback was it? You know about the dads who are always there at football practice, cheering and talking at them during the matches.. Was there a kind of exchange.. when you drove..?”

Mick: “Not at all. The exchange was always that he tried different tactics. Sometimes he tried to be very strict, sometimes not at all, always tried to see ‘what does Mick react to?’ and there were always a few moments where I actually had to think about ‘Okay, what did I do wrong now?’, but those were always moments that brought me forward, so I really liked this up and down, this inconsistency in a way, because it’s not that different in motorsport. You meet people who are giving you everything, who support you 100%, and some you are not behind you 100% and you still must deliver the performance.”

PH: “So he had a really good feeling about you-“

Mick: “Very good”

PH: “-what you need at that time, if you need a bit more pressure, or a hand steadying you.. so that was mainly where he had a good feeling about you.”

Mick: “Exactly”

PH: “So not like with Max Verstappen, where he -  do you know that story? (*Mick nods*) - Where he (Jos) left him (Max) at a gas station?”

Mick: “And he had to walk.”

PH: “And he had him collected by the mum an hour later because the result wasn’t good?” *laughs*

Mick: *With a very neutral voice and expression* “No, we didn’t have that, no.” 

PH: “How was it for you in general with the pressure? I mean it’s always there anyway and you also put it on yourself, to win races, to get better, but also to get a foot in with that name in the karting scene? Was there ever someone, or didn’t everyone say, ‘Now here comes the son of Michael’ and was that a special burden?”

Mick: “No, not at all, because Papa never gave me that pressure. So it was super easy to just do what I wanted to do, in a sense of how hard I wanted to push myself or not, and as I said Papa had an amazing feeling for it ‘Don’t think about it too hard, we’ll do the best that we can’ and it was clear from the very beginning of what Papa said and also Mama that if I don’t want to do it then I don’t have to. And that has taken a lot of pressure off me.”

PH: “What was your biggest talent?”

Mick: “The first lap. These one-on-one battles, the first laps, let’s say when I didn’t start from pole to always fight my way up to the front when the field was very compact, making the right decisions, which line to take, or when I started from the front to have a kind of calmness and to not take on the pressure but to start the race relaxed.”

PH: “Timo is also saying that about you, Timo Glock (former F1 pilot and current fellow Sky Germany host) because I talked to him about you before I talked to you. He said what had always been impressive about Mick was his racing intelligence. To know when to do what, he said that is really distinctive with you. Would you agree?”

Mick: “Yeah, I would agree. It’s a lot of fun for me, so it might be a bit easier for me.”

PH: “You started your Formula career via karting, with Van Amersfoort, which memories do you have of that time?”

Mick: “My first year in Formula 4… (I remember) That those were the first 2 weekends that I had, so the first 6 races in my career and they were an absolute rollercoaster. From an average race to win to a crash to a broken thumb, it was all within those first 6 races that I had, but it was still a very nice time. I learned a lot from Van Amersfoort and definitely took it with me to my second season that I then did with Prema and yeah, where it went relatively well.”

PH: “Fritz van Amersfoort said that you above all always tried to improve, looked at where those possibilities were, such a meticulousness that you have taken with you from how you learned it.”

Mick: “Yes, I think so, too. I had it in me then and it guided me throughout my whole career, this ‘always try to improve and always trying to get the best out of the package that you had’.”

PH: “Then you went on to Prema, Formula 3, Formula 2, and particularly in the second seasons always taking the big leaps. Why was that do you think? That you always needed the first year to settle in? Was that normal?”

Mick: “No, we had some difficulties in the first year with technical problems that you can’t really see. We were always well off regarding the speed, ehm.. so we could’ve been further up in the championship, but that’s all history in the end. We won in the second year and that’s what counts.”

PH: “When was it clear to you that the step up to Formula 1 was happening?”

Mick: “With the Formula 3 victory.”

PH: “In Spa?” (Referring to Mick’s first race win in F3)

Mick: “No, with the championship”

PH: “Ah okay, I thought. But the first race win was in Spa?”

Mick: “Yes, the first win was in Spa, with the first pole position and the first win. But to win the championship was the first moment for me when I thought ‘I can do it’ and that I do have a little talent to be able to make it.”

PH: “When you said ‘Phew, I can do it!’ – were there doubts along the way?”

Mick: “Doubts? I think if you don’t drive without any then you would never try to achieve the 100%. And I think it’s very important as a racing driver but also a person to doubt yourself – of course to a certain degree – but, to always try to get better, and to get the best out of yourself. If you’re too self-assured, then you’ll say ‘Oh well, I achieved everything’ and you lean back and then.. it starts going backward.”

PH: “How was the transition then? I remember when we met in 2019 at Nürburgring when you were supposed to drive for Alfa (Romeo), the first free practice, and it rained too hard that it didn’t work out. Many believed back then it could work out with Alfa and in the end it was Haas, take us with you again on this journey.”

Mick: “Ehm.. I mean the Formula 2 season was that you had the last race in Europe in Monza and then you had this big break before the last race in Abu Dhabi. Ehh, Bahrain, sorry. And in between was (F1) Nürburgring, for example, where we were supposed to drive the FP1, but didn’t due to the weather. And then it was clear that for the last race of Formula 1 in Abu Dhabi I was supposed to drive the last FP1 for Haas. What went quite well for me. I was feeling well very quickly and yeah, it became clear pretty quickly that that would be the next step for me for the next year. And I then won the championship, which was my first goal before getting into Formula 1, the first goal I then reached, the second goal still being open, which is to become World Champion, so.. I’m still working on that.”

PH: “Which I’m sure is going to work out. Mick, regarding the decision, when that happened, how was it to reach this milestone for you?”

Mick: “You can only be 100% sure when it’s signed by both parties. And when that was the case I was really happy, that I got this chance. But when I was really, really happy was when I drove the first race.”

PH: “How was that first meeting with Günther Steiner, do you still remember it?”

Mick: “Pfft.. Ehh.. In Bahrain when I did the seat fit. That was the first time when I met Günther.” 

PH: “What was your first impression back then?”

Mick: “Well, back then ‘Drive to Survive’ was already out, so I had an impression of Günther, already, but yeah, it was like you would imagine.”

PH: “That first year in Formula 1 was under hard circumstances anyway, I believe, with Haas practically knocked off, basically driving the race for oneself. And what you had to do, to beat your teammate Nikita Mazepin at the time, you did. What did you take with you in this first year?” 

Mick: “Yeah, we had our highs two or three times, with a Q2 appearance, which wasn’t thinkable at that time, but we did it and that was really nice. The first one was in Turkey, the second one was in Paul Ricard. But if you drive a car that is soo inferior, I mean our highest downforce setup, the Monaco downforce, was even higher than the downforce setup for Ferrari. So that’s how you can imagine that it had nothing to do with it (the 2021 Haas). And even if I drive the cars now, from Mercedes for example, the 2021 car that I drove at Goodwood, which I was allowed to test prior at Silverstone, that has nothing to do with it (the 2021 Haas). So it makes sense why Lewis and Valterri were able to drive those times when we really had to fight for, but I personally think that it’s good that I also achieved something with the car that I had at that time. Of course, it was a bit different in the season after that, but you couldn’t really learn a lot when you’ve only ever taken a look at your own data and didn’t really have a comparison and the team expects you to develop the car but we didn’t have any experience from Formula 2 how to develop a car, so those are all processes that you learn from a teammate of course, who might have some experience, or needs the time to learn it himself. In that case, I sadly didn’t have the time to really learn that myself.”

PH: “And in the second year, Nikita Mazepin had to leave after testing, Kevin Magnussen came – who came back from pre-retirement in a way – as your teammate. How was the dynamic within the team before the season started in Bahrain?”

Mick: “The dynamic was positive, of course everyone was happy that Kevin was back, and had placed their bets on him in that case. It was the first time for me to be able to collect experience from a teammate. Sadly, because we had such difficulties within the first year, we adopted some habits, that fit that (2021) car really well, but not to the new one. Which we then tried to change with new setups and whatnot and Kevin simply drove, which we probably should’ve done, too. Because those are such minor details, which when you have too few people who are looking after two cars will of course get difficult. But yeah, we made the best out of what we got and still had some few successes throughout that whole year that were positive.”

PH: “You have pressured yourself a bit too, then, with the crash that you had in Saudi Arabia, in Monaco was another one, the situation with Sebastian Vettel, where you had the duel where you could’ve driven into the points where it didn’t work out in the end – how did you experience it back then for yourself? Also what came then, from your team principle, from Günther Steiner, from your team principle? Would you have needed something different to be able to show the bets you’ve got?”

Mick: “I mean I don’t want to justify myself there, but there is more about the crash and the situations than meets the eye. Because there were things there that were depicted way worse – about the crashes and about me – than they actually were. And of course, if you then have a person that is very active in the media who is taking this thing with them and is building this thing up in a way that it didn’t have to be built up in. Of course, it wasn’t ideal, it was not ideal. Because everyone crashes. And in that situation in Saudi Arabia, I was relatively happy that I was okay and certain people then started talking about something else that was unnecessary and.. just tried to.. to make a complicated situation out of a situation. Didn’t really like that, and yeah, I’m with you there, I could’ve needed something different, especially when I’m looking at how it’s actually supposed to be when I’m at my new role at Mercedes with Toto Wolff, but also with different team principles, for example at McLaren or Williams, then the two 2 years had nothing to do with it. You can’t expect your drivers to be able to show their best when they’re not supported in the right kind of way. So much about that. But I learned a lot, I learned a lot as a person and in the end, no one will ever give you flowers, you have to pick them yourself, I know that now. And I feel ready to fight again and to show what I can actually do because I think a lot of people don’t actually know what I can do.”

PH: “Mick, what I have always found very admirably, which I think I’ve always told you, is the calmness that you had. You were never rattled by anyone, were always in balance, and were able to free yourself from that pressured situation, by driving into the points, in Austria, in Silverstone, the curve went upwards, and that despite the little experience that you have. When you now look back at that situation, would you still say that you would’ve done something differently, that you should’ve stepped back at one point and said ‘Until here and no further’? Or are you at peace with yourself and would say everything was okay the way it went for myself and for my part?”

Mick: “In the end, you are always wiser. I always say ‘Woulda shoulda coulda’, it is how it is, I experienced the situation how I did and handled it how I did, and looking back, sure, you can always do something differently. Would you want to do something differently? Maybe. But all in all, I am the person I am today because of those experiences. If I tried to undo all my mistakes retrospectively or to improve them, I would not have the desire now to improve myself. I am the person I am today because of the experience I have had, and I know what I am able to do and what I am worth and can, hopefully when I get the next chance, do it better accordingly.”

PH: “You have already described it a bit how it is with Toto Wolff, for example, who is looking after you – how would assess the next year? All of the German Formula and motorsport community is hoping for you for you to drive in Formula 1 again. What do you think is happening now? Which options do you have?”

Mick: “Well there is not a lot moving at the moment, a lot of the drivers are set, a lot of the drivers have a set long term contract, of which many end at the end of next year, so we have to see. The season is still long. I am in touch with Toto a lot, we think about what we can do daily. But in the end the decision is not mine to make, sadly. I can only present myself and say ‘This is what you can get, this is what you can expect’. I know that I have yet a lot to give, that I want to show a lot more, can show more, and that’s what I fight for now.”

PH: “What you can also see with Alex Albon, who also made it back to Formula 1 with a little detour. Is there a Plan B for next year, in case it’s not working out with Formula 1?”

Mick: “Sadly, I have to say yes, there is a Plan B, but I have to talk about that a little later on. Yes, there is a Plan B.”

PH: “What do you wish for, for the future?”

Mick: “Well hopefully another chance in Formula 1, that is my goal, that is what I want to do, where I see myself. That is my life. I have worked 15 years of my life towards it and won’t settle for being out after 2 years. Therefore, that’s  my goal, that’s what I want to do, that’s what I fight for now and will do my best.”

PH: “Our fingers are crossed! Mick, thank you!”