Nearly 180 years ago, two bearded men, Marx and Engels, described how capital concentrates power and turns human lives into instruments of accumulation. Tonight, their diagnosis feels uncomfortably alive.
In Washington, a president intoxicated by personal grandeur and imperial ambition holds the world hostage to an unrelenting war with Iran. Around him, monopoly wealth discovers opportunity in catastrophe. In Tehran, an entrenched capitalist order cloaks itself in sacred authority, administering religion as an anaesthetic while gambling everything on its own survival.
Europe, meanwhile, watches the darkness gather. Decades of neoliberalism have hollowed out public provision, turned housing into a privilege and taught millions that democracy delivers insecurity. The far right harvests that despair, barely eight decades after fascism’s defeat.
Yet Berlin offers a breach in the gloom. Elif Eralp, the daughter of refugees from Turkey, stands poised to lead Germany’s capital. Die Linke’s housing offensive suggests another political vocabulary: homes, dignity and collective responsibility. Its promises deserve scrutiny; its challenge to resignation deserves recognition.
Agreement with every policy is unnecessary. What matters is preserving the conditions for disagreement itself: democratic argument, philosophical inquiry and the shared pursuit of a better life. Those conditions wither when authoritarian power, religious reaction and nationalist resentment determine the limits of what is possible.
From Washington to Tehran, and across Europe, different systems increasingly converge in their contempt for human emancipation.
Berlin has not redeemed the continent. It has reminded it that surrender remains a choice.
Tonight, let Europe extinguish neoliberalism’s exhausted lights and imagine another dawn.
Thank you, Berlin. Good night, Europe.