They come out every night. They’re shot at with rubber bullets and they’re fired upon by water cannons and they’re detained and they’re hospitalised. But they come out every night anyway. They come out and they face down the police, with their riot shields and truncheons, because they still believe in Europe.
They believe in the promise of Europe. And those of us in the West who have either left Europe or who stare on aghast as it sinks into its latest muddle, should sit up and pay attention. There are still people out there who know what Europe means. There are still people out there who remember the European dream.
What’s happening on the streets of Georgia has been a long time coming. The ruling Georgian Dream party is the plaything of Bidzina Ivanishvili, a billionaire who made his money in Russia after the fall of the Soviet Union. He now lives in his home country, like a Bond villain, in a lair which supposedly contains sharks and rare trees, controlling politics from the shadows.
Earlier this year the government passed “foreign agent” legislation targeting NGOs. It then placed restrictions on LGBT groups. Both initiatives are copied and pasted from the Vladimir Putin playbook. They’re almost a like-for-like replication of recent Russian laws. It was clear for anyone to see what was happening. Putin was trying to drag Georgia back into his orbit, to make it one of his satellite states. It is the same thing he did to Ukraine a decade ago, trying to bribe and bully it into submission. And when that failed, he simply invaded it.
Georgia, like Ukraine, is overwhelmingly pro-European. Around 80 per cent of the public support EU membership. But they are now having their right to self-determination stripped from them. An election last October saw Georgian Dream triumph, amid documented cases of voter intimidation, vote manipulation and interference with election observers. It was a stitch-up. The final kill shot came last week, when newly appointed prime minister Irakli Kobakhidze finally dropped all pretence and suspended EU accession talks.
It seemed like another triumph for the global forces of nationalism and populism. Sometimes the wave seems unstoppable. Just days after the Georgian election, Donald Trump secured victory in the US. He will serve as the lodestar. He will work with Putin to push Ukraine towards the negotiating table. He will probably start a tariff war with the EU. He will encourage the thugs in Georgia just like he does those in Hungary and elsewhere. He will serve as inspiration and organisational leader for authoritarians around the world.
Meanwhile, Europe itself seems to be in total disarray. Emmanuel Macron once used to define himself as the figurehead of the anti-populist movement. He is now the plaything of his own populist opponents. His decision to hold a snap legislative election and then refuse to work with the left parties has given Marine Le Pen total power over government. France could collapse into political chaos and financial crisis at any time. In Germany, Olaf Scholz has collapsed his own traffic light coalition government and faces an election in February, in which the populist Alternative for Germany party could perform strongly.
Even in the UK, where the centre left is in power, we see more confusion than we do conviction. Keir Starmer and David Lammy are trying desperately to stay on the right side of an incoming Trump administration. They have still failed to outline what is involved in their vision of a better relationship with Europe. They are still pointlessly resisting a European youth mobility scheme – a proposal so moderate, even dyed in the wool Brexiters barely seem fussed by it.
The best lack all conviction. The worst are full of passionate intensity. Across the West, those who stand for liberal values seem uncertain and anxious, while those who wish to undermine them seem full of vigour and confidence.
But Georgia has not bowed to the tide. It has stood firm. Its people are showing Western Europe what it means to stand up for the values it claims to uphold. If Kobakhidze thought he could kill EU talks and present it as a done deal, he’s now learned otherwise. He is being given an instruction in how free people behave when they are faced with an insurgent authoritarian government.
Night after night they come, for six straight nights. Protestors gather in Rustaveli Avenue in the capital Tbilisi. They burn effigies of Ivanishvili in front of the legislature. In the Black Sea city Poti, they block access to the country’s main commercial port. In Khashuri, a town of just 20,000 people in central Georgia, they throw eggs at the local Georgian Dream office and tear down its flag.
The police response has been barbaric. Rubber bullets, torture, the hunting down and beating of individuals. The arrest of opposition figures. But still they come. They hold up their flags of the European Union and they fight for its values: liberty, peace, law and progress.
Just like Ukraine, they remind us of what we’ve lost. And they remind us of what else we might lose if we do not stand up to the populist advance. They’re risking everything for the dream of Europe. They show how beautiful that dream is and how many people still long for it, around the world.
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