Europe’s approval of the rapid backlash: this is the turning point. Anti-Semitism, racism, misogyny, anti-queer and anti-democratic attitudes have not been normalized – they are the people’s will.

Remembrance culture and the politics of remembrance are inseparably connected to this turning point of societal backlash. Societal learning is intended to be made possible by the remembrance of historical failures of humanity, of destruction, war, and suffering. Remembrance should be used as a method for exercising humanity, justice, and solidarity. This is the societal function of remembrance, at least when one takes the oft-repeated slogan “never again” literally. The fact that reality is increasingly approaching a point of “again and again” raises the question of what actually remains from this promise made in recent years.

What results from this crisis of trust in remembrance culture? The turning point of the societal backlash must follow a new remembrance culture of resistant civic society. A remembrance culture that will be the expression of a will to shape things, also against an increasingly authoritarian political sphere, if necessary.

On March 14, 2025 the Coalition for Pluralistic Public Discourse will dedicate itself to the European turning point of the backlash and discuss new paths for a remembrance culture of resistance in Studio Я.