ABSTRACT
The year 2018 was simultaneously marked by huge political upheavals, crises, and challenges accompanied by, and instrumentalized for, the rapid rise of the populist far right, gaining votes at national elections in Brazil, Hungary, Italy, Sweden, and Turkey. This chapter considers two opposing visions of the European Union (EU), both propagated and disseminated in 2018 by two of the most important European players, the French president Emmanuel Macron and the Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban. It discusses the role of the media in the construction of history and memory. This chapter concludes by pointing to the future: In which manifold ways will the fact that Europe is a continent of immigration – and thus EU member states should therefore be regarded as migrant societies – influence traditional collective memories and the staging of commemorative events?
