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In an interview for the Swiss group CH Media (which includes Neue Zürcher Zeitung) that appeared on May 15, 2026, Peter Sloterdijk provides a succinct diagnosis of Europe today. His basic premise is that, after successfully going through the process of mourning the breakdown of colonial empires, Europe will have to learn the role of the observer of terrifying events in its neighborhood. In contrast to Europe, Russia resists joining the group of humiliated European empires, even denying it is part of Europe, a role which until recently Russia proudly accepted – now it insists on its Eurasian imperial role. Europe as an observer should assume the role Latin America, New Zealand, and North Africa played when Europeans were killing each other in the two world wars. “Europeans no longer enjoy the privilege of acting, but they are also no longer haunted by the curse of acting. In a sense we will all become Swiss citizens who were the first to assume the privilege of observing the slaughters committed by their neighbors.” When Sloterdijk talks about future slaughters which Europe will only observe without being able to do anything, he has in mind especially the devastations in Africa and also in Russia, which may sooner or later fall apart. “The crimes which are now being prepared will sooner or later be committed, and at that point Europe will have to maintain a certain cold-bloodedness.”1
As always with Sloterdijk, his insights are thought-provoking, but in this case I cannot fully agree with him. Switzerland was never really just an observer; it played a key role through its neutrality as the place for financial transactions and economic exchanges between warring states around it. Europe cannot play this role of a neutral observer because it is itself a potential target of forthcoming catastrophes, military, political, and financial. We cannot be observers of our own destruction. So Europe’s support for Ukraine is not the usual sympathy for a victim, it is support born out of the awareness that our own fate is decided there – not only our future but also our past. Let me conclude with a well-known quote from Walter Benjamin’s Theses on the Philosophy of History: “The past carries with it a temporal index by which it is referred to redemption. There is a secret agreement between past generations and the present one. Our coming was expected on earth.” In other words, what is going on now in Ukraine will affect how we will experience not only Ukraine’s past but also Europe’s past. If Ukraine loses and disappears (or if it survives as a doubly colonized state: the East directly becoming part of Russia, the West a US economic colony), Europe itself will in some spiritual sense die. It will survive as a tourist attraction for rich Americans and Chinese, and as a collection of states dominated by the neo-fascist new populist Right.
The first step in this direction should be to get rid of the legacy of 1968 and reawaken our sense of shame. Trump and Elon Musk are the ultimate descendants of the 1968 generation. Sloterdijk is very clear in his characterization of Trump as a person unable to feel shame: “I have no doubt that this exactly is the reason what makes Trump attractive to some of his followers. They would also like to be in a similar way shameless, brutal and unconstrained. They are glad they can again act as a mob.” So Trump will soon lose his power; maybe he will even be hospitalized... which is a bad prospect: if Trump loses his post, Vance, who will replace him, is even worse – remember Vance said that the US disengagement from Ukraine makes him proud. The problem with shamelessness is that it enables us to openly admit our crimes without feeling any guilt. Recall Alphonse Allais’s old joke when he pointed at a woman walking along a street and shouted: “Look at her! Beneath her clothes, she is totally naked!” In exactly the same way, a human being is guilty only under the cover of his or her shame.
