BOOK LAUNCH | Bílí, ale ne tak docela

White, but not quite Central Europe’s Illiberal Revolt

Where does illiberalism, strong racism and Islamophobia, homophobia and a hardened misunderstanding of the consequences of colonialism come from in Central Europe? Conversely, how did discriminatory and racist attitudes towards people from Central and Eastern Europe develop in the West? How are these questions related? Central European illiberalism can be understood as a misguided reaction to the devastating effects of global neoliberalism that marked the brutal transition of post-communist countries to capitalism in the 1990s. This period also saw the birth of rejectionist attitudes towards 'Eastern Europeans', which constitute a specific form of racism. The Canadian anthropologist Ivan Kalmar's book White But Not Quite: The Illiberal Revolt in Central Europe takes us on a journey in the footsteps of Central European illiberalism, in which we meet not only Orbán, Klaus, Mečiar, Zeman, and Poland's PiS, but also Dracula, James Bond, Mozart, the horror film Solunovrat, and the scandals of (not only Czech) football.

The book was published by the cooperative publishing house Utopia libri in May 2024.

The presentation of the book in the presence of the author will be in English, questions can be asked in Slovak, Hungarian, English or Czech