Some people say I'm going from the frying pan into the fire. I hope not. We've had very good co-operation from the coalition government, but you're quite right to indicate that there is a far right party. Let's understand that it is a constitutional party. There are parties that cross out of the constitutional order altogether and incite violence against other people. The FPÖ is not yet in that place, but you're right to be concerned, and it illuminates the problem: the increasing rightward turn of the political formations in central and eastern Europe. As you say, these are formations that depend on the continuous mobilization of their base by the creation of enemies, and you listed who those enemies are.
I do think that for a Canadian audience it's extremely important to notice the recurrent anti-Semitic tone and the recurrent anti-Semitic tropes here. This should concern all Canadians. The attack is not simply on George Soros; it's a reprise on the cosmopolitan rootless speculator who destroys ordinary God-fearing Christian lives. We know where that stuff comes from, and it's poison every time you hear it, wherever you hear it. I think Canadians ought to be concerned about that.
They have targeted the university that I have the honour to lead, I hope not because I'm leading it, because it's been 25 years as an independent institution here. It allows me to come back to what I said in answer to a previous question. The key challenge, I think, to democracy in Europe is the hostility towards counter-majoritarian institutions everywhere: hostility towards the media, hostility towards the courts, hostility towards civil society that asks probing questions and hostility to any of the independent regulators, in favour of a vision that the people must rule, the people must decide.
Well, that's not democracy. Democracy is this balancing between legitimate majority opinion, which must always be sovereign, and the countervailing power represented by universities, courts, etc.