In early August, Chris Hermann of the European Council on Foreign Relations wrote about how the Trump administration aims to remodel Europe. He wrote:
“In April, Marco Rubio’s state department launched a blog on Substack. In a post called “The Need for Civilizational Allies in Europe” the article saw the Trump administration draw the battle lines of a civilisational conflict with Europe. The article accuses European governments of betraying the West by embracing multiculturalism and secularism, and describes how Western institutions of liberal democracy, international law and pluralist governance have become weapons in a campaign ‘against Western civilisation itself’. For America this is no policy critique, but an ideological excommunication: Europe is now the principal threat to the West’s survival.”
Later in August, in an ancient Scottish castle deep in Perthshire, the Scottish cultural icon that is Richard Demarco called for his friend Robert Sturua to come back to Scotland next year, to mark the Edinburgh International Festival’s eightieth birthday.
Demarco was speaking to an invited audience at Fingask Castle on 22nd August, after the showing of a film about the life and works of Sturua, the director of the Rustaveli State Theatre of Georgia. Sturua brought Shakespeare’s Richard lll to Edinburgh in the summer of 1979. It played to packed houses, even though it was performed in Georgian and without sub-titles.
For Demarco, the return next year to Edinburgh of Sturua is not simply about praising a master craftsman in the interpretation and presentation of Shakespeare. It is about truth. For Demarco, Shakespeare embodies the truth of the human condition more perfectly than any other hand has managed. He sees Sturua as the master of its delivery.
“And truth”, says Demarco, “is the foundation stone for all creativity, for all the unlocking of great culture, in any genre, in any society, in any land. We must bring Robert Sturua to Edinburgh in 2026, to reaffirm the roots of the festival as a celebration of European culture and art in every form. To hear him speak freely. To remind the world of the role of culture in love, in peace and in liberal thought and liberal society.”
Demarco v Rubio in great debate
As I sat in the sun at Fingask Castle I proposed to myself another attraction for the 80th birthday of the Edinburgh Festival. It is to have Richard Demarco debate Marco Rubio. Like Rubio, Demarco is a devout Christian, and he’s well read in the philosophical and historic foundation stones of European civilisation. Where do two Christians stand in the great argument about free speech that is sweeping across the Western world? Is the victor to be enlightened rationality or a contemporary Spanish Inquisition, given momentum by Trump’s transactional foreign policy?
Perhaps Robert Sturua could join the debate and tell us about the wish of many in Georgia to have the country join the European Union and be free of the current government led by the Georgian Dream Party. The European Parliament says the general election that saw the Dream Party come to power was, “neither free nor fair.”
Since the party’s leadership suspended Georgia’s application to join the EU, in December last year, tens of thousands of demonstrators have regularly taken to the streets of the capital, Tbilisi, and other cities. The police have reacted with brutality, tear gas and the arrest of prominent opposition figures.
Artistic freedom no longer assured
Sturua himself remains the director of the Rustaveli National Theatre of Georgia at the pleasure of Georgian Dream. The government is in charge. The artistic freedom the 87-year-old Sturua once enjoyed can no longer be assured. Many believe he is still in office only because of his global renown. News of his dismissal and the severing of him from his theatre company would surprise few.
Georgia’s street protestors call for fresh elections and an end to Russian involvement with Georgian affairs. Georgian Dream has an agenda of social conservatism and nationalism tied to religious fundamentalism. A Georgian echo of Putin’s Russia. And echoes too of Trump’s America that threatens academic freedom, marginalises media that takes his administration to task and tells the Smithsonian Institute, one of the world’s greatest museums, how it should present the American story.
Mario Rubio has written: “A Europe that replaces its spiritual and cultural roots, that treats traditional values as dangerous relics, and that centralizes power in unaccountable institutions is a Europe less capable of standing firm against external threats and internal decay.” This is both unfounded nonsense and a direct attack on the European Union, which the Trumpists despise because it challenges the power of big business, especially American big business, and because Europe’s economic weight and the EU’s political legitimacy stand in the way of American dominance.
If you’re a lover of free speech, would you trust Trump or Putin to allow the unfettered publishing of poetry, novels and plays? Might the abstract art of Damien Hirst or the whimsy of the late Jack Vettriano be cast down by the authoritarian duo named above? They fear the author, writer, poet, dancer, playwright, composer, musician and great performer because great art requires freedom. Where culture is dictated by political strong men it is produced not by free minds but by people in fear.
Rubio calls in aid a European civilisation that died when Enlightenment thought replaced the authority of Gods with rationality, fact-based science and free intellectual enquiry, personified in and nurtured by the great universities of Europe and the USA. Rubio and his cult want to tell you how to think, what to study, what to read, act, play and perform.
So, there is a direct connection between what Rubio wrote in “The need for Civilizational Allies in Europe” and Richard Demarco’s call for Robert Sturua to return to Edinburgh in 2026. Rubio stands for reversing the Enlightenment. Demarco calls for it to be ever-evolving, ever-exploring, ever-seeking the new, enriching and profound.
Truth and freedom essential bedfellows
The Edinburgh Festival was founded in 1947 with the aim of bonding the peoples of Europe following the devastation, mass death and crushing of the human spirit and artistic freedom wrought by the Nazis. It was to be a great celebration of European culture, of free men and women at liberty to create, interpret and perform and do so without fear. Over its 79 years it has had its great moments and its failures and disappointments. Such is art. But Nicola Benedetti, now the International Festival’s director made “The truth we seek” the theme of this year’s event. Truth and freedom are essential bedfellows. Without each other neither can survive. Without each there can be no great flowering of the human condition.
Trump, Rubio, Putin and their fellow travellers in the UK, Europe and across the globe are not the friends of European civilisation. They are the destroyers of freedom. One way to see them defeated is to support writers, artists and performers, whether folk band, local landscape painter, avant garde author, jazz virtuoso or classical orchestra. Free expression in the Arts is freedom for us all.
You can start by helping Robert Sturua light up Edinburgh in 2026. And: There is another way to see the current enemies of freedom cast into the dustbin of history. It’s called voting and it’s rarely been more important.
This article was first published in The National on 31st August 2025.
Featured image of Demarco at a pro-EU demo in Edinburgh March 2019, David Gow
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