THE
SOULLESS MONSTER
The
Eurocrats are not unaware of their predicament: the Museum's
mission statement admits that most see the EU as a "cold,
bureaucratic monster, a soulless producer of administrative
edicts." Ah, but this can be overcome, they aver, by dressing
up the Monster in different historical costumes, and inventing
a fake "history" of the "European idea." As the Museum's mission
statement puts it: "The European Union which is taking shape
before our eyes is not a recent invention born of politicians'
whims but the product of a long maturation of a time-honored
idea as old as Europe itself." In opening up the question
of the history of the European idea, its political and ideological
antecedents, the Eurocrats are putting their cards on the
table – cards that bear some pretty provocative symbols
– starting with the swastika.
FASCISM
AND
"THE EUROPEAN IDEA"
Ah
yes, the "time-honored tradition" of pan-European integration.
EU propagandists have pointed to the postwar "pan-European"
movement as having grown out of the resistance to Hitlerism,
but the reality is quite different. Nazi propagandists were
the first modern purveyors of European continentalism –
a program forcibly implemented by Hitler's legions as they
overran a vast territory from Normandy to the Urals. The earliest
purveyors of Italian fascist and German ultra-nationalism
latched on to the European idea from the very start, organizing
exhibitions and conferences eerily similar to those now making
their debut all across Europe under EU auspices. As the New
York Times reports, "Lack of consensus has not hindered
the proliferation of museum shows emphasizing" the new "Pan-European
culture"; the Council of Europe is sponsoring a traveling
exhibition, which is now on tour. Reading this immediately
brought to mind the photograph illustrating the second
chapter of John
Laughland's remarkably learned and provocative book, The
Tainted Source: The Undemocratic Origins of the European Idea.
It is a photo that shows a photographic exhibition organized
by the French Waffen SS in Paris, 1944, entitled "The Waffen
SS is fighting for Europe." French collaborators, dressed
in full Nazi regalia, schmooze with their German conquerors,
and the caption reads: "Just over a year later, it was soldiers
from the French Waffen SS division 'Charlemagne' who were
to be among the last to defend the Reichstag from Soviet attack."
CHARLEMAGNE'S
GHOST
Speaking
of
Charlemagne, the first Holy
Roman emperor has become the Eurocratic icon of choice,
a fitting symbol of their overarching ambition – but
not without some opposition. A battle royale is breaking out
among the Eurocrats between Greek classicists and medievalists.
Greece has taken umbrage at the Museum directors over their
concept of the European idea as being rooted in the Middle
Ages. Clearly, the Greeks assert, this is a slight to
the classical era: is not Greece the "cradle of democracy"?
Well that may be, reply the Museum's officials, such as scientific
director Elie
Barnavi, but that is simply not good enough: the problem,
reports the Times, is that "Greek civilization failed
to promote a larger European consciousness . . . because it
discriminated between citizens and barbarians. Roman civilization
featured a similar dichotomy," avers Barnavi, and so cannot
meet the EU's high standards of political correctness. And
so it is out with the first philosophers, the founders
of the world's first republics – not only Aristotle
but the original explicators of natural law theory, the Stoics
– and in with the ninth century absolutism of
Charlemagne and rule by "divine right." Such are the political
uses of history.
HEIL
EUROPA?
The
Orwellian character of the EU and its propaganda is eerie
in the extreme. On the one hand, the Nazis are held up as
the ultimate symbol of evil, and this is truer in Germany
– the geographic center of the Soulless Monster –
than practically anywhere else on earth. Yet the "we are the
wave of the inevitable future" rhetoric employed by the advocates
of a EuroSuperState bears a striking resemblance to the prewar
pronunciamentos of Italian, French, and German fascists,
who hailed the rise of "Europa." As John Laughland puts it
in The Tainted Source:
"Because
the fascists believed that they were the harbingers of a New
Order (much fascist thought was overtly futuristic) they argued
that the concept of national sovereignty was simply out of
date – a view which is peddled vigorously by pro-Europeans
today. In Vichy France, the senior Vichyite minister and admirer
of Hitler, Jacques Benoist-Machin, who was a Secretary of
State in the Vichy government in charge of Franco-German relations
from June 1941 until September 1942, declared that France's
policy of collaboration required 'the abandonment of old illusions'.
France would be able to join the new Europe, he asserted,
only when she abandons all crumbling forms of nationalism
– which was itself in reality only an anachronistic particularism
– and when she takes her place in the European community
with honour. . .'"
THE
COURT HISTORIANS
As
the Eurocrats go about their gigantic project of social engineering
on a continental scale, they are not content with the usual
paraphernalia of phony "nationhood": a flag,
a currency, a symbol-embossed
passport – even a national
(or supranational) anthem. Now, that's one song
virtually no one can hum, let alone the lyrics, not even the
Eurocrats themselves. But perhaps their children will, and
that is the goal of the pan-European educational system now
taking root. With Brussels overseeing the writing and publication
of textbooks that teach history from a "European" point of
view, the little Europeans of tomorrow will be spoon-fed –
and force-fed, if necessary – a version of history that
legitimizes the EU
kleptocracy. Previous efforts to distribute an official
EU history textbook were thwarted by the troublesome Greeks,
who objected to a volume by the French historian Jean-Baptiste
Duroselle on the grounds that the contribution of Hellenic
civilization was almost completely overlooked in the text.
STRANGLED
IN THE CRADLE?
But
the Eurocrats can afford to wait, or so they think. According
to Peter Ludlow, of Center for
European Policy Studies, the official EU thinktank headquartered
in Brussels, we are in for a "sea change." They may not yet
know the words to the EU's anthem, but they'll know what a
Euro is in 2002, when they have to trade in their francs,
marks, pounds, and what-have-you for the spawn of the European
central bankers. Yes, but will this be enough to inspire the
loyalty of millions? If the pure economism of the Eurocrats
is correct, then the answer is yes: if not, then the pockets
of resistance to the coming dictatorship of the acronyms are
bound to expand. The
British Tories show signs of waking up to the danger,
and in Austria, Greece, and throughout
the continent opposition to the Soulless Monster is mobilizing.
The Monster could be strangled in its cradle – if we're
lucky.
THE
EUROPEAN THREAT
It
strikes me as incredible that the growth of a single European
Super-State is seen as a benign development by our national
leaders, while such marginal despots as Slobodan Milsovic
and Saddam Hussein loom large in the official imagination
as monsters of Satanic proportions. In their endless search
for overseas enemies, the interventionists of the Left and
the Right have both overlooked this obvious danger: the rise
of a nuclear-armed European Super-State, that sees itself
as a great liberator of peoples, an Empire to rival our own,
with its own energizing ideology as well as a formidable military
force. The Republican wing of the War Party is railing at
a third world nation like China, whose standard of living
and military is fifty years behind the West, while the vast
technological resources of Europe are being mobilized in the
service of a new and burgeoning Brussels-based Power.
THE
ENEMY THEY OVERLOOKED
The
same Times piece reports that a soon-to-be-published
volume put out by a pro-EU thinktank opines that the geographic
reality and reach of the European Idea is elastic, apparently
infinitely so. According to Professor Heinrich Schneider,
of the University of Vienna: "How far Europe will reach tomorrow,
or the day after tomorrow, or in the next century and later,
cannot be looked up in a historical atlas of the Antique,
the Middle Ages, of the 20th century, or of the
cold war period." This has an unmistakably messianic ring
to it, an idea that seems inherently aggressive and expansionist.
As the engine of European socialism, extending the rule of
the Third
Way into Eastern and Southern Europe, including even Turkey,
the EU seems much more of a potential challenge to American
interests and "hegemony" than either Russian or China, or
even both combined. Yet never do we hear a peep out of the
War Party, either wing of it, on this question: this is the
one enemy they have apparently overlooked.
REVISIONIST
HISTORY
The
smashing of old icons, and the creation of new gods and new
heroes, this is the process of European cultural integration
in action – a sinister ritual that bears a remarkable
resemblance to what is going on in the US. We, too, face the
purgation of old, politically "incorrect" symbols – the
Confederate
flag, the "Indian"
sports franchises, the slave-owning
Founders – and the enthronement of new gods and heroes:
Jefferson is out, Saint
Martin Luther King is in, and our children are
taught that the Founders of this country were white male heterosexual
sadists, who did not merely colonize but enslaved a
continent, murdering and raping their way from sea to shining
sea. It is not only the textbooks of Europe, but also our
own that have been rewritten – to fit the same multi-culturalist
anti-particularist agenda.
A
WARNING
The
announcement that the
EU intends to raise its own army is a warning to the last
independent pockets of resistance, such as Serbia, that continue
to defy the Euro-lords. The European integrationists attach
a lot of importance to their very first war, in which the
declared enemy was the idea of sovereignty, and the nationalistic
Serbs were given the honor of being singled out for subjugation
and humiliation. But Milosevic fought them to a standstill,
and stood up for the idea of national sovereignty against
these would be Holy Roman emperors. The issue remains dangerously
unresolved, and with plenty of potential to drag the United
States into yet another European conflict. In the civilizational
struggle between Western Europe and the Orthodox East, the
US and the EU are lined up against the Slavs – and anyone
else who dares challenge Western global hegemony.
NEITHER
HOLY NOR ROMAN
The
crusade to export MTV, Democracy,
and the cultural hegemony of Hollywood
to the four corners of the earth is, for some, a holy crusade,
albeit a purely secular one. In spite of the Eurocrats' pathetic
pretensions, and their highly dubious claim to represent the
imperial legacy of Charlemagne, this rising Euro-imperialism
is neither Holy nor Roman. It isn't even a proper Empire,
as it has no Emperor, nor even a sense of its own majesty
– only faceless bureaucrats who thrive on anonymity.
There is indeed something distinctly unholy about this
international crusade against the idea of national sovereignty,
and the rise of regionalism, and "the European idea," straight
out of Nazi and fascist propaganda of the 1930s – even
as nationalists, such
as the Freedom Party of Austria, are denounced as "neo-Nazis"
for their opposition to the dictatorship of Brussels
and the liquidation of national identity and history in the
face of the pan-European cultural blitzkrieg.
THE
STRUGGLE FOR THE WORLD
On
every front, from Europe to Latin America, from the Middle
East to the Straits of Taiwan, the great struggle in the world
comes down to two forces, two great antagonists locked in
mortal combat: the emerging
world state versus the rest of mankind. At the center
is he metropolitan megalopolis, North America, Great Britain,
and Western Europe, with the second tier the former colonies
of Great Britain and the emerging nations of Eastern Europe.
Extending its reach into the Ukraine and the Baltics, and
through Turkey into the Caucasus, the great Acronymic Alliance
of the EU and the US is now making its bid for world hegemony,
with the prize being the fantastic
oil wealth to be found in the Caspian Sea region. It is
a vision that combines the megalomania of Alexander,
the hubris of Napoleon
– and a Hitlerian sense of messianic inevitability.
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