CLUCK
CLUCK CLUCK
The
rise of Pia Kjaersgaard as a Nordic version of Jorge Haider
has already got the European Left in a lather – and in
America, too, the clucking disapproval of the liberal media
is almost audible. The New York Times' coverage
of Danish Euroskepticism has the reporter asking a leftist
opponent of the EU, a "rumpled and thoughtful" socialist professor:
"But
ought a man of the left to share a platform with Ms. Kjaersgaard?
It is very awkward, Mr. Krarup confided. But then, this is
a time of collapsing certainties, of 'exponential change,'
so such odd shifts of political ground could occur."
THANK
GOD FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES!
The
idea that Ms. Kjaersgaard is some kind of political pariah,
and that her mere presence on a platform next to the "thoughtful"
Mr. Krarup would almost certainly prove contaminating, is
not-so-subtly introduced right off the bat, so that the reader
is instantly alerted as to the politically correct position
to take on the subject at hand. Naturally, anything that doesn't
fit into the paradigm of a New York Times-style liberal
is "odd" – and even, in the case of Ms. Kjaersgaard,
"bizarre. "The essential issue is the preservation of our
sovereignty," says Ms. Kjaersgaard. "The euro will erode our
national authority and identity at a time when Denmark is
already becoming more and more multiethnic and globalized."
Thank god we have the New York Times to interpret all
this for us: "To lump the euro with the arrival of foreigners
and the effects of global competition and conjure a three-
pronged menace may seem bizarre," we are informed. "But not
necessarily in today's Europe, where concern about the dilution
of nationhood through European integration and mounting immigration
is widespread."
WILD
AND CRAZY
Oh,
those crazy Europeans – you know how they are!
With all that history in every stone, on every streetcorner
a national monument or a sacred grove, why it's like living
in a theme park – a politically incorrect Nordic Disneyland
full of castles and white people. Not only that, but this
storybook land is home to a growing right-wing populist opposition
to the idea of a borderless, multiculturized and completely
socialized Denmark. Can EU sanctions be far behind?
THE
AUSTRIAN PRECEDENT
While
the adoption of the euro as the Danish currency is the ostensible
subject of this referendum, what is really at stake is the
fate of Europe's little nations at the hands of a revived
Holy Roman Empire. Everyone saw what happened to the Austrians
when they transgressed the boundaries of the politically permissible:
humiliating sanctions and a demonization campaign conducted
on an international scale. Polls show that few Danes support
the sanctions – and implicitly measure the fear that
the EU will intervene in Danish elections if the desired results
are not forthcoming. If Pia Kjaersgaard, the Pat Buchanan
of Denmark, enters the government, the political commissars
of Europe's new Warsaw Pact would give the Danes the same
treatment they gave the Austrians – perhaps worse. The
upcoming decision by the Euro-crats on whether or not to lift
the sanctions on Austria – after a subcommittee of the
EU bureaucracy called them "counterproductive"
– could have a decisive impact on the outcome of the
referendum, particularly if the arrogant French prevail and
the sanctions stay.
DANISH
RIGHT-WING POPULISM: A CAPSULE HISTORY
Before
they start labeling Ms. Kjaersgaard a "Nazi" and the Danish
People's Party a gang of goose-stepping skinheads, here's
a few facts: The Danish People's Party was an outgrowth of
the quasi-libertarian Progress Party, founded in August 1972
by Mogens Glistrup. Glistrup was a tax-resistor and attorney
who electrified the nation when he disclosed on national television
that he refused to pay any income tax, praising tax-evaders
as heroes to be emulated: he compared them to those who had
resisted the German occupation during World War II. In a country
with the highest income tax (27% as a percentage of gross
domestic product) this was the equivalent of starting a revolution
– and, for a while, Glistrup's revolution seemed to be
succeeding. A few weeks into the election season saw the Progress
Party skyrocket from 4% in the polls to nearly a quarter of
the electorate. When the votes were counted, the party wound
up with 15.9 percent of the vote, Glistrup and his tax rebels
had gone from being a small splinter group to taking their
place in Parliament as the second largest party after the
ruling Social Democrats. Danish statists of every hue were
horrified, and they went after Glistrup with a vengeance;
dragging him through the courts, jailing him on at least two
occasions, and vilifying him in the media as the incarnation
of the devil himself. Factional disagreements, as well as
Glistrup's personal and political intransigence, led to the
decline of the Progress Party, and the rise of the more moderate
People's Party, with parliamentarian Kjaersgaard at the helm.
Her party eventually displaced Glistrup, garnering some 10
percent in the last elections, and currently doing over 20
percent in the polls.
THE
ROOTS OF DANISH NATIONALISM
Ms.
Kjarsgaard's rising popularity is due largely to her visibility
not only on the EU question, but on the volatile immigration
issue, which was dramatized recently when a multiculturalist
organization mocked the alleged "racism" of the Danes by erecting
billboards showing a youth-of-color declaring: "When I become
white, I'll be a schoolteacher." People's Party activists
parodied this with billboards of their own, showing a derelict
white guy proclaiming: "When I become a Muslim, I'll have
a house." Reflecting the widespread view that immigrants are
first in line for the vast array of services automatically
provided to all residents of this very wealthy country, such
propaganda is frightening to the Danish – and Anglo-American
– elites. It is effective precisely because it rings
so true. As one of the top ten richest countries in the world
– and also a welfare state in the Scandinavian style
– Denmark is reflexively balking at the open borders
immigration policy of the EU. For this means that every Somalian
refugee, every Albanian drug dealer, every Gypsy in Europe
will be entitled to a little cottage with a white picket fence,
a guaranteed annual income, and complete medical coverage
for life. The libertarian roots of the People's Party, as
well as its evolving critique of globalism and regionalism,
has made it the voice of Danish nationalism The Danish People's
Party represents an anti-statist nationalism that is taking
on the central planners headquartered in Brussels, whose "Third
Way" corporate socialism is dependent on a European central
bank as an instrument of government policy.
ON
THE FRONT LINES
In
1992, with right-wing populists and some allies on the left
leading the campaign, the Maastricht treaty was rejected by
Danish voters, and only approved in a later rematch when a
modified version gave Danes the choice to opt out of key sections
of the treaty – including adoption of the euro, immigration,
defense, and foreign policy. Denmark, with its frequent referendums
on EU matters, has been in the front lines of the battle against
the consolidation of a European super-state. According to
the Berlinske Tidende, the Eurocrats are outspending
their opponents by three-to-one
in this campaign – even as leftwing British Laborites
scream
bloody murder when Lady Thatcher and fellow Euroskeptics
raise money for the beleaguered Danish "No" campaign. These
'Third Way" Commies are such hypocrites. In spite of being
outspent and smeared as "far right" – not to mention
"bizarre" – the Danish defenders of national sovereignty,
on both sides of the political spectrum, are holding their
own. Resistance to full assimilation into the Euro-monster
runs high enough to leave the outcome in doubt as we get down
to the wire – and that is precisely what has the Eurocrats
running
scared.
THE
PAN-EUROPEANS
The
Danish People's Party, the Austrian Freedom Party, the Lega
Nord in Italy, the Euroskeptical wing of Britain's Tory Party
and the other anti-EU groups are all part of the inevitable
reaction to the power grab by the Brussels bureaucracy. What
the Danes are up against is the permanent government of the
EU which seeks to establish a socialist super-state from the
Iberian peninsula to the steppes of the Ukraine – and
beyond. This is the old dream of the pan-European movement,
which had its rise, as John McLaughland shows in his book,
The
Tainted Source: The Undemocratic Origins of the European Idea,
in the fascist and national socialist movements of Europe
in the 1930s. Aggressive, animated by a sense of its civilizing
mission, and armed with nuclear weapons, the patriots of the
EU dream of the day when they can mount a challenge to the
American "hyperpower." Yet the Clinton administration has
hailed European integration and even welcomed the idea of
a European Defense Force – provided it doesn't displace
NATO. But even at this early stage, the tension between the
US and the EU is palpable, and not only over trade matters.
This is one reason for the enthusiasm for NATO expansion by
US policymakers, who hope to head the Eurocrats off in Eastern
Europe.
RELIGIOUS
INSTRUCTION
In
a world where "globalization" has become a religion, any sort
of particularism is heretical – and promptly punished,
in varying degrees of severity. If the Danes dare to buck
the tide of European elite opinion and assert their sovereignty,
rejecting the euro and all it stands for – socialism,
internationalism, and the virtual abolition of all localism
– the pressure on that small and relatively powerless
country is bound to increase. Political and economic sanctions,
a hate campaign organized along the same lines as the "hate
Haider" hysteria – and who knows what else the Eurocrats
will resort to in their campaign to subjugate a continent?
THE
NEGLECTED THREAT
The
real irony of American foreign policy, which is geared to
meddling in other people's affairs, is that it prevents us
from recognizing – let alone safeguarding – our
own legitimate interests. There is so much talk of
the alleged "threat" posed by such petty dictators as Saddam
Hussein and Slobodan Milosevic: practically every day we hear
how they are the equivalent of Hitler and Stalin rolled into
one, ready to pounce at a moment's notice. But what about
the challenge posed by the rising European super-state –
how come we never hear a word about that, not even from the
most fanatical interventionists? The neocons over at the Weekly
Standard – always in the market for a new foreign
bogeyman – seem to have overlooked this one. The War
Party has been so busy scaring the daylights out of us with
tall tales of Chinese and Russian plots against the Pax Americana
that they seem to have entirely neglected the only really
credible competitor – one centered, not in Moscow
or Beijing, but in Brussels. Now there is a real threat to
US interests – and potentially a military one –
that even the undisputed champion scaremonger of cyberspace,
J.R.
Nyquist of WorldNetDaily and Newsmax, has
yet to uncover! Surely this is a scoop of major proportions.
. . .
LOVE
THY ENEMY?
But
seriously, folks, there's plenty of irony here: in spite of
spending more on "defense" than any nation in history, still
we wind up – somehow – nurturing our enemies. As
the guardians of a global empire, with "vital national interests"
on every continent and in every global backwater, we have
less security than we ever did. While Republican politicians
inveigh against the alleged "threat" posed by dilapidated
Russia and technologically backward and internally unstable
China, and both major parties see Iraq as a major threat to
American interests, the threat posed by the Eurocrats has
only been raised to some extent by Pat Buchanan, and to a
lesser extent by Ralph Nader. My question is: Where are the
scaremongers when you really need them? On the issue of the
EU, they seem to be AWOL.
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