COMING
TO A SMEAR CAMPAIGN NEAR YOU
The
Danish People's Party and its leader, Pia Kjaersgaard, are
bound to be targeted by the Left for a hate campaign similar
to the one unleashed on Joerg Haider and his Austrian Freedom
Party: get ready for a press campaign smearing Denmark's Buchananites
as a gang of dangerous "ultra-nationalists" – isn't all
nationalism ultra, and therefore dangerous? – and with
"racist" tendencies to boot. They're against unlimited immigration,
aren't they – what more do we need to know?
THE
HAZING OF A NATION
Speaking
of the Austrians, the example of what the Eurocrats did to
that proud people – another small country, like Denmark,
rich in history as well as material comforts – was a
major factor in the Danish referendum. If they could impose
sanctions on Austria for voting the wrong way in a national
election, then what was to stop them from doing the same to
Denmark? This question was doubtless on Danish voters' minds
when they voted a resounding no: would the entry of the Danish
People's Party into the government subject their country to
the same sort of ritualized humiliation?
THE
FORCES OF LITTLE-NESS ADD UP TO SOMETHING BIG
Haider's
Freedom Party, like the Danish People's Party, is free market-oriented,
opposed to immigration, and unabashedly nationalist in the
Swiss sense: not aggressively expansionist, but quite the
opposite: peaceful and a bit standoffish, even aloof from
the rest of the world. These are people who want only to be
left alone – by governments, at home and abroad –
and they are rising up, from Copenhagen to Vienna, and beyond.
The Euro-tax revolt movement – the Spanish fishermen
blockading harbors and their British brothers blockading the
street in front of 10 Downing Street – is also very much
in the spirit of the new trend I call the Revolt of the Little
Guys. The little people, the small traders and entrepreneurs,
and the little countries – Denmark today, perhaps Britain
tomorrow – are marshaling the forces of little-ness into
one big backlash against the rapidly consolidating European
super-state. The results are already historic.
A
WARNING TO THE MIGHTY
The
election results were a rebuke to the "presumptuous Brussels
bureaucracy," as
Haider put it, a "warning to the mighty in the European
Union which cannot be ignored." But Haider is the first one
to know that they have not been ignoring the rising tide of
opposition to their rule. Vilification was the price he paid
to be one of the first to show that the little guys would
not be forced to their knees by "the mighty." They can't vilify
all the opposition to the creation of the United Socialist
States of Europe. But they can certainly try, and if that
doesn't work then they'll silence their critics by force:
The European Court of Justice is currently hearing the case
of Bernard
Connolly, a British
whistleblower who once served the EU at their Brussels
headquarters as a leading economist – and enraged he
Eurocrats with his book, The
Rotten Heart of Europe, which exposes the EU as a
means for the Franco-German elites to dominate Europe at its
"core": he was not only promptly dismissed from his post,
but the European Commission tried to silence him. The legal
move to muzzle Connolly was upheld by a lower court of the
European Court of Justice, which ruled that "the general interests
of the Communities" trump free speech. This is the fate awaiting
all Euro-skeptics who dare to raise their voices as soon as
Brussels clamps its iron grip on the life of a continent.
But help is on the way –
BACKLASH
The
more the Eurocrats bear down, the bigger the backlash. The
demonstrations against fuel taxes were the culmination of
a movement that has been percolating for some time. The secessionist
trend, especially in northern Italy, is yet another countervailing
force to the movement for integration. Reflecting a split
in the ranks of the Eurocrats, Romano
Prodi, the head of the European Commission, is openly
complaining about the coming Franco-Prussian hegemony.
Centrifugal forces seems to be tearing the EU at its fragile
edges. In a direct challenge to the eastward expansion of
the EU, Serbian President-elect Vojislav Kostunica upbraided
small countries that have abandoned their sovereignty to "international
organizations" without even a backward glance. Significantly,
his supporters in Serbian are employing the same tactics utilized
by the Euro-tax protesters – and perhaps we are seeing
in the streets of Belgrade a little of what is in store for
Tony Blair and the British version of the Serbian Socialist
Party if they don't start seriously negotiating a significant
fuel tax reduction.
JERSEY
LIBRE!
Kostunica
recently attacked the US and Russia, belittling the latter
for its bumbling indecisiveness and attacking the former for
its overbearing strength: clearly, he and his movement are
part of the revolt of the little guys against "the mighty,"
along with Denmark, Austria, and the Padanians
of northern Italy. Emblematic of what is happening all
across Europe are the 90.000 residents of the Channel isle
of Jersey, who may hold a referendum next year on ending their
900-year-old association with the British crown. Jerseyites
fear that their low taxes will come to an abrupt end once
Britain is mired in high-tax Europa. Jersey libre!
HELP
IS ON THE WAY
With
the Franco-Prussian monolith on a fast-track to de facto unification,
and the elites of England and the others solidly in the camp
of the Eurocrats, but a few short months ago the rise of a
new European empire seemed almost inevitable. Today, it seems
highly problematic – and it is the revolt of the little
guys that is suddenly calling all this into question. Without
any centrally-coordinated leadership, without the support
of the media or the major political parties, a spontaneous
rebellion against the big guys – big government, big
business, and the big powers – is taking shape. It's
only a matter of time before it leaps the Atlantic Ocean and
lands on American shores – and not a moment too soon.
Please
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