Virtue Signalling & Democracy versus Populism

One of the most nauseating features of the post referendum period is the effortless assumption of superiority by those who lost the vote. They are, they maintain, the educated people, the successful people, the outward-looking liberal people, the idealistic young and the truly compassionate. The European Union, they believe, is an institution which affirms all those values and reinforces their already exceedingly good opinion of themselves.

They are, of course, in favour of democracy – after all, the EU has its own elected parliament where the peoples’ voices are heard! But when the people vote against this wonderful European construct, that decision is not democracy but populism. Then the voice of the people must either be disregarded completely or they must be made to vote again until they come to their senses and conform to the pattern of the benevolent EU project.

After all, the voters of France, the Netherlands and Ireland have all had this sort of treatment and quietly resumed happy fulfilled lives within the great harmonious European polity. This has not been done by any external force or coercion but by powerful people within each member state who have given their first loyalty and duty to the European Union above that which ordinary people owe to their own country. One of their most vigorous advocates is a Mr. Westerman who writes to papers all over the place from his home in Wales. On October 28, I responded to a letter of his in the Derby Telegraph where he had made such assertions.

“C.N. Westerman brackets Nigel Farage with the late British fascist leader, Sir Oswald Mosley. (“Populism in politics can arrest critical thinking” October 24).

This is most misleading as Sir Oswald was a keen advocate of European union, which Nigel Farage certainly is not.

Euro-fanatic Kenneth Clarke twice invited Sir Oswald to address the Cambridge University Conservatives while another then student, Michael Howard, resigned in protest. Perhaps we should not read too much into the genial Clarke’s youthful enthusiasm.

While the European project drew on many ideological sources, including Christian Democracy (Konrad Adenauer), Socialism (Paul Henri Spaak) and Communism (Altiero Spinelli), there is no doubt of the transfer of Nazi principles and personalities to the post war era.

For years I puzzled over the origin of the EU’s biggest project, the Common Agricultural Policy. It was so grotesquely bureaucratic and alien to the common sense system we had before, I just could not place the ideology behind it.

It was not until 2002 when someone sent me a German book, “European Economic Community”, that I knew beyond reasonable doubt. It was a collection of papers by senior figures in government, industry, diplomacy and academia, published in Berlin in 1942.

I translated the lead paper * by Walther Funk, Reichsminister for the Economy and President of the Reichsbank. Apart from uncomplimentary references to Winston Churchill and President Roosevelt, there is hardly anything in it which has not come out of the European Commission and European Movement in the last fifty years. The similarities are just too many to be merely coincidental.

The first President of the European Commission, Dr. Hallstein, was previously member of the “National Socialist League of Protectors of the Law” and addressed a Nazi rally in early 1939 on unifying the legal system in territories under German control. Much of his post war activity was spent in “harmonising” the legal systems of EU member states.

Perhaps one reason people think politicians of the main parties are “all the same” arises from their leaders, until recently, all being enthusiasts in the common cause of subjection to the EU – effectively a one-party state with a deceptive choice of flavours.”

So the “nice” people don’t look quite so nice now, do they? Kenneth Clarke was fascinated by Mosley and fascism as a young man and certainly retains Mosley’s euro-fanaticism. Clarke hoped to see the day when Parliament was reduced to a mere “council chamber in Europe” – and he could have become Prime Minister. Just imagine the fuss, if somebody of his background had been prominent in the independence movement!

The Nazis, of course, were heirs to earlier German plans for domination of Europe. On 9th September 1914 the First World War was over a month old and the Imperial German Chancellor, Bethmann Hollweg, thought he had better get some war aims. Here is an excerpt from his memo.

“Russia must be thrust back as far as possible from Germany’s Eastern frontier and her domination over non-Russian vassal peoples broken…..We must create a Central European Economic Association through common customs treaties to include France, Belgium, Holland, Denmark, Austria-Hungary and perhaps Italy, Sweden and Norway.

The association will not have any common constitutional supreme authority and all members will be formally equal but in practice under German leadership and must stabilise Germany’s economic dominance over central Europe”.

The unique thing about the EU is the addition of that “common constitutional supreme authority” –  the EU Commission – the true legacy of Monnet, Schuman & Co. It has not prevented the continuing “Drang nach Osten” – the process of EU enlargement to the East in the interests of German economic domination. The proxy wars in former Yugoslavia in the Nineties and in the Ukraine today testify to that and also give the lie to the EU’s myth of uniquely peaceful intent. Few people realise that British soldiers are already stationed in the Ukraine – effectively to defend Germany’s sphere of influence.

The peace of Europe would be much better secured if the German ruling class forgot expansionism – even if it is wrapped in an EU flag- and recalled Bismarck’s great dictum on foreign policy. “First make a good treaty with Russia”.

* To get the full translation Google “The European Union’s Evil Pedigree” . This is on the website www.freenations.net .