Europe Seethes With Populism

By: Andrew_McKillop

AGIT PROP AND THE EUROCRATS
Europe's top down, elitist, and very unpopular Federal Europe quest twists and turns – possibly in its death throes. The federalists in Brussels say they are facing down the dangerous threat of rising populism in Europe. For them, this is a direct menace to European democracy.

Much simpler and much closer to the truth, the confused and convoluted "federal project" has never been so unpopular – even when it can be understood. Opinion polls in the EU states regularly say that a majority of persons questioned do not even know what "federalism in Europe" is meant to mean. The failure of communication by the Eurocrats is total. Europe's voting populations, after 5 years of economic crisis which shows no signs of going away, are shock-averse and recoil from any new "surprise treaty" the Brussels bureaucrats may throw at them.

Next May's European elections, in which almost 400 million people in the 28 member states can cast their votes, will almost certainly produce a landslide against the Eurocrats. Voters will support any party that opposes the lurking shadow of Big Brother Europe.

Brussels has pretended – for decades – that the European Parliament, Commission and its agencies, its directives and the linked European Treaties are the peak of democracy. Voters do not see it that way, at all. However "populism" is defined, and for the Eurocrats it means the extreme left and extreme right, extreme nationalism, racism and xenophobia, and so on, voters are interested in what they can understand. They are not interested in the agit prop coming out of Brussels, Strasbourg, Luxemburg and wherever else that Eurocrats have their agencies and seats of power. What the Eurocrats call populism means a victory for democracy.

BREAK TIME
For decades, Brussels has done what it wants. The European Treaty series, as they are officially called, have gone one way only. Always more complex. Always negative for the economy. Always opposed to civil liberties and national identity. Enough is enough..The stated and open aim of the Eurocrats to "destroy the nation state to relegate war between nations to the trashcan of History" has worn thin. The record got stuck for much too long. Nobody in Europe is especially interested in war, anyhow. But Europe's present crop of political masters seem to love it, whether it is Libya, Syria, Mali or Iran.

The stunning failure of the Eurocrats to convert the Economic Community, which worked, to the Union which doesn't, is a recurring conversation and debating theme – anywhere outside Brussels. The euro-zone and single euro money, notably, have such a poor public approval rating that the Eurocrats should have noticed. But they prefer to take the huge aversion to abandonment of the euro by the most afflicted victims of the "single economy and money" - the Greeks, Cypriots, Spanish, Italians, Portuguese and Irish – as a proof that they like and want the system. In fact these victims of the "single economy" are terrified of what would happen when or if they converted back to their previous national moneys. That is all.

People have come to realize that the so-called "europhile goal" of destroying Europe's nations has only a flimsy outline sketch or model of what would come next in the vaunted "Federal Europe". Failute would be 99% certain. For many Europeans, this is a pure and simple suicide quest – not the ritual slaughter of "relic nations". They are not going to let it happen.

Completely naturally, patriotism has made a comeback. Being told, day and night, that patriotism is dangerous and causes wars, that its a vice and not a virtue, has blown back. Here again, the record got stuck for too long, much too long. Reasserting national pride and identity, whatever the dangers is now commonplace.

The Eurocrats went too far with the antiwar meme – because their own mindset is dug-in to the early 1950s. Robert Schuman, one of the EU's founding fathers said at the time that the basic aim of European integration was "to make war not only unthinkable but materially impossible"  By materially impossible he meant a flourishing and sustainable economy with full employment.

Today's Eurocrats have either directly depressed the economy, or aided its decline, in all EU states whether post-2005 members or earlier member states. They have done nothing about the continent's 27 million unemployeds. The utterly simplistic "peace in our time" one-liners of the founding fathers made the absurd one-for-one claim that because soverign nations exist, they have to go to war. The nation state as a concept and political model, apart from starting in Europe, exists everywhere, but the early Eurocrats were besotted by the US on one hand, and terrified by the USSR on the other. But their admiration of both was total. They wanted to bundle the American economy and Soviet Big Brother mindwarp together into a European package.

FEDERAL NONSENSE
Early Eurocrat speechmaking can be found with the click of a mouse. Their speeches literally "rewrote history" on many, many occasions. They literally claimed that because Germany, France, Britain, Italy, Spain and other nations existed in the past, they went to war because they were sovereign nations. They literally said that democracy means war, adding the key adjective "national" democracy - whereas their Federal Democracy could not go to war.

To be sure, the Eurocrats are covered, and cover themselves with a layer cake of flak jackets. The European Parliament, notably, is a nice talkshop for budding orators – but nothing else. Its ability to do anything constructive for the economy, society, or wellbeing of European people (or peoples) is less than zero – it is negative. The Parliament has for example mainly pretexted ignorance concerning the dangerous lurking process of financial and banking "convergence" or "harmonization", with the Goldman Sachs-friendly ECB poised to take ourtright control of all member state banks and buy any national treasury bonds it wants by end-2014 - if it gets what it wants. Instead, the Parliament has waded into issues "everybody knows" such as ecology, environment, climate change and green energy – producing a monstruous policy and process of driving up European energy prices to fantastic extremes.

The Commission has at all times been willing and able to turn Parliament speechmaking into new directives – depressing the economy. The Commission can claim with a po-face this is the democratic wish of the people (or peoples). It is covered. National governments, run by Europe's golove puppet equivalents of the USA's Demorepublicans then rubber stamp the Commission directives, acting exactly as they would in the hoped-for Federal European Superstate.

In fact, the Eurocrats are already in a very comfortable position of unelected power, without responsibility, but they always want more. Hubris or plain arrogance can be surmised as being their only real motive. Due to this factor – call it megalomania for short – their plans and projects have  an inevitably increasing totalitarian component. One current example is the "ecotax", an idea for new taxes, controls, and 24-hour surveillance of how we live that has floated down from Brussels after a quick tour in the Parliament.

Europe has a self-appointed role of Savior of The Planet, meaning the heroic struggle against global warming. Ergo transport fuel consumption must be curtailed, with new taxes. The pump price must remain the same – higher pump prices are unpopular – but actually using vehicles can be squeezed. Also, by tracking the origin and destination of every goods vehicle in Europe, Federal European security can be enhanced. Al Qaeda in Europe (if not in Mali or Syria) can be defeated.

Several glove puppet regimes in different member states jumped at this idea, for instance France with its self-appointed role of More European Than Thou. Around 2 billion euros-worth of electronic surveillance gantries for major highways were ordered in a deal signed with a consortium of corporate European interests called Ecomouv. No serious ground-up political opposition was expected – but then the project unravelled, as real and determined opposition started, firstly in Brittany and the west of France. Today, the gantries that have not been destroyed by protestors are being "provisionally dismantled" while business lawyers fight out compensation claims from Ecomouv consortium members for damages and lost earnings – probably 800 million euros for 2014, if the ecotax cannot be rammed through. The publicity and communication for the project vaunted the ability to know where every truck and large van in France was going and where it came from – and tax them to Save the Planet!

DEMOCRACY MEANS CHOICE
One fantastic anti-democratic trait of the Eurocrats is already well known to European voters. They can vote against new omnibus Treaties, but they will get them all the same. In referendums in 2005, the Dutch and the French electorates rejected the then-latest European Constitution treaty, which aims to turn the EU into a "genuine super state". Brussels refused to take no for an answer. It went ahead with its plans for a federal constitutional treaty, notwithstanding the people's opposition. Tirelessly aided by the Demorepublican glove puppets, it could say that Brussels knows better than the people.

The Eurocrats make a point-blank refusal to retreat. For them, the EEC (Economic Community) which was basically a plain and simple customs union was a small and unworthy thing, merely a stepping stone to the higher pastures of the Superstate. Interestingly enough, even at the time of the EEC, the euro, under another name, existed as a unit of account to rationalize national economic and financial accounts. It was not convertible. It was a technical "single money", not a real world currency. It worked.

Wanting to go much, much further produced the euro. With the euro in place, European voters are now terrified of what will happen when or if it collapses or is abandoned – inevitably in a highly classic financial and monetary panic. Because the euro is No Alternative, abandoning it will be a lot harder than adopting it. The euro is a somber example of how the Eurocrats have created, and used fear of the unknown to maintain and increase their power.

This also shows the urgency of putting an end to their EU-USSR and EU-USA project in the shortest possible time. Holding national referenda on continued full membership of the EU is now a rising demand in member countries, but again the dice are loaded in favour of the Eurocrats. To be sure the Swiss and Norwegian models exist, purely because of ground-up democratic action to resist the repeated and dogged attempts by the ruling elites of Switzerland and Norway to force through membership of the EU.

The more likely process will be several large and small countries abandoning full membership at one and the same time. How they tie together their future relationships with the "rump EU" bloc will be a challenging time for their democratic leaderships – which at present and as noted, are effectively Federal European glove puppet regimes. This is no longer a pipedream project, but the Eurocrats have sown the playing field with mines which can cause massive damage.

By Andrew McKillop

Contact: xtran9@gmail.com

Former chief policy analyst, Division A Policy, DG XVII Energy, European Commission. Andrew McKillop Biographic Highlights

Co-author 'The Doomsday Machine', Palgrave Macmillan USA, 2012

Andrew McKillop has more than 30 years experience in the energy, economic and finance domains. Trained at London UK’s University College, he has had specially long experience of energy policy, project administration and the development and financing of alternate energy. This included his role of in-house Expert on Policy and Programming at the DG XVII-Energy of the European Commission, Director of Information of the OAPEC technology transfer subsidiary, AREC and researcher for UN agencies including the ILO.

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