Current EU management is vile, but Anti-Europeanism is a mental illness

[fpb]

Reading the Telegraph blogs and the Mail's hilariously named "Right minds" page is an exercise in dissociation and unreality. Happily ignoring the well-known fact that over 70% of Greeks want to stay within the Euro, they call it a defence of democracy when a crumbling Greek politician announces a referendum on matters already agreed without even informing his own cabinet. That the said referendum would be an abuse of process; that you don't negotiate only to then turn around and tell those you negotiated with that you are going to vote about whether you will accept the results of said negotiation; that you ten times don't do that when it is the other parties who are putting in the money and you who are accepting it; and that you fifty times don't do that when they have already done you the enormous favour of forgiving half your debt; that is something they don't even begin to contemplate. Happily ignoring the moral and political bankruptcy of Silvio Berlusconi, they call it a defence of democracy when that putrid scoundrel places his own country at risk in order to eke out a few more days in the ministerial chair. Ignoring the fact that Angela Merkel has had to fight to keep the support of her Parliament, they call the ongoing struggle to defend European finance a GErman aggression. These people are mad in the clinical sense of the word.

The purely destructive attitude of English Europe-haters has never been in better evidence. They are slobbering at the thought of the Euro collapsing. That it would bring about a banking collapse worse than anything we have seen so far does not seem to impinge on their consciousness. That it would destroy London as a finance centre, since London depends on Europe, seems to pass them by. That it would deepen the already intolerable economic crisis seems to fill them with a perverted glee. That it would certainly not spare Britain, whose economy is sunken in unpayable debt, just goes unsaid, unmentioned, unthought of. The bitter, burning, implacable hatred for anything and everything to do with a united Europe is willing to contemplate the complete ruin of Western economies and do nothing except slobber with glee. And the most evident display of disassociation to the point of insanity is that they don't seem to realize that a return to 1960 conditions would be hugely uncomfortable and impractical for them. Having to get visas to travel to Europe - you would have to keep your hordes of drunken young men and women in Blackpool or Margate every year, instead of vomiting them annually on to Ibiza or Aiya Napa. You would have to negotiate tariffs and regulations in order to sell anything to the continent (there is a reason why the proportion of British exports to continental Europe has gone from 10% in 1960 to 60+% today). No more booze trips to Bruges or Calais. Soon you would begin to hear people start to ask why anyone ever thought it was a good idea for "us" to get out of Europe.

As I have long been saying, Britain ought to be kicked out of the EU. General de Gaulle had it right the first time, and even more profoundly than he knew. The relationship of Britain to the continent is neither rational nor wholesome. Two generations of putrid politicians and corrupt journalists have used the EU as a punching bag in order to draw attention away from their own poisonous incompetence, meddling, and PC. And now this lie has become so embedded in their brains as to make them literally incapable of perceiving their own immediate interests.

Comments

[james asher (from livejournal.com)]

Don't forget Eastern Europe. A friend from Prague told me of british stag-night partiers getting drunk there, inserting flaming toilet rolls up their posteriors, and other wacky drunken hi-jinks. (Beer is very cheap in the former Czechoslovakia.)

Part of the reason why the British attitude is poisonous is the way EU integration proceeds without popular consent. You may have noticed eurosceptics' continuous calls for referenda on various treaties, eurozone entry, EU membership &c. It would have cleared the air and increased public acceptance if governments had let the occasional referendum through back in the 90's when the EU began; as it is, resentment concerning sovereignty and lack of democracy has grown and festered, and turned into a mania occluding rational thought in some cases, like you cite. (A lot of eurosceptics would tone down their rhetoric if they had, and lost, a referendum on leaving the EU, I think.)

Regarding the UK being kicked out, the EU didn't exist in de Gaulle's time, and the EU seemed quite happy to have us along for the ride till now... not totally sure why, since we're a bit of a pain in the neck.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

Very cheap and very excellent. To use original Pilsner or Budvar-Budweiser to get stoned out of one's head is a waste of good work. Mind you, I don't doubt they would similarly insult the best of Medoc. And to go to one of the loveliest countries in the world only to make idiots of oneself is a waste of life. What on Earth will these people say when they are old - well, I got really drunk in my time?

I said that the current European management is vile. As I said elsewhere, I feel a bit like the great Carlo Cattaneo (except for the greatness, of course), a heroic patriot who, having fought all his life for Italy's freedom, spent the last years of his life in exile because he couldn't stomach the way that united Italy had been made. The reckless extension of the law-making power, under the thin and absurd pretence of regulating the market, the obvious democratic deficit, and the poisonous mixture of brutal PC and equally brutal Thatcherism (in which the Prodi presidency was particularly guilty) are all an affront to my conscience. But I still think that a united Europe is a necessity, and the history of Italy shows that all the wrong things can be reformed, one by one or all together. British hostility to Europe began long before the idiots in Brussels went out of control; indeed, its unreasoning and frequently mendacious quality was a positive asset to the empire-builders - they could always demonize any opposition by comparing it to England's. That is one reason why Britain has been kept in Europe. It is a fact that, in their campaign to set up the Euro, Andreotti and Vattane' deliberately used Margaret Thatcher as a scarecrow to get the other European government to line up behind their proposals.

The EU is the most recent name for an entity established with the Treaty of Rome of 1956, called first the European Common Market, then the European Economic Community, then the European Union. There seems to be a historical law whereby each British government since 1950 must contribute at least one disastrous decision to the long story of national decline; that of the Macmillan government was to seek admission to the then Common Market, without informing either the Commonwealth governments or British public opinion. The first thing anyone knew of it was when it became public that De Gaulle had vetoed the British entry. This was the real end of the British Empire: all the white Dominions, which until then had taken pride in their connection with the UK, felt rejected and angry, and Macmillan achieved the perfect score of losing all the friends Britain had without gaining anything in Europe. From then on, Britain has been increasingly subservient to the USA, and it is my view that this is only explained by its neurotic attitude to Europe.

[james asher (from livejournal.com)]

I know the history of the EU, vaguely. But when I were a lad it was still the EEC, then the EC, then the EU, each step involving a certain handing over of power to the thing's management class. If you're talking about UK euroscepticism it helps to distinguish between the earlier stages and the later stages, because the British could accept the EEC, despite complaints (how dare they regulate the curvature of our cucumbers &c), but the political integration of the EU is pushing it, and the fact other countries get referenda and we don't is even more of an annoyance. Unfortunately this diverges from the vision of continental Europe, which doesn't see economic union and loss of sovereignty as different things but as stages in a (generally desirable) process. (Why, incidentally, do *you* think a united Europe is necessary?)

"I said that the current European management is vile." Indeed; I noted and I wrestled down my knee-jerk euroscepticism because of it. (And also because I haven't actually lived in England for a while, so going all Daily Mail on people would be silly.)

Regarding UK euro-hostility... I never thought of it much, or where it came from. A large chunk of it is being a powerful island nation, I guess. Regarding subservience to the USA, though, I note you're using a matter of political relationships (an isolated UK sucking up to the USA) to explain an attitude of a large chunk of the public (hostility to the EU). I'm not sure this holds. There's a lot of yankee-sceptic (or whatever the term is) attitudes floating round in the UK to go along with the euro-scepticism, and I don't think they're massively different in origin. When Tony Blair went along with the Iraq War, he faced a lot of domestic criticsm and portrayals as Bush's poodle, &c.

"And to go to one of the loveliest countries in the world only to make idiots of oneself is a waste of life. What on Earth will these people say when they are old - well, I got really drunk in my time?" There's a lot of people who just stay in their home town and get drunk; or go to university and get blindingly drunk there. At least the travelling boozers see the world while doing it, even if they do give the whole nation a bad rep at the same time. (...And it isn't just the English doing that. I remember a German from the border region with France complaining about French booze tourists trashing the place and running back over the border.)

"It is a fact that, in their campaign to set up the Euro, Andreotti and Vattane' deliberately used Margaret Thatcher as a scarecrow to get the other European government to line up behind their proposals." ...that's a highly interesting tidbit, and makes sense of a lot. Do you have any similar examples from after Thatcher's time?

Europe?

[frittomisto.livejournal.com]

Europe means bankers are in control... and that ancient and glorious countries can now "fail" like corporations. And that elected leaders can be pressured out through diktats from Berlin and Paris.

Bankers in control means that despite a huge increase in productivity, both fathers AND mothers need to work to stay semi-afloat. It means that production facilities are shut down and moved to lands of oppression / semi-slave labor.

It means that the small and local dwindle and disappear (the local cafès become starbucks); it means huge entry barriers for the young. They should've left it to the Common Market

Re: Europe?

[fpb.livejournal.com]

I disagree TOTALLY.