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The Left and the EU: Why Cling to This Reactionary Institution?

June 22, 2016
The Left and the EU: Why Cling to This Reactionary Institution?

by Joseph Richardson



Why is it that many people who consider themselves left-wing have such difficulty grasping that the EU is a deeply reactionary institution? The mere fact that those running the EU present it as an internationalist venture dedicated to the creation of a world free of nationalist enmities does not make it so. If we want to examine the EU in its proper light, then we should ignore the high-flown rhetoric in which its supporters indulge, and consider its actual record. And what is the record of the EU, once we penetrate the obfuscatory rhetoric about ‘internationalism’ that surrounds EU policy? Without a doubt, that record is one that should cause those on the left now defending it acute embarrassment, as it starkly contradicts the ideals that the left has always claimed to uphold.

Across the Continent, the unelected officials who have usurped the power of national governments and asserted their right to determine the fates of countless millions, through their adherence to the damaging creed of neoliberalism, have wrought suffering on an unimaginable scale, casting millions into poverty and removing the last vestige of dignity people cling to in an economy that has fallen prey to the voracious claims of big business. They have foisted austerity on unwilling populations, creating a cycle of endless unemployment and ever increasing woe, compelling ordinary workers struggling to eke out an existence in the wake of the most painful recession in living memory to shoulder the burden of repaying a debt which was originally incurred as a result of the criminal behaviour of Europe’s financiers. With brazen contempt for the views of the peoples of Europe they claim to serve, they have connived to topple left-wing governments and deny the citizens of the countries most affected by austerity their one remaining means – their inalienable right to elect a government subservient to their will – of resisting the vicious policies that have reduced them to their present abject state.

It is worth detailing the ways in which the actual practice of the EU diverges sharply from the propagandistic image endorsed by elements of the left.


The Crushing of Greece

One word should be engraved on the minds of those who, despite all the evidence to the contrary, persist in believing that the EU is an inherently progressive body: ‘GREECE.’ What the EU did to Greece should have dispelled forever the fanciful idea that such an institution has as its fundamental aim the material welfare of ordinary Europeans. But such is the power of the delusional thinking which holds sway amongst the ‘liberal’ apologists for ‘internationalism’ that nothing it seems, not even the destruction of an entire country, the decimation of its industries, and the despoliation of its people, can shake their belief in the manifest virtues of the EU.

After five years in which Greece was forced to undergo the most far-reaching programme of austerity ever implemented by any European government, selling off its public infrastructure and slashing spending on social services to please its creditors, even the economists at whose insistence this policy had been carried out were grudgingly admitting that it had been an unmitigated disaster. By 2015 Greece had seen its economy contract by 27% as a result of the government’s futile efforts to meet the continually mounting debt repayments demanded of it by the troika. As GDP fell and Greece’s ability to repay the debt was further reduced, rather than provide relief the ECB chose to extend fresh loans to the Greek government to enable it to service the interest on its existing liabilities, thereby adding to its overall level of debt and enmeshing the country in an interminable process of austerity from which it could never hope to extricate itself. The needless suffering caused by the single-minded pursuit of austerity had resulted in scenes of poverty and despair more appropriate to the 1930s than 21^st century Europe. Entire families were starving on the streets, deprived of even the bare minimum they required to survive; thousands of people, reduced to absolute despair by the unrelenting attacks on their living standards, had committed suicide. The IMF, in an extraordinary departure from its long-standing commitment to free market dogma, published a report bluntly stating what had become apparent to all well-informed experts on the matter, which was that Greece would never be able to rid itself of the debt, not unless it was significantly reduced and a 30-year moratorium on repayments was imposed.

What was the response of the managers of the eurozone to the tragedy unfolding before their very eyes, to the unbearable spectacles of suffering for which they, as the economic masters of Greece, bore responsibility? The response was callous indifference. When in desperation the Greek people elected the far-left party Syriza to power, on a platform of ending austerity and negotiating a debt restructuring, the EU steadfastly refused to treat with such a government on terms of equality and outright rejected the democratic mandate with which it had been recently invested at the polls, insisting that, regardless of the outcome of elections, Greece had no right to seek a change in rules which had been autocratically decided upon by the bureaucratic elites in Brussels. There would be no substantive negotiations leading to an end to austerity; there would be no concessions to the democratically expressed will of the population. When Syriza attempted to resist the diktats of Brussels, calling a referendum on its negotiating stance, which it won resoundingly, the EU bullied and cajoled little Greece, threatening to punish the refractory population of this wayward country, which had dared to question the entire basis on which the eurozone was run, by cutting off the money supply and rendering even more people destitute if Syriza should refuse to acquiesce in the harsh financial terms of the proposed deal, which mandated yet more spending cuts to service a debt that everyone knew to be unsustainable. Under extreme duress Syriza surrendered to these demands and the worsening cycle of unemployment and declining wages, in which Greece has been trapped for at least the last 6 years, was resumed, inflicting a historic defeat on the people of Greece who had misguidedly believed that, by exercising their democratic rights, they could decide the future of their own country.

Greece illustrates the failings of an economic policy that is being implemented over the objections of the great majority of Europe’s citizens. Indeed, in its unwavering support for neoliberalism the EU represents nothing less than an attempt to perpetuate an economic model which advantages European businesses, whilst eroding the living standards of most Europeans. Particularly in the countries of the eurozone, democracy has been eviscerated by the adamant insistence of the EU on more cuts to government spending. The Growth and Stability Pact effectively prevents large-scale public spending on vital social services to alleviate the effects of a recession, limiting deficits to 3% of GDP. As part of this neoliberal model, national governments are also required each year to submit their budgets to the Commission for its approval, which has increasingly demanded that the rights of workers take second place to paying off the debts accumulated by the financial sector. Whilst the desperate scenes in Greece are an extreme case, high unemployment and chronic poverty have become fixed features of the eurozone, with the number of jobless in Spain, for example, amounting to over 20% of the workforce. Moreover, employers have been given the freedom to disregard the rights of their employees in a bid to raise productivity, sparking a series of labour revolts by workers driven to the edge of despair. In France, to cite the most recent instance, the much hated El-Khomri law, which seeks to increase the working week to 46 hours and is currently being contested by striking unions, was originally based on the recommendations of the Commission.

Thus, it is transparent that the hardships experienced by workers across Europe are an inescapable product of the economic policies enforced by the EU.


The myth of a pacifist EU

It is difficult to fathom how anyone save the wilfully blind could continue to view the EU as a progressive force in light of the destruction it visited upon Greece. But to understand the mindset that leads otherwise enlightened people to extol the benefits of an institution which is the cause of so much distress throughout Europe it is necessary for the moment to ignore facts. Faith in the EU is not grounded in any rational analysis of reality, but rests on a series of founding myths the truth of which its defenders have never paused to consider. They are regarded as unquestionably true and are never scrutinised, much as devout Christians in centuries past would never have thought to examine the articles of faith on which their belief in God was based.

The myth from which the EU derives much of its strength is that of an organisation which has overcome the bitter divisions of the past to fashion a new identity for the once warlike people of Europe. The narrative goes something like this: for millennia Europe was plagued by nationalist rivalries which produced wars of unparalleled violence. In the twentieth century, as a result of these rivalries the entire world was plunged into two conflicts which witnessed bloodletting on a scale never seen before, and following the second and most devastating of these wars, a band of far-seeing European statesmen resolved that never again would the nations of Europe battle against one another and be a cause of such misery to the rest of the planet. In a spirit of high-minded idealism they took the first steps toward the establishment of a supranational body which would bring countries together in harmony and peace, consigning to history the internecine feuding and jingoistic war-mongering that had rent the political fabric of Europe apart. Henceforth, the people of this war-torn continent, divided though they might be by borders, were to consider themselves Europeans in the truest sense, part of an organic union that would only grow in strength with the passage of the years.

To any serious student of history this account of the EU’s origins must appear as a gross distortion of the facts. But such is the comforting myth that underpins the faith many people, who should know better, exhibit in relation to an organisation they credit with having maintained the peace in Europe and prevented another plunge into barbarism for more than half a century. This romanticised view of history explains why in 2012 the Nobel Committee was able to award the Peace Prize to the EU, and also why in a poll conducted on the same occasion it was found that 75% of Europeans agreed with the Nobel Committee that ‘peace and democracy were the most important achievements of the EU’. The people who believe this are prepared to forgive the EU anything, because its failings in their eyes are as nothing when set against its tremendous success in averting another world war.

The reason this myth should cause offence to campaigners for peace everywhere is that it is based on a version of events which is utterly contradicted by the known facts about how the EU came into being. That there has not been another conflict to compare with WW2 in the seventy years following its end owes not to the moral vision of the politicians who presided over the birth of the EEC, the precursor to the EU, but is purely a result of shifting power dynamics. By 1945 the great powers of Europe had been so reduced in strength by the most savage war in human history that they soon realised they would never be able to recover their former status as global hegemons in a world the US had come to dominate. Indeed, such was the overwhelming preponderance of power enjoyed by the US, the only state to emerge from the war with its standing massively enhanced, that the idea of opposing its designs for Europe was swiftly set aside, and to retain what small measure of influence they could hope to wield in this unipolar world the formerly great powers agreed to be integrated into a military and economic alliance headed by the US. The creation of pan-European institutions that would foster the growth of a single European market, which would trade freely with US corporations, was made a condition of Marshall Aid by the American architects of the new economic order, who greeted every significant move in the direction of greater European unity with satisfaction. In the military sphere, membership of NATO, the armed alliance of states that the US established to further its imperialist interests, required Western European countries to devote a significant part of their budgets to military expenditure and maintain an armed truce with the Soviet Union and its Eastern European satellites, effectively dividing the Continent into two hostile camps, constantly teetering on the edge of nuclear war, for much of the latter half of the twentieth century.

The roots of the EU are therefore to be sought not in the sentimental desire for peace felt by leading statesmen in the wake of war, though this was undoubtedly a desire expressed by masses of ordinary people, but in the essential fact of the post-1945 world that the US displaced Europe as the centre of global power and influence. Power politics not pacifism explains why there has not been another war between the major European states. Anyone who doubts the truth of this need only consider the foreign policy of Europe during the period when the basis for the EU was being laid. For most of the inhabitants of the third world these years were not ones distinguished by peace but by a series of brutal wars to free themselves from the yoke of imperialism. The founding members of the EEC, at the same time they were joining together in a spirit of ‘harmony’ and ‘peace’, unleashed a torrent of blood in their colonial possessions, obstinately clinging to the remnants of empire and crushing demands for liberty with shocking violence. In Algeria the French prosecuted a terrorist campaign against the population that resulted in 1.5 million deaths, the effects of which are still felt acutely by France’s Muslims, treated as second class citizens by the Republic, and are a source of deeply-felt divisions even now. In Vietnam, with funding from the US, the French also sought to retain control over their colony and defeat the Vietminh, eventually handing over to the Americans when they could no longer sustain the cost of such a military campaign. In the Congo, Belgium initially met demands for independence with violence and continued to interfere in the politics of the region following independence, playing a role in the assassination of the elected Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba. In Kenya, the British, who were to join the EEC in 1973, waged a brutal war against the native Kikuyu throughout the 1950s in order to uphold the rule of the white settler elite, interning many Africans in concentration camps where they were subjected to torture.

The danger of peddling a false narrative of the growth of European unity in which base geopolitical considerations do not figure is the immunity granted the EU against criticism for its actions in the present. Far from waning, the attachment of European states to militarism remains as strong as ever, and has continued to find an outlet during the 21^st century in a number of wars of aggression across the Middle-East and Africa, which differ little from the hey-day of 19^th century imperialism, when great powers bestrode the world looting defenceless countries with utter abandon. There is, however, one significant difference between these past exploits and European imperialism in its modern guise. In recent years the EU has arrogated to itself an increasing array of powers in the field of foreign policy, establishing the office of High Representative for Foreign Affairs with a view to eventually dictating the relations of European nations with the outside world. Given fully 22 of the 28 member states that comprise the EU are members of NATO, it is unsurprising that the policy followed by this fledgling branch of the Commission is little more than an extension of the goals that Europe’s political leaders have long held in common with the US.

Through vesting power, however, in an unaccountable body of bureaucrats who cannot be voted from office, unlike elected politicians in member states, the EU seeks to make it all but impossible for the citizens of Europe to alter the foreign policy trajectories of their respective governments, and draw back from the reckless path of unabashed war-mongering upon which we are embarked. A case in point, and one that the former MP George Galloway cited in a recent speech, is Syria. Although most of the people who argued for Britain to intervene against ISIS towards the end of last year have effaced it from their memory, barely three years ago Cameron’s government, supported by much of the media class, favoured military intervention on the opposite side of the Syrian civil war, calling for air strikes against the Syrian army and support for those jihadist elements which subsequently morphed into ISIS. Thankfully, to the dismay of Cameron, this move was narrowly voted down in the Commons, but had this question fallen within the purview of the EU’s High Representative, it is unlikely that Britain’s Parliament would have even been permitted a vote on the matter.

The crowning achievement of the EU in the arena of foreign affairs has undoubtedly been its contribution to resurrecting the Cold War, fomenting a civil war in the Ukraine that still rages along the historically fraught border region that stretches between the EU and Russia. Few people in the West know of the EU’s role in igniting this conflict, or of the policy, drafted by the Commission, and relentlessly pursued during the last twenty years, of expanding the influence of the EU into Eastern Europe so as to isolate Russia behind a ring of hostile states. The degree of ignorance that the media has fostered regarding the crisis in Ukraine has reached the point that the supporters of remain even cite, with positive pride, the aggressive posturing of the EU during the recent crisis as a reason to vote against Brexit, contending that only as part of a larger entity can we stand up to the Russian bear, which is engaged in an attempt to subjugate its neighbours and reconstitute the Soviet Empire. If anything, the reverse is true, and the perilous brinksmanship of the EU with respect to Russia, its unceasing efforts to provoke an escalation in tensions between the two, should be considered grounds enough to vote leave.

For in reality Ukraine is merely the latest in a long line of countries which the EU has sought to annex to a Western alliance controlled by the US, with EU membership proceeding hand in hand with membership of NATO. This military organisation, formed in 1949 with the supposed aim of defending Western Europe against the USSR, has since the collapse of the Soviet Union more than doubled in size, with many of the new additions former Communist countries situated on Russia’s periphery, revealing its true character as an alliance that exists to extend the global reach of the US. The EU, by incorporating these countries into a political union closely linked to NATO, and in some cases laying the ground-work for their eventual accession to NATO through the Eastern Partnerships, a proto-form of EU membership, has in many ways acted to reinforce the bonds linking the various members of this alliance.

In the case of Ukraine, the action that set in motion the chain of events leading to civil war was the offer by the EU of an Association Agreement. This has frequently been depicted as a generous arrangement under which Ukraine would have benefited from most of the advantages enjoyed by EU member states, without, however, formally becoming a member. In actual fact the agreement would have required Ukraine to sever economic relations with Russia, a country to which it was intimately bound by a shared history, and was linked to a package of swingeing austerity measures that would have resulted in the ruination of Ukraine’s economy. Moreover, despite the outraged denials of its framers, the deal also mandated military cooperation between the EU and Ukraine and was clearly intended as a prelude to NATO membership. Given the fact that approximately half of Ukrainians, mainly living in the East of the country, were opposed to NATO and favoured better relations with Russia, it was hardly likely that the Ukrainian President, Victor Yanukovych, who by all accounts had pro-EU leanings, would ever have been able to implement the terms of such a deal without splitting the country in two. When at the end of 2013 he therefore rejected the Agreement, prompting protests in Kiev’s Maidan Square, in which Ukraine’s fascist parties, which are driven by a racist hatred of the country’s ethnic Russian population, played a prominent part, both the EU and the US chose to back the protesters agitating for his removal. After Yanukovch was overthrown in a putsch in February 2014, spearheaded by those same fascist elements within the opposition, instead of spurning the interim government that was installed following his ouster the EU immediately proceeded to signal their approval by securing its assent to the Association Agreement that Yanukovych had originally refused to sign. When Eastern Ukrainians rose in revolt against the putschist government, which had removed the democratically elected President from office and concluded an Association Agreement in spite of their objections, the EU disingenuously attributed Ukraine’s descent into civil war to Russian interference.

The defenders of the EU refuse to acknowledge its contribution to the turmoil that has engulfed Ukraine, or its part in bringing about a new cold war, even arguing that Russia’s opposition to the European project stems from a distaste for democracy and human rights, rather than simple geopolitics. Some, indulgently, recognise that Russia is genuinely fearful about the threat to its position from the extension of NATO eastwards, but claim that these fears derive from a 19^th century habit of mind whereby the world is divided up into spheres of interest between competing powers, which vie with each other for global domination. Unfortunately, they argue, the EU is hampered in its relations with Russia by the failure of Europe’s leaders to grasp that they are a 21^st century power dealing with a country that has still not freed itself from old modes of thinking about international affairs. But the chronology of the crisis is clear, as is the role the EU played in prompting it, and few who have studied the matter would deny that the actions of the EU with respect to Ukraine appear in the grand tradition of imperialist politics.


The question confronting Britain

The question of whether to remain or leave will likely not be decided on the basis of what is being done on the Continent in the name of ‘internationalism’. But a broader perspective is needed to refute the contorted arguments of many liberals who all too often give too much credence to the rhetoric of the European project, whilst paying little heed to its record. The current debate in Britain suffers from the entrenched tendency of the mainstream left to identify support for remain with opposition to petty-minded nationalism, and to chide Brexiters for being too insular and self-interested to appreciate the sense of high moral purpose that drives the EU. The briefest look, however, at the destructive polices that have been imposed on the countries of the eurozone, and the chaos that has ensued from imperialist meddling in foreign affairs, is enough to counter the baseless assertion, constantly repeated by those in the remain camp, that in opposing Brexit people will be voting for a worthy attempt to replace nationalist discords with a shared identity based on a commitment to democracy and human rights. The EU is not internationalist in any sense that a genuine member of the left would support. It exists to advance the interests of the business class as against workers, and in its zeal to enrich corporations at the expense of ordinary people it has succeeded in creating such disaffection with the political establishment that fascism, the very phenomenon the EU was in theory designed to prevent, has once more become a formidable force in countries languishing in the grip of high unemployment and low wages.

There are both altruistic and more self-interested considerations that should be factored into any decision on how to vote in the upcoming referendum. Both kinds of analysis, however, dictate a vote for Brexit. The supporters of remain commonly react to the argument that Britain has much to gain from leaving by speaking vaguely of showing solidarity with the many millions of people in the eurozone to whom that option is not available. They seem not to understand that by voting to remain, far from showing solidarity with the rest of Europe, Britain would be electing to prolong the life of an institution which is conducting a bizarre neoliberal experiment in how far it can push Europeans before they lose all hope. There is a moral case for leaving, based on the fact that Brexit would probably result in the dissolution of the EU and ease the suffering of nations currently held captive by neoliberal economics. The evidence for this is compelling. It is doubtful, for example, that the EU could long survive the withdrawal of one of its principal sources of funding. Far more worrisome from the point of view of those running Europe than the financial repercussions of Brexit, however, would be the example that it would set for the stricken populations of the Continent, especially in the southern countries, who have been led to believe that escape from the economic straitjacket of the eurozone is impossible. Presented with the spectacle of a people freely choosing to exit the EU, it is conceivable that workers suffering the consequences of EU-enforced austerity in countries like Spain and Italy would place pressure on their representatives to grant a referendum.

There is also an argument for leaving based on the benefits that Britain is currently well-placed to reap from such a move. The landslide election of Jeremy Corbyn as leader of the Labour Party last year has indicated the widespread support that exists for a socialist alternative to the centre-ground politics which has held sway in Britain for the last thirty years, showing that the Blairites, who were roundly defeated in the election, were wrong to dismiss socialism as a spent force and place their faith in the free market. Consequently, a reforming Labour government may well assume the reins of government in the very near future. If it takes power in the context of a vote to remain, however, such a government would face real obstacles to implementing its programme in the form of the capitalist safeguards against reform that the EU has established. It would not be able to nationalise the railways, despite the overwhelming support of the public, because the EU has made public ownership of the railways illegal. A Labour government would find it difficult to increase expenditure on the NHS and other much needed public services because of the strict economies that the EU pressures member states to adopt by limiting the budget deficit to 3% of GDP. Furthermore, a social-democratic government of the kind that Corbyn could potentially head, with its commitment to decoupling the economy from its damaging dependence on financial services, would soon discover that competition rules forbid us from subsidising our manufacturing sector or even protecting our steel industry from Chinese dumping through raising tariffs on imports. In short, any government that seeks to overturn the neoliberal consensus will find that, within the confines of the EU, even limited reforms toward that end are a practical impossibility, liable to be struck down by the European Court of Justice as incompatible with EU law at any time.

It is regrettable that, instead of focussing on the impediments Labour would face in the event of a vote to remain, the mainstream left has chosen to fix its attention on the perceived boost that Brexit would give the current Conservative government. A myth has gained ground amongst large sections of the left that the rights which British workers have come to take for granted, such as maternity leave and paid holidays, were gifted to Britain by the EU, and that Brexit would free the Conservatives to intensify their assault on the working class, uninhibited by a social Europe which at present exercises a restraining influence over neoliberal governments. Even supposing that the remain camp is right in assuming that the Conservatives will hold onto power until the next general election in four years time, a questionable assumption in light of the fact the Conservatives are deeply split over the referendum, it is simply false to claim that we owe whatever rights we enjoy to the EU, As others have documented, most of the rights that are invoked by the mainstream left as a reason to vote remain were already in place when we joined the EEC in 1973, and they owe not to a beneficent bureaucracy of Eurocrats but to Britain’s working classes, who won these rights over the course of many years and after a series of hard-fought struggles with the capitalist class. Likewise, the retention of these rights will depend not on the good-will of a remote bureaucracy, which is actively undermining those same rights elsewhere, but on the determination of workers to band together in defence of their standard of living.

Unfortunately, many of the left apologists for the EU have been aided in their efforts to paint their opponents as backward nationalists by the fact that the Brexit campaign is largely dominated by the right. Almost all of the political figures who favour Brexit that the British public are regularly exposed to on TV are drawn from the far right of the Conservative Party, such as the former Mayor of London Boris Johnson and the current justice minister Michael Gove. (The noteworthy exception is Nigel Farage, the leader of UKIP – a right-wing party formed for the sole purpose of taking Britain out of the EU.) At times the debate has resembled, and has often been reported as, an internal squabble between factions of the Conservative Party over the direction Britain should take as well as, on a more personal level, a battle between Prime Minister David Cameron, the leader of the remain group, and Boris Johnson, who is widely believed to be the most likely successor of Cameron in the event of Brexit. The left-wing case for leaving, which has been eloquently articulated by a number of prominent intellectuals and activists, has been given relatively little attention by the media, with the result that many voters have been kept in ignorance of the existence of such arguments, and various Blairite MPs on the right of the Labour Party have been able to assert that they alone represent what the left’s position should be in the debate over Britain’s attitude to the EU.

Paradoxically, however, the near monopoly of the right over the Brexit campaign is not proof that opposition to the EU is intrinsically right-wing, but testifies instead to the weakness of a left which has been steadily stripped of its commitment to economic justice. Thirty years ago the most forceful advocates of Brexit were to be found among the members of the Labour Party, not on the right, and calls for Britain to withdraw from the EU, or the EEC as it was then called, were considered a standard feature of Labour’s policy platforms. The great left-wing MP Tony Benn campaigned in the 1975 referendum for Labour to leave the EEC on the grounds that such an arrangement was contrary to the basic democratic principle that people should be allowed to vote on the policies affecting them. Events since 1975 have only proved the truth of Benn’s original argument, made all those years ago, that these undemocratic tendencies were destined to grow with time, posing a grave risk to our ability to decide the most basic of policy issues. Moreover, unlike the MPs campaigning for remain today, politicians like Benn understood that the lack of democracy at the heart of the EU was not an oversight on the part of its founders, but an essential component of a project which sought to supplant national governments with a supranational authority divorced from the concerns of ordinary people. So long as power was vested in national assemblies, these institutions, however imperfect, were at least answerable to their voters, but once power over economic policy was ceded to bureaucrats then the business elites which effectively governed Europe were easily able to overcome popular resistance to their policies by dispensing with the need for elections.

Unfortunately, this basic point has been forgotten by the members of the Labour Party now campaigning to remain. Thus, the left-wing opponents of Brexit frequently give the impression that they regard the EU’s democratic deficit as a minor flaw, something that could easily be rectified if only Britain stays within the EU and works with other countries to reform it. Not a few even deny that the EU is undemocratic, reasoning that because the Council of Ministers, which concludes the treaties which form the basis for the EU, is composed of elected government figures from the member states this amounts to an indirect form of democratic accountability. These supporters of remain seem oblivious to the fact that the whole purpose of enshrining in various treaties the neoliberal principles on which the EU rests, treaties which once concluded cannot be repealed except through the agreement of all 28 member states, is to ensure that such weighty questions are forever removed from the sphere of democratic debate. The electorate of a particular country can vote their government out, but they cannot revoke the set of laws that this government agreed to, nor exercise any control over the unappointed Commission which is granted broad discretion to implement these laws.

The referendum is perhaps the one chance that this generation will ever have to vote on our membership of an institution which now wields an inordinate amount of power. It is the only opportunity we will be given to affirm our democratic right to rule on the fundamental questions with which we are confronted, and at the same time administer a blow to the undemocratic vision of a corporate Europe, rooted in neoliberal economics and a disdain for workers, that has crushed underfoot the aspirations of so many Europeans who were never even offered the choice of agreeing to such a project. A vote to leave will not usher in an age of socialist egalitarianism, but it is nonetheless, as socialists agitating for Brexit have observed, a necessary steppingstone without which the fairer society we are striving to achieve will be rendered a more distant prospect.
Members of the mainstream left who are campaigning to remain have only bee
n able to maintain their enthusiasm for the EU by averting their eyes from its shameful record, adhering instead to an exalted image of a progressive body which has never existed outside of their imaginations. Ordinary voters must spurn such consoling myths, and recognise the EU for what it is: a deeply reactionary institution that is holding back progress throughout Europe.
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Commentary:
Yes not many 'experts' understand the interwovenness of the EU with the UN. For example the EU's 'internationalist' meddling to create a Ukraine-NATO-Russia military conflict.

Now Big Mal assures Australian Brits, that the brexit will not 'immediately' affect them.

Is Australia in the EU or is the trading agreements of Australia with the EU also engaged in more globalist agendas pointing to the UN?
Was not the post WW2 'Commonwealth Trading' beneficial to all parties before the EU's creation parallel with the OPEC oil-energy crisis of 1973, which allowed the 'petrodollar' to begin the globalist utopian dreams of undemocratic rulership by oligarchs and corporatism, irrespective of national identity or culture with Saudi islamarabia equivalent to western renaissance-essentiental Judeo-Christian science?

http://www.counterpunch.org/.../the-left-and-the-eu-why.../


The Left and the EU: Why Cling to This Reactionary Institution
Why is it that many people who consider themselves left-wing have such difficulty grasping that the EU is a deeply reactionary institution? The mere fact that those running the EU present it as an …
counterpunch.org

 

Putin on Brexit: No one wants to support weak economies
Published time: 24 Jun, 2016 12:44Edited time: 24 Jun, 2016 17:07
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Russian President Vladimir Putin © Sergey Guneev / Sputnik

Russian President Vladimir Putin says ‘Brexit’ is the choice made by the British nation and is a comprehensible one, as “no one wants to feed weak economies.” Russia has not and does not plan to interfere with the results of the referendum, he added.

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British politics in post-Brexit turmoil after vote to leave the EU

“I think it’s comprehensible why this happened: first, no one wants to feed and subsidize poorer economies, to support other states, support entire nations,” the Russian president said at the Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit in Tashkent.
“Apparently the British people are not satisfied with the way problems are being solved in the security sphere, these problems have become more acute lately with the migration processes,” Putin said, suggesting the second reason for the British people to have voted ‘out.’
The Russian president's comments come in reply to UK Prime Minister David Cameron’s claims that “Putin would be happy if the UK left the EU.”



The president says such claims were an ill-posed attempt to influence the general opinion of the British public.
“But as we see now, even claims like these have not had the effect desired by those who made them. No one has the right to make claims on Russia’s position, especially after the votes were counted. This is nothing but an example of a low level of political culture,” Putin said.

Russia analyst Martin McCauley believes that naming Russia and Vladimir Putin as part of the reason for the Brexit can be explained by the fact that the UK government is reluctant to face the truth and acknowledge its own failures in economic, social and political areas.
“They have to find a bad guy, they have to find a reason why they lost. It becomes a blame game and therefore Vladimir Putin is a bad guy in Europe, and therefore he is the first one you blame instead of looking at the reasons for the defeat,” McCauley told RT.


READ MORE: ‘Shocked’ MPs react to British PM David Cameron’s Brexit resignation
The Russian head of state noted that Moscow has never interfered with the British referendum and never made any statements on the matter.
“I believe we acted rather tactfully, watching the situation closely, but never interfering with the process. We’ve never even tried to affect it,” Putin added.

The president also said the British referendum will undoubtedly have consequences, but at the moment it is hard to tell whether these will be good or bad.
“For the UK, Europe and for [Russia] this referendum is sure to have consequences […] of a global sort. They are inescapable. There will be both positive and negative ones.

'
People have spoken', both UK and EU 'indispensable partners' – Obama

The markets will surely lose ground, they have done so already, but in the midterm everything will be restored, surely,” Putin predicted.
He added however, that the UK citizens' choice resulted from the British authorities' "arrogance and a shallow approach to solving pivotal issues."
“[Brexit] will not lead to any sort of a global catastrophe. Certainly, we will monitor the situation and if need be adjust both our economic policy and our relations with European partners,” Putin continued.

He also said that Russia is ready to start a functional dialogue concerning mutual sanctions, and if the EU will make concessions, Russia will do the same.
“I don’t think [Brexit] will influence our relations with the EU concerning sanctions. We were not the ones who started the sanctions in the first place, we only answered the actions taken against our country,” he stated.

President Putin linked the results of the British referendum to the high concentration of power within the EU structure.
“The percentage of mandatory decisions made by the European Parliament is larger than that of mandatory decisions made by the High Council of the USSR concerning its member-republics. This means that the powers are highly concentrated within [the administrative body of the EU],” the Russian president said.

“Perhaps some are satisfied with this state of affairs, some do want to move along this road of dissolving the national borders, but some don’t. As the referendum results have shown, the majority of Britons don’t want to follow this path,” Putin added.

 

MUTINY: Military leaders finally take stand against Obama…

Written by Allen West on June 23, 2016



Something is happening when the civilian officials in the Obama administration openly conflict with the White House talking points on the fight against Islamic jihadism. But you know something is happening when uniformed members of the military, finally, stand up and openly criticize the state of our force readiness and the lack of strategy.
Yes, I know what y’all are saying, what took so long?

As reported by the Washington Times, “Rifts have emerged between U.S. military leaders and the Obama White House on Washington’s future role in Libya, with the generals questioning the White House’s argument that the recent success against Islamic State shows Libya can go it alone in the fight against terrorism, without direct U.S. assistance.
Marine Corps Gen. Thomas Waldhauser, the White House’s pick to lead U.S. Africa Command, called for increased American military action in Libya to ensure the Islamic State, or ISIS or ISIL, does not reconstitute itself in the country as pressure ramps up against its strongholds in Iraq and Syria.

Gen. Waldhauser told a Senate Armed Services Committee confirmation hearing Tuesday that U.S. military planners were drafting up battle plans for airstrikes against Islamic State targets in Libya, Reuters reported. The fledgling unity government in Tripoli has enjoyed surprising success in recent weeks in a campaign against the Islamic State’s stronghold in the coastal city of Sirte. But rules of engagement for U.S. forces in Libya, which require White House approval for any offensive operations in the country, have hamstrung American military planners in the region, according to the report.

Aside from clandestine drone strikes launched from NATO bases in southern Europe and small rotations of U.S. special operations teams working with local militias in Libya, the Pentagon has not conducted any large-scale military mission in the country since the cancellation of a failed train-and-advise operation late last year.
Gen Waldhauser was not the first American combatant commander to call for an increased military role for U.S. forces in Libya. U.S. Central Command chief Gen. Joseph Votel told lawmakers during his confirmation hearing earlier this year that he supported restarting the U.S.-led training mission in the country.

In May, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Joseph Dunford told reporters that an agreement with Libya’s Government of National Accord, the U.N.-recognized governing body in the country, to open the door for new U.S. operations in the country was weeks from being ratified. At the time, Gen. Dunford said the situation in Libya had deteriorated to the point where Washington and the international community had little choice but to act.

“They want assistance, [and] you know that a number of countries, including the United States, are prepared to do that,” Gen. Dunford said in May. The only thing preventing U.S. officials from going forward was determining whether or not local forces could coalesce around the nascent Libyan government, he noted.”

Y’all remember Libya, right? You know, that place Obama said we had to intervene in order to prevent a massive humanitarian crisis — not no Syria. Obama, in complete violation of the war powers act, basically outsourced our air power and intelligence gathering capability to support Islamic jihadists in the overthrow of Muammar Gadhafi.

Now, let’s be honest, he wasn’t the nicest fella, but he had surrendered his weapons of mass destruction program. We have tapes and proof that he was willing to step down, along with his son, and depart the country. But that wasn’t good enough for Obama, who again appeared so willing to provide material support and comfort to the enemy, Islamic jihadists — by way of arms. And of course we now know the city of Sirte has now become the base of operations and center of gravity for ISIS in Libya.

The deteriorating situation in Libya is a direct result of Obama’s ill-conceived intervention there. And we know the covert CIA operation in Libya, namely Benghazi, was intended for a weapons recovery (buy back) program with the objective for those weapons to be funneled to more Islamic jihadists, in Syria.
Now, if this was all happening during a Republican administration, the liberal progressive media would be screaming from the rafters — heck, they still attack Reagan over Iran-Contra. But this is “their guy” and he can do no wrong. Things are slowly unraveling right before Obama’s eyes, but the leftist media will not expose him — or Hillary Clinton — on the issue.

There are estimates of 5,000-6,000 ISIS fighters in Libya, which provides a conundrum for a country which was once a very close ally — Egypt. Now, President al-Sisi finds himself contending internally with the Muslim Brotherhood along with ISIS-associated jihadist forces to his east in the Sinai and to the west in Libya. And to the north, Egypt must contend with Hamas, which will find itself better financed and supplied thanks to the billions of dollars released to Iran by, guess who? Yep, Barack Obama.
And President Obama becomes infuriated when people question his loyalties? His policies and actions speak volumes; no one is paying attention to his teleprompter talking points anymore. Doggone, what I find so ironic is that Obama has done so much to arm Islamic jihadists in his tenure while he seeks to disarm Americans. How very odd and perplexing. Gee, I wonder why no one else has presented that interesting little tidbit.

Don’t challenge me on that because ISIS is certainly hamming it up with U.S. military equipment. And that failed “train and advise” program in Libya — guess what? They left the weapons and equipment there. Hmm, why does Obama refuse to provide the same arms and equipment to the Kurds or the Egyptians?
Yes, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton abandoned Americans to die in Libya, and then lied about it. And for the life of me, I find it unconscionable that it does not matter. Where are those CIA station workers who were there during that attack, with direct arms and mortars? Where are the State Department security officials who were there?

The next presidential administration will have the challenge of rebuilding our military while it is in contact with the enemy who has been aided and abetted by the president of the United States, Barack Obama — it happened on his watch, and Libya is a direct result of a failed Obama policy. Then again, if it’s a Hillary Clinton administration, we’ll be getting more of the same.
The dark specter of Libya is not going away. Funny, all these generations after Pressley O’Bannon of the Marines landed and assaulted Derma…we’re still dealing with Islamic jihadists in the country now known as Libya. Then it was the Barbary pirates; today it’s ISIS.

http://www.allenbwest.com/allen/mutiny-military-leaders-finally-take-stand-against-obama

 

Did MI5 murder Jo Cox, like Mossad Sweden's Foreign Minister Anna Lindh?
2016-06-16 21:02

The murder of the British Labour MP Jo Cox has staggering similarities to the murder of the Swedish foreign minister Anna Lindh 10th September 2003. 14th September 2003 the EURO-referendum was scheduled. The polls showed a majority for the NO-side, who wanted that Sweden does not join the Euro. Anna Lindh, social democrat as Jo Cox, was campaigning for the YES-side, she loved the Euro idea.
Because of the brutal murder of Anna Lindh, she was stabbed to death in central Stockholm in a shopping mall, all campaign activities were cancelled until the election. Those who organized the murder had hoped that the YES-side would gain sympathy, so that Sweden would join the Euro. Anna Lindh was very popular.
But the opposite was the case. Unusually many Swedes participated in the election and an overwhelming majority voted against the Euro, which was very positive for Sweden.
The evidence is crystal clear that the alleged and convicted murderer of Anna Lindh was under mind control, watch the film below with Ole Dammegård. The Israel ambassador in Stockholm, Zvi Mazel, called Anna Lindh an anti-Semite, because she dared to criticise Israel for their bloody politics in Palestine. At that time the Mossad had already the control over the very advanced Swedish mind control technology.
Anna Lindh left two minor children and a husband.


source
Jo Cox left husband Brendan and two young children. She was on the loosing Remain campaign.

The Remain and Leave sides are suspending their campaigns for next week's EU referendum following the attack.

In Great Britain the MI5 is still in charge, they are ranked after the Mossad (Bank house Rothschild) the second most powerful intelligence agency in the world. They are also controlled by the dark background forces, the Royal Family, Prince Philip in particular is in charge. So it is very likely, that they committed the murder and not Mossad. The Swedish secret services are just cleaning the shoes of Mossad. They have nothing to say in Sweden.

The witness Hichem Ben-Abdallah tells Swedish Aftonbladet-TV that the killer of Jo Cox had a white baseball caps and that he did not act alone. He seemed to have some military training and acted professional. After the murder he shot into the crowd surrounding the crime scene. Hichem Ben-Abdallah could not confirm that the killer shouted ”Britain First”. Listen to the very important interview in the first film below.

This description of the killer does not fit to the official version with 52 years old Tommy Mair. His brother claims that he has problems with mental illness, which could indicate that he is under mind control. The symptoms of mind control have afterwards been defined as mental illnesses in order to cover up the mind control technology. In the case of Anna Lindh the official killer had also a mental illness, but the real killer was a professional.

Those commanding the Intelligence world don't want that Britain leaves the EU, because the EU is an important mile stone on the road to the New World Order. Everything has to be united under huge pyramid organizations, that makes it easier to control them from the top.
The only purpose for the murder of Jo Cox, which is reasonable, is to give the Remain campaign sympathies. The other side has no interest at all to get negative publicity and does not need killings, because they have the better arguments.

Most likely more voters will join on the voting day 23rd June 2016 and more on the Brexit side. The effect will be the opposite of what the conspiracy wanted, as in Sweden 2003. But the establishment will rig the elections, as in Scotland, and will proceed to fight with criminal tricks, to keep Britain within the undemocratic EU.




http://www.whitetv.se/sv/anna-lindh-mordet/1592.html

Published on
Friday, June 24, 2016
by
Common Dreams
After Brexit, European Left Calls for 'Massive Political Opposition'

'What Europe needs more than ever to avoid a slide into a xenophobic, deflationary, 1930s-like abyss'
by
Nadia Prupis, staff writer

.........
http://www.commondreams.org/news/20...opean-left-calls-massive-political-opposition



Tony Bermanseder "The campaign’s fearmongering and hate has already claimed a victim in Jo Cox, the Labor MP who was violently martyred by a white British racist. Tellingly, her murder was not described as an act of terrorism, which it clearly was. The decision to restrict the “terrorist” label to Muslims, in Great Britain as in the United States, feeds precisely the kind of hatred that fuels movements like these."



Pat Selden Er...I think that might be a SLIGHTLY partisan and prejudicial reading of the events, Tony. Would it perhaps be not better to wait until all the facts are in and the accused has been tried before we jump to such conclusions?



Tony Bermanseder This is from the link below. It is in quotations.



Pat Selden Which one? The Chios one or the Patsy Gardner one?



Tony Bermanseder The quotation is from Andrew's post.



Tony Bermanseder The second is from the Swedish site. I did not put this one into quotes.



Tony Bermanseder I should have said link above, my bad.



Pat Selden Thank you. I'll have a look at those posts and see what I think. Peace...



Tony Bermanseder Peace



Barbara Maat Pat, your accused is actually going to get a trial? we just shoot them (your accused) and then accuse their corpses.




Tony Bermanseder This is partially disinformation. https://youtu.be/Dx-QXxCvZq0


Greek Journalist Stefanos Chios: "Jo Cox's murder was organised…

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC3MYfanq6wRtREEK8h4iG-w
Greek Journalist Stephan...
youtube.com



Tony Bermanseder https://youtu.be/l4TOeUaif3Y


BREXIT False Flag: Patsy Gardener
His friends, his neighbors, his family — all describe a gentle man, not intelligent, not political, far from intellectual. He had a history of treatment for ...


Tony Bermanseder The murder of the British Labour MP Jo Cox has staggering similarities to the murder of the Swedish foreign minister Anna Lindh 10th September 2003. 14th September 2003 the EURO-referendum was scheduled. The polls showed a majority for the NO-side, who wanted that Sweden does not join the Euro. Anna Lindh, social democrat as Jo Cox, was campaigning for the YES-side, she loved the Euro idea.



Tony Bermanseder http://www.whitetv.se/sv/anna-lindh-mordet/1592.html


Did MI5 murder Jo Cox, like Mossad Sweden's Foreign Minister Anna Lindh?
White TV is Sweden's first uncontrolled medium which is not a puppet to the establishment. White TV reveals themes that are covered up by mainstream media. White TV is the first community site where you can receive money for participating in a constructive way.
whitetv.se|By Henning Witte



Tony Bermanseder The Rothschild-'Mossad' connection is rather more probable, than a Israel Zionist connection. The details are devious and multiwoven in a multi plan agenda (a win-win whatever outcome for the 'controlleurs')



Remove
Andrew Bellon From my experience here with the nearly complete corporate takeover of the US (Hillary will put the last nails in the coffin of democracy), I must say that insofar as Brexit is a setback for the globalist privatizers it is good. Of course this will be difficult, for it is a kind of declaration of war, and there will be suffering through misdirections of retribution like Islamic terrorism and overt retribution as is happening in Greece. But if it brings about more dissolution of the EU and the resurgence of national sovereignties and sovereign currencies so much the better. NATO, which has been the cover of all the US hegemonic wars, will eventually be at risk and that is a good thing. As things are now, with globalist mercenary NATO forces at the Russian border, WWIII looms. The correct course is difficult to fathom. Here Bernie Sanders has brought much clarification and the realization that change must be a slow and organized steadfast process.


Tony Bermanseder I agree in general, especially about the NATOnized EU. It is good that the Bernie Sanders political phenomenon has suceeded to undermine the fake leftist democratic political platform as has the Trump political phenomenon with respect to the Republican base of 'misnomed' rightwing politics.. This is indeed repeated globally, as a "showdown of 'High Noon'" of sorts. In particular though, some of the 'Zionist conspiracies' of Sanders and this otherwise 'balanced' Swedish 'new conservative nationalistic' outlet show a degree of under information or naivety regarding the social democratic libertarian reformations they honorably are espousing. The resolution of this 'metamorphosis of many/all things, will however require a superhuman initiative, which is defined and rooted in metaphysical realities, rather than physical movements. In consideration of those auspices, a harmonious outcome is however assured for the descendants of the pioneering ancestors of this universal family.



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A4a_1UhwgFU




Andrew Bellon I agree that this is a confrontation of Biblical proportions...




Tony Bermanseder Indeed a confrontation between Objective Truth and Subjective Opinion, labeled say in Malhama versus Harmageddon. One ought to be as innocent as doves to know and become the cunning of the serpents. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nn-EBiMhczw


ARMAGEDDON ISLAMIC ESCHATOLOGY Sheikh…
In order to help better understand and make sense of all the events that are unfolding, Islamic Scholar Sheikh Imran Hosein who has devoted much of his time ...

 

Israel apologizes to Erdogan/Turkey apologizes to Russia
A strategic 2010-2016 7-year agenda following brexit.

This strategy and agenda engages brexit and the 'Fall of Fallujah' and the 'greater plan' of the Malhama by the UN-Ummah allegiance






All You Need to Know About the Israel-Turkey Reconciliation

What strained ties between the once erstwhile allies? What is the agreement expected to include? And why is this important? An explainer.
Haaretz
Jun 27, 2016 12:32 PM


A billboard with photos of Netanyahu and his Turkish counterpart Erdogan, celebrating Israel's apology, in Ankara, March 25, 2013.AP

• Israel and Turkey reach reconciliation deal; formal announcement postponed until Monday
• Israel, Turkey reach understandings on Hamas

An announcement was expected Monday noon that Israel and Turkey will finally reach a reconciliation agreement normalizing their relations. Here's the background on the issues involved, issues that have vexed relations between the two countries for six long years.
What soured the relationship?
Israel and Turkey enjoyed years of close economic and even military ties, but they gradually deteriorated under the rule of Turkey’s Islamist Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who is now Turkey's president. But it was a clash on the high seas in the Mediterranean in 2010 that brought ties with Turkey, which is predominantly Muslim, but not Arab, to a low.

In May of that year, a Turkish flotilla of ships, including the Mavi Marmara, set sail with the announced intention of breaking the Israeli naval blockade of the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip. In an effort to stop the Turkish flotilla, which refused to change course, on May 31, 2010, Israel Navy commandos boarded the ship. In the violent confrontation that followed, nine Turkish passengers were killed. A tenth, who was injured, died a considerable time later. The following year, after the issue remained unresolved, Turkey expelled Israel's ambassador in Ankara.
skip - Close-up footage of Mavi Marmara passengers attacking IDF soldiers.

Close-up footage of Mavi Marmara passengers attacking IDF soldiers. Israel Defense Forces


Why has it taken six years for a deal to be reached?

Though Netanyahu has since apologized for the death of the passengers on the Mavi Marmara and Erdogan accepted the apology, a reconciliation agreement was never sealed. The ties were strained even further during the Israel-Gaza conflict of 2014, as Turkey severely criticized Israel's actions in the Strip.
Turkey has since been conditioning a reconciliation with Israel on lifting the blockade on the Strip. The Turks have been seeking access to the Gaza Strip to engage in development and reconstruction work.
On its part, Israel has insisted that the Turks shut down Hamas' offices in Turkey and ensure that members of the Israel Defense Forces are not subject to international legal action in connection with the Mavi Marmara incident.


What does Israel stand to get?

Under the agreement, Turkey would reportedly pass a law barring claims against Israeli soldiers and officers and preventing future claims from being filed. The agreement also includes normalizing the diplomatic relations between the two countries and returning the ambassadors to Ankara and Tel Aviv.
But mainly, the Turkish government has committed that Hamas will not carry out any terrorist or military activity against Israel from Turkish territory, although the organization is not barred from maintaining a diplomatic presence in the country. Turkey has also promised to seek the return of two Israeli citizens and the remains of two soldiers held in the Gaza Strip.


What does Turkey stand to get?

Under the agreement, Israel would deposit some $20 million in a humanitarian fund as compensation for the families of the Turks who were killed or injured on the Mavi Marmara. Turkey has waived a demand for the removal of the Israeli blockade on the Gaza Strip, Israel would enable Turkey to set up infrastructure projects in Gaza, including the construction of a hospital, a power station and a desalination facility. All the materials for these projects would be transported via Israel's Ashdod Port.


What comes next?

The details of the agreement, if it is announced, are not expected to be released until Monday. Israel's security cabinet is scheduled to vote on any agreement on Wednesday.


Why is all this important?

Turkey is a highly important Muslim country, with a population of close to 80 million, around the same as Germany's. In the past, it was an ally of Israel's in the Middle East and a bridge to the Arab world. It is also a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, NATO, technically at least allying it with the United States and Western Europe, although its efforts to join the European Union have stalled.
For more on the Israel-Turkey reconciliation deal, follow Barak Ravid on Twitter.

http://linkis.com/www.haaretz.com/isra/8klMC

From August 23rd, 2020 onwards - In and out!​

 

Brexit and the new hostility to participatory democracy

• By Jeff Sparrow
• 25.Jun.16

• 25 Comments

The reaction to Brexit illustrates the desperate need for the Left to return to first principles. For, as the result broke on social media, a remarkable number of progressives directed their anger not at anti-immigrant demagogues and opportunist politicians but against the voters themselves and the very idea of a referendum in which they might express their will.
It’s merely the most recent illustration of a growing estrangement from democracy, not only on the mainstream Right but also on the Left.
Obviously, that claim requires an immediate qualification. In Eureka Street recently, I wrote:

These days, aside from a few fringe cranks, everyone endorses democracy. As C. Douglas Lummis says, ‘The sentence, “I’m for democracy” communicates virtually no information … The statement is likely to be met with a blank stare or with a puzzled response like, “How nice”.’​

But the almost universal enthusiasm is actually remarkably recent. Raymond Williams reminds us that, until the 19th century, democracy was mostly a term of approbation. It referred to a particular model of society, one in which the multitude ruled and the wealthy were suppressed: hence, in the revolutionary wave of 1848, the insurgent forces were known simply as ‘The Democracy’. Roget’s Thesaurus captures something of that usage by retaining ‘democrat’ as a synonym for ‘commoner’.​

But that meaning was challenged by a conception of democracy as representative rule on behalf of the masses. Thus, Alexander Hamilton, one of the US founders, insisted that vesting deliberative or judicial powers in the collective body of the people led to ‘error, confusion and instability’. Against that, he advocated representative democracy as a kind of check on the multitude, ‘where the right of election is well secured and regulated, and the exercise of the legislative executive and judicial authorities is vested in select persons’.​

As Williams says, it’s from this notion that the dominant modern sense of the term developed. Yet, throughout the 20th century, the old debate continued in a new form, reflected in the differing understandings of democracy in the liberal and socialist traditions. For socialists, democracy meant popular power; for liberals, it meant elections of representatives alongside the conditions that facilitated those elections.’These two conceptions,’ Williams argued, ‘in their extreme forms, now confront each other as enemies.’​

But that was written in 1976, a time in which the Left retained some of the vigour of the insurgent 60s. Today, the socialist tradition has been erased from public consciousness — and the radical definition of democracy largely forgotten.​

In that piece, I suggested that the #neverTrump campaign illustrated the new hostility to participatory democracy. But the response to Brexit offers an even clearer example.
Take, for instance, the article by Michael Pascoe in the Melbourne Age, a piece about the Brexit result noteworthy primarily because it’s so typical.
‘Many of the protagonists know no better,’ he writes.

They are people with minds closed to the reality of the world being made a better place by maximising engagement, by welcoming differences and enlargement. There are others, the worst of them, happy to exploit ignorance for their short-term advantage. It sells newspapers. It can win an election. It can give an aspirant power.​

The ignorant still view the interactions of nations as zero-sum games. They don’t grasp that globalisation is a win-win process, that the sum of our individual nations is indeed greater than the parts.​

Pascoe’s the contributing editor of Business Day and thus hardly a radical. But, alas, that’s the point, for last night, you saw an almost identical rhetoric from all across Twitter. The majority of British voters were, we were told, buffoons and bigots – Little Englanders too foolish to understand the self-evident virtues of European integration. Many Australians drew a direct parallel with the proposed plebiscite on same-sex marriage, a venture that would, we were told, allow a massive dam of ignorance and hatred to break its banks and drown us all.
Denunciations of the masses’ idiocy are always reactionary. If that seems surprising, it’s because, over the last decade, we’ve seen a minor cottage industry in books by supposed lefties with titles like Idiot America, The Dumbest Generation, A Short History of Stupid and so on. But if the masses are feeble minded, why bother trying to convince them? Why not instead devote yourself to reshaping the world on their behalf? Indeed, it often seems today that politics comes down to a choice between different versions of paternalism – the stern daddy of the Right versus the kindly father of the Left.
Of course, despite what the Pascoes of the world would have you believe, the ordinary people voting for Brexit weren’t motivated simply by a mixture of folly and spite. There were plenty of entirely legitimate reasons for scepticism about the EU project. Some years ago, Perry Anderson denounced the ‘degenerative drift of democracy across the continent, of which the structure of the EU is at once cause and consequence’.

The oligarchic cast of its constitutional arrangements, once conceived as provisional scaffolding for a popular sovereignty of supranational scale to come, has over time steadily hardened. Referendums are regularly overturned, if they cross the will of rulers. Voters whose views are scorned by elites shun the assembly that nominally represents them, turnout falling with each successive election. Bureaucrats who have never been elected police the budgets of national parliaments dispossessed even of spending powers.​

More recently, Paul Mason argued that:

The EU is not – and cannot become – a democracy. Instead, it provides the most hospitable ecosystem in the developed world for rentier monopoly corporations, tax-dodging elites and organised crime. It has an executive so powerful it could crush the leftwing government of Greece; a legislature so weak that it cannot effectively determine laws or control its own civil service. A judiciary that, in the Laval and Viking judgments, subordinated workers’ right to strike to an employer’s right do business freely.​

Its central bank is committed, by treaty, to favour deflation and stagnation over growth. State aid to stricken industries is prohibited. The austerity we deride in Britain as a political choice is, in fact, written into the EU treaty as a non-negotiable obligation. So are the economic principles of the Thatcher era. A Corbyn-led Labour government would have to implement its manifesto in defiance of EU law.​

None of that necessarily involves claiming Brexit as a victory for the Left. As Mason says, at least in the short term, the beneficiaries will undoubtedly be the xenophobic Right.
At the same time, nothing’s contributing to the Right’s success more than the Left’s embrace of the antidemocratic, technocratic ideas embedded in the EU. It was one thing to argue against Brexit on the basis that it was being driven by bigots like Farrage. It was quite another to simply dismiss the quite legitimate concerns of working people as prejudices that might be dispelled by lectures from pop stars and TV personalities. ‘The cultural and economic barriers in the UK,’ lamented Salon, ‘the resentment of small-town people, some of them poor, to famous, wealthy people telling them how to vote … may be steeper than the people who did the predicting guessed.’ Ya think?

In some respects, Cameron’s plebiscite might be compared to the process by which Corbyn became Labour leader. In both cases, it took a political miscalculation to provide an opportunity for the expression of the popular will – an illustration of just how rare participatory democracy has become.
The best way to defeat a newly emboldened Right is to undercut its claims to give voice to the silent majority. The racists across Europe hate democracy – many of them have lineages directly traceable back to the fascist era. They can only present themselves as tribunes of the people because so much of the Left now sees ordinary voters not as agents of history but as a problem to be managed.

Take, for instance, the lessons being drawn from Brexit about the plebiscite on same-sex marriage. In the Age (in a piece published before the British vote but nonetheless expressing a sentiment widely voiced in its wake), Wendy Squires denounced the very idea of a vote on equal marriage as ‘divisive’, a ‘preposterous endeavour’ that would be innately ‘ugly’.
Again, it’s one thing to say that the plebiscite’s unnecessary, to denounce it as a stalling tactic by the conservatives. But that’s not the argument being made. Instead, the implication is that a popular vote would be more dangerous than a parliamentary one because it would involve, well, the population.
It’s a particularly odd contention, given the history of marriage equality in Australia. As I’ve argued before:

The current debate is only necessary thanks to John Howard, who, back in 2004, inserted a clause into theMarriage Act to exclude same-sex couples and ban them from adopting children. The Liberals’ discriminatory legislation was immediately supported by the ALP, with Nicola Roxon announcing Labor’s support for “promoting the institution the of marriage between men and women and as a bedrock institution for families”.​

Noting the parliamentary consensus, Howard crowed, “Nobody can say [the amendment] is being used as a wedge, nobody can say it’s a diversion, everybody can say it’s a united expression of the national parliament and therefore of the will of the Australian people.”​

The current marriage laws were imposed on the nation only 11 years ago, not as a result of the ignorance of the great unwashed, but as a parliamentary manoeuvre by the very people [we’re now told] will protect us from the hoi polloi.​

​

For years now, polls have shown that the vast majority of Australians support marriage equality. The obstacle to equal marriage isn’t the bigotry of ordinary Australians but the demagoguery of Australian politicians, who entrenched homophobia into law. To put it another way, the struggle for marriage equality demonstrates that ordinary people have been consistently more progressive than their elected representatives.
Why, then, do so many progressives insist on presenting the issue as a cautionary tale about popular prejudice?
It’s the same problem we see in the reaction to Brexit: a conviction that ordinary people have failed us. Unfortunately, it’s far more accurate to say that we on the Left continue to fail them.

–
​

Jeff Sparrow is the former editor of Overland. He is the co-author (with Jill Sparrow) of Radical Melbourne: A Secret History and Radical Melbourne 2: The Enemy Within, the editor (with Antony Loewenstein) of Left Turn: Essays for the New Left and the author of Communism: a love story, Killing: Misadventures in violence, and Money Shot: A Journey into Censorship and Porn. On Twitter, he's @Jeff_Sparrow.
More by Jeff Sparrow

https://overland.org.au/2016/06/brexit-and-the-new-hostility-to-participatory-democracy/

 

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EU response to Brexit: Totalitarian Super State

Measure will strip sovereignty of member states

Kurt Nimmo - June 27, 2016 364 Comments




The Polish news channel TVP Info reports French and German foreign ministers are ready to reveal a super state “ultimatum” to EU countries in response to Brexit.



The totalitarian proposals will strip the sovereignty of member states and the ability to have an army. The criminal law system and central banks will also be removed and run by bureaucrats in Brussels.

Additionally, member states will lose control of their borders and procedures on admitting and settling migrants.

“Our countries share a common destiny and a common set of values that give rise to an even closer union between our citizens. We will therefore strive for a political union in Europe and invite the next Europeans to participate in this venture,” a preamble to the document states.
The drastic measures will be presented during a meeting of the Visegrad group by German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier later today. The Visegrad group consists of Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary and Slovakia.

“This is not a good solution, of course, because from the time the EU was invented a lot has changed,” complained Polish Foreign Minister Witold Waszczykowski.
“The mood in European societies is different. Europe and our voters do not want to give the Union over into the hands of technocrats.
“Therefore, I want to talk about this, whether this really is the right recipe right now in the context of a Brexit.”

The super state proposal is a response to rumblings in Europe, Scandinavia, and France to depart the union. It will likely arouse further Euroskepticism.
Prior to the Brexit vote, European Council president Donald Tusk warned that European citizens do not share the enthusiasm of their leaders for “a utopia of Europe without conflicting interests and ambitions, a utopia of Europe imposing its own values on the external world, a utopia of Euro-Asian unity.”



http://www.infowars.com/eu-response-to-brexit-totalitarian-super-state/

 

Synarchy: The Hidden Hand Behind the European Union

March 15, 2012 By davidjones

By LYNN PICKNETT & CLIVE PRINCE—

While questions remain about the existence of a single global elite with an agenda that goes beyond simply keeping itself very, very rich, there are certainly groups that want to run the world for quite other reasons. And with the increasing globalisation of political and economic institutions, it has become easier for a relatively small group to inveigle itself into quite staggeringly influential positions. One cabal in particular reveals – alarmingly – what a small group, driven by a fanatical belief system, can achieve from the shadows. And writing as we are in the United Kingdom, this group is on our doorstep, and has been for over a century. And although perhaps small in number, its reach is big.


Our research into this subject – detailed in The Stargate Conspiracy (1999) and The Sion Revelation (2006) – demonstrated that every major step in the development of the European Union from a simple trading body to a borderline superstate can be traced back to a very specific ideology, which upholds rule by an elite from behind the scenes. But this isn’t just about politics. Astonishingly, this ideology is also about mysticism and magic.
This shadowy politico-occult movement is synarchy, which was developed by the Frenchman Joseph Alexandre Saint-Yves, the Marquis d’Alveydre, in opposition to the rise of anarchy in the second half of the nineteenth century. To him the ideal synarchist state would be a rigid social hierarchy topped by an elite that is predestined to rule – absolutely at odds with the then emerging concepts of democracy, individual liberty and social mobility.

Central to Saint-Yves was the creation of a united Europe, a call for which appears on the first page of his first book on synarchy, Keys to the East (1877). He believed that his perfectly balanced society reflected deep cosmic laws, with which his elite perfectly resonated. They are also directly guided by the powers that rule the universe – as he believed himself to be.
Saint-Yves claimed that in the ancient past an advanced civilisation – based, of course, on synarchic principles – had governed the whole world. This golden age lasted from 7500 to 4000 BCE, before imploding due to a global catastrophe, remembered in legends such as Atlantis. Since then the occult powers-that-be have periodically reintroduced the revelation of synarchy, sending or inspiring figures such as Moses and Jesus – and, naturally, Saint-Yves himself.
He adopted the idea, popular in nineteenth-century esoteric and theosophical circles, that spiritually advanced masters – to him preservers of the synarchic revelation – existed in Agartha, a hidden realm in the Himalayas. He confided in his closest associates that he had been visited by its emissaries.
Another significant aspect of his version of history was that clandestine societies had transmitted the secret of synarchy throughout the ages. It comes as no surprise to discover that his ‘spiritual fathers of synarchy’ were the usual suspects – the Knights Templar.

For a time in the 1880s and 90s Saint-Yves’ ideas were seriously discussed in political circles in France and elsewhere in Europe. In 1886 he formed the Syndicate of the Professional and Economic Press to promote synarchy to political and business leaders. Several members of the French Parliament joined, including government minister François Césaire Demahy – later a founder of the influential nationalist movement Action Française – and Paul Deschanel, who became President of France in 1920. Saint-Yves was made a chévalier of the Légion d’honneur in 1893.
In the end, however, Saint-Yves’ followers realised things would have to change radically. After his death in 1909, and particularly in the uncertain aftermath of the First World War, they knew they could never achieve their ambitions through conventional means – and turned to stealth. They decided on inveigling their members into key positions in political and economic institutions intending on creating, in the words of Richard F. Kuisel, a specialist in twentieth-century French political history, “a world government by an initiated elite.”¹ Synarchy came to stand for ‘rule by secret society’, which in practice makes it difficult to distinguish between card-carrying synarchists and those merely under their influence.

Towards Europe’s ‘United States’​

The most high-profile late nineteenth-century devotee of Saint-Yves was the physician Gérard Encausse (‘Papus’), a leading light among French esoteric societies. He blended the teachings of his ‘spiritual master’, the eighteenth century occult philosopher Louis-Claude de Saint-Martin, and his ‘intellectual master’ Saint-Yves. Encausse founded the Martinist Order, into which he absorbed synarchist principles – so that, unusually, it had political ambitions, including the formation of ‘a United States of Europe’. Delusions of grandeur, one might have thought…
Encausse’s death in 1916 resulted in a schism in the Martinist Order over its involvement in politics. The activists, under Victor Blanchard – head of the secretariat of the Chamber of Deputies of the French Parliament – formed the breakaway Martinist and Synarchic Order, which established the Synarchic Central Committee in 1922, designed to pull in promising young civil servants and “younger members of great business families.”² The Committee soon became the Synarchic Empire Movement, or MSE (Mouvement Synarchique d’Empire) in 1930, under dedicated firebrands Jeanne Canudo and Vivien Postel du Mas.
Canudo is best remembered today as an energetic campaigner for European unity and founder of several youth organisations in the 1930s, select members of which were inducted into the esoteric synarchist orders that she led together with Postel du Mas.

An important witness to these events was the celebrated Parisian litterateur Maurice Girodias (publisher of scandalous sensations such as The Story of O, Lolita, Henry Miller’s Sexus and William S. Burrough’s The Naked Lunch). As a teenager in the 1930s he was involved both with Canudo’s European groups and an esoteric society that met at Postel du Mas’ luxurious apartment to hear the ‘secret masters’ speaking through teenage trance medium Laurette. Girodias said of Postel du Mas’ magical salons: “I saw at his feet men of science, company directors, and bankers.”³

Beyond Top Secret​

The MSE produced an important but beyond Top Secret document – its very existence unknown to outsiders until 1941 – entitled The Synarchist Revolutionary Pact for the French Empire, usually known simply as the Synarchist Pact. The exact authorship is uncertain but the main candidates are Postel du Mas and the businessman Jean Coutrot. It was only as a result of Coutrot’s apparent suicide under the Nazi Occupation, when copies were found among his possessions, that anyone knew the Pact existed.⁴
This highly scary document set out a programme for “invisible revolution” or “revolution from above”: that is, taking over a state from within by infiltrating into high office. The first step was to take control of France, before creating the “European Union” – then, tomorrow…

Saint-Yves did not invent the concept of a federal Europe. For example, Victor Hugo is credited with first using the term ‘United States of Europe’, although – probably not coincidentally – he was a close friend of Saint-Yves in the French ex-pat community in the Channel Islands in the 1860s.
But it became a serious political force when the Pan-European movement was established in 1923 by the Austrian Count Richard Coudenhove-Kalergi, described by Otto von Habsburg – in rather telling terms – as the “guide and prophet” of a united Europe. He famously won over Winston Churchill, who began espousing European unity from 1930 and wrote a foreword to the Count’s 1953 book An Idea Conquers the World. The Count was a committed believer that cosmic forces shape events, giving him at least the profile of a synarchist. (Sadly we have no information about Churchill’s views on the more occult aspects.) But there is evidence of a closer connection with the French synarchists.
In their 1968 Synarchy and Power, André Ulmann and Henri Azeau interviewed one of the inter-war members of the MSE, who claimed it had “inspired the action of Coudenhove-Kalergi and his pan-Europeanism.”⁵ Coudenhove-Kalergi also lent his support to pro-Europe groups formed by the MSE’s Jeanne Canudo.

Maurice Girodias’ involvement with the synarchists began as a 16-year-old when, at a Theosophical Society lecture in 1935, he was intrigued by a group in flamboyant Templar garb led by Postel du Mas and Canudo. He was told they were “schismatic theosophists with political designs, and they are linked to Count Coudenhove-Kalergi… who is a champion of the United States of Europe… Their aim is to launch a pan-European political party and to institute in the entire world, commencing with Europe, a society obedient to a spiritualist idea.”⁶ In conversation with Girodias Postel du Mas named Coudenhove-Kalergi as one of the two major promoters of his and Canudo’s plans.

The Hood and the Illuminati​

In the tumultuous aftermath of the First World War, like the rest of Europe France became polarised between communism and fascism. The mid-1930s saw the creation of several clandestine far-right groups, both civilian and military, which were integrated into a single network under the control of a three-man Superior Council. Although it gave itself no particular name, the press dubbed it the Cagoule – or the sinister-sounding ‘Hood’.

Indeed, the Chicago Tribune’s correspondent in Paris, William Shirer, summed up the Cagoule as “deliberately terrorist, resorting to murder and dynamiting, and its aim was to overthrow the Republic and set up an authoritarian régime on the model of the Fascist state of Mussolini.”⁷ Italy supplied the Cagoule with funds and arms and, in return, the Cagoule assassinated anti-fascist Italian refugees in Paris.
The Cagoule was led by chévalier of the Légion d’honneur Eugène Deloncle, with the other Council members being Dr Henri Martin and Colonel Georges Groussard, who oversaw cabals within the military. It was funded by wealthy industrialists, including Eugène Schueller, founder of L’Oréal – who obviously thought synarchy was “worth it” – in whose company’s headquarters the group met.
Although most of the Cagoule were simply anti-communist extremists, who had probably never heard of synarchy, there’s no doubt that there was a strong connection between the MSE and Superior Council, particularly Deloncle. The connection was acknowledged by Shirer⁸ and by Richard Kuisel, who writes: “Strangely enough, although the Cagoule was an archenemy of Freemasonry, it imitated Masonic ritual, symbolism, and method of recruitment. The head of the Cagoule, Eugène Deloncle, even likened its recruiting procedures to the ‘chain method’ of the Illuminati.”⁹

Basically, through the Cagoule, the synarchists had taken over terrorist groups for their own ends, planning to precipitate a state of emergency that would enable its chosen man to step in as a strong leader to restore order “in the interests of public safety.” And their chosen man was Marshal Philippe Pétain.
In September 1937 a series of bomb explosions rocked Paris, intended to kick-start a wave of armed attacks to spread chaos and confusion. But a lucky break led the police to caches of arms and ammunition around the city and Deloncle was arrested.

An official report pointed to the MSE, noting “affiliates of the Synarchic Movement were very numerous and already in place within, and at the head of, the major organs of the state, ready to take charge.”¹⁰
It is hard to overestimate the influence of the synarchists. They were – and no doubt still are – hardly a bunch of nobodies. A major player in this story was none other than François Mitterrand, later France’s longest-serving President. Although he was to reinvent himself as a socialist, before and during the Second World War he was very much of the extreme right.

Even at the time it was rumoured that Mitterrand was a member of the Cagoule. But more sensationally, Henri Martin’s family claimed he had actually planted the 1937 bombs.¹¹ But while no firm evidence exists to support Mitterrand being a cagoulard, and he strenuously denied it when confronted with his shady past in the 1990s, he certainly had the connections, besides the relevant political – and indeed, esoteric – views.
Mitterrand believed in rule by an elite – preferably an elite of one: himself. Although from a relatively modest background, he always had an unshakeable belief in his personal superiority, even seeing significance in his family’s origins in the town of Bourges, where a field called the Champs de Mitterrand marks the exact centre of France. ‘Mitterrand’ means ‘middle of the land’.
When the ultra-ambitious Mitterrand finally achieved power he notoriously governed through his ‘clan’ of friends and relatives, famously remarking that he needed only “fifty well-placed friends to run the country.”¹² And he began building the clan during those pre-war days, around leading cagoulards, particularly those close to Deloncle.

Mitterrand was a close friend of conspirator in the assassination of the Italian anti-fascist Rosselli brothers, Jean Bouyver, and of François Méténier, Deloncle’s assistant who was sentenced to 20 years for his part in the 1937 bombings. But the closest family connection was with Deloncle: Mitterrand’s brother Robert married Deloncle’s sister-in-law just before the outbreak of war. It is inconceivable that Mitterrand never met the Cagoule’s mastermind and top synarchist. Also, as we will see, like Deloncle Mitterrand was deeply fascinated by esoteric and mystical matters.

Secrets of the Hitler-friendly State​

Although the Cagoule’s plans to create a state of emergency to bring Pétain to power failed, of course this was achieved three years later by an even greater crisis. In June 1940 France fell to Nazi Germany, Pétain emerging as the leader of the new Hitler-friendly French State, based in Vichy.
Almost immediately after France’s ignominious surrender some claimed elements in the military had connived in the defeat, believing that jumping into bed with the Nazis would enable Pétain to achieve his cherished national reorganisation.

So it is all the more disturbing that one of Ulmann and Azeau’s ex-MSE informants told them that a senior figure behind the group and “one of the mentors” of the young men being groomed for future greatness in the 1920s and 30s was none other than General Maxime Weygand.¹³ No doubt not coincidentally married to Saint-Yves’ great-niece, he was Supreme Commander of French and British forces at the outbreak of the Second World War, and in June 1940 it was he who advised the French government to ask Hitler for terms.
French researcher Roger Mennevée argued that Vichy represented the climax of the first phase of the plan outlined in the Synarchist Pact – taking power in France in preparation to extend it to Europe – using the Germans to do what the Cagoule had failed to three years earlier.¹⁴ Ulmann and Azeau note that, coincidence or not, Vichy was organised precisely on synarchist lines.
Both the Occupation and Vichy were seen as an opportunity by the synarchists. In Paris, Postel du Mas and Canudo positively welcomed the German overlords. One investigator into synarchy notes of one of her pro-Europe organisations, “the majority were found, after 1940, either in the corridors of power in Vichy, or in the collaborationist circles in Paris.”¹⁵

In Vichy, unsurprisingly, former cagoulards rose to the top, particularly in the dreaded Milice, Vichy’s equivalent of the Gestapo. Deloncle was freed from prison – and formed a political party to build a ‘new Europe’, while Henri Martin and Colonel Groussard enjoyed high-level roles in the intelligence and surveillance network. Historian John Hellman states bluntly that former cagoulards were behind the “manipulation, control, and orientation of Pétainist France.”¹⁶
Although a one-to-one connection between the Cagoule and the synarchs may sometimes be something of a leap, the latter were undoubtedly active in Vichy. Shirer declares there is “no doubt” that synarchists “infiltrated the highest posts in business and finance and in the government bureaucracy.”¹⁷ Certainly many of the young hopefuls groomed by the MSE rose to Vichy’s upper echelons – including Yves Bouthillier, Minister of Finance from 1940 to 1942.

What about Mitterrand? Imprisoned in June 1940, he escaped from the Occupied territory in December 1941 to the Vichy zone. He was welcomed by ex-cagoulards who got him various government jobs (his main sponsor was the father-in-law of both his brother and Deloncle) and was even awarded Vichy’s highest honour for services to the state, the Francisque Gallique, in 1943.
Soon afterwards Mitterrand hastily changed sides, joining the Resistance and making his way to London to ally himself with the Free French – the only episode allowed to be remembered after the war. He wasn’t the only Vichyite to jump ship. Many French synarchists began cosying up to the Allies, as it was increasingly obvious that the tide had turned against Hitler. Henri Martin joined the American covert organisation, the OSS, and Deloncle established contact with the British SOE, although he was killed in a gun battle with the Gestapo in January 1944.

In November 1943 a group of Free French analysts drew up a report explicitly examining synarchists in Vichy and, lately, in the Resistance, acknowledging the reality of synarchy and its considerable influence.¹⁸
Unbelievably, Mitterrand emerged from the conflict a Resistance hero and a left-wing politician, his connections with Vichy and his far-right background assigned to the collective amnesia that conveniently gripped France after the war.
But as he clearly had cagoulard sympathies and connections, he must have shared their aims – despite his later bluster to the contrary. And with his interests, associations and chameleon-like changing of political colours in order to achieve his goals he certainly looks like the perfect synarchist. But most suspicious by far are his extraordinary efforts to create the European Union…

The EU: An Alternative History​

The ‘European project’ began on 9 May 1950 with French Foreign Minister Robert Schuman’s announcement that France and West Germany had agreed to co-ordinate their coal and steel industries. Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg took up his offer to join in, leading seven years later to the Treaty of Rome that established the European Economic Community (EEC).
Schuman was only the front man. The prime mover was actually Jean Monnet, the most influential businessman and economist in post-war Europe. Period. The massive international power base he had built up before and during the war gave him immense political influence while keeping out of the public eye. It was Monnet who had secured the Allies’ backing for General de Gaulle against Roosevelt’s opposition, and in return, de Gaulle gave him responsibility for rebuilding the French economy and industry – a position he used to achieve his great dream, laying the foundations for the EEC.

The ‘Schuman Declaration’ was the result of intrigue, trickery and subterfuge by Monnet,¹⁹ his most audacious trick being to get French and West German governments to set up a supranational organisation to co-ordinate their industries without realising exactly what they had signed up to. This radical new concept, of an organisation with control over individual nations’ industries but with its own, outside autonomy, laid the foundation for all that came after. Unsurprisingly, Monnet became president of the new body, called – with a chillingly Orwellian tone – the High Authority. Shuman became the first president of the European Parliament in 1958.

What was really going on? A rather large clue lies in the fact that Monnet was another pre-war protégé of the Synarchist Empire Movement. In 1936, Vivien Postel du Mas told Maurice Girodias that, alongside Coudenhove-Kalergi, Monnet was an influential promoter of the synarchist agenda. He certainly publicly supported Canudo’s pro-Europe groups. And one of Ulmann and Azeau’s ex-MSE informants went so far as to describe Monnet as a “true synarch… whose membership of the movement was never in doubt for the true initiates.”²⁰ (Note the occult-sounding “initiates.”)
Schuman, too, had pre-war synarchist connections, although not as direct: he had worked closely on political reform in France and European integration with the professor of law Louis Le Fur, a synarchy activist.

Power for Power’s Sake​

The Single European Act of 1986, which established free trade and movement between EEC states, was the culmination of the process set in motion by the Schuman Declaration. Over the years the EEC had come to include the UK and Ireland, among others, but the original idea had gone as far as it could.
It was Mitterrand who went beyond the original concept by proposing not just closer economic, but also political, union. The 1992 European Union (‘Maastricht’) Treaty not only turned the EEC into the EU, but for the first time gave the European Parliament powers over member nations (until then it had only an advisory role). Was this the beginning of a European superstate? It also agreed on a single currency, establishing the ‘eurozone’ and the European Central Bank – now terrifyingly beleaguered. All this was Mitterrand’s initiative (aided by German Chancellor Helmut Kohl), including changing the name to the ‘European Union’. Straight out of the Synarchist Pact.

Mitterrand made his second bid for the presidency in 1981 – but unlike the first sixteen years before, backed by Jean Monnet, this one was successful. He held the office for two seven-year terms, only being prevented from a third term by the onset of the cancer of which he was to die in 1996. His presidency is remembered for its corruption and the blatant nepotism of his ‘clan’ being rewarded with positions of power.
Political historians accept that Mitterrand was purely interested in power for power’s sake, and for the enrichment of himself and his clan, with no real political agenda or vision – except when it came to the ‘European project’. There, he was driven by the desire to see a fully integrated Europe, which he declared “takes precedence over everything.”

But was Mitterrand a card-carrying synarchist? He moved in the right circles, through his pre-war associations with the Cagoule’s leadership. His pursuit of closer European integration certainly fits the synarchists’ core objective. And his interest in esoteric matters also fits the profile – which tends to be downplayed by Mitterrand’s biographers, although it is explored in Nicolas Bonnal’s Mitterrand, the Great Initiate (2001). He employed astrologers – even for major foreign policy decisions – believed in reincarnation, and was interested in UFOs.
Even more intriguing to Dan Brown fans – and indeed, our own – is the fact that he had a special veneration for Mary Magdalene, focused on her cult centre at Vézelay. And much has been made of him visiting the celebrated ‘village of mystery’ of Rennes-le-Château (actually only the most high-profile of several visits) during his 1981 election campaign.

Nicknamed ‘the Sphinx’, Mitterrand was also fascinated by ancient civilisations: as President he oversaw a great accumulation of Egyptian antiquities by French museums and universities, believing there was some connection between that civilisation and ancient France. Saint-Yves would have agreed.
As President, Mitterrand also spent some 30 billion francs on a major programme of public building, mostly in Paris. Like all egomaniacs he was driven to leave his solid, tangible mark on history. But apparently, there was more to it than that. His monuments’ esoteric symbolism is acknowledged even by mainstream writers, such as Marie Delarue in her 1999 study, tellingly entitled A Republican Pharaoh. She refers to the Parisian buildings as “a journey for initiates,” noting they “seem to relate more to personal destiny and François Mitterrand’s pronounced taste for hermeticism and the Sacred Science, than to the politics of socialist governments.”²¹

The most famous of his monuments is the great glass pyramid outside the Louvre, unveiled in 1993 to mark the bicentenary of the French Revolution, and clearly reflecting a link between ancient Egypt and France. But the most imposing public work is the Grande Arche de la Fraternité in the La Défence area of Paris, completed in 1989 and designed by the Danish architect Otto von Spreckelsen. Bizarrely – and rather ambitiously – it represents a three-dimensional ‘shadow’ of a hyperdimensional cube that he called a “porte cosmique”: ‘cosmic gateway’ or perhaps even ‘stargate’…

But “the most beautiful, most esoteric and least known of the Mitterrandian Great Works”²² – and his personal favourite – is the 1989 Monument to the Rights of Man and the Citizen in the Parc du Champs-de-Mars, in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower. Modelled on an Egyptian funerary temple and aligned to the Sun on the summer solstice, it is literally covered in esoteric symbolism, much of it obviously Masonic. After Mitterrand’s death his staff revealed that he often visited it at night, silently meditating.
In both action and belief Mitterrand certainly fits the profile of the synarchist. But remember that synarchy’s elite believed itself to be in direct contact with powerful non-human intelligences who effectively pulled the strings of those in power. Or perhaps Mitterrand was simply under the synarchist elite.
So…
Nobody can pretend the journey from the Schuman Declaration to today’s EU has been untroubled. It has been repeatedly obstructed by those opposed to a federal Europe, and diverted by vested interests – political, economic and even criminal – seeking to turn it to their advantage. The whole thing simply can’t have been planned and directed exclusively by the synarchist elite. But on the other hand, it is undeniable that things have turned out how Saint-Yves and his followers would have wanted. And given that all the major steps along the way were the initiative of individuals with direct synarchist connections, it would equally be wrong to dismiss their influence on the EU’s creation.

Of course, Saint-Yves’ vision did not end with the creation of the EU and the eurozone. They merely marked the beginning of the ultimate synarchist dream of a true United States of Europe. Building on those foundations, and bringing about even closer integration, depends on overcoming the individual nations’ interests, which has always presented a problem – unless the situation changes drastically.
And that is precisely what is happening right now with the major crisis in the eurozone, which has brought the EU to the brink of make-or-break. Senior figures – including the European Commission President José Manuel Barroso – have declared that the only solution to the crisis and preventing it happening again is an even greater level of economic and political integration. The same conclusion has been reached by the likes of the powerful financier George Soros, who has called for a European central authority with greater powers over the member states. On the other hand, some believe that the crisis will be the downfall of the EU. And synarchists – no matter who or where they are – simply can’t let that happen.


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Footnotes​

1. Richard F. Kuisel, ‘The Legend of the Vichy Synarchy’, in French Historical Studies, spring 1970, 378.
2. André Ulmann and Henri Azeau, Synarchie et pouvoir (Julliard, 1968), 63.
3. Maurice Girodias, Une journée sur le terre (Éditions de la Différence, 1990), vol. I, 411.
4. The Pact was finally published in 1946 by Raoul Hussan, writing under the pseudonym Geoffrey de Charnay, in Synarchie: Panorama de 25 années d’activité occulte (Médicis).
5. Ulmann and Azeau, 64.
6. Girodias, vol. I, 149.
7. William L. Shirer, The Collapse of the Third Republic: An Enquiry into the Fall of France in 1940 (William Heinemann, 1970), 209.
8. See Shirer, 217-20.
9. Kuisel, 385.
10. Quoted in Jean-Raymond Tournoux, L’Histoire secrète (Plon, 1962), 173.
11. The allegation was made to journalist Pierre Péan, during his research for Une jeunesse française: François Mitterrand 1934-1947 (Fayard, 1994), see page 109.
12. Quoted in John Laughland, The Death of Politics: France under Mitterrand (Michael Joseph, 1994), 60.
13. Ulmann and Azeau, 116.
14. Writing in Action, 2 November 1945.
15. De Charnay, 69.
16. John Hellman, The Knight-Monks of Vichy France: Uriage, 1940-1945 (Liverpool University Press, 1997), 331.
17. Shirer, 218.
18. The report is reproduced in Ulmann and Azeau, pages 293-310. Ulmann was one of the Free French analysts, who worked alongside Mitterrand after his ‘defection’.
19. See, for example, Merry and Serge Bromberger, Jean Monnet and the United States of Europe (Coward-McCann, 1969).
20. Ulmann and Azeau, 63.
21. Marie Delarue, Un pharaon républicain (Jacques Grancher, 1999), 8.
22. Delarue, 50.

LYNN PICKNETT & CLIVE PRINCE began their joint career with Turin Shroud: How Leonardo Da Vinci Fooled History and – eight books later – they have just published The Forbidden Universe. They are best known for their 1997 The Templar Revelation, which Dan Brown acknowledged as the primary inspiration for The Da Vinci Code. As a reward for their contribution they were given cameos in the movie (on the London bus). They also give talks to an international audience. Lynn & Clive both live in South London. Their website is www.picknettprince.com.

The above article appeared in New Dawn Special Issue 18.
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[7:38:25 AM] Sirius 17: http://www.newdawnmagazine.com/articles/synarchy-the-hidden-hand-behind-the-european-union
[7:38:30 AM] Sirius 17: Barbara dug this up
[11:17:30 AM] *** Missed call from Sirius 17. *

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[12:13:13 PM] Sirius 17: I want you to watch this and give me your take on his 'theory'. lol he thinks Saturn is transmitting a false frequency onto Earth as a false reality and the moon is the amplifier of the saturnian signal

[2:32:28 PM] ShilohaPlace: Come on pure bogus. Yes saturn is a very strong emitter of energy. But this is metaphysics that is part of the geometrical astroanalysis. He uses the LOTR archetypes see, Sauron at all all this is ok.: But it is not to do with Old World politics except in the astrology.

[2:35:38 PM] ShilohaPlace: About Barbara yes but it misses the simplicity give her this to watch and all should make more sense.

[2:36:28 PM] ShilohaPlace:

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[2:41:58 PM] ShilohaPlace: I put her arrticle with it to show the connections.
The illuminati of courses uses astrology and archetypes as Icke claims correctly. This also relates to Egyptian hieroglyphs like the freemason symbol for Ptah as the path. Rosicrucians and the 7 heavens of Ptolemy and Paul in the NT: Sun-Mercury-Venus-Moon-Earth-Mars-Jupiter-Saturn as 1-8 and so on

[2:45:35 PM] ShilohaPlace: LYNN PICKNETT & CLIVE PRINCE began their joint career with Turin Shroud: How Leonardo Da Vinci Fooled History and – eight books later – they have just published The Forbidden Universe. They are best known for their 1997 The Templar Revelation, which Dan Brown acknowledged as the primary inspiration for The Da Vinci Code. As a reward for their contribution they were given cameos in the movie (on the London bus). They also give talks to an international audience. Lynn & Clive both live in South London. Their website is www.picknettprince.com.
The above article appeared in New Dawn Special Issue 18.

This is nabsey like hell lol. So I cant take Barbara's article too seriously. The New Dawn magazine is nabs as you might know.

[4:19:02 PM] Sirius 17: yes I knew it was all nabs but I wanted your take on it

Hillary Clinton's and Angela Merkel's Globalist Sponsor

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