The European Union. Self-Destruction in Process.

The European Union.  Self-Destruction in Process.

 Written by Robin Mathews (March 2018)

It didn’t come together quickly … and its collapse won’t happen in a blinding flash.  But the growing dissatisfaction among European populations will grow. Misrepresented by the likes of Mario Draghi, European Central Bank head – and former Goldman Sachs employee, and Jean-Claude Junker, President of the European Commission  - as well as by almost all Mainstream Press and Media … dissatisfaction will grow ... will increase and strengthen the process of decay….

The European Union began in a lie and – because of the punishment being suffered by the people of Europe – the lie cannot continue.  Clothed in a truly Great Idea about the liberation from wars on a continent full of different languages, cultures, and national borders, the experiment is, in fact, wrapped in the greed of international bankers, U.S. imperialism, local (European) competitions, and a blighted and inflexible retinue of private corporations which are so ‘progressive’ they would return to slave labour quickly if only it could be imposed….

The European Parliament is mostly a toothless sham.  European power lies in Washington, in Berlin, in NATO, in the appointed European Commission, and in various European organizations, corporations and holders of capital.  None of those forces is ‘enlightened’.  Nor is the lackey European Press which is mostly owned by them.

How did it happen?

The history of the formation of the European Union is longer than most think.  After the First World War a small group of thinkers and political actors urged the idea of One Europe.  They were a small minority, but they did what they could to keep the idea alive: meeting, publishing, campaigning.  A significant voice through the time, Aristide Briand, eleven times Prime Minister of France, proposed (unsuccessfully) an economic union of Europe in 1929 – hoping to prevent what fell upon Europe after his death in 1932.

And so came Adolf Hitler and in 1939 Blitzkrieg and the military unification of Europe.  Some of the long-time advocates of unity thought Hitler’s Europe could be transformed into a democratic union.  They were accused of being “collaborators” with Nazi brutality … and abused for their naïve hopes.

And then Europe was cleared of the Nazi scourge.  Even more intensely the cry arose that something had to be done to end the brutality of inter-European wars.  The cry of ‘One Europe’ was raised again. 

Across the Atlantic as the Second World War was winding down (1944) numerous nations (44 of them) met at Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, U.S.A. to work out the coming shape of trade, commerce, international finance, justice, labour ….  (The creation of the U.S.-led military force, NATO, and the de facto exclusion of Russia came separately and a little later.)

All of Europe (except Germany), the U.S.A., plus the United Kingdom, (in the 1944 meetings) set to work to hammer out a future for the Planet – a future which was, in fact, forged and controlled by the U.S.A. A famous contest ensued between Britain’s John Maynard Keynes and U.S. representative Harry Dexter White in which – simply because of the sheer post-war power of the unscathed U.S.A. – the U.S. won and created a global, U.S.-dominant financial and trading system … with endless implications for a “European Union”.

When the 1939-1945 war ended, the U.S. discovered that the Marshall Plan (to restore Europe) presented unlimited possibilities of profit (and control).  And those ideas pointed to the U.S. helping to create (and control) NATO and every major step in the construction of the European Union – an entity that is now so (needlessly) complicated that the European Parliament is an almost-toothless debating society.

Not without central importance (but rarely mentioned), the bureaucracy of the EU proposed and wrote a Constitution for Europe. Three volumes long (perhaps the longest Constitution ever written, 2004-5), its creators were not anxious that the people of Europe study it.  Governments in power began passing it.

But a few countries, among them France and the Netherlands, required a vote by popular referendum to pass such a measure.  French activists got copies, read it … and went on the offensive to disclose its contents and block passage of the “un-liberating” document. 

The result in 2005 was that both France and the Netherlands refused the so-called Constitution by significant margins.  It was dead on the ground.  Not to be defeated by the people of Europe, the EU bureaucracy created a treaty (the structure of treaties binding European countries is now called ‘the growing Constitution of the E.U.’), presented it at Lisbon in 2007 – where it was passed by governments of Europe – and The Treaty of Lisbon (containing some of the rejected material of the written and rejected Constitution) went into effect in 2009.

Leaping to today, we are faced with the sleight-of-hand in France that gave it a sudden new party “En Marche” [“Marching on”, “Let’s Go”] and Emmanuel Macron as president of France.  As the Socialist Party of France collapsed from betrayal … by following the dictates of the reactionary European Commission, France’s capitalist class rushed the blue-eyed saviour [‘Emmanuel’ translates ‘God is with us’] into place.  Avoiding the direct attacks on working people that characterized the government of Francois Hollande, Macron is – for the time – securely in place.  Marine le Pen’s opposing party – mis-called by most commentators (partly because it seriously questions EU structure) - struggles to maintain its presence, having made a creditable showing in the election that placed Macron in power.

The recent shattering election in Italy routed the so-called Centre Left party led by Matteo Renzi (a duplicate of the Francois Hollande “Socialist” government in France). In both cases the governments were anti-labour, punitive to ordinary people, useless on the question of unemployment – in fact in the hands of the Jean-Claude Junker European Commission (and through it of corporate Europe and its U.S. connections).

Italy’s election – which gave the Five Star Party (radically questioning EU policies) the largest number of votes … and increased the power of Rightest elements – created a Mess, but a perfectly understandable Mess. The failure of “established” (media-acceptable) parties to hold their positions has brought about screams of the move to power of “Far Right”, “Populist” parties – which means nothing more than that legitimate protest voting has worked.  (After all, populist parties are those supported by the population rather than by rich, contributing corporations!). And when reactionary governments like the “Left” governments of France and Italy meet Opposition – what to call the Opposition? The hack press of Europe chooses to call it “Far Right”!

All over the Western World (except for Britain) so-called ‘Left’ parties have sold out to corporate domination, Canada not excepted. In Italy (and Europe generally) hurting parents, unemployed youth, and increasingly insulted working people are seeking a solution to the corporate-world-centred government of the EU.

If one wishes to think of the Gigantic Failure of the European Union, one only has to look at Greece.  Cursed with no greater corruption than the U.S.A., assisted in its faking of a balanced economy by Goldman Sachs of New York, desperately needing real community assistance to reconstruct its economy and political legitimacy, Greece has been chopped into fragments, desiccated, dishonoured, devoured, and sold-off by a conscienceless “troika” of EU appointees - to European and foreign Vultures – until the most able six million of Greece’s population have fled the country. (Do we really dare to speak of The European Community?)

Italy is the third largest member of that “European Community’.  The struggle in the next months to form a government that will work for Italians (instead of everyone else in the world with putrid wealth and criminal intent) ought to test the unity of the European Union and massively change its power structure … or announce the death-knell of the whole tragically misbegotten nightmare.

__________________

The Straight Goods

Cheers Eyes Wide Open