European legal drift disguised as "rule of law"
The Sovietization of Western Criminal Law
Source : https://www.polemia.com/la-sovietisation-des-droits-penaux-occidentaux/
In his books, Le Théâtre de Satan ou Droit, conscience et sentiments , and in his articles published by Polémia, the lawyer Éric Delcroix is not alone in deploring the European legal drift disguised as "rule of law". Doctor of philosophy, polyglot, diplomat in the United States and political scientist, the Croatian Tomislav Sunić also addresses this crucial question in numerous articles and conferences. He is also the author of several books, some of which have been translated into French, such as Chronique des Temps postmodernes , La Croatie : un pays par défaut ? or Homo americanus , scion de l'ère postmoderne (preface by Kevin B. MacDonald), reviewed on our site . Here is a text written by him dealing with an essential subject.
Polémia
Summary
1. A mirror image of the communist system
2. Verbal and legal anomaly
3. Criminalized wrong-thinking
A mirror image of the communist system
One of the advantages of the judicial system of the old communist Europe was that no one, including party apparatchiks, believed its fraudulent language. This is the main reason why the system collapsed. The legal proceedings against political dissidents – officially labeled “hostile elements” or “Western-sponsored fascist infiltrators” – were parodies of simulacra, with prosecutors projecting their true selves onto their imaginary, embellished double selves, all the while knowing that their legal palaver was a litany of fabricated lies. The communist miscarriage of justice became visible soon after the collapse of the communist system in the early 1990s, prompting thousands of communist judges and legislators across Eastern Europe to adopt overnight the newly imported liberal judicial mimicry from the West.
Although different terms are used, the modern Western, and particularly American, judicial system is rapidly becoming a mirror image of the communist system. Unlike the wary citizens of former communist Eastern Europe, millions of Americans and thousands of legal experts sincerely believe that the American judicial system is the best in the world. But the current scourge of trials and prosecutions in the United States and its territory, the EU, proves otherwise. A foreigner can better understand the American judicial system by comparing its legal jargon to that of the former communist system, or by mistranslating it and applying it to the EU judicial system.
Verbal and legal anomaly
Like the communist justice system and its arsenal of demonizing verbal constructs designed for political dissidents, the U.S. Justice Department and the media have increasingly resorted to criminalizing the names of political opponents. “Give me the man and I’ll give you the case against him” was a common legal practice in the former communist states of Eastern Europe. Similar fabricated charges can now be easily leveled against freethinkers, writers, and whistleblowers who criticize government conduct. An unarmed intruder on the Capitol on January 6, 2021, who shouts pro-Trump slogans and forcibly removes police barriers can hardly expect to be charged with a simple misdemeanor. Rather, on the whim of a top prosecutor, anyone who defies the liberal system can find themselves charged, under Chapter 115 of the United States Code, with "engaging in seditious and criminal activity."
Countless verbal constructs that most American citizens take for granted must be critically examined. Negative or flowery expressions such as “hate speech,” “affirmative action,” “diversity,” “white supremacy,” and “neo-Nazi rallies” are used by the media and the courts, with minimal effort on the part of lawyers and linguists to extract their meaning. When their origin, etymology, and the resulting semantic distortions are carefully studied, flaws in American penal codes are detected. The same effort applies to the multitude of German and French terms peppering the respective penal codes of the FRG and France, terms that are virtually untranslatable into English, or, when they are, resonate entirely differently in American legal proceedings.
The term “hate speech” is a bizarre verbal construct that allows for a wide range of extrajudicial maneuvers to be pursued. One’s free speech is always another’s hate speech. The term didn’t even exist in the legal glossary half a century ago. One wonders who invented the term and introduced it into the law in the first place. Its abstract meaning allows judges or juries to define it however they want.
One of the main features of communist totalitarian legalism was the use of abstract and liquid expressions that provided the prosecutor with a myriad of potential accusations during court hearings. But the very term “totalitarian legalism” is a contradiction in terms, given that the ongoing juridification of politics in the EU and the US has already led to excessive legalism, i.e., legal warfare, which is only a first step towards the establishment of totalitarian systems. The resulting legal anomalies could be further illustrated by examining the much-vaunted and universally accepted expression “human rights,” forgetting that human rights are understood differently by different parties; differently, for example, by a Palestinian in Gaza and by a Jewish settler in the West Bank. It is in the name of romantic-sounding human rights principles, the jurist Carl Schmitt wrote long ago, that the most savage crimes are committed against an entity or people declared outside of humanity. Once declared outside of humanity, a political entity at war and its civilians are no longer human beings; human rights no longer apply to them. The desire to impose universal human rights and global democracy was perfectly observed in the aerial bombings of German cities by the Western Allies during the Second World War.
Another widely used, rarely critically examined, term is the federally mandated “ affirmative action .” In addition to its content, which is well known to most employers, this term highlights a generic Soviet language. It is impossible to translate it word for word into other European languages, except by grossly altering its meaning. When translated into German or French, it generates an improper hybrid term such as “positive discrimination” ( positive Diskriminierung ). A legitimate question must be asked: if there is such a thing as “positive discrimination,” is there also such a thing as “negative discrimination”? The term “positive discrimination” is at once a lexical, conceptual, and legal anomaly that most legal professionals in the United States and the EU nevertheless consider an acceptable figure of speech.
Bad thinking criminalized
The terms “fascist” or “Nazi,” once used incessantly in the Soviet penal code to condemn dissidents, are now part of a similar demonizing vocabulary, especially in the EU judicial system. National Socialism or fascism no longer represent specific historical and political affiliations, having been transformed into symbols of absolute and ultimate Evil.
The German penal code contains a multitude of similar criminalizing expressions, often defying grammatical and morphological rules. The relatively new compound noun Volksverhetzung , which figures prominently in Article 130 of the German penal code, has been clumsily translated into English as “ incitement to hatred ,” although the German original has a much broader scope when used in indictments. This multi-meaning term represents a case of linguistic anomaly similar to the formulations of the Soviet judicial system. German citizens pejoratively call it a “ Gummiparagraph ” (rubber paragraph, or elastic clause) because its broad interpretation can land anyone who asks politically incorrect questions in jail, from someone who makes a joke about an illegal Somali migrant to someone who raises critical questions about the Holocaust or the state of Israel. Even an American lawyer who is perfectly versed in the German language would have difficulty deconstructing the meaning of this German term when defending his client in a German court.
Contrary to the liberal dogma about the supposed independence of the judiciary, it is always the ruling class that makes and unmakes the laws; the laws never make the ruling class. The widespread liberal myth that the Supreme Court acts as the ultimate independent arbiter during a state of emergency has never worked in practice. The Roman thinker Juvenal knew this long ago when he asked the timeless question: “But who will guard the guards?”
Tomislav Sunic
08/30/2024
Hate speech just means thought crime.
Hate crime means thought crime. Someone commits a crime, then an additional charge for what we claim he was thinking.