The EU, a dystopia marching toward nothingness

From a promise of peace, democracy and prosperity we are failing on an abyss of war, surveillance and recession.

By Jean-Paul Foscarvel for Reseauinternational.net

Peace.

It was supposed to be the basis of everything, the foundation of European integration, in light of the tragedy of the Second World War (never again). The EU even received the Nobel Peace Prize from the Swedish Nobel Academy. It was as if Europe had awarded itself the prize for peace on earth, forgetting a past made up of glories based on the destruction of others.

The wars in the Balkans, then in Kosovo, had already cast a stain on this ideal of peace, when Germany sponsored Croatia's independence, leading to the breakup of Yugoslavia. But this was in the name of the free determination of peoples to decide for themselves.

In 2014, the EU demanded that Ukraine choose between a partnership with itself or continuing its trade relations with Russia. There was no alternative. Faced with the leaders' hesitation, a muddle supported by the EU and the US led to a regime overthrow with a witch hunt against Russian speakers. Chaos ensued there. Russia intervened to protect the Russian-speaking population, which opened the conflict to intervention by NATO and the EU.

Today, the EU is at near-open war against Russia and is demanding direct intervention in Ukraine, at the very moment when the US is trying to broker peace with Russia. It's a remarkable achievement for European diplomacy to sponsor a conflict that can only lead to the great third, with the nuclear end of human civilization.

Peace, therefore, for EU leaders, is war.

Democracy.

Democracy was a response to the Soviet sphere, which was its repellant. Over there, the dictatorship was protected by a wall of shame; here, the era of freedom was established, democracy being characterized first and foremost by free access to a market where undistorted competition was the rule. The Maastricht Treaties, then the Constitution, defined the framework.

There was already something wrong with this structure, where the Commission, appointed and not elected, proposed regulations to a parliament that was certainly elected, but without the capacity to create laws itself. A strange parliament without its own initiative, which approves by a simple majority and must reject by a majority of registered members the proposals of the European Commission.

Contrary to the separation of powers, the Commission has the power to decide and legislate, since it is the one that defines and implements the regulations, and to sanction states that do not meet its requirements. It therefore has all three powers united in a single unelected person, the President of the European Commission.

The icing on the cake was that this constitution was rejected by two peoples, the French and the Dutch, which served no purpose. All they had to do was stop asking their opinion.

Beyond this organization where the people have no say, the values ​​of democracy were proclaimed as fundamental, probably inspired by the countries of the North, examples of democracies ruled by so-called comic-opera monarchs who underpin a system of absolute inequality based on privileges from another age. The Queen of England even refused to sign the inauguration of an Australian Prime Minister because he was too left-leaning. We have the democratic principles we can.

Democratic values ​​are thus summed up as human rights, seen as the right to have an inalienable identity and the right to present oneself on the market without this identity being a hindrance, in which case discrimination is denounced.

Democratic values ​​are therefore those of unlimited access to the market (that of labor, capital, property, consumption, etc.).

However, since these values ​​are inherently those of democracy, their criticism constitutes a violation of this same democracy and is therefore condemned.

The result is a whole system of control, censorship, sanctions, and repression against those who oppose a vision of democracy reduced to the proper functioning of the capitalist market in the name of democracy. Today, even complete control of emails by the EU is being considered in the name of this democracy.

In addition to citizens not having real access to political choices, they no longer have free speech—when they choose incompatible EU leaders, the EU no longer hesitates to cancel elections or ban these undesirable and popular leaders—they become producers-consumers, individuals whose only freedom is to enter the market in order to survive. The EU's values ​​boil down to the market at all costs.

But even this is now under threat, because it is no longer a question of consuming in a free market, but of consuming in a market itself controlled by regulations, particularly those concerning ecology and decarbonization.

The space of free and undistorted competition is joined by that of binding rules on the consumption and manufacture of automobiles, houses, dwellings, and the very circulation of money, now being completely controlled by monetary digitization. The market itself, the alpha and omega of the EU, is no longer free, but completely controlled.

There is thus no longer any freedom for citizens in terms of politics, whether in electoral choices or even free thought, nor any freedom of choice for social actors in terms of production and consumption. It is completely monitored and controlled.

European democracy is thus becoming a dystopia that concerns the integrity of citizens' lives, depriving them of real choice through an unprecedented system of surveillance, control, and sanctions. As if a vast panopticon had been created, transforming the EU into a perfect prison.

Prosperity.

Europe, as a model of peace and democracy, must also achieve economic prosperity resulting from the advantage its peaceful, free, and open citizens have in accessing a dynamic and highly efficient market.

All the bureaucratic constraints imposed by the EU, as well as the creation of the euro, have destabilized both budgetary and economic balances. The demand for privatization, including of public services, combined with deficit restrictions, has deprived states of the means to implement their policies. The creation of the euro, with varying productivity and living standards between states, has caused hidden but uncontrolled inflation in some of them. Social rights and welfare benefits have gradually evaporated, and structural adjustments have condemned some of the most fragile states, such as Greece, to economic collapse.

Today, with the war depriving the EU of gas, albeit Russian, but cheap, combined with the demand for clean energy, energy prices are exploding, with an electricity system heading towards global collapse, as was already the case recently following the Spanish outage, probably due to grid instability.

Large manufacturing companies are either closing or relocating, as was the case recently with ArcelorMittal in France, and inflation continues to dangerously strain the budgets of households already on the verge of collapse.

It is not only households that are in danger, but also most European countries, including the largest: Germany, France, Spain, and the United Kingdom, the latter of which, despite having left the EU, continues to pursue similar policies internally.

Ultimately, it is the long-term economic capacity that is being called into question, with dramatic consequences in sight that could lead to widespread poverty for the people, with prosperity remaining reserved for an oligarchy that monopolizes all available goods.

The fall. Nothing is inexorable, however, the unrestricted pursuit of the trajectory currently pursued by the European Union is leading us to catastrophe.

Why, instead of righting the ship, does the EU insist on prolonging and accentuating the effects of its policy, why doesn't it question its disastrous decisions? Quite simply because the European elite is right. They hold high positions of responsibility, have received expensive and elitist education, come from exceptional backgrounds, have decision-making power beyond challenge, and are surrounded by a communications system that is absolutely loyal to them. They receive no signals indicating any error in even the slightest of their decisions. They are protected from any possible criticism. As for the people who try to rebel, they are ignorant, toothless fools, deplorables who make bad choices in every way. Their protests should therefore not be taken into account, but rather kept within a controlled flow of communication and prohibited from making choices considered harmful, because they are subject to cognitive biases that must be eradicated.

The logical application of necessary policies then leads to unforeseen dialectical effects that endanger the very people who make these choices without critical reflection, much like an airplane or ship crew that makes bad decisions while being certain they are right, without events ever causing this crew to escape the error they are making, following a self-certainty stemming from past positive experience (I've never had an accident, so I can't have one) and the internal arrogance (supposedly elite training) of those who are incapable of questioning themselves... until the final crash.

Will we be able to act before this final stage?

Source: Agoravox via L’Observateur Continental