Libyans start an uprising against a dictator?
"EU lights North Africa on fire"!
Said uprising quickly became an
armed uprising backed by local power brokers who were promised recognition as a new government if they succeeded in toppling the current one. When they failed several EU countries, notably France, directly intervened to topple the libyan government and create the current anarchy. Without french intervention Libya would be back as it was. Now it has i nstead been in civil war for years. They must really be enjoying their "freedom".
Russian tanks roll into Ukraine?
"EU got a war going in Eastern Europe!"
Let us not forget that the EU escalated tension within Ukraine past breaking point by pushing its trade deal, knowing it would be divisive, and finally backed a coup. All of this before any tanks started rolling. That the stakes were high and it would lead to war was predictable.
Turkey having an autocratic streak?
"Gotta blame the EU again, somehow..."
Turkey has an autocratic president working to become dictator because for over a decade he has delivered economic growth to his constituency, thanks to favorable trade deals offered by the EU, allowing for a growth in exports and employment under his government.
I remember a time when your criticism against EU was grounded on reality.
Did it prove too constraining?
"If you remove anything that was bad about Hitler, he looks frighteningly similar to Juncker. They are both carbon-based life forms, for example!"
I try to point out the
likely (not just possible, almost everything is conceivable in the long term, but what I judge
likely) long-term effects of present policies. And, you know, I have been vindicated by later events in those worries.
Ok', let's make some historical parallels then. Juncker is not an Hitler. But he may be an EU Stresemann. The Hitlers of the future now have 1-2% at elections - as Hitler did when Stresemann fumbling his way through politics in 1920s Germany. And in some EU countries we've moved past Stresemann to Bruening.
The deflationary fetishists who rule over "the eurozone" and taking their entire economic policy out of Weimar Germany playbook - not surprising, they're the heirs of the german ordoliberals. So far they're pushed
other countries within the EU, not germany, to the untenable position of paying debts and interests while being structurally unable to gain a trade surplus large enough to do so. But the logic they use to justify the prescription of "internal devaluations" in an international scenario where everyone wants to export its way out of a global crisis is the exact same that caused the collapse of the liberal parties in the Weimar Republic. And what do we see across several european countries: the collapse of liberal parties in national politics. It has not reached Germany -
yet. It will. The EU economic policy is turning is being conducted down a similar path as Japan's was - and they're
30 years into a crisis and going.
The political scenario is different in Europe, of course, and I really don't think it likely that the EU can survive as a political construct much longer. But the stage is set that, in the
unlikely possibility the EU achieves an escape forwards by becoming "politically unified", there will be a huge constituency among its 400 million voters willing to support a future European dictator who comes up with an "european nationalism" and proposes some (
any...) radical change to economic policy. That is the sole programme I can see having any change of "uniting" voters from many countries: an EU rabid nationalism against external enemies, made possible by decades of frustration with economic problems and high unemployment.
This kind of political programme wouldn't gain much tract with germany's voters, because Germany has not been much harmed by the suicidal economic policies it has been imposed on the EU, the harm is falling primarily on others. But in some kind of "USE" the german population will be a minority voting block. A majority of voters will be from nations that have long been withering under the existing EU arrangements. Kind of like the rural vote in Weimar Germany supported the right-wing nationalists against the more liberal urban voters, while the urban pool dropped off from the contest.
A divided and discredited european "liberal" field made up of national parties that cannot be seen to cooperate too much (lest they be branded traitors by their own national-based electorates) will not be able to oppose a radical pan-european nationalism that can achieve unity across the EU by opening a fight against "external enemies". Be them the chinese, the russians, or even the americans. Reasons will be found. The liberals will instead cooperate with the new EU-nationalist forces, thinking them even useful to forge the new super-state they wanted, believing that they be directed and contained... So yes, there is a possibility for the EU to become a farce repeating 1933 in Germany. A slim possibility, but only because the possibility of the EU forging its "United States of Europe" instead of disbanding is slim.
The best possible outcome of the UK's EU referendum is a breakup of the EU, restoring freedom of action and meaningful democracy to national politics across Europe, and the reinstatement of the
separate agreements in the areas of trade, justice, foreign relations, etc, that served Europe well before the EU swallowed them all anc created the one-size-must-fit all monster it is today on a misguided, tremendously dangerous path to creating some kind of european supser-state.
...
