The Dutch Prime Minister, Mark Rutte, reached for the neo-con playbook last week at a talk he gave at the Atlantic Council, a pro-NATO lobby group in Washington DC, when he compared the current situation in Ukraine with the Munich agreement of 30 September 1938.&nbsp; This was when France and Britain agreed to let Nazi Germany annex parts of Western Czechoslovakia populated by Germans.&nbsp;Hitler did this and then, in March 1939, invaded the whole of Bohemia and Moravia and broke up the country by encouraging an independent Slovakia.&nbsp; It was this betrayal by Hitler of the promises he had given at Munich which led London and Paris to issue their guarantee to Poland, which in due course led to the outbreak of war in September 1939.The lesson Rutte was trying to teach us is that you must not give territorial concessions to aggressors in the hope that they will bring peace.&nbsp; This argument has been trotted out remorselessly by the NATO war machine since at least 1999 as the Americans attack one country after another – Yugoslavia, Iraq, Libya, etc. – each successive national leader of the target state being presented as the new Hitler.&nbsp;Rutte added that Russia would not stop at Ukraine, if it prevailed there, but would instead advance further and eventually Finlandise the whole of Europe, just as Hitler went on to conquer the whole continent.&nbsp;This would be bad for the security of the USA, Rutte said, which amounts to an admission that Europe is fighting an American war.&nbsp; This a variant of the “domino theory” argument used to justify the Vietnam war (1955-1975)But is this the real lesson of Munich, of which Churchill famously said, “You had the choice between war and dishonour.&nbsp; You chose dishonour and you will have war”?&nbsp; &nbsp;France and Britain did not betray only their own principles at Munich.&nbsp; They also demonstrated a contempt for reality.&nbsp; The choice in 1938 was not so much between war and dishonour and still less between democracy and dictatorship or between aggressor and victim.&nbsp; These are all abstract terms.&nbsp; Instead, the choice was far more real: it was between Germany and Russia.&nbsp; It was a matter of pure Realpolitik - and the Western powers chose Germany.In 1938 it was simply not possible for France and Britain to stop Germany on their own.&nbsp; They did not have the necessary public support for war and they had not undertaken the necessary rearmament.&nbsp; Even if they had done these things, they could never have stopped Germany without the USSR, as the subsequent history of the Second World War demonstrated.&nbsp;Rutte’s notion (that of the neo-cons) that Munich was a failure of will is an illusion.&nbsp; It was far worse than that.Instead, at Munich, France and Germany showed that they were determined to exclude Russia from Europe.&nbsp; In May 1935, France and the USSR had signed a security treaty in which each country promised to support the other in the event of an attack.&nbsp; A fortnight later, the USSR signed an almost identical treaty with Czechoslovakia.Three years later, France and Britain preferred to spit in Russia’s face rather than invoke those treaties.&nbsp; This was in spite of the fact in 1934 the USSR had joined the League of Nations, convinced of the need for collective European security.&nbsp; Maxim Litvinov, the Soviet foreign minister, worked tirelessly for this throughout the 1930s.&nbsp;As the crisis over the Sudetenland grew, Moscow made it explicitly clear to Prague that it intended to honour the security guarantees it had given to Czechoslovakia.&nbsp; On 20 September 1938, ten days before Munich, the Soviet government sent a telegram to President Benes of Czechoslovakia reaffirming its support within the framework of the League of Nations.&nbsp;So why did London and Paris reject this proposal and decide to sacrifice Czechoslovakia instead?&nbsp; The suspicion must be that they went to Munich not because they were cowards but instead because they were cynics.&nbsp; They actually wanted Hitler to direct his aggression Eastwards, in the hope that the Nazis would finish off the Bolsheviks.&nbsp; The Spanish civil war (1936-1939) had seen the Nazis and the Soviets fight a proxy war by supporting the two sides against each other: some wanted them to fight a real war in the East.&nbsp; The Russians definitely believed that Munich was directed against them, whence their own cynical decision to sign a pact with the Germans instead, on 23 August 1939.This can be seen in the fact that, in October 1938, a few weeks after Munich, a Ukrainian nationalist regime took power the far East of Czechoslovakia, in Ruthenia.&nbsp; Prague was too weakened by Munich to prevent it and Germany encouraged it.&nbsp;Chamberlain’s special adviser, Sir Horace Wilson, eagerly predicted that Hitler would use this new Ukrainian nationalist entity and as a springboard for an invasion of Soviet Ukraine, invoking the principle of national self-determination, just as he had done in the Sudetenland.&nbsp; In the end, Hitler did not do this, partly because he was still juggling the Poles against the Hungarians who occupied this rebel area.&nbsp; Chamberlain and his team were no doubt disappointed.&nbsp;In any case, the sheer inability of the West to fight Germany in 1938 became terrifyingly clear the following year when France and Britain declared war on Germany, following the invasion of Poland.&nbsp; The Russians had tried again, in the summer of 1939, to get the Western allies to agree to collective security but the Poles would not have it.&nbsp; The failure to reach an agreement with Moscow is what caused the outbreak of the Second World War: Hitler saw his chance and took it.&nbsp;Without any hope of help from the USSR, the Western powers were powerless to stop Hitler in Poland.&nbsp; Instead of attacking Germany in the West, as they should have done, and as the Germans feared they would, they did nothing.&nbsp; This was the so-called “phoney war” which lasted until Hitler attacked the Netherlands, Belgium and France on 10 May 1940.&nbsp; The extent of unpreparedness for war, even in 1940 let alone in 1938, was cruelly demonstrated by the rout of the British at Dunkirk and by the capitulation of France in June 1940.&nbsp; Hitler no doubt calculated they would do nothing and that is why he felt able to launch the war against Poland.Winston Churchill, the great opponent of Munich, started to realise that Russia was key around 1936.&nbsp; He energetically opposed those who wanted “to keep Russia out of Europe altogether", to quote William Strang, the Foreign Office official who later headed a delegation to Moscow in 1939 as Britain under Chamberlain belatedly and incompetently tried to negotiate with the USSR. <a href="#_ftn1">[1]</a>&nbsp; On 16 October 1937, Churchill wrote that the Soviet Union was an essential element in the European balance of power.<a href="#_ftn2">[2]</a>&nbsp; Throughout these years, up to 1941 and beyond, the great anti-Communist learned to put aside his hatred of Bolsheviks and see the ancient nation of Russia and its geopolitical reality (“the great Russian mass” <a href="#_ftn3">[3]</a>) behind its ideological façade.Munich therefore was not just an act of dishonour, it was also a severe act of aggression against Moscow.&nbsp; Its violent rejection of the hand extended by Soviet Russia, and of the collective security Moscow proposed, anticipates the rejection by the USA and NATO of repeated proposals made by contemporary Russia for the same thing, the most recent and most violent rejection being those sent from Washington and Brussels to Moscow at the end of 2021 and the beginning of 2022, when Russia made one last-ditch attempt to obtain some sort of security guarantees from NATO.&nbsp; This is what triggered the Ukraine war.The lesson from Munich is therefore not the moralistic one that we should stand up against aggression.&nbsp; Such statements are infantile and meaningless without the means to enforce them.&nbsp; Rutte wants us to stand up to Russia now, but how?&nbsp;NATO probably cannot do it on its own, however many dozens of Leopard tanks eventually end up in Kiev’s hands.The lesson, instead, is that attempts to direct other states against Russia – Germany in 1938, Ukraine today - generally fail because of that country’s immensity and gigantic resources. For centuries, Russia has been part of what Churchill called “the equipoise of peace both in the West and in the East."<a href="#_ftn4">[4]</a>&nbsp; Whatever you think of the Russian regime, these are basic geopolitical facts which no amount of pious wishes about parallel history can remove.<hr>&nbsp;John Laughland is currently a Visiting Fellow at the Mathias Corvinus Collegium in Budapest.<hr>&nbsp;<a href="#_ftnref1">[1]</a> Louise Grace SHAW, The British Political Elite and the Soviet Union 1937-1939 (London: Routledge, 2003) p.68.<a href="#_ftnref2">[2]</a> Winston CHURCHILL, Step by Step 1936 - 1939, (London: Thomas Butterworth, 1939) p. 59.<a href="#_ftnref3">[3]</a> Speech at the Free Trade Hall, Manchester, 9 May 1938.<a href="#_ftnref4">[4]</a> CHURCHILL, Speech to the House of Commons, 5 November 1936, Hansard Vol. 322, Col. 1063.

WhatsApp Image 2023-01-25 at 10.11.27.jpeg

small_WhatsApp Image 2023-01-25 at 10.11.27.jpeg

thumbnail_WhatsApp Image 2023-01-25 at 10.11.27.jpeg

The real lessons of Munich

Vincent Vos is an councillor for FVD and staff member of the Renaissance Institute. He will give a lecture on the psychology behind totalitarian liberalism on Friday 21 January. Get your ticket <a href="https://fvd.nl/events/borrellezing-vincent-vos">here</a>.Last week, Thierry Baudet’s door was again vandalised after Deputy Prime Minister Sigrid Kaag, a member of the social-liberal party D66, called in the media for more resistance to the ‘extreme right’ and ‘conspiracy theorists’. Increasingly, we see intolerance rising among people who have declared themselves to be tolerant. This raises the question: ‘Why are these self-proclaimed tolerant people so intolerant of dissenters?’Recently, everyone has been able to see how quickly enlightened liberal man in the 21st century has gone from the Covid-hoax to the Ukraine-hoax. The speed at which media-narratives succeed each other is unprecedented. Whereas in recent years many people have turned away from the media, by far the majority of people still have great faith in them. All it takes is to turn on the television and we are bombarded with streams of information loaded with progressive-liberal content. Whether it is about LGBT hype, climate hype, unending immigration or globalisation; everything is framed to the citizen in a progressive-liberal way. We hear all the time slogans like 'Just be yourself,' 'It's our mission to save the world' and ‘We all have human rights.’The fact that citizens swallow this propaganda so easily has mainly to do with the great trust that the average Westerner still has in its institutions. This trust is based on the story that everyone in the West is taught from childhood: the terrible oppressors of the past have been defeated and we are 'free.'It is not only citizens who have taken this narrative for truth. Our leaders themselves have also come to believe in it. Certainly even at the geopolitical level, this agreement between Western leaders is clear. The war between Russia and the West is certainly not just about Ukraine. It is an ideological struggle between liberalism, which has achieved hegemony in the world through its institutions, and a coalition of illiberals who oppose it. Or, as the West frames it: moral enlightened humanity versus an evil relic of history. This has to do with a very important idea that emerged among political elites after the fall of the Berlin Wall.This sentiment is reflected most clearly in Francis Fukuyama's famous essay, 'The End of History and the Last Man.' In this essay Fukuyama argues that liberalism and the resulting liberal democracy is the philosophical end point of humanity. The authoritarian ideologies (fascism and communism) of the 20th century have been defeated and a new era of peace and prosperity has begun. This thought is not limited to the idea that liberalism has beaten other ideologies only because of luck: it is said to be self-evident that liberalism’s victory was inevitable. It is said to be the natural progression of humanity that would allow no other path. Therefore, the future must and will mean the domination of liberalism on a global level. Only backward barbarians need to be educated a little more.Whereas Fukuyama has partially revised his vision, this is not the case with our political leaders. The optimism which followed the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 is still baked into the brains of our elites. This can be seen by looking at the culture of governance in Western countries. Leaders do not govern as they used to. They merely follow what they see as the Zeitgeist. The Zeitgeist, according to the progressive-liberal, is a sort of magical force which always causes events to manifest themselves in this world in such a way as to ensure that ‘progress’ takes place. What ‘progress’ then means, however, they themselves have no idea. They do not even ask themselves this question. It has probably something to do with more progressive-liberalism.However, this dream of ‘progression’ started to fracture when it turned out that both from home and abroad there was more rebellion against this dream than expected. The rise of what elites call populism, the wars against regimes in the Middle East and the proxy war with Russia threw a spanner in the works. These ‘illiberal’ actors therefore had to be ‘educated’ and every means was allowed to do this.When a progressive-liberal is challenged on this intolerance of illiberalism, the argument they give is usually: 'We should not be tolerant of intolerance.' Justice Minister Dilan Yeşilgöz spoke exactly&nbsp;<a href="https://mobile.twitter.com/DilanYesilgoz/status/1569420292027568136">these words</a> at a lecture when she fantasized that FVD should be dissolved.This statement is known in political science as the tolerance paradox by the philosopher of science, Karl Popper. This paradox of tolerance comes from the book The Open Society and its Enemies. Popper is best known for his theory of falsification. This has become the benchmark of modern science. At first glance, this paradox seems logical. Tolerance can only exist if intolerance does not exist. Consequently, this is the explanation of liberals. However, the tolerance paradox only reveals the authoritarianism of liberals. In fact, the definition of tolerance is itself created by liberals: ‘to be tolerant, you must be liberal.’ The conclusion then becomes that in liberal-democratic society illiberalism must be repelled.Liberalism can actually only allow liberalism. The interesting thing is that progressive-liberals are so blinded by their own arrogance that they do not see their authoritarianism.&nbsp;They even project their arrogance onto the masses. This is a very dangerous development. Tolerance and intolerance are interpreted precisely in such a way by politicians now that they call dissidents who go against their own agenda ‘a threat to democracy.’ By democracy here is meant liberal-democracy. The appropriation of the term ‘democracy’ is again a manifestation of authoritarianism, as Marco van den Boomgaard&nbsp;<a href="https://fvdinternational.com/article/democracy-is-also-christian-conservative">described</a> well in his piece earlier this week on the website about the conflict between Hungary, European Union and George Soros (who called his NGO ‘The Open Society Foundation’ for good reason).&nbsp;Issues, such as climate change for example, are taken for granted by our elites. The people within a liberal democracy may then only vote for parties that actually think fundamentally the same about these issues and differ only in how they want to solve them technically. The choice between technical solution 1 and technical solution 2 is then the result. A debate about fundamentally different views is thus removed from politics. Democracy is gradually turning into technocracy. The increasing openness of clubs such as the World Economic Forum that want to ‘solve problems’ in this technical way shows the bankruptcy of the legitimacy of our ‘liberal democracy.’ The Western liberal political order has become so arrogant that they no longer see political debates on fundamentals as necessary. Dissenters who do not go along with the supposed obviousness of these topics are placed outside the consensus and portrayed as irrational or evil.&nbsp;This change has to do with the ideological arrogance of our administrators. Our elites are so sure of their own cosmopolitan vision of the world that other visions of life do not even exist for them. The future must and will lead to a progressive world government.‘Democracy’ will then only have the function of rummaging around in the margins to sell international, progressive-liberal policies to the people. Fundamental debates about where we should go with each other as a society therefore no longer take place.&nbsp;This is best illustrated by the philosophical concept of the Panopticon by the French philosopher, Michel Foucault. Panopticon shows how discipline has evolved in today's society. Society is said to be like the architectural form of the Panopticon. The citizen conforms to the state, according to Foucault, because he feels that he can be watched at any moment. We see this in cameras on the street, monitoring behaviour. On the other hand, we also see that the introduction of the cell phone has given citizens the opportunity to also monitor each other and the government at lightning speed by filming each other and sharing it en masse on social media.So it is not only the state which can do this monitoring directly. The interesting thing about the integration of social media into our lives is that we also send out what we are doing all day long, willingly. This in turn can be viewed by billions of other people in the world with an internet connection. Because the behaviour can be seen by all other people, the individual ‘voluntarily’ conforms to the idea of the progressive-liberal majority online. The ideas that everyone has already inherited from childhood only get elaborated online by the constant flow of new articles saying the same thing. This creates a similar situation to the Panopticon theory of state authority. The controlling mechanism that everyone conforms to is progressive liberalism. This can be called the democratisation of totalitarianism.The combination of a liberal hegemony that does not want to lose its power; institutions designed in such a way that ‘progressive-liberalism’ is the only possible outcome; the ‘self-evidentism’ to which many citizens in the West and administrators have fallen prey, and the consequent self-control, mean that Western liberalism has become totalitarian. It is so totalitarian, indeed, that the population of the West forces itself to be liberal. Russia could learn a lot from that.

medium_https___cdn-kiosk-api.jpg

small_https___cdn-kiosk-api.jpg

thumbnail_https___cdn-kiosk-api.jpg

Totalitarian liberalism

Marco van den Boomgaard is a FVD city council member and an expert, by personal experience, on Hungary. He gave a lecture to the Renaissance Institute on Hungarian politics on Friday 6 January&nbsp;Where does your affinity for Hungary stem from?My affinity with Hungary is multifold. My wife is a Hungarian from Romania. Before the First World War, Hungary was of course larger and until the Treaty of Versailles it included large parts of what is now Romania and Ukraine. This includes Transylvania, where my wife is from.Furthermore, my affinity with Hungary stems from the fact that I grew up in a quite conservative and Christian family. Many of these values I see reflected in Hungary and the surrounding countries. Precisely because the Hungarians have a history of oppression, their Hungarian pride is very important to them. Their folklore, folk dances and their own language are so important that even Hungarian minorities abroad hold on to them closely. Through my wife, I have experienced this pride and I gained a lot of respect for that. It is fantastic to see it, to experience it and to be able to represent a piece of it.I also find the historical and religious connections between Hungary and the Netherlands interesting. Hungary is, contrary to what people may think, largely Calvinist - just like the Netherlands. Prime Minister Orbán himself is a member of the Hungarian Reformed Church and his wife is Catholic. Michiel de Ruyter once freed 28 Reformed Hungarian ministers in Spain. Hungarians are still grateful for this. This is beautifully symbolized by the fact that every year the Hungarian ambassador lays a wreath at the Nieuwe Kerk in Amsterdam, where Michiel de Ruyter is buried.&nbsp;There is a lot going on right now in the media about the conflict between Hungary and the EU on the meaning of the democratic process. What is your view on this debate?I look at it more from the Hungarian point of view. The attitude of the EU in this conflict is sour. Ursula von der Leyen said at one point that Europe had the "tools in its hands", by which she meant freezing EU assets for Hungary. Because the EU initially thought that the progressive-liberal alliance would win the 2022 elections, it remained only a threat. When Orban won, the EU still wanted to punish Hungary. Why? Because of the illiberalism of the progressives in the West. They only accept the left-liberal agenda - nothing more. That's quite a limitation of democracy, isn't it? A Christian-conservative democracy is no less democratic than a liberal one but the EU is less and less willing to acknowledge that. For as long as this view continues to exist, democracy will be eroded more and more.&nbsp;So the interpretation of democracy is used as an ideological weapon by the EU to eliminate its opponents?Yes, and then the EU turns it around by saying that Orbán is an autocrat. This of course is pertinently untrue. It is a piece of projection, which fits perfectly into the EU's agenda.&nbsp; For example, it sells the story that there would only be limited academic freedom in Hungary, because the Hungarian government closed the Central European University that was founded by well-known businessman, George Soros. The reason for that closure had nothing to do with the nature of that university. But all that Hungary asked of that university was that they have a headquarters in the country in which they operate. In the Netherlands we have similar legislation. This Soros-university did not want to cooperate with that. After not complying, the university was closed down. Of course, that was grist for the mill of progressive-liberal Europe, when it was in fact just the normal course of events. Everything is being twisted. The bottom line is that Hungary is an obstacle to progressive-liberal plans, because Hungary proves that as a country you can flourish enormously as a conservative democracy. In fact before the COVID-situation, it was the fastest-growing economy in Europe. Of course, Hungary is part of the European Union and wants to remain so.&nbsp; So how do they view the EU's attacks on their democracy and culture? Isn't it a bone of contention?It certainly is. On one hand, Hungary benefits economically from the EU; on the other hand, Hungary does not want to be dominated by larger foreign players. This is of course because of the country's history. They have been occupied by the Ottomans and the Habsburgs. After the First World War, the country was drastically reduced in size and thirty years later the Soviet Union dominated the country again. This is why so many Hungarians have developed a great aversion to foreign powers.&nbsp; At the same time Hungarians also realize that they are in the middle of Europe and cannot escape cooperation with other countries. This complexity underlies the stalemate they find themselves in with the EU. They are in favor of the original membership. As a nation-state you should be able to cooperate within Europe, but what the EU is doing now is, among other things, imposing an ideology that does not fit their nature. Hungary never signed up for that.&nbsp;Does the progressive-liberal influence you're talking about come mainly from the EU or are there other actors that try to influence Hungary as well?There are plenty of outside influences on Hungarian democracy. A good example is the elections last April '22. There was mainly a struggle between two major blocs. On one side Fidesz, Orbán's party, and on the other side the large alliance of almost all other parties. That included the right-wing party Jobbik, the left-liberal Democratic Coalition, and the Hungarian Socialist Party. After the election, it was found out that millions were given to the alliance by American investors.Legal action will be taken, because in Hungary, as in the Netherlands, foreign funding is not allowed. What FVD is often accused of in the Netherlands, that we would supposedly receive money from Putin, actually happens in Hungary with Orbán's opponents, not from Russia but from America.&nbsp;How is Hungary behaving in the current conflict with Russia?They are handling it very well in my opinion. After the First World War, a big piece of Hungary went to Ukraine and that was very difficult for the newly created Hungarian minority. You can read in the media how Hungarians were treated in Ukraine between 2010 and 2012. You have to imagine that there were news reports that people were no longer allowed to speak the Hungarian language, sing their national anthem or raise the flag. If people knew where Hungarians lived, Molotov cocktails could be thrown through their windows. There was never any real crackdown on that. One news story I remember was about a Hungarian girl who was sleeping at home when a firebomb was thrown into her house downstairs. Those are the situations played out in those years.&nbsp;But when the conflict between Ukraine and Russia broke out, we saw that Hungary opened the borders and generously welcomed not only Hungarian minorities but also Ukrainians. That shows a good soul as far as I am concerned. Hungary's approach is that we should be committed to peace and not to supplying weapons and ammunition, which only escalates the conflict.

Marco_van_den_Boomgaard_FvD_Zoetermeer61fd3b657139c.jpg

medium_Marco_van_den_Boomgaard_FvD_Zoetermeer61fd3b657139c.jpg

small_Marco_van_den_Boomgaard_FvD_Zoetermeer61fd3b657139c.jpg

thumbnail_Marco_van_den_Boomgaard_FvD_Zoetermeer61fd3b657139c.jpg

"Democracy is also Christian-conservative"

The Mathias Corvinus College in Budapest, where I am a Visiting Fellow until the end of February, is an elite training college which students attend in addition to their main university studies.&nbsp; With a presence also in schools, and with regional centres across Hungary and even in neighbouring Romania and Ukraine, MCC is a creation of the Fidesz government of Viktor Orban.&nbsp; A public foundation funded by part-ownership of public companies, its goal is to promote talent in Hungary, to prevent emigration and – let’s be honest – to create a conservative, more or less Fidesz-friendly deep state to keep the flame alive when Orban is no longer in power.The Hungarians are a people of great initiative, not afraid of taking the battle to the enemy.&nbsp; It is in that spirit that MCC has just opened an office (or think-tank) in Brussels.&nbsp; Chaired by the Canadian-Hungarian academic, Frank Furedi, of the University of Kent, MCC Brussels aims to fight the stifling political correctness of the European Union.&nbsp;Furedi is an old leftist who cannot bear the New Left and who has written eloquently on the culture wars currently being waged in the West.&nbsp; He is devoted to the cause of free speech and open debate – you know, those old-fashioned ideas which pre-date the “war against disinformation”.MCC Brussels has hit the ground running by publishing its first briefing paper, aptly entitled&nbsp;<a href="https://brussels.mcc.hu/uploads/default/0001/01/5ebb0cb6d69541bedf89fa6a01743c21162ccad8.pdf">“Dangerous Game: the Weaponisation of the Rule of Law and the Attack on the Veto.”</a>&nbsp;The “rule of law” is, of course, the pretext used to blackmail Hungary into changing its domestic policies by withholding EU funds.&nbsp; The reference to the national veto is in the context of plans, suggested by the German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and others, to move to a fully federal system in which individual states would no longer have the power to block EU initiatives, as they currently do in a small number of areas including foreign policy.These two issues are in fact two sides of the same coin.&nbsp;As the paper explains, the “rule of law” is simply a way of fighting a culture war using the language of law, and by having recourse to coercive methods, rather than fighting it in the democratic arena with debate.&nbsp; What is at stake between Brussels, on the one hand, and Budapest and Warsaw on the other, are cultural values.&nbsp; The “rule of law” is in reality an ideological weapon designed to force these countries to adopt certain cultural and social policies using constraint.The paper shows that elite suspicion of popular sovereignty goes back to the very founding of the EU. It has only grown since then.&nbsp; The role of national parliaments is circumscribed ever more, by the EU bureaucracy and by the judiciary at national level.&nbsp; Politics is replaced by administration (the Commission) and, when that does not work, by the judiciary (especially the European Court of Human Rights) – a judiciary, incidentally, which is not a judiciary since many of the Strasbourg judges are not career judges at all but instead political activists.The MCC Brussels paper makes it very clear why this is happening.&nbsp; It is driven by a fear that“liberal democracy lacks the normative foundation to inspire the loyalty and affection of ordinary citizens. In recent years, transnational elites, such as those within the EU, have used international institutions to avoid the need to engage with the electorate and to convince citizens to adopt views that are generally unpopular in wider society. They rely on the authority of transnational or international institutions to side-step having to win the argument on contentious issues.”The authors argue that, whether it is over culture wars, Covid or the euro crisis, the EU tends increasingly to “use the legal form to communicate its political choices.”&nbsp; In this way, it thinks it is absolved of the need to subject those political choices to democratic debate.&nbsp; “One reason why European political establishment is prepared to endow the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) with a quasi-sacred authority is to ensure that fundamental questions touching on moral norms are taken out of the realm of politics.&nbsp; The outsourcing of moral and political authority to an apparently independent institutions like the ECHR, Constitutional Courts, or Courts of Justice, is symptomatic of the difficulty that post-war liberal democracy has in dealing with the realm of values. “Naturally, it is within the national framework that values other than those of the EU are expressed, and this only serves to confirm the deep hostility of the EU to the nation-state.&nbsp; So it is a self-fulfilling vicious circle: the EU provokes a reaction and then seeks to strengthen its own power as a counter-reaction.I particularly liked the observation that one reason why EU elites find the Hungarian and Polish positions so inimical is that they no longer encounter any traditional conservatives I their own countries.&nbsp; The British Conservatives and the German Christian Democrats have long since abandoned any attachment to traditional values and indeed any real opposition to globalisation at all.&nbsp; The only real ideological opposition in Europe is with FVD.MCC’s is a very good paper and it goes on to argue that, for the same reason and the “rule of law” must not be abused, the national veto also needs to be preserved.&nbsp; On the other hand, one has a depressing sense of déjà vu reading it.&nbsp;Three decades ago, European conservatives like Margaret Thatcher in Britain or Philippe de Villiers in France argued for a different Europe.&nbsp; They tried to prevent the drive towards federalism.&nbsp; Britain eventually succeeded, after a gargantuan battle lasting a generation, to extract itself from the process – only to waste the benefits of Brexit by embracing full-on globalism instead.&nbsp; France failed and has been caught up in a vortex of its own making.&nbsp;A small country like Hungary might, like the Gauls in the Asterix cartoons, preserve a little redoubt from the encircling imperial armies.&nbsp; Certainly, the Hungarian national mythology is full of such brave tales of resistance against empires, whether Habsburg or Ottoman or Soviet, even if they have often ended in defeat.&nbsp; But can Budapest change the tide and what will happen when its resistance crumbles?&nbsp;Maybe other countries will draw inspiration from the Hungarian model - but it is unlikely that any major EU state will do so, so penetrated are they all are by political correctness.&nbsp; However, although on balance it is more likely that the Hungarian and Polish opposition to the EU, partial as it is because both countries want to remain in both the EU and NATO, will eventually prove futile, it is nonetheless essential to continue the fight.&nbsp; We fight and we fight and, one day, God will give us victory.

large_Kepernyofoto-2022-11-17-16 (1).jpg

medium_Kepernyofoto-2022-11-17-16 (1).jpg

small_Kepernyofoto-2022-11-17-16 (1).jpg

thumbnail_Kepernyofoto-2022-11-17-16 (1).jpg

MCC Brussels denounces the EU’s “dangerous game”

When in September 2022 Thierry Baudet said that Sigrid Kaag, the Dutch deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister had attended the “spy college”, St Antony’s College, Oxford, the whole government walked out of the parliamentary chamber in protest.&nbsp; This moment was elected “Political Moment of the Year 2022” in a nationwide poll at the end of December.Not all students at St Antony’s are spies yet the deep links between the British intelligence services and that college are undeniable.&nbsp; The label “spy college” has been widely used – for instance, by the Australian historian, Sheila Fitzpatrick, in her 2013 book A Spy in the Archives&nbsp;(even though she was not a spy) and by the documentary film maker, Leslie Woodhead, in his 2005 book, My Life as a Spy.&nbsp; But these authors were simply repeating what everyone knew, the College having been set up by people who were themselves secret service agents.The first Warden of the College, founded in 1947, was thoroughly emblematic. A close associate of Sir Winston Churchill, whose books he helped to write, William (“Bill”) Deakin had distinguished himself during the war as an officer in the Special Operations Executive (SOE) in the Balkans where the British made a major contribution to the victory of Tito’s Communists (and to the defeat of the Royalists under Draza Mihailovic).&nbsp;SOE was a secret special forces organization involved in sabotage, espionage and reconnaissance in occupied Europe.&nbsp; There is a substantial literature on it and many of its officers were heroes.&nbsp;Unfortunately some of its operations were catastrophic failures, as with the sad story of the Englandspiel in the Netherlands from 1942-1944, when German counter-espionage infiltrated the cells, seized the weapons and captured all the agents.Another important figure linking the college to the British intelligence services was David Footman, who transitioned effortlessly from having working for 20 years as an MI6 agent to becoming a Fellow of St Antony’s in 1953.&nbsp; Footman initiated the weekly seminar on Soviet and Eastern European affairs, held every Monday at 5pm, which have now been running for half a century.&nbsp; The seminars have been part of the education of generations of students interested in area studies, in this case Russia.&nbsp; Since the college’s creation, seven other area research centres have been created, covering all the regions of the world – interestingly, the only area not studied is North America.In more recent times, the links between St Antony’s and the intelligence services have evolved with the changes those services have themselves undergone.&nbsp; Espionage is no longer only about collecting information: instead, it is about undertaking covert operations in order to influence outcomes.&nbsp; A good example of this are secret operations to effect political decision-making in other countries, of which the “colour revolutions” which spread on Russia’s borders and in the Middle East are a perfect example.&nbsp;This new role was well explained in a book published in 2000 and based on a conference held in St Antony’s: Agents for Change,&nbsp;edited by a veteran don, Harold Shukman.&nbsp; According to this set of beliefs, intelligence agencies have a role in shaping the world, not just in understanding it, putting forward progressive solutions against those proposed by “populist demagogues”.&nbsp; A perfect illustration of this new ethos came when Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022.&nbsp; The current head of the Secret Intelligence Services (MI6), Richard Moore, tweeted, “With the tragedy and destruction unfolding so distressingly in Ukraine, we should remember the hard won freedoms that distinguish us from Putin, none more than LGBT+ rights.&nbsp; So let’s resume our series of tweets to mark LGBTHM (LGBT human rights) 2022.”&nbsp; For the head of the British security services, war is approached purely in terms of emotion (‘tragedy’, ‘distress’) but not in terms of security; LGBT rights are the most important value at stake, not parliamentary democracy or the rule of law; and the right response to this attack is to do more tweets, i.e. to partake in pure gesture politics.A very representative figure in this respect is Timothy Garton Ash, professor of European Studies at St Antony’s.&nbsp; Garton Ash is a governor of Ditchley Park, which although a private foundation in fact serves the function of promoting the trans-Atlantic relationship and is staffed by appropriately senior former public officials from the British government.&nbsp; He is also a founder of the European Council on Foreign Relations, the European counterpart of the Council on Foreign Relations which is widely believed to be one of the most powerful organs of the American deep state.&nbsp; Garton Ash was awarded the CMG (Companion of the Order of St Michael and St George) which is traditionally given to diplomats or to those who have served their country in a non-military capacity in its foreign relations.&nbsp;You get the picture.But St Antony’s is not just the long arm of the British services, it is also a place where foreign students come to study who will later go on to work for the secret services of their respective countries of origin.&nbsp; In this way, networks and links are created between those “agents for change” who ultimately constitute a single global elite, often sharing more in common with each other than with their respective peoples.&nbsp; This is perhaps the most important role St Antony’s plays today – as Thierry said in his speech, St Antony’s is “a training college for globalist elites”.&nbsp; This only makes it all the more remarkable that Sigrid Kaag was so sensitive about the words “spy college” that she left the chamber and later called Thierry Baudet “an extremist” for uttering them.&nbsp;The lady doth protest too much, methinks.

What's the backstory behind the Dutch "Political moment of the Year 2022"?

large_St._antony's_College,_Oxford.jpg

medium_St._antony's_College,_Oxford.jpg

small_St._antony's_College,_Oxford.jpg

thumbnail_St._antony's_College,_Oxford.jpg

St Antony’s College Oxford – the “spy college”

<ul style="list-style-type:disc;"><li>The west is totally hypocritical concerning international law.</li><li>American war crimes in Iraq demand excuses</li><li>Neoconservatism and ‘democratising’ the Middle East do not work.</li></ul>On 22 December the Dutch Parliament debated the continuing the presence of the Dutch army in Iraq. The cabinet wants the mission to continue for yet another year.Forum for Democracy asks fundamental questions about whether the West can ‘democratise’ the world.We find it shockingly hypocritical that the West speaks of international law, while Afghanistan and Iraq were invaded without a valid reason. We think that apologies are due to the Afghan and and Iraqi peoples, because the West’s aggression has caused hundreds of thousands of civilian victims.&nbsp;With the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001, a new ideology erupted into American foreign policy - ‘neoconservatism’. The neo-cons argued that the Western world could never live in peace for as long as people from other countries lived without freedom, because living without freedom feeds radicalism and radicalism feeds terrorism.The attack on the Twin Towers was also almost immediately (and without much evidence) attributed, to an enigmatic organisation called ‘Al Queda’, that acted under the shady influence of an Arabian prince, one Osama Bin Laden.He was supposed to be sheltering in the mountains between Pakistan and Afghanistan, and from his cave sanctuary, had coordinated this attack. If we hoped to prevent acts of terror in the future, then we not only had to destroy this organisation but much more than that; we must bring democracy to the whole Muslim world.Due to the supposed connection to Bin Laden, Afghanistan was the first target. On 7 October 2001 the carpet bombing of Kabul, Kandahar and other regions of the country began. In the context of ‘Operation Enduring Freedom,’ the American army actually invaded Afghanistan intending to drive out the ruling Taliban.&nbsp;This war of conquest was not based on a United Nations resolution, nor did the United States present convincing evidence that the attacks of 9/11 were launched from Afghanistan. The attack could not count as self- defence and the war was therefore a violation of what we call International Law.When in August 2021, 20 years later, the United States admitted that their operation to drive out the Taliban had failed, they had already killed more than 243,000 people (and spent around 1,000 billion dollars).In January 2002, the Americans embarked on the next step of this new path of ‘democratisation’. They opened a special prison in Guantanamo Bay on Cuba where the rules concerning the treatment of prisoners of war would not apply, and where prisoners could be tortured without interference. The United States was not ashamed of this approach; they did it openly to show that they were not concerned with the Geneva Convention’s international agreement of basic principles of humanity.&nbsp;A new ‘regime change’ operation began and the following year at the beginning of 2003, this time in Iraq.On 5 February of that year, the US Secretary of State, Colin Powell, presented ‘evidence’ to the United Nations Security Council, claiming to prove that the Iraqi dictator, Saddam Hussein, had developed weapons of mass destruction. The world was not convinced (and later on, it appeared that the photos he used were also fake).&nbsp; In the absence of any United Nations resolution&nbsp; - and again on the spurious grounds of self-defence - the United States nevertheless invaded Iraq in March 2003.From July 2003, the Netherlands also participated in this war. In the meantime, the number of dead in Iraq totalled more than 288,000. The Netherlands is also guilty. A Dutch F16 killed 70 innocent citizens near Mosul in 2015.In the following years, other Middle Eastern countries had to deal with ‘regime change’ politics, with which policy makers and leaders were also involved, and the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), invaded Libya in 2011 - with a devastating war (and an uncontrollable refugee crises) to follow.&nbsp; The USA also started a proxy-war in Syria, in order to unseat the Assad regime: that failed due to the stabilising involvement of Russia from 2015 onwards.&nbsp;During this whole time, we saw that the West - often in flagrant opposition with the international law which they purport to support - spreading death and destruction in the Middle East, causing hundreds of thousands of civilian victims, uncontrollable streams of refugees and economic hardship without a demonstrable result.Therefore, what are we doing?Why do we continue to support this ‘regime change’ politics, while it has become absolutely clear that it does not work?&nbsp;Why should the Dutch military remain in Iraq any longer while not one single meaningful goal is served by their presence?The acknowledgement of one’s own faults, and the resulting adjustment of leadership, is one of the characteristics of civilisation.&nbsp;Since 9/11, foreign policy in the West has promoted, and is an example of, enormous and serious leadership errors. Making the world ‘safe by democracy’ has not worked. It led to an unsafe world, with many dead and at much financial cost.We must acknowledge that we cannot recreate the Middle East to mirror the liberal American model. We must recognise that the world comprises many opposing ‘poles’, cultures and groups within countries, and these demand respect.We must put an end to the hypocrisy of international law, now that we are aware that we have been completely wrong about it over the last three decades.&nbsp; We should apologise for the hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians who have died in these dreadful and absurd military operations.

On the futility of 'democratisation' and the hypocrisy of the West.

small_article_image_57253_7058824a48.jpg

thumbnail_article_image_57253_7058824a48.jpg

What is the Netherlands doing in Iraq?

The Dutch parliament is being asked to approve the extension of the Dutch military presence in Iraq for another year.&nbsp; This means that the country will have had a military presence there for nearly 10 years, with the first intervention dating back to 2003.Unlike France and Germany, indeed, the Netherlands sided with the illegal Anglo-American invasion of Iraq and participated in the occupation.&nbsp; Some 1,200 Dutch troops were deployed in the first two years of the US-UK occupation, starting in July 2003.&nbsp; The invasion and occupation of Iraq, and the ensuing civil war, killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqis.&nbsp; The Netherlands shares moral responsibility for this terrible toll.The current presence dates from 2014 when the Americans also returned to Iraq to fight the Islamic state, having officially left in 2011.&nbsp; The Netherlands was involved in at least one horrific event, in 2015, when an F-16 from the Dutch air force killed 70 civilians near Mosul.&nbsp;Today there are some 200 Dutch military personnel in Iraq, on the pretext that the war against the Islamic state has still not been won - even if the West claimed it had defeated ISIS in 2019.So the prolongation of the Dutch presence (and of Western forces generally) shows that it is has not worked and is not working.&nbsp; It is a classic example of mission creep: ISIS having been defeated territorially, it has now morphed into a guerrilla army.&nbsp; The original mission has been forgotten and a new one – policing – has taken its place.As a consequence, the Iraq intervention is beginning to look a lot like the Afghanistan intervention, which lasted 20 years from 2001 to 2021.&nbsp; It cost $1 trillion, thousands of American lives and hundreds of thousands of Afghan lives.&nbsp; Yet it ended it total failure and a rout: nearly 200 people were killed, including 13 US troops, in the suicide bombing at Kabul airport as the Americans left in August 2021.&nbsp; As with ISIS in Iraq, the Taliban were initially defeated in 2001.&nbsp; They then regrouped as a guerrilla but inexorably won back territory until, for years, the official Afghan government in reality governed only the centre of the capital.&nbsp; The Taliban is now in full control, as they were before 2001.Not only was that intervention a failure, it actually funded the very insurrection the occupying forces were fighting.&nbsp; The US occupation forces used subcontractors for logistics and these companies paid protection money to the various Taliban-associated militia which controlled most of the country.&nbsp; It was a surreal situation.Moreover, as the Afghanistan Papers showed – a collection of documents obtained by the Washington Post in 2019 – US army officers and Pentagon officials systematically lied to their superiors about the way the war was going, pretending it was going well in order to preserve and increase their jobs.&nbsp; Institutional self-interest won out against the truth and military victory.The justification now for the continuing Dutch and allied presence in Iraq demonstrates the same futility of such interventions.&nbsp; If Western forces are still required, 19 years after the illegal invasion, 8 years after the proclamation of the Islamic state and 2 years after its defeat, then it shows that they have failed.&nbsp; Yet paradoxically, as in Afghanistan, the longer the intervention continues, the more difficult it becomes to admit that failure because the political capital invested gets higher and higher as time goes on.Not only does the continuing Western presence in Iraq demonstrate the sheer impossibility of bringing such regions under control – regions which in any case do not affect European security.&nbsp; It also shows the folly of siding with the Americans who are pursuing their own geopolitical agenda.&nbsp; Iraq with its Shiite majority is prey to terrible violence between rival Shiite groups, some of whom are friendly to Iran.&nbsp; The real purpose of Western intervention is therefore in fact to keep Iraq out of the Iranian sphere of influence.In other words, the intervention is not 20 years old but 40 years old, dating as it does from the 1979 Islamic revolution in Iran and the Iran-Iraq war of 1980-1988.&nbsp; Iraq under Saddam Hussein was then supported by the Americans to wage war against the Islamic Republic: the future super-hawkish Secretary for Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, who would oversee the 2003 invasion, visited Saddam twice in Baghdad during this period to arm him with weapons including chemical weapons (which Saddam used against both the Iranians and the Kurds).&nbsp;Iraq is a quagmire and the sooner Western forces leave that country to its own devices, the better.

US_Navy_030402-N-5362A-004_U.S._Army_Sgt._Mark_Phiffer_stands_guard_duty_near_a_burning_oil_well_in_the_Rumaylah_Oil_Fields_in_Southern_Iraq.jpg

large_US_Navy_030402-N-5362A-004_U.S._Army_Sgt._Mark_Phiffer_stands_guard_duty_near_a_burning_oil_well_in_the_Rumaylah_Oil_Fields_in_Southern_Iraq.jpg

medium_US_Navy_030402-N-5362A-004_U.S._Army_Sgt._Mark_Phiffer_stands_guard_duty_near_a_burning_oil_well_in_the_Rumaylah_Oil_Fields_in_Southern_Iraq.jpg

small_US_Navy_030402-N-5362A-004_U.S._Army_Sgt._Mark_Phiffer_stands_guard_duty_near_a_burning_oil_well_in_the_Rumaylah_Oil_Fields_in_Southern_Iraq.jpg

thumbnail_US_Navy_030402-N-5362A-004_U.S._Army_Sgt._Mark_Phiffer_stands_guard_duty_near_a_burning_oil_well_in_the_Rumaylah_Oil_Fields_in_Southern_Iraq.jpg

Intervention does not work

A pioneer of European integration, Richard Coudenhove-Kalergi thought Europe would be better off without Russia and Britain. A contemporary of his, Heinrich Mann, begged to differ. Now that Brexit is a fact, Coudenhove-Kalergi's vision has finally become reality.Heinrich Mann and his brother Thomas Mann were the most prominent German intellectuals of the interwar period. Most aficionados of European literature are still familiar with the name of Thomas Mann, but his brother Heinrich seems to have sunk somewhat into obscurity. Heinrich Mann nevertheless stood at the cradle of the European integration process. He advocated for a "United States of Europe".&nbsp;Most Europeans will be more familiar with the name of another pioneer of European integration: the Austrian-Hungarian Richard Coudenhove-Kalergi, founder of the so-called Pan-Europa Movement. No wonder. There is a Coudenhove-Kalergi Europe Prize.Every two years, this prestigious prize is awarded to personalities who have significantly contributed to the project of a united Europe. The award is conferred by the European Society Coudenhove-Kalergi, founded in 1978 in honour of "the great European visionary".The list of laureates includes, among others, Jean-Claude Juncker, president of the European Commission (2010), Angela Merkel, chancellor of Germany (2010), and Ronald Reagan, president of the US (1992). In 2018, the prize was awarded posthumously to the so-called "Heavenly Hundred", the victims of the protests on Maidan Square in the Ukrainian capital Kiev.&nbsp;Kalergi PlanBut there is another reason why many are still familiar with the name Coudenhove-Kalergi. In recent years, one of his books, Praktischer Idealismus (Practical Idealism), has become an object of controversy on social and alternative media. In the book, which came out in 1925, Coudenhove-Kalergi sets out his vision for a "Eurasian-Negroid race of the future" that "will replace the diversity of peoples with a variety of personalities".This has led some to believe that there is such a thing as a "Kalergi Plan" that is actually being rolled out through mass immigration from Africa and the Middle East in order to undermine the ethnic, cultural, and national identities of native Europeans.To prove their point, they refer to, among others, former UN migration chief and EU Commissioner Peter Sutherland, who called on the EU to "undermine national homogeneity", and former German Minister of Finance Wolfgang Schäuble, who declared that "seclusion would plummet us into inbred".In March 2019, a former British member of the European Parliament, John Stuart Agnew of UKIP, asked the European Commission about the Coudenhove-Kalergi Europe Prize. "Kalergi's book Practical Idealism contains racist theories and rhetoric and espouses racial engineering", he said."This bears an uncanny parallel with the 'open door' immigration attitude to North African and African countries that we have seen throughout the EU Member States. Would the Commission assure my constituents that current EU immigration policies do not reflect and are not part of the 'Kalergi plan'?"&nbsp;"The European Commission neither engages in speculations nor is it aware of the existence of any 'plan' referred to by the Honourable Member", European Commissioner for Migration Dimitris Avramopoulos answered. "And the European Commission is not involved in the award of the European Society Coudenhove-Kalergi Prize".&nbsp;Little EuropeThere is no proof European elites are working on some secret plan set out by Coudenhove-Kalergi. But it is as clear as daylight that with Brexit, at least in one respect, the Europe that Coudenhove-Kalergi envisioned in his book Pan-Europa has finally become a reality: a united Europe without Russia and the UK, or a "Little Europe", as he called it.In his Pan-European Manifesto, published in 1923, Coudenhove-Kalergi described Russia and Great Britain as "world empires". They did not need to be part of a "Pan-European" community, because they were perfectly able to stand on their own feet - while other European states were dependent on each other, "destined to either perish together or to rise again".Coudenhove-Kalergi also saw practical problems for both "world empires" to become part of a federal Europe. He found that Europe would be better off without Britain, or "England" as he called it, because of its presence on five continents. At that time, Australia, Canada, South Africa, and India still belonged to Great Britain. "Europe would not be Europe anymore but an intercontinental world empire", Coudenhove-Kalergi argued in his his book, Pan-Europa (1923).Furthermore, he noted that Great Britain was connected to the US, as well, through "language, blood and culture", and maybe even stronger than to the European continent. This could lead to dual loyalty.Coudenhove-Kalergi did not want to welcome Russia either, because he thought the country posed a military threat."While Europe is divided into twenty-six states and even more sovereignties, Russia forms a unified political complex," he wrote in Pan-Europa. “Its territory is four and a half times the size of Pan-Europe and the number of inhabitants twice as large as that of the most populous European nation. No European country can militarily match an organised and industrialised Russia.”Russia's embrace of Bolshevism had added an extra danger, Coudenhove-Kalergi argued. "Its leaders have declared the destruction of European democracies". He, therefore, concluded: “The main goal of European politics must be the prevention of a Russian invasion. There is only one way to prevent this: bringing Europe together.”Moreover, by introducing Bolshevism, Russia had "broken with the democratic system" and had therefore "alienated itself from Europa", Coudenhove-Kalergi wrote.&nbsp; &nbsp;&nbsp;No Europe without Russia and BritainCoudenhove-Kalergi's contemporary Heinrich Mann begged to differ. He feared German nationalism more than Bolshevism or Russian imperialism. He called for resistance against National Socialism, both before Adolf Hitler seized power and afterwards when he was in exile.His principal political aim was for France and Germany to work towards economic unity in order to secure peace and to prevent Europe from becoming an "economic colony" of the US or a "military colony" of Asia, as he described it in his 1924 essay V.S.E.History proved Mann right. It was not Russia that led Europe into another war; it was Germany. Also, European unity is still relevant to prevent European countries from being squashed between the US and Asia.He could not imagine a united Europe without Britain and Russia. "There is no Europe without the birth ground of Shakespeare," he stated. He also considered Russia "economically and intellectually indispensable to us".Mann did not understand why Coudenhove-Kalergi rejected Russia for not being a democracy. He noted, "Neither Spain nor Italy are governed by parliament today." So why did not Coudenhove-Kalergi reject them too?Mann was a Realpolitiker, a pragmatic thinker. He thought Europe could not afford to keep Britain and Russia at a distance - and especially not Russia. "Europe exists only including Russia," he wrote in 1932. "The exclusion of Russia, which certain nationalists consider, would virtually be an immediate declaration of war."&nbsp;To keep the peace, European countries should welcome Russia into their midst. Because of its geographical position at the centre of Europe, Mann saw Germany as uniquely suited to act as a mediator between Russia and Western Europe."We have to hold up the middle ground between our neighbours in East and West, and not only in geographical terms," he wrote in his 1927 essay Ein Geistiges Locarno (A Locarno of the Spirit). In the same year, he expressed the same idea again in another speech in Paris, in French, where he regretted his inability to speak Russian. “Germany must never again become the enemy of Russia.”Still, there is no Heinrich Mann Europe Prize. There is only a Coudenhove-Kalergi Europe Prize. But this is something that might change. It would be a logical thing to do: to award those who have made an effort to make Europe a common home to all of us, no European country excluded.&nbsp;This article was originally published by Sputnik International:&nbsp; <a href="https://sputniknews.com/20200525/dream-come-true-eu-without-uk-and-russia-1079411351.html">https://sputniknews.com/20200525/dream-come-true-eu-without-uk-and-russia-1079411351.html</a>&nbsp;

Coudenhove-Kalergi thought Europe would be better off without Russia and Britain. Heinrich Mann, begged to differ.

large_mann152_v-contentxl (1).jpg

medium_mann152_v-contentxl (1).jpg

small_mann152_v-contentxl (1).jpg

thumbnail_mann152_v-contentxl (1).jpg

A Dream Come True: a Europe Without Britain or Russia

Interview with Václav KlausTo many of us, no matter how well versed in history, in political affairs or in socioeconomic issues, the present conditions in the West, and especially in Europe, can sometimes seem like the plot of a bad movie. It is often said that history doesn’t repeat itself, but it does rhyme, and what we’re seeing today is a great example of that. Nevertheless, one would have expected that at least some of those in charge of the “big decisions” would have learned something from the mistakes of the past – if not the mistakes of their predecessors, at least their own.The current political trajectory, which is a mere acceleration of the trend of the past decades toward further centralization and concentration of power in the hands of the “anointed” few, has now clearly entered an especially dangerous phase. The purposeful disempowerment of the individual, the infantilization of the body politic, the suppression of free debate and the demonization of dissent, have brought our societies and our economies to their breaking point.&nbsp;An actual war is raging in Ukraine, with countless direct and indirect victims, an economic crisis like no other in recent memory is ravaging working households and that “invisible thief”, namely inflation, is wiping out whatever was left of the middle class, forcing once-benefactors of food banks to become their beneficiaries. All the while, it seems that nobody is placing the blame where it belongs.&nbsp;It is musings and questions like these that we recently discussed with Former President of the Czech Republic, Prof. Ing.&nbsp;<a href="https://www.klaus.cz/english-pages/">Václav Klaus</a>. In the interview that follows, he offers a lot of food of thought, drawing from his own extensive experience in politics during the most challenging times in modern memory and his deep understanding of geopolitics, economics and human nature itself.&nbsp;&nbsp;<hr>&nbsp;Claudio Grass (CG): Although one can argue that Europe has been in a state of crisis for at least a decade, it can be argued that this time it’s different. There’s an actual war on its doorstep and everyone is paying the price, in one form or another, not just the direct adversaries. Russia’s advances have essentially come to a standstill, while cracks in the European economy and tears in the social fabric are getting worse by the day. How long do you think this can go on and what are your biggest concerns about the continuation of this conflict?Václav Klaus (VK):&nbsp;I agree that it is different now. The current crisis, which is much deeper than the situations that we (or the politicians) irresponsibly labelled as “crises” in the past. This is the outcome of a unique combination of factors and causes. Some of them are directly visible and make headlines, others are invisible and therefore not sufficiently exposed or discussed.&nbsp;The first group of factors consists of individual events, whereas the second one consists of&nbsp;slow, incremental changes of the political, social and economic system.&nbsp;They are not statistically measurable. No one can see them, because they happen in small steps. Nevertheless, it is this second set of developments that is more worrying.&nbsp;War, the energy crisis and mass migration make headlines, but systemic changes don’t.&nbsp;I am afraid that we are not paying attention to how far we have already moved away from free markets and political democracy.CG: As we habitually see during every conflict, propaganda machines go on overdrive and fear-mongering campaigns spread panic and division among the population. A few weeks into this war and increasingly ever since, blanket-hate for “all of the West” or “all Russians” is being propagated. How do you assess collectivist viewpoints like these?VK:&nbsp;I sometimes erroneously underestimate the role of propaganda, because I believe that by not watching TV or by being insulated from social networks, I am immune to it. I admit that it is a wrong perspective.&nbsp;Direct propaganda is one thing, but the general one-sidedness and bias of the media is much worse. What we are experiencing now is similar to what we went through last time in the 1950s and 1960s. I admire George Orwell, I consider him a genius and his book “1984” a historic achievement. But I was always opposed to the hyperbolic and overdramatic use of Orwellian aphorisms to describe real-world affairs. I was afraid to trivialize the situation or my enemies and opponents. It is different now. Orwell has become directly applicable.&nbsp;CG: There are growing calls in Europe for a “Marshall Plan” for Ukraine, the loudest among those coming from the likes of German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. Rebuilding Ukraine is estimated to cost around $350 billion, according to the World Bank. Given the results of the original Marshall Plan, do you think repeating it now would be a good idea?VK:&nbsp;As an economist, I do not believe in Marshall Plans in general and in the post-second world war Marshall Plan in particular. The importance of the original one was propagandistically overplayed.&nbsp;I know of studies that demonstrate its marginal role.&nbsp;Postwar European reconstruction was the work of Ludwig Erhard, not George Marshall.&nbsp;The role of foreign aid has been canonically exposed by Peter Bauer, Deepak Lal and others. Foreign aid pleases the donors more than the recipients. I see it now in the eyes of Czech politicians. It is not their own money they’re giving away.CG: While the war has monopolized media attention and political speeches, there are a lot more problems and threats that Europeans are facing and most of them preceded it, but no-one really paid attention. Inflation is the most severe of those and it’s forcing countless households to make impossible choices. Western politicians are blaming it all on “Putin’s war”, but do you think that monetary and fiscal policy makers in the Eurozone in particular have to assume any responsibility themselves?VK:&nbsp;I consider inflation to be the most important problem these days. It’s not only about Putin, it’s about the Green Deal and especially about the inflationary monetary and fiscal policies, which became “normal” after the 2008-2009 recession.&nbsp;Quantitative easing and zero (or negative) interest rates in central bank monetary policy and deficit financing in government fiscal policies created macroeconomic disequilibrium. We are living in an inflationary atmosphere and can’t get rid of it without fundamental breaks in monetary and fiscal policies.&nbsp;To my great regret,&nbsp;Keynes is the winner of the day, not Milton Friedman.&nbsp;This is something I did not expect, but that is the new reality. Friedman, not Keynes, was my hero in the dark days of communism and it is frustrating that in the bright days of “the brave new world” of the EU and of “liberal democracies”, Keynes is back on the pedestal.CG: We’ve seen a lot of misguided policies adopted in the EU that divided the public and eventually inflicted a lot of damage on the economy and on society at large, from immigration to the “green agenda”. There have been widespread protests over the years, but little changed, if anything at all. However, do you expect the public anger to be more fiery and more effective this time, as more and more people struggle to put food on the table?VK:&nbsp;The EU policies are absolutely wrong and therefore damaging. You mention potential protests – I don’t see any. Europe and the whole of the West is marching to the left, towards collectivism, towards state interventionism. If there are any protests, they are against the market.&nbsp;There are practically no meaningful protests against the European system of massive state interventionism and the existing ones cannot change anything.&nbsp;There is a dissatisfaction, but no real protests.&nbsp;People still believe in the possibility of improving the functioning of the existing system, they still call it a market economy and a parliamentary democracy. This is, however, not a correct interpretation of the current state of affairs.&nbsp;CG: Having lived under communism and having experienced directly the way the State uses fear to manipulate and control the populace, to muzzle dissent and open debate and to enforce policies that no free-thinking, rational individual would otherwise accept. Even though our politicians today insist that our Western democracies are all about liberty, core values like freedom of speech or individual financial sovereignty have been increasingly curbed over the years. Do you think any of this is reversible or are we destined to repeat the mistakes of the past that you had to live through?VK:&nbsp;It is undoubtedly reversible, but I don’t see anyone ready and able to do it. What is necessary is not just marginal reforms. There needs to be a fundamental transformation of the system and I am not sure the voters are interested in that.&nbsp;Changes may come, but not in the foreseeable future. I know it sounds pessimistic, but I think that making a change is not a task for me or for my children, but for my grandchildren.Claudio Grass, Hünenberg See, SwitzerlandThis article has been published in the&nbsp;<a href="https://proaurum.ch/aktuellwichtig/precious-metals-are-and-always-have-been-the-ultimate-insurance">Newsroom</a>&nbsp;of&nbsp;<a href="https://proaurum.ch/leistungen/edelmetallverwahrung/duty-free-storage">pro aurum</a>, the leading precious metals company in Europe with an independent subsidiary in Switzerland.&nbsp;

Interview with former Czech president Václav Klaus.

large_dsc-1338 (1).jpeg

medium_dsc-1338 (1).jpeg

small_dsc-1338 (1).jpeg

thumbnail_dsc-1338 (1).jpeg

“Keynes is the winner of the day, not Milton Friedman”

Forum for Democracy International

pawel_czerwinski_Huhz_Izuj_Hm_Y_unsplash_9cbc70646e.jpeg

Support our movement

Support our movement