After a week of mass protests, Ireland was brought to a standstill. Farmers, truckers and hauliers blockaded motorways, ports and the country’s only oil refinery, leaving a third of petrol stations dry. The immediate trigger was a sharp spike in global fuel prices caused by the US-Israel military operations against Iran and the resulting disruptions in the Strait of Hormuz. But the deeper grievances were plain. Protesters demanded not only a fuel-price cap but the suspension of planned carbon-tax increases — policies that had already turned energy into a luxury for many households.
Underlying the anger, as commentators at MCC Brussels and elsewhere noted, was the cumulative burden of aggressive green decarbonisation combined with rapid mass immigration, both of which have imposed unbearable costs on working people while delivering no tangible benefits. The Government’s eventual response — €505 million in tax cuts and a delay of the carbon-tax hike — was an admission that elite climate and migration policies had finally produced a social explosion on the streets. Yet, like their counterparts in the EU and UK, the Irish Government has for long depended on elite-managed integration deliberately insulated from democratic politics and genuine popular support.
The European Union and the UK increasingly resemble the late Soviet Union in both institutional architecture and ideological rigidity. An unelected central bureaucracy sets the policy agenda while national parliaments and the European Parliament provide little more than democratic theatre. The Commission’s 32,000 civil servants, enjoying legal immunities and generous privileges,
Discussion
Comments
This week across the site:
To join in with the discussion please make a donation to the Daily Sceptic.
Profanity and abuse will be removed and may lead to a permanent ban.
While I agree with much of this I don’t think the statement “European Parliament are directed not by the communications directorate but by the security commissioner — evidence that defence and intelligence bureaucracies now sit upstream of politics. ” makes sense. If it were true surely the EU, UK and NATO would be spending much more on defence than the current risible amounts ?
It has been recognised for a long time that the structure of the EU is a reincarnation of the USSR.
Václav Klaus, the former President of the Czech Republic, stated in a 2009 interview that the European Union (Brussels) was rebuilding a system similar to the Soviet Union. “The mystery is why they are rebuilding the Soviet Union in Brussels” and he noted that the EU was creating a system lacking in democracy, transparency, and freedom, similar to the failed communist systems of eastern Europe.
Wasn’t it Gorbachev who remarked on how the EU was becoming the new USSR?
Increasingly? Only to those lacking any history and not paying attention.
What exactly do people think happened to the UK when post-1945 the Marxist-Labour Government took the economy and its workers into State-ownership aka Communism?
The EU (Fourth Reich) 1992, morphed out of the EEC 1958, which morphed out of European Coal & Steel Community 1953 – which was set up according to Mussolini’s Socialist principles of Corporatism – economic sectors planned and directed by corporations/bodies consisting of representatives of the State, representatives of private capitalism, representatives of workers, to run the economy to serve the higher interests of the State. Their equivalent in the USSR were Soviets.
So not increasingly becoming like, just increasingly overt about it because the hold over us of the evil-ones is so strong they don’t have to hide any more.
Mussolini’s idea of the corporatist state still refers to something inspired by the medieval guild system where incorporated entities representing different parts of society, eg, a corporation of factory workers (factory workers guild) and a corporation of factory owners (factory owners guild) cooperate to resolve practical problems. It has no relations to either the EU or socialism.
The European Coal and Steel Society (that’s a proper translation of Europäische Kohle- und Stahlgesellschaft while community isn’t) was founded by Robert Schuman and Konrad Adenauer with the intent to intertwine the French and German heavy industries to a sufficient degree that future wars between Germany and France would become impossible or – to use a more realistic description – Germany couldn’t again win a war against France because it wouldn’t be able to go to war against France ever again. The goal was “eternal” political domination of Germany by France via economic means. So far, this has worked.
If anything, this should be called the second empire (with Napoleon’s being the first). In the context of Germany, Reich (empire) always only refers to Germany itself, the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation being the first Reich, the German empire of 1871… Read more »
Not for nothing was the EU dubbed as the EUSSR a long time ago. Meanwhile Ireland has reduced fuel taxes but Reeves et al just sit on their hands and do nothing for our farmers and the transport industry.
That would be the ‘ever closer union’ bit of the treaty.
The “ever closer union” bit of the treaty, insofar it means anything at all, would be that the elected governments of the EU member states increasingly cooperate within the organizational framework of the EU to create EU-wide regulations instead of just national laws applicable to only one member state. This is a hair-brained idea because this will require exceedingly complicated solutions even for the most simple problems. But it’s not “democratic centralism.” That’s just term someone stole from Lenin to use in in a particularly bizarre guilt-by-association construction (namely, the one employed here).
Democratic centralism was Lenin’s theory how to implement democracy in a soviet republic, that is, a republic of councils. At the lowest level, there are local councils for large factories and similar entities whose members are directly elected party members. Due to its origins in the first world war, these were originally called worker’s and soldier’s soviets, the former elected from the workers of the crucial heavy industry factories and the latter, from the soldiers of larger military units. A number of these local councils band together and elect members for a supercouncil from among their members. This organizational principle continues until the central committee (or council) of the party which is the top-most politcal organ making decisions by majority vote of its members (slightly simplified).
This system is called democratic because the higher councils are always elected from and by the members of the councils on the next lower tier who may also recall the higher-tier council members they elected at any time. The reason it’s also called centralist is because decision flow strictly top-down: Higher-tier councils can give lower tier councils orders these must then execute which will based on orders to the higher-tier council which were given… Read more »
PS: The EU would be in much more trouble if its self-proclaimed opponents would actually fight it instead of just using some thoroughly distorted image of it as convenient bogeyman for keeping their own supporters in line. If it wouldn’t exist, they’d need to invent it.
PPS: This is obviously bad because a lot of seriously bad things are implemented by the people who use the EU as their political vehicle and typical EU opponents are of no use here because all they do is navelgazing.
I notice farm workers (peasants) did not have a say.
Peasants usually had some kind of “productive property” and generally no sympathies for the Bolshevists who considered them at best a relic of feudalism (the predominant economic system before capitalism) and at worst, minor members of the opressor class.
And here’s the main engine room behind it. Note Lammy’s presence yet absolutely nothing about it on his social media..
https://x.com/charlottecgill/status/2045879148011290667?s=46&t=uln_Zd1aZl1V8BGGmhEENQ
It does seem that much of the funding and direction of the progressive Left is American with the Western democracies dancing to their tune.
The EU ———The DUMMY RUN FOR GLOBAL GOVERNANCE. ——This is why Europe and the UK have this Mass Immigration Policy. Because they do not care where all the people live as they want to govern us all anyway, and infact the destruction of National Identity and Sovereignty helps them in that regard.
We are not govern we are ruled in a Charles I sort of way.
“Brussels operates through a form of “democratic centralism”, steadily transferring sovereignty from member states upward during successive crises — globalisation, Covid, Ukraine, migration.”
An even better term is Trotsky’s “substitutionism”. All Power to the People! .. to the Soviets!… to the Party… to the Party officials… to the Central Committee… to the Chairman.
And I love “a style of governance that conflates emotional signalling with competent statecraft.” There was a Spectator piece linked in the News here a few days ago – Joanna Williams? – which nailed exactly this legislative mania in the UK context. The effect, she argued, is to make adherence to the law seem completely optional. (As a side-effect, I later discovered a lovely new word: contumacy. Basically “I can’t be arsed to even be aware of or understand your latest stupid crackdown laws, let alone obey them”).
Politicians snd police and other parts of the state encourage the idea that compliance is optional when they announce they will fully cooperate with an investigation. When it comes to it they don’t!
Starmer used to boast of his compliance with process even when it was daft. Now we know he didn’t.
What the hell is “lived reality?”
Give it a rest.
It’s what used to be referred to as an opinion.
I think formulated in this way it’s meant to make it more incontestible. An opinion can be argued against. But reality? You can’t argue against reality.
Has anybody experienced an unlived reality?
Has anyone lived unreality.
I don’t know about living reality, but I see a lot of people struggling to see reality.
Oleg Gordoevski referred to the EU as the USSR without physical gulags.
The EU leaders should read the excellent book on the Third Reich by Michael Burleigh, the behaviour of the Party that ruled Germany from the 1930’s through to the fall of Hitler in the 1940’s bears many resemblences to the EU and the current Labour Party’s ideology.
I recommend it to readers.
Of course Von der Layen and co and Starmer would be affronted and horrified by the comparison, because they are in their minds “good leaders” and that they are doing what is best, but short of the extermination camps there is a great deal of similarity in intended outcomes, even if the methodology may not be the same. Yet. Although one can take into account the permissable murder of the baby up to the point of entry out of the birth canal, and the killing to be kind, assisted suicide bill. All done of course with only kindness as the main principle.
Do NOT let EU leaders read such a book. They will take it up as an instruction manual.
Excellent article. To understand the trajectory of The European Project, one must look to its inception.
Altiero Spinelli wrote The Manifesto for The United States of Europe on Ventotene Island in 1941. He was a communist. He founded the Federalist Movement in Italy after WWII. He advised fellow Founding Fathers of the now EU – De Gasperi, Spaak, Monnet. He went on to win his seat in the first elections for the European Parliament in 1979 as a Communist Mep. His ‘Spinelli Plan’ was voted through in 1984 by the Parliament and then folded in to the subsequent treaties.
Ventotene was referred to as “The Birthplace of Europe” in an official EU press conference held post Brexit.
The Communist Manifesto lists No Borders and the eradication of Nation States as central to the objective of realising Global Communism.
When it comes to Russia it’s interesting to note that 3 of the main public faces of that warmongering – Kallas, UVD and our owwn head of MI 6 (how and why?) Blaise Metrewelli all had grandfathers who were major Nazi figures.
Metrewelli’s was known as “The Butcher” for his role in the killing of Ukranian and jews in WW2.
Talk about carrying out a family tradition…
From one of my earlier comments about Robert Conquests laws:
I’d add a corollary to the second law:
Any organisation not explicitly Right-wing sooner or later becomes Left-wing. Any organisation already Left-wing sooner or later becomes totalitarian.
In sone ways, the lot currently in charge are even worse than the old Soviet Union.
Back then, I don’t think they pretended that they weren’t trying to force their ideology. They believed that some distasteful things needed to be done to achieve an ultimately worthwhile goal. They accepted they were totalitarian.
The current lot are totalitarians but lack all awareness of their totalitarianism. They call themselves centrists and everyone that doesn’t agree with them extremists.
What could be more totalitarian than basically saying that anything that isn’t what I think is completely beyond the pale? It is the very definition of intolerance.
You don’t believe we’re facing a climate catastrophe? Extremist. You don’t want so many immigrants? Extremist. You think there are only two sexes? Extremist. You don’t believe there should same sex marriage? Extremist. Etc..
Yep good points. We have governments who pretend they are not commies. They call themselves GREEN now because they know we won’t vote for REDS.