Europe's corporatist empire
The British people's decision to leave the European Union (EU) in the June 2016 referendum was painted by EU-rophiles as a victory for the far-right – even before the polls opened. But who are the real fascists?
Coup plotters
Yesterday the unelected commission that runs the EU came out in support of the latest of many violent coup attempts against the elected government of Venezuela. The latest scheme, backed by US Vice-President Mike Pence, saw the opposition-controlled National Assembly declare its speaker Juan Guaidó 'president' just days after Nicolas Maduro was sworn in for his second term.
“Violence and the excessive use of force by security forces are completely unacceptable, and will for sure not resolve the crisis,” the commission's 'foreign minister' Federica Mogherini insisted, days after 27 National Guard troops kidnapped their officers, seized weapons and tried to start an armed insurrection. “The Venezuelan people have the right to peacefully demonstrate, to freely chose its leaders and decide its future,” she asserted, after putschists kicked off a third wave of murderous rioting and torched a police station.
EU president Donald Tusk, whose second term in the post was nodded through without a vote in 2017 despite strenuous objections from his native Poland's government, tweeted: “I hope that all of Europe will unite in support of democratic forces in Venezuela.”
“Unlike Maduro, the parliamentary assembly, including Juan Guaidó have a democratic mandate from Venezuelan citizens,” Tusk said. But Guaidó was not even the Democratic Unity Roundtable (MUD) candidate in last May's presidential election, which Maduro won with over two-thirds of the vote against MUD 'moderate' Henri Falcon. Venezuela's “democratic” opposition has boycotted or claimed fraud in every election over the past two decades – except those it won.
Guaidó is from the small, extremist Popular Will (VP) party, whose leader Leopoldo López was jailed for inciting the 2014 guarimba riots that left 43 people dead. Other VP members were arrested in possession of rifles, explosives and lists of targets during 2017's repeat of the street violence. Guaidó's election as speaker and “president” marks a palace coup in the MUD, which chose to contest elections after 2017's second guarimba fizzled out after four months and over 120 deaths.
Threats from without and within
Yesterday Britain's senior counter-terrorism police officer Neil Basu claimed that the “febrile atmosphere” of Brexit, just two months away unless Parliament finds a way to thwart the will of the people, could lead to “extreme right-wing terrorism.” One might conclude that febrile atmosphere is confined to Basu's brain.
The reality is that the EU is in chaos while Britain remains calm. French cities are awash with 'Yellow Vest' protesters, with similar protests in neighbouring Belgium and Spain.
The new Pax Romana
Both fascism and the EU were born in Italy. Duce Benito Mussolini took as his symbol the ancient Roman fasces, a bundle of sticks bound around an axe, representing strength in unity. This is also the philosophy of the EU: all 28 nations (soon to be 27) must be as one against any opposition to the new Pax Romana, even when it's against their own national interests.
Last November French President Emmanuel Macron, who has dismissed the Gilet Jaunes as cousins of Hillary Clinton's “basket of deplorables”, asked Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg to thought-police his country on social media. On Tuesday he signed a military integration treaty with German Chancellor Angela Merkel which she said “contributes to the creation of a European army.”
The Italian government, derided as “far-right”, has broken an almighty taboo by blaming French colonialism for the hundreds of thousands of trafficked African migrants the EU expects it to shelter.
It's clear that what Neil Basu, Emmanuel Macron, the EU Commission and British Remainers fear most is old-fashioned class struggle. The Labour Party demands that Britain be kept under EU regulations after it leaves the bloc so the state – not trade unions – can defend “workers' rights”. That's echoed by unions who for years have condemned the EU-backed “race to the bottom” on wages and conditions. Instead they should start a race for the door marked “Brexit”.