Project Hope prevails over Project Fear in Brexit referendum

All Hail to those UK democrats who have made “Project Hope” prevail over “Project Fear” and decided that they want to win back Britain’s political independence and national democracy in face of the undemocratic monster that is the European Union.

Let us rejoice at the discomfiture of the Brussels Eurocrats and their acolytes in every EU country – in Ireland the likes of such anti-democratic, anti-national ideologues as Peter Sutherland, Alan Dukes, Brendan Halligan, Brigid Laffan et al, plus the clique of Eurofanatics that decides Irish Times editorial policy on the EU.

Democrats in the Republic of Ireland should now seek to win back Ireland’s independence by following Britain out of the EU and the Eurozone. Leaving the EU is the only legal way in which Ireland can disentangle itself from the disastrous Eurozone, joining which was the biggest mistake ever made by the Irish State.

Ireland does two-thirds of its foreign trade outside the nineteen-member Eurozone: two-thirds of its exports and three quarters of its imports. It is essential that Ireland has a special deal governing its UK trade, but while it stays in the EU it is Brussels Commission, not an independent Irish Government, that decides the Republic’s trade arrangements. In any case those running the present and all foreseeable Irish Governments share the anti-national and anti-democratic mind-set of the Eurocrats.

British Labour paid the penalty in yesterday’s referendum for failing to stand for British national independence and democracy. If the political Left does not stand for national independence, it is inevitable that the political Right will. This is a lesson that is universally applicable. It is what Ireland’s James Connolly taught in his writings and by example – the Labour leader who was one of the signatories of Ireland’s 1916 Easter Rising proclamation.

Ireland’s democrats who understand the EU issue will look today with contempt on those politicians in the Fine Gael, Fianna Fail, Labour and Sinn Fein parties who shamefully lent themselves to the campaign of bullying, lies and fear-mongering against ordinary UK citizens that characterized the “Remain” side in the Brexit referendum.

This world-historical act of rejection of the EU by the British people will encourage democrats in every EU country, whether on the political Right, Left or Centre, to push ahead with their struggle against the anti-democratic and reactionary EU/Eurzone and to seek to replace it with a Europe of independent, democratic and cooperating Nation States.

The EU is an out-of-date construct left over from the Cold War. It is inevitable that it will disappear in time, and the sooner that happens the better for national democracy, the true welfare of Europe’s peoples and peace and good international relations on our continent.

Best wishes from Ireland to all UK democrats as you seek to implement yesterday’s admirable decision in the period ahead.

Anthony Coughlan

Director

NB. Scottish talk of “independence in Europe” is a contradiction in terms. Scotland’s independence referendum last year was premised on a supposedly “independent” Scotland retaining the pound sterling as its currency. Do those who talk of Scotland remaining in the EU while the rest of the United Kingdom leaves, not realise that in order to do that Scotland would have to adopt the disastrous euro-currency and all the reactionary apparatus that goes with it?

This is an extract from 'Tackling the EU Empire: basic critical facts on EU/Eurozone – a handbook for European Democrats', written by Anthony Coughlan. The full document can be read on here web-site.

**The National Platform EU Research and Information Centre** is based in Ireland at 24 Crawford Avenue, Dublin 9. Tel.: +353 (0)1-830-5792. https://nationalplatform.org

EU IDEOLOGY – SUPRANATIONALISM

Supranationalism – from Latin supra,”above” – is where Nation States surrender their authority to a superior entity that rules them and has legal primacy over them, at least in the policy areas surrendered. An example is a multinational Federal State where sovereignty is divided between a superior federal level and inferior national or regional states. Such contemporary Federations as India, Pakistan, Russia or Nigeria are instances. Or it can refer to imperial arrangements like the Austro-Hungarian Empire, once known asa “prison-house of nations”, where different countries are ruled by a centralized bureaucracy in a far-away imperial capital.

The EU has features of both these forms of supranationalism. Supranationalism is the opposite of internationalism, which is a benign and progressive concept. Internationalism – from Latin inter, “between” – implies the pre-existence of sovereign Nation States. It refers to relations of co-operation between the States that constitute the international community, but with each controlling and deciding its own domestic and external affairs in accordance with the wishes of its people. Recognition of States based on the right to self-determination of nations and peoples is a basic principle of modern democracy and international law.

Supranationalism, in contrast to internationalism, implies a hierarchy, with the supranational level on top. Internationalism implies legal and political equality between the parties. Properly understood, internationalism is opposed to all forms of chauvinism and xenophobia. It implies coexistence among progressive “nationalisms” – that is, broad nationalisms rather than narrow, using the positive rather than the negative sense of that word in English. It implies patriotism and love of country, combined with respect for the many national communities into which humanity is divided and admiration for their varied cultural and other achievements.

Internationalism delights in the diversity of nations. Supranationalism seeks to erode national differences, eitherbecause they threaten the dominance of a particular ruling power or they make it more difficult for transnational Big Business to establish a world of homogenized consumers and employees. Supranationalism seeks the erosion of State sovereignty. Internationalism seeks to establish and maintain it.

The glory of European civilisation has been the diversity of its national components – in culture, science, political institutions, economic actors, legal systems, education systems, tax codes,fashion. In classical Europe emulation and competition between nations, communities and individuals spurred creativity and innovation. They contrasted with the centralized empires of China, Japan, India and the Ottomans. The peak of Europe’s cultural achievements occurred when its political units were numerous and small – in Athenian Greece, Renaissance Italy, 17th century Netherlands, 18th century Germany. This classical Europe, which is synonymous with much of what is best in human civilization, is the opposite of the centralised “Europe” of the Brussels bureaucracy, with its mania for imposing uniformity and “harmonization” by means of supranational laws.

EU supranationalism means rule by technocrats, supposed experts who are not elected, without democratic control. The EU Commission is a good example. Supranationalism leaves ordinary people cold. In the EU it means “Brussels talking to Brussels” as the elite groups concerned get ever more removed from citizen voters in the different national communities they come from. It means the governments of the bigger Member States using the EU’s supranational institutions to impose their hegemony on the smaller, while at the same time seeking to leverage the EU bloc as a whole into becoming a world power through which the government of each Big State hopes to wield more influence externally than it can ever do on its own. Lust for world power is the mainspring of EU supranationalism. National democracy is to be sacrificed to that end, while economic laissez-faire is made a constitutional imperative everywhere in the interest of powerful national economic elites, particularly those of the big countries. Supranationalism and internationalism propose quite opposite visions of different ideal “Europes”.

Supranationalists seek to encourage the illusion that one must belong to a big political unit to be prosperous. That is false. There is no connection between size of country and peoples’ living standards. The richest countries in the world are mostly small. The two European countries with the highest standard of living for their populations are Norway and Switzerland – both independent and outside the EU.

The historical and moral guilt of those pushing the European “project” is great. They work to subvert the democracy and national independence of their own peoples and to transfer control of their societies to supranational elites with whom they identify and who reward them generously. Their own peoples meanwhile become disillusioned and depoliticized, while the economic prosperity they have been promised if they shift to supranationalism proves a mirage for many.

The European Union is the ghost of the real Europe. When it calls itself “Europe” and believes it is Europe it is acting out a fiction that future historians will surely compare to the fiction of the Holy Roman Empire, the ghost of imperial Rome, which the French philosopher Voltaire once said was neither holy, Roman nor an empire, and which for centuries spoke German and was ruled from Vienna.

Original article; Tackling the EU Empire: basic critical facts on EU/Eurozone – a handbook for European Democrats