Is Resistance to EU Totalitarianism Futile?

“Resistance is futile. You will be assimilated.” The dreaded Borg warning from “Star Trek: The Next Generation” could also have been an appropriate motto for the Soviet Union’s plan for assimilating Europe, its lands, nationalities, and borders into an eventual global Soviet population. I will return to that analogy later. Throughout the history of the Soviet Union (1917-1991) the ideologies of communism and socialism were dispersed across Europe with near-proselytizing zeal, finding fertile ground among disenchanted laborers and within elite socio-political circles. Communist and socialist parties sprang up in virtually every European nation, mostly with small memberships but at times achieving sufficient clout to gain representation and influence in the parliaments of many European nations. One desired goal shared by the Soviet-European socialist/communist brotherhood was an eventual dissolution of separate nationalities and borders, with a resulting international communist union.

While the Soviet communists did not appear to succeed in establishing a borderless communist utopia throughout Europe before the demise of the Soviet Union, future generations of Europeans chose on their own to embrace the concept of a European super state, and the current European Union was born, blending nationalities and marginalizing borders. It should concern the free world, then, that former Soviet dissidents who escaped the USSR and live freely in Europe today are expressing their increasing concerns that the European Union contains the ingredients of and is taking steps toward becoming a behemoth totalitarian dictatorship in the mold of the former Soviet Union.

The conservative European blog The Brussels Journal this week published summaries of two recent speeches by former Soviet dissident Vladimir Bukovsky, as well as the transcript of an interview of Bukovsky conducted by The Brussels Journal’s Paul Belien. For anyone who was initially wary of what the European Union would become once matured, Bukovsky’s warnings will confirm even the direst fears. The similarities between the EU and the USSR, in structure, enforcement, and suppression of dissent, are ominous. The following are key points from the Brussels Journal’s excellent coverage of this issue, but Capital Cloak recommends reading Bukovsky’s remarks in their entirety:

Vladimir Bukovksy, the 63-year old former Soviet dissident, fears that the European Union is on its way to becoming another Soviet Union. In a speech he delivered in Brussels last week Mr Bukovsky called the EU a “monster” that must be destroyed, the sooner the better, before it develops into a full-fledged totalitarian state.

…Mr Bukovsky was one of the heroes of the 20th century. As a young man he exposed the use of psychiatric imprisonment against political prisoners in the former USSR (Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, 1917-1991) and spent a total of twelve years (1964-1976), from his 22nd to his 34th year, in Soviet jails, labour camps and psychiatric institutions. In 1976 the Soviets expelled him to the West. In 1992 he was invited by the Russian government to serve as an expert testifying at the trial conducted to determine whether the Soviet Communist Party had been a criminal institution. To prepare for his testimony Mr Bukovsky was granted access to a large number of documents from Soviet secret archives. He is one of the few people ever to have seen these documents because they are still classified. Using a small handheld scanner and a laptop computer, however, he managed to copy many documents (some with high security clearance), including KGB reports to the Soviet government.

…In 1992 I had unprecedented access to Politburo and Central Committee secret documents which have been classified, and still are even now, for 30 years. These documents show very clearly that the whole idea of turning the European common market into a federal state was agreed between the left-wing parties of Europe and Moscow as a joint project which [Soviet leader Mikhail] Gorbachev in 1988-89 called our “common European home.”

The idea was very simple. It first came up in 1985-86, when the Italian Communists visited Gorbachev, followed by the German Social-Democrats. They all complained that the changes in the world, particularly after [British Prime Minister Margaret] Thatcher introduced privatisation and economic liberalisation, were threatening to wipe out the achievement (as they called it) of generations of Socialists and Social-Democrats – threatening to reverse it completely. Therefore the only way to withstand this onslaught of wild capitalism (as they called it) was to try to introduce the same socialist goals in all countries at once. Prior to that, the left-wing parties and the Soviet Union had opposed European integration very much because they perceived it as a means to block their socialist goals. From 1985 onwards they completely changed their view. The Soviets came to a conclusion and to an agreement with the left-wing parties that if they worked together they could hijack the whole European project and turn it upside down. Instead of an open market they would turn it into a federal state.

…It is no accident that the European Parliament, for example, reminds me of the Supreme Soviet. It looks like the Supreme Soviet because it was designed like it. Similarly, when you look at the European Commission it looks like the Politburo. I mean it does so exactly, except for the fact that the Commission now has 25 members and the Politburo usually had 13 or 15 members. Apart from that they are exactly the same, unaccountable to anyone, not directly elected by anyone at all. When you look into all this bizarre activity of the European Union with its 80,000 pages of regulations it looks like Gosplan. We used to have an organisation which was planning everything in the economy, to the last nut and bolt, five years in advance. Exactly the same thing is happening in the EU. When you look at the type of EU corruption, it is exactly the Soviet type of corruption, going from top to bottom rather than going from bottom to top.

If you go through all the structures and features of this emerging European monster you will notice that it more and more resembles the Soviet Union. Of course, it is a milder version of the Soviet Union. Please, do not misunderstand me. I am not saying that it has a Gulag. It has no KGB – not yet – but I am very carefully watching such structures as Europol for example. That really worries me a lot because this organisation will probably have powers bigger than those of the KGB. They will have diplomatic immunity. Can you imagine a KGB with diplomatic immunity? They will have to police us on 32 kinds of crimes – two of which are particularly worrying, one is called racism, another is called xenophobia. No criminal court on earth defines anything like this as a crime [this is not entirely true, as Belgium already does so – pb]. So it is a new crime, and we have already been warned. Someone from the British government told us that those who object to uncontrolled immigration from the Third World will be regarded as racist and those who oppose further European integration will be regarded as xenophobes….

Hence, we have now been warned. Meanwhile they are introducing more and more ideology. The Soviet Union used to be a state run by ideology. Today’s ideology of the European Union is social-democratic, statist, and a big part of it is also political correctness. I watch very carefully how political correctness spreads and becomes an oppressive ideology, not to mention the fact that they forbid smoking almost everywhere now. Look at this persecution of people like the Swedish pastor who was persecuted for several months because he said that the Bible does not approve homosexuality. France passed the same law of hate speech concerning gays. Britain is passing hate speech laws concerning race relations and now religious speech, and so on and so forth. What you observe, taken into perspective, is a systematic introduction of ideology which could later be enforced with oppressive measures. Apparently that is the whole purpose of Europol. Otherwise why do we need it? To me Europol looks very suspicious. I watch very carefully who is persecuted for what and what is happening, because that is one field in which I am an expert. I know how Gulags spring up.

It looks like we are living in a period of rapid, systematic and very consistent dismantlement of democracy. Look at this Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill. It makes ministers into legislators who can introduce new laws without bothering to tell Parliament or anyone. My immediate reaction is why do we need it? Britain survived two world wars, the war with Napoleon, the Spanish Armada, not to mention the Cold War, when we were told at any moment we might have a nuclear world war, without any need for introducing this kind legislation, without the need for suspending our civil liberties and introducing emergency powers. Why do we need it right now? This can make a dictatorship out of your country in no time.

…My conclusion is not optimistic. So far, despite the fact that we do have some anti-EU forces in almost every country, it is not enough. We are losing and we are wasting time.

Bukovsky also recounted a chilling prophecy made by then French president d’Estaing in 1989 that within fifteen years Europe would become a federal state and east European nations would have to choose whether to join it or survive on their own. This prediction was made years before the 1992 treaty creating the EU had even been drafted. Was it a coincidence that fourteen years later former president d’Estaing authored the European constitution? Bukovsky thinks not.

The issue, of course, that concerns Bukovsky most is the suppression of rights, particularly freedom of speech. When government can declare opposition to its policies as “hate crimes” or fears of merging cultures and borders as “xenophobia” punishable by law, it will have effectively silenced its critics and can act without restraint.

Americans should read Bukovsky’s remarks carefully with an eye open for similar trends developing in the U.S. It should be particularly alarming for Americans to note that Bukovsky warned of a new classification of crime in the EU labeled as “racism,” and that those opposing uncontrolled immigration would be branded as “racists.” We have seen that already here in the U.S. during the current debate over illegal immigration. Because the vast majority of our illegal aliens come from Mexico, amnesty advocates have seized on the racist label and accuse amnesty opponents of racism and hating Mexicans. Former Bush administration darling Linda Chavez, in a column titled, “Latino Fear and Loathing,” managed to merge the xenophobe and racist accusations into one hateful piece of writing in which she asserted that all debates over “immigration reform” are dominated by xenophobia and racism. The distinctions between the former Soviet Union, the EU, and the U.S., in the area of political correctness and suppression of political opposition are becoming increasingly blurred. What Burkovsky, a London resident now, fears most appears to be multiplying and replenishing itself in America at a pace not far behind the already liberties-challenged EU. Perhaps if the EU is looking for a “Racism and Xenophobia Czar,” Chavez might consider moving across the pond to head the budding EU dictatorship’s thought police.

I return now to the opening analogy to the Borg assimilation efforts so effectively portrayed in the motion picture Star Trek - First Contact. In that film, the seemingly indestructible Borg (the USSR) was found to possess a fatal weakness (economic collapse), and in its moment of destruction the Borg’s collective conscience (communism/socialism), embodied by a leader and her closest followers (enthusiastic communist recruiters), jettisoned from their spacecraft and avoided the complete collapse of their existence and ideology by taking up residence elsewhere. The Borg were clever, though, and chose to lay low and regroup in a place their enemies did not think to look: on the starship Enterprise itself (Europe and the U.S.), the flagship most dedicated to destroying the Borg. The Borg quickly established their collective hive in their new environment and sought to take over the important systems of the ship, life support (environmentalism), propulsion (economy), navigation (social and diplomatic policies), communications (the media), and weapons (law enforcement or military). The quick-thinking captain of the ship locked out the controls of these vital systems, but the Borg employed all means to include violence, bribery, and torture, to gain the control and subsequent assimilation of people and technologies they craved (Soviet proselytizing throughout Europe and the eventual formation of the EU).

It is in such a precarious and perilous moment that Europe currently finds itself. The USSR as an organized political entity of control over subjected peoples crumbled in 1991, but its ideology and goals for European control merely jettisoned themselves, like the Borg escaping their exploding vessel, and established a solid foothold in a new environment: Europe itself, and to a lesser but growing degree, the U.S. The regrouping and formation of identical governmental structures and policies has been underway under the guise of the EU since at least 1989, as Bukovsky explained.

Bukovsky’s urgings for Europe to dismantle the “monster” EU before it becomes the totalitarian state it was intended to be, are understandably and rightly urgent and should be heeded before resistance to the uber-powerful EU becomes permanently futile.

Technorati:
Vladimir Bukovsky European Union EU USSR Dissidents Totalitarian Political Correctness xenophobia Europol Borg Star Trek Resistance is Futile