Printed from www.italianiliberi.it
_______________________________________
Microsoft Word format: against_europe.doc
From "Against Europe |
|
Chapter IV. HOW TO BUILD YOURSELF AN EMPIRE
1. THE BOOK OF DREAMS
Anyone who wishes to examine the European Union's intentions from close up must read the Maastricht Treaty. Politicians and journalists have always taken care to keep even the tiniest fragment of the Treaty out of the citizens' hands; but the text can be found in the Official Gazette of the European Communities. It would be relevant to compare the translations given in each of the national languages of the member states, since the sense of many terms varies from one language to the next. At any rate, even the basic perception of certain concepts varies on the part of single peoples, according to the specific political, psychological, cultural and historical contexts in which they live. For example, one need only think of certain key words such as "integration", "community", "agreement", "culture", "state of rights", "economic and political cohesion": for Italians, these are overloaded with meaning because of the long, violent struggles which have been and are being waged by political parties and labor unions, over the way to interpret and actuate their contents. Still, the problem of languages, which is surely central to all aspects of the Union, is not in the least ways confronted. This fact alone could explain how superficially (or rather, how deprecatingly) the problem of differences between peoples has been cast aside, even at that primary level constituted by the impossibility of making languages coincide perfectly, however accurate translations might be. At any rate, this is a problem about which European members of parliament usually joke, well knowing how inaccurate their way of discussing topics and decisions is made by the pseudo-understanding permitted by the hurried immediacy of simultaneous translations. But what does that matter? Brussels diligently puts out booklet after booklet in all the national languages of the member states, accumulating unending piles of paper, with an exponential increase in "Brusselsese" bureaucracy. With their centuries-old slowness and patience, countless administrative offices must study these booklets, interpreting them and putting their contents into practice in each single country. But again, what does that matter? The problem of how to make the mammoth body of the European Empire work, is cheerfully thrown aside. (Just as the cost of Brussels, of which peoples have not the slightest inkling, is thrown aside.) (...) The global impression gained from reading the Treaty is one of incredible stupor. You seem to find yourself gazing at a dream plan, the book of dreams. Still, it has been written with the hard, down-to-earth, astute professional skill of economists, bankers, and Communist labour union leaders (quite similar to Italian ones). The principle underlying it-- usually, but not always, tacit-- is quite clear: a few leaders decide, in theory, what goals whey want to achieve; these goals are certifiedly good, since they have been established by those who govern. The other tacit principle-- unexpressed, since it is taken for granted-- is that plans decided on by men of government sitting at the little table of bureaucratic theory will most certainly be achieved, since peoples are the passive objects of the decisions thus made. No reaction is expected of them, except total conformity, total obedience. The Treaty therefore takes shape as a macroscopic plan for domination. It annuls the national parliaments by emptying them of any power. It eliminates national governments by substituting them with a supranational government; and even though the national government may continue to exist on paper, it loses its importance, since it becomes the mere executor of decisions made by the European government. All of this totally changes the mechanism of Power. There will be a group of Emperors, the Twenty, who will sit on a Committee governing Europe. This is the post aspired to by the various Europeist fanatics running the show with their religion in Italy, Germany and France. Among other things (...), certain politicians are creating pressure so that the unanimity principle established for the European government will be substituted by the majority principle. This means that the idea of equality and parity among the single member nations has virtually been overcome. In the end, the "ideals" which the Union founders so aggressively claimed as their foundation stone now stand outside of reality-- as is only natural. Thus, some States will be more important, others less, even within the "democratic" mechanism of the majority vote. In conclusion, with the European Union, men are preparing the mightiest imperialistic dictatorship that peoples have ever experienced. The list of objectives found at the beginning of the Treaty would suffice-- even without comment-- to reveal two things. The first is the nearly unimaginable enormity-- the distance from any reality principle-- of the plan itself. This plan is clearly dictated by the psychological exaltation inspired by the fall of the Berlin wall ("Recalling the historical importance of the end of division in the European continent", says the premise). An exaltation implying the conviction that Good has won out over Evil; that Man is therefore "good". In fact, the European Union is entirely constructed on this premise: the kingdom of Evil has ended. Like individuals, States are inaugurating the Era of Goodness. As we know, this is the premise of Marx, which can finally be affirmed, forgetting all the dictatorships which have prevented the real achievement of a "good" era-- as if they were merely an unfortunate parenthesis. The second thing revealed by a reading of these objectives is the enormous sense of Power over men which the Leaders possess, and which is doubly terrifying within the so-called democratic structure of Europe's governing powers. The Maastricht Treaty is the most totally outspoken document, the unopposable proof that the men governing us are incapable even of imagining democracy; that is, of giving up even the tiniest crumb of power. Or let's put it this way. The European Union is a project meant to relaunch Power in a world where Power is weak. The Men of Government are so constitutionally convinced that no power can truly be delegated, that they are working at concentrating power at the center, with the most blatant recklessness. Their sense of power is much more frightening than the one held by Kings or Emperors, since these latter made their power depend on the Divinities (from the Egyptian Pharaoh to the medieval emperors of Europe). Now, on the contrary, precisely because men of government are delegated by the people, Power is limitless. It is entrusted only to leaders' boundless will for dominion, to their incapacity to see their own miserable limitedness. Not to mention the fact that the Emperors, Condottieri, Generals-- from Alexander the Great to Caesar, to Napoleon, to Hitler-- knew they had to rely on their own intelligence, on their own person skill and responsibility, on their own courage in leading actions of conquest or political strategies; they knew that defeats were theirs, as well as victories. The dictator-governors of today, in contrast, run to hide behind something that is rigid, neutral and self-contained: financial parameters. Thus no one will ever be able to blame these men for anything. However, the builders of Maastricht claim their "attachment to the principles of liberty, democracy, and respect for the rights of man and the fundamental liberties, as well as the State of Rights". How it could be possible to plan the rules of living for 375 million individuals (a figure destined to expand greatly) by way of the rigid articles of Maastricht, while declaring one's attachment to the principles of freedom, is one of many unanswerable questions. Do they not propose to achieve goals that violate those very rights? Unless they deceive themselves and their "own" peoples (as the signers of Maastricht sweetly put it), how can they conceive of European integration unless they push aside what they say they want to respect-- "history, culture, traditions"? For the politicians of the Union, what are history, culture, traditions? Empty words: for the Union is a project annulling history, culture, and traditions themselves. (...) Perhaps they do not know of what they speak, since by way of "common objectives" they actually propose to mould peoples together, homogenizing them: i.e., forcing them to lose their own cultural identities.
2. CREAMED PEOPLE
The word "integration" here (as in many, many other passages of the Treaty) connotes a positive meaning because it alludes to a common, concrete experience in achieving a new condition by mixing differing material components (even a cook rejoices in seeing milk, egg and flour mix together, while preparing cream sauce). But as regards peoples, a life system is so complex, and depends on such a great number of meaningful, interdependent elements, that forced integration is impossible unless you impose one factor in such a way that it dominates the others. At any rate, a cream of peoples is devoid of form; as such, it is not a people. And then it is hard to understand how it can be claimed that they want to respect the fundamental liberties when, immediately afterwards, men of government declare themselves to be "determined to institute a common citizenship for the citizens of their countries". Here again, we find ourselves facing the harsh violence of a power decision deliberated at the little table of bureaucratic theory, with no consideration for history, culture, or affections. "Citizenship" is the result of a long historical process, the recognition of a state of belonging which takes shape with the passing of time-- psychologically, emotionally, linguistically, territorially-- in the individual consciousness. But for these new citizens it will be impossible even to perceive the trauma of passing to a new state of belonging, since no real destination exists. To call oneself "European" is extremely difficult if one cannot cling either to a corresponding language, or to a territory having, at least in one's mind, a recognizable boundary. Although it is the economists and the bankers that first appear as the men governing the best possible world, Karl Marx is the real prophet of the Treaty. Because-- obviously-- the Treaty reserves most of its rules for financial problems, the economic organization of the Union; but above all because the goal fixed by men of government is the "reduction to identicalness" of peoples who will be subjected to European Institutions. Perhaps we will not all end up wearing the same clothes, as in Russia or China; though to judge from on of the latest enterprises of the Brussels Parliament, that seems to be the path chosen. They have fixed obligatory measurements for the seats in public transport vehicles. The British opposed these since "their posterior is smaller". But wait and see; the next move will surely have to be fixing the correct Brussels measurements for the bottoms of all Europeans. What they want to gain, at any rate, is precisely the elimination of any difference: whether psychological, cultural, social, ethical or political. The Treaty, in fact, declares that member states "promise to follow common guidelines in health, education, culture, research...". If you go beyond the pretty words being used-- reciprocal coherence of actions, integration, solidarity, development and so forth-- you realise that no similar plan for overthrowing the behavioral differences among States and Peoples in all areas had ever before been conceived, either by an Empire like the Roman one, or by condottieri and dictators like Alexander the Great, Napoleon, or Hitler. Only with Christianity and Constantine did men propose a total change in the life of peoples, by imposing a common language, customs, ethics, science, law. And yet, Christianity could boast of being a vehicle for a world vision; and on the basis of this vision, defined as the highest and noblest that had ever appeared on earth, it dictated life norms to the leaders of various existing reigns, to which peoples were obliged to adhere. Cuius regio eius etiam religio. On the contrary, the condottieri-economists of today speak only of monetary systems, markets, budgets; and they carefully conceal the ideal inspiring them: the formation of an Empire governed according to economic structures; that is, them. Their religion is ours. It might seem incredible that the reduction to identicalness is being chosen and put into practice after the Soviet, Chinese, and Cambodian experiences (just to cite the most dramatic ones) have shown what fruits spring from such ideals and the systems used for achieving them. But this is precisely the greatest danger of the European plan: it hides its true face behind a thick tangle of misinterpretations, prejudices, impenetrability, incomprehensiveness of the global model. Still, these are the facts: under the benevolent heading of "common guidelines" (...), the citizens of various States are kneaded to fit one mould. This involves a further false pretence, since the social part of the Treaty requires peoples to be united but distinct, more or less analogously to the theological formula of the Christian God, One and distinguished in Three Persons. With this exception: theology does not pretend to be rational... The peoples belonging to the Union, in fact, will all follow the same guidelines in the field of education, health, research, culture, the environment, foreign policy, internal order... Does anyone perhaps think he can pronounce the word "freedom" in such a context? And what does "guidelines" mean? First of all, there will have to be someone defining what these guidelines are; and we can only expect that it will be the most powerful and prestigious representative on the Commission who will make his convictions prevail.
(3. ) One of the more immediate consequences of European Centralism will be the macroscopic increase in the rigidity of all social, economic and political structures, and of their bureaucratic management. (...) If we consider that, even as regards unemployment, the lack of flexibility is indicated by all operators (today, even by the labor unions) as one of the most incisive factors, we realize that to increase rigidity-- and, therefore, the lack of freedom-- will mean creating a true crisis. (...) In reality, all the norms of the Union lead to the lack of freedom, called rigidity, even in the area of markets for whose sake the Union inventors claim to be fighting. These are authoritarian principles depriving peoples and States of freedom in all fields, subjecting them to a forced homogenization and closing them within Europe. It has been said that the main purpose of the Union is to enlarge and strengthen the market, since the single States are too small to be able to compete with the American and Asian markets. But even supposing this is true, no one can prevent single firms from merging and freely performing their activities with the rest of the world; whereas what the European Union pursues is market success-- not for single firms, but for Europe-- by rigidly controlling all of its actions. Perhaps more than is openly admitted, this aim is dictated by the will to break free from the influence of America and to be able to compete with it. Not only in the commercial areas, but also from a political, military and cultural point of view (...) (...) For the time being, we have the Maastricht Treaty norms to tell us what to do, and tell us where our future lies. These norms are so hidebound that they dare dictate to us, up to the finest detail, even the way to produce science and art. If we analyze the norms regarding research, it will be easy for anyone to realize that the Maastricht Treaty deliberations are more illiberal and coercive than any medieval institution. The spirit inspiring them is always the same: to dominate its goals by unifying the ways to reach them, money being the instrumental incentive. Article 130: H, I: "The Community and its Member States co-ordinate their action in the field of research and technological development in order to guarantee reciprocal coherence between national policies and Union policy". II. "In close collaboration with the Member States, the Commission may take any initiative useful in promoting the co-ordination mentioned in paragraph I". Article 130 I: "The Council [...] adopts a proposed plan lasting a given number of years, encompassing the Community actions as a whole [...] The proposed plan: fixes the scientific and technological objectives to be achieved by means of actions pursuant to article 130G and relative priorities; indicates the main guidelines for such actions; establishes the maximum overall sum and procedures for the Community's financial participation in the proposed plan, as well as respective quotas for each of the actions proposed [...] 2. The proposed plan is adapted or completed according to the evolution of the situation. The proposed plan is put into practice through specific programming developed within the sphere of each action. Each specific program defines the modes and achievement of same, fixes the duration and predicts the means held to be necessary. The sum of amounts held to be necessary, fixed by specific programs, must not exceed the maximum global sum fixed for the proposed general plan and for each action.[...] 4. The Council, deliberating with a qualified majority, on proposal from the Commission and after consultation with the European Parliament and the economic and social Committee, adopts the specific programs." Article 130 J: "For the actuation of the proposed pluriennial plan the Council: fixes norms for the participation of enterprises, research centres and universities; fixes norms applicable to the divulgation of research results". A reading of these articles is in itself befuddling enough. But one cannot help but rebel if he realizes both the hypocritical astuteness in the use made of certain terms, and the results implied by their real actuation. The first paragraph of article 130H is in this respect a masterpiece: the key words are "co-ordinate", "guarantee" and "coherence". Translated into real language: no one can do anything outside of what is commanded (this is the meaning of "guarantee") and predetermined by the only Authorities governing the European Union: the Commission and the Council. "Co-ordination" and "coherence" actually represent the logical absoluteness of obligation. This is the same mechanism which was put into practice for so many centuries by the theological system of thought: obedience follows from the premises. Naturally, as in all of the Maastrich deliberations, it is never stated that if common guidelines must be followed, someone must establish what the goals are. We already noted this earlier; but in the area of "research" (the term "science", towards which public opinion is more sensitive, is accurately avoided), nobody even hints at the fact that in order to "co-ordinate", it is necessary to decide what to co-ordinate. It is superfluous to point out that it will be the Commission that decides this. (...) The Soviet scaffolding of the pluriennial program, which led to the universally-known disaster even of Russian agriculture (once an abundant source of wealth), reappears with dictatorial absoluteness in the Maastrich Treaty. In fact, Maastricht ignores history, despises any critical reflection on the consequences of Communism (the negative consequences are held to be a simple passing incident), and-- with true co-operation and coherence-- finds its natural support in Catholics, who are abundantly present in the European institutions. Of course, as we have noted elsewhere, Communism is the latest incarnation of Christianity. But in the European Union such an embrace becomes mortal, since it is presented as secular and democratic. What could be more secular and modern than to seek functionality and productivity in all fields? The Maastrich Treaty declares this: we guarantee the highest result by putting order where disorder exists, by organizing and planning efforts, energies and money in order to achieve precise, specified goals. Nothing is, or can be, left to chance. This means killing thought, in any field; it means killing research. But not even the clear contradiction in terms implicit in programming what in principle cannot be programmed, can perturb the placid dictators of Maastricht.
(4.) (...) Therefore science finds itself in the same situation in which it found itself in the era of Galileo or, more recently, Lysenko. This time, it will be wearing the clothes of democracy. Here we find the most perverse aspect of the European Union. The citizens of the West are so far from doubting that in their world anything undemocratic can be decided, that deceiving them is ridiculously easy. (...) But the citizens do not know, nor do they even wish to know, that the Brussels Parliament is a puppet with no decisional powers, purposely created to keep the true organization of command hidden from indiscreet curiosity; command centered in a very few hands-- those forming the Commission-- whose members "do not solicit or accept instructions from any government or any organism" (Art. 157). Deliberations made by the organs of command "are executive" (Art. 145). If you stop to think that with this irrevocable formula twenty individuals govern 375 million people, you remain flabbergasted. But this is one of the strong points of the European Empire: it is being born in a context which is so distant from the very concept of "empire" that one is not aware of living within its sphere
5. FINALLY IT IS WRITTEN: GOD IS MONEY
In contrast with all of this, however, the economist-emperors have equipped themselves with a very concrete, ferocious weapon, though you do not see it dripping with blood: money. Whoever disobeys pays with fines, or else is thrown out of the Union. This is clearly an absurd condition. O course, once it has entered,, no country will be able to turn back or, if it does so, it will suffer serious psychological, cultural, emotional harm; the harm of alienation. Not to mention all the economic consequences. However, the economists dictatorially ignore these things; nor do they foresee their cost, even in monetary terms. What will become of that ideal which has been invoked as primary: "we are Europeans", we are a single people, we love one another so dearly that we won't make war against each other? And how will it be possible to maintain that we will continue to "love one another", once we are condemned to not belonging to the family any more? Of course, in order not to be accused of "preferences", they have clung to a third instrument, neutral and rigid in itself: "parameters". But here, too, we find a reduction of men to "concrete" reality: you are what the "parameters" say you are. Moreover, how will the expelled nation find a new image of itself, after becoming convinced with such taxing fatigue that its identity is European? In actuality, the Union Plan is so devoid of the reality principle because not only are the economists cynical (as good dictators must be), but totally devoid of intelligence. In fact, as much as a condottiero might despise the men in his command, he does not forget that victory in battle is due above all to "troop morale". The Generals of Europe, instead, think of the monetary system and the market as if they were independent of the societies expressing them; and in their almost incredible foolishness they thus condemn the rickety castle planned with no foundations, to economic failure. Naturally, in a situation where only one structure-- the economic one-- supports the whole system, the fact that punishment is economic should serve to guarantee its absolute rigidity. The mechanism is the same one we find when a military or religious structure is seen as an absolute system of meaning. The coercion involved is identical. The logical inevitability is identical. After all, no power gives up the absoluteness of the Sacred. Sacredness and Power are the same thing. No one has learned that lesson better than the Economists. For many centuries people alluded to the God, Money, indicating it as a hidden level within the system. But not any more. In order to become Priests-- or holders of Power-- the Economists have finally proclaimed that God is Money and that the liturgical structures at its service are the rules of the economy. The monetary system-- the Euro-- is the tabernacle that the 375 million believers are called upon to worship, kneeling at the moment of its advent, offering themselves as victims for the Kingdom. The misunderstanding according to which the Euro plan is attributed to hard capitalistic liberalism, is easy to interpret. In our Christian-Communist Europe, we tend to forget that liberalism means first of all liberty of the individual, beyond any State system. But the European Union, as we have seen, is not liberal in the least. The State is so all-pervasive that only the current British government, though it is a Labor government, has succeeded in putting a brake on the rigidity of its structures. These are the mechanisms created when you have government extending throughout many nations, centered within the hands of the few, and far away: distant mentally more than physically, from the individuals subject to it. The fact that it touches on so many different peoples creates a sense of estrangement, a sloughing off of responsibility, causing each person to believe that it is not his duty to react. Of course, this is the inevitable consequence of the principle according to which the Union was invented; the institutions of Power come first, and then the peoples. The existence of the Empire was declared while sitting at the little table of bureaucracy; its government was organized without conquering or unifying the territory. But, without the Subjects' wishes, the mental distance of this government strengthens its license for action, both because the sacred force of what appears to be "distant" belongs to the psychological categories of Man, and because one is unable to visualize its physical concreteness. At this pint it is superfluous to point out the loss of any and all democratic characteristics within the European Government, even in such unstable and illusory forms as are present in national States. The Brussels Commissions are mere phantoms of democracy, since they take on the fundamental traits of absolute Power, the sacredness of the origins: such Power is Distant, it is the Only Power, Mysterious, Superior, Uncontrollable. Consequently, it is untied from any possibility or desire for understanding or criticism in its ideal, theoretical manifestations. (...)
(6. ) Common guidelines are also being discussed for "culture". It is hard to know what the Treaty politicians intend by "culture", given the multiple meanings implied by the term. Still, it would seem that in the case of common guidelines, they usually intend creative activities, whereas the anthropological meaning appears where they declare that they want to respect "cultural identities". However, as anthropologists well know, the problem of creative expression is inseparable from that of a people's identity, since nothing is the fruit and, at the same time, the synthesis of a cultural model more than artistic production. It expresses the pattern's form, in interaction with the artist's individual personality. At any rate, these are extremely complex topics over which countless scholars have toiled since ancient times-- historians, critics, philosophers, artists, anthropologists, psychologists-- without ever managing to reach conclusions or certainties. After all, this is only to be expected, since if the work of art could be defined, narrated or explained, the very essence of art would disappear. But in contrast to their predecessors, the new dictators are not afraid of confronting the entire human reality from the height of their power, modeling that reality according to their own premises. An first off, on their list of priorities, they state that "European" production must be increased. It is superfluous to say that this is an obsession harrying anyone who arrives at the top rungs of the power ladder: art must seal and crown the New Age. But putting aside this umpteenth observation concerning the imperial goals of the Union builders, what matters in our discussion is whether there can be a "European" art; that is, an art expressing the European identity, associated by those sitting at the table of bureaucracy with those artists who happened to be born in countries geographically belonging to the European continent. Instead, the contrary is true: Europe is rich precisely because it possesses within its confine, extremely differing artistic expressions, formed during a long historical process of exchanges, conflicts, invasions, revolutions. If there is any proof that homologation kills intelligence, this can be found precisely in the creative richness of Western Europe a opposed to the immobility of the Orient, Africa and Asia, throughout the Middle Ages. The West is criss-crossed by continual changes, partly because its peoples have never given up searching for their own identities. With the formation of innumerable dialects, even while never renouncing the tendency to let a language emerge; with the invention of the most varied government systems, even while under the suffocating dominion of markets and commerce, in spite of almost insuperable trials and hardships: seas to cross, pirates to fight, mountains to climb; with the explosion of all the arts, called upon to express feelings, passions, traits jealously kept distinct from one commune to the next, one city to the next, one people to the next. It is on the basis of non-homologation, of the freedom of non-homologation, whether through or in spite of highly intense cultural exchanges, that we are able to re-cognize the contribution of classic Greek culture to the rethinking and, at the same time, the absolute newness of the Renaissance; the contribution of the Roman juridical concept of the "person" to the entire process leading down through Christianity and the Enlightenment towards the subjectivity and equality of each single man; the contribution of Christianity in such radically differing arts as the Cistercian and the Baroque. Who could ever imagine a Greek, Italian or French Wagner? And yet opera, which finds such an outstanding representative in Wagner, is an Italian invention; its myths were born in Greece; the repetition of its "themes" is the fruit of the explosive genius of a Bach, liberating himself from Gregorian chant while, at the same time, being nurtured by it... At any rate, do they want to declare that Wagner is European? This can be done only if the terms of our discussion are not switched: Europe is the context in which Wagner's personality was freely formed, but one does not find in him, nor in any other artist, the "European identity", for the simple fact that this does not exist per se. In other words, an artist "filters" all stimuli through his personality, conducing them to a synthesis which is not the sum of the stimuli. This synthesis, in turn, is the fruit of a synthesis created outside himself, in the family where he was born, in the language he has learned to speak, and so on. Therefore, German, French or Italian culture is the "form" from which an absolutely new "form" springs. Europe per se is not "form", is not a given synthesis. If Mozart did not dare to compose an opera whose libretto was not written in Italian, this does not make him Italian, just as having created the greatest Don Giovanni ever to exist does not make him Spanish or French. In conclusion, the wealth of Europe is the process of extraordinary diversities, each of which is unique and universal. It is the "common guidelines" decreed by the Treaty that condemn richness to die. (...) To impose "common guidelines" on culture so totally pertains to the realm of dictatorial thought that one is almost ashamed to comment on it. We can only hope that they do not impose a form of realism on all artists-- this time European instead of Marxist; that the Imperial Commission of Twenty does not establish which artistic discipline is most appropriate to celebrating the Union Spirit and therefore, which art receives all financial aid, according to the norms of the Treaty. (...) To homologate different peoples is so violent and uncivil an act that no term can define it. _______ printed from www.italianiliberi.it
|