The European Union’s fires where freedom burns

Hugo DIONÍSIO

Hugo Dionísio is a Lawyer, researcher and geopolitics’ analyst. He is the owner of Canal-factual.wordpress.com Blog and co-founder of MultipolarTv, a Youtube Channel targeted to geopolitical analysis. He develops activity as Human Rights and Social rights activist as board member of the Portuguese Democratic Lawyers Association. He is also a researcher at the Portuguese Workers Trade Union Confederation (CGTP-IN).

\Faced with the more-than-announced collapse of the Kiev regime and everything it stands for; the EU is facing a challenge to survive.

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The European Union shows all the symptoms of a structure in deep crisis. Like other organizations in the past, the more it tries to convey an image of internal cohesion, the greater the fissures it creates, based on the increasingly rigid demand for compliance with the rules that this appearance of cohesion requires.

In order to assert its political power, Brussels is presented as a power that is as distant as it is unattainable, so superior that everything it has is unquestionable. Placing itself on such a pedestal, Brussels arrogates to itself a presumed wisdom and omniscience, relying on a very well-constructed communication process, based on the idea of a power above all others, above the elected powers, above the “people’s governments”: “The EU said that…”; “the EU says you can’t…”; “the government asked the EU to…”; “the EU warned that…”; “the government was forced by the EU to…”. One gets all this, without question, criticism or reflection. A sort of European extension of the “one indispensable nation” theory.

If, until a certain point, we were faced with a power that was self-imposed, self-sufficient, whose unattainability was enough to discourage any contradictory idea, given the monumentality of the task that consisted of facing not one government, but “the government of all governments”; today, Brussels is no longer content with this ontological superiority and demands an unequivocal proof of loyalty.

This means that adhering or not to the “narrative” presented by the European bureaucracy has long since ceased to be a voluntary act. Loyalty is now demonstrated by the vigor and rigor with which the EU’s ideology is internalized — in my opinion, it is more like an idolatry. There was a moment that acted as a signal for the activation of mechanisms to conform opinions to the “narrative” emanating from the Union. That moment was 25/02/2022. Even with Covid, although there was already an iron grip on the circulation of information that questioned the vaccines, methods and policies being developed, in Europe we have not seen the current use of direct coercive means to silence, condition or hold accountable those who did not adhere to the “narrative”.

But in the last two years, just like in past and more inquisitorial times, proof of loyalty has been demanded, in the form of adherence to a discourse, a narrative, an idolatry. And the very truth is that powers of this kind, throughout history, have always chosen the “disinformation” and “propaganda” of their enemies as the original seed of conditioning!

It was therefore at the sound of the thunder of war that we began to see the arrival of the EU’s “state of war” and the need to prove loyalty. They didn’t report it, question it or analyze it. As with everything that characterizes European power these days, we only see the facts, their inexorable existence. The discourse, on the other hand, continues to be as luminous as ever, or perhaps even more so.

We know this, for example, when we use a generative text Artificial Intelligence tool and ask it about “journalists persecuted in the European Union as part of the conflict in Ukraine”. The answer is invariably the same: “brave journalists that are persecuted” you find them only in Russia, my friends. However, when we ask about the names of journalists like Alina Lipp, Graham Phillips or Pablo Gonzalez, we discover that, in fact, there are journalists: accused of espionage and preventively detained (Pablo Gonzalez in Poland for more than a year and a half); accused and subjected to a prison sentence of up to 3 years for the opinion crime of “supporting the Russian invasion” (Alina Lipp from Germany); and, accused of acts of propaganda and “glorification” of “Russian invasion and its atrocities” (Graham Philips from the UK), coming to the point of being accused, by some politicians, of having “committed war crimes”, just because having interviewed Aiden Aslin, a British mercenary imprisoned in Mariupol and therefore targeted with his name inclusion on a personal sanctions list, that prevents him from re-entering his country of origin.

These were some of the first cases — never admitted — of not providing proof of loyalty. As if to set an example, a handful of journalists have experienced the weight with which Ursula von der Leyen’s hand treats disloyalty to her narrative. Even when she talks about washing machine chips that equip missiles and economies in pieces that are actually growing more than the EU’s, you need to fulfill the loyalty requirement.

As a result, as with all powers that no longer have enough of themselves, somewhere along the line, the net has become even tighter, and it is no longer just journalists and media outlets (such as Russian TV’s, independent websites and news outlets) that are caught in the nets of the European ministry of truth. The idolatry police have been launched on the attack and are sniffing under every stone for the slightest sign of dissent.

Recently, the Czech authorities decided to put an entity with the virtual profile of “Voice of Europe” and its two managers on the sanctions list, accusing them of wanting to “undermine the territorial integrity, sovereignty and independence of Ukraine” because, in their view, they glorify the “Russian invasion of Ukraine”. We have all learned that, in the EU of our time, we can idolize Nazis, neo-Nazis and even spread fake news. It’s when our speech coincides with that of any Russian, no matter how insignificant, that we turn to be the targets of von der Leyen’s wrath. As I said, it’s not a question of “whether or not it’s true”; it’s a question of loyalty or betrayal.

This intransigence towards speeches, even when they are proclaimed by people with no media exposure, only limited virtual exposure, is in itself symptomatic of the fact that the level of tolerance towards diverse, critical or controversial thinking is at an all-time high. Such discursive — and behavioral — fundamentalism is in line with what we then see in the real world, and mostly in the epicenter of European idolatry: Brussels.

It is in Brussels that we find the symbolic center to which we must be loyal. The “Ukrainian project”, for the idolaters of european central power — and their followers — which is based on the bodies that make up the European Union, has a founding dimension, having become the ultimate symbol of the regime; a regime that no longer asserts itself by what it is, but by what it defends as the ultimate symbol of Russian antagonism: support for the Kiev regime. The more rigid, uncompromising and demanding you are in your support for Kiev, the more anti-Russian you became. And that’s the ultimate proof of loyalty. Is that a reason to say that this EU is no longer the same. Or is it, now, what it should be from the very start?

Presented as a peace project, but which ended up financing the war, even the most absent-minded passer-by in Brussels won’t miss the regime’s ultimate symbol. Since February 25, 2022, Brussels has been a city bathed in blue and yellow. From billboards to public works fences, everything seems to denounce the single truth to which we must be loyal. Zelensky’s Ukraine is indeed a member state of the EU! The legitimacy that it lacks in formal law, it has in the manifestation of symbolic paraphernalia and in the persecutory frenzy with which the European institutions embrace its protection.

By dispensing with the usual access procedures, which only aim to give some formal legitimacy to a whole phenomenon (Ukraine on the “fast track” to the EU) that is observable in fact, Ukraine benefits from a whole altar that is the ultimate symbol of this idolatrous fundamentalism and this de facto adoption.

Nothing is more overwhelming than a trip to the central square of “Luxembourg”, where the European Parliament is located, under the watchful eye of a vigilant European Commission and a European Council commanded by far more distant powers. Yellow and blue are so intensely prominent here that we seem to be both in the sky and close to the sun. They say they are the colors of the EU… Their presence has never been as strong as it is today. Ukraine and the EU are also intertwined in color.

Zelensky’s image stands out from this sea of colors, flooded with messages like “stand with Ukraine” or billboards saying “the brave people of Ukraine, represented by their president (…)”. As if to prove that what is outside, emanates from within, the Ukrainian state, without other democratic backing than that generated by the immense propaganda that floods our senses, even has its space in the very hemicycle of the European Parliament. In addition to all the simultaneous translation booths for each of the languages that make up the European project, the “Ukrainian project” also has its own. Even if it has no MEP’s.

Even the 50 billion euros recently approved by the European Council for the remaining 4 years of the Multiannual Financial Framework (which normally runs until one year after the nominal period, which is 21-27), taken from the respective financial cake, seems to reproduce, more or less, what a country with 35 to 40 million inhabitants and a per capita income below the European average would receive. In other words, not even the funds are lacking for the development of the goals of the 2030 strategy. Now, tell me Ukraine isn’t a member state?

We could also take, as an example, the war that the EU bought with Hungarian, Bulgarian, Romanian, Polish and Slovak farmers, because it floods European markets with products produced without complying with the same rules to which others are subject. Because of this, those countries are forced to revive the same feeling of diminishment that any peripheral European country has, when it has to confront itself with the interests of more powerful countries, such as Germany or France. Today, even these two submit to the dictates of the Bandera’s trident.

If, throughout the European Union, in all the member states, we come across the regime’s propaganda, reminding us at every turn that everything we are and everything we have is due solely to the “divine” (or diabolical) presence of the “humane, inclusive, democratic and free EU”, it is in the capital city and its nervous center that this propaganda is most overwhelming. Like a power that spreads from the center to the periphery.

Faced with the more-than-announced collapse of the Kiev regime and everything it stands for; the EU is facing a challenge to survive. Because idolatries have these things: they lack substance. No matter how hard they try to make the “Ukrainian member state” adhere to the idea that it is a bastion of “European values”, everything falls apart when it is in Bandera’s Ukraine that the rights that the EU claims to represent are most denied. In turn, it was Russia (in the USSR) that did the most to defend those values. The only way for this not to be a complete misunderstanding is if we assume, as a premise, that, after all, this EU does not disown Nazi-fascism and, on the contrary, hates Russia for defeating the one it was created to defeat her.

In fact, admitting the Nazi or neo-Nazi idolatry that today forms the backbone of Ukrainian political power, but not admitting the idolatry of the Russian operation, the EU is telling us something terribly devastating: Western elites consider what they call Russia’s “invasion” of Ukraine to be more serious than the Nazi-fascist invasion of Ukraine, Russia, the USSR, France, Poland and so on. The facts leave no doubt: you persecute those who accuse you of “supporting the Russian invasion of Ukraine”, but you support those who idolize the forces that invaded and destroyed the whole of Europe. Which brings me back to the ever-controversial question: is the EU anti-Nazi or not?

This is not about judging the EU for condemning the Russian operation in Ukraine, it is about questioning why it persecutes those who say they support this operation and does not persecute, with a much greater argumentation force, those who idolize powers that have destroyed the whole of Europe.

This issue wouldn’t be so important if Ukraine wasn’t a member state. Now, when it is, in fact, the most important of all and around which the entire life of the Union revolves, none of them fills our news, political speeches and opinion columns like this one… To the point where the EU tries to reproduce, in its behavior, the most damaging practices that the Kiev regime forces on its own citizens… Here too, adherence to the narrative, the language, the idolatry of Bandera, the idolatry of the EU, NATO and the U.S., is not a choice, it is a proof of loyalty. Those who don’t practice it end up tied to posts, wrapped in cellophane. Al least, we haven’t reached that point here yet… But in my case, I take Martin Niemöller’s poem very seriously — “first they took the communists…”.

Just as covertly as it was used to integrate a member state that didn’t belong to it into the Union, handing it, as Emmanuel Todd says, the scepter of a power that belonged to the Franco-German axis, not because it contributes more to the Community budget than everyone else, but, on the contrary, because it needs to become the one that receives the most contributions, the EU is also launching a sneaky witch-hunt, further intensifying and generalizing the proofs of loyalty that it already demanded. Once again, never assuming that it is doing so. Another characteristic that sticks so well with Kiev. “It wasn’t Kiev that bombed Energodar NPP”; “It wasn’t Kiev that bombed the streets of Donetsk full of civilians”; “It wasn’t Kiev that bombed a detention center with its own soldiers as prisoners of war”…

Consequently, it was the Belgian Prime Minister himself who, in a statement to the New York Times, accused parliamentarians from France, Germany, the Netherlands and others of being paid to pursue Russian interests in the European Parliament. Without specifying who all those accused are, but pointing to the same “extreme right” that is proliferating thanks to the damage that the power of Brussels is inflicting on our living conditions, we are once again confronted with the contradictions of this European Union. And this is how we identify the proof of loyalty that is now demanded from all citizens. If only under penalty of censorship on social media.

So, what serious things did the accused say or do? Well, the NYT says so itself: they said things like “The sleepwalkers in Berlin and Brussels are leading us into a foreign war — without rhyme, reason or purpose” or “Whoever accepts Ukraine into NATO is provoking, whether we like it or not — I don’t like it either — the Russian attack. And now ask yourself if you are prepared to accept war for Ukraine’s membership of NATO.” And what else did they do? They opposed the classification of Russia as a “state sponsor of terrorism”.

This is how the EU, the West and the mainstream media put things. They spare no effort to impose, in practice, the idea that Ukraine is a member state, which it isn’t; to give Ukraine and the Kiev regime political weight, which it clearly doesn’t have; to incriminate for the crime of spreading Russian disinformation, when what was said had to do with a state — Ukraine — which supposedly isn’t even a member of the Union; persecute journalists for presenting facts that contradict those presented by the Kiev regime, which is supposedly not a member of the EU; close down virtual profiles for exposing facts that dispute the information provided by a country, which virtually — and only virtually — is not a member of the EU. Do you see the contradiction?

Thus, the emptier of meaning, substance and theoretical depth, the more dangerous idolatries become, almost as if the idolaters knew that the maintenance of their idolatry does not depend on its consistency, but on the force with which it is imposed.

In this case, the force with which it is imposed tells us that, if the witch-hunt has begun, it won’t be long before the fires start to crackle!

https://strategic-culture.su/news/2024/04/04/the-european-unions-fires-where-freedom-burns/