Brave New World, or European Road to Serfdom

Recently well-known Russian dissident Vladimir Bukovsky made a speech in European parlament about some alarming tendencies in EU. Here is a transcript of this speech.

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.

According to the [secret Soviet] documents, 1985-86 is the turning point. I have published most of these documents. You might even find them on the internet. But the conversations they had are really eye opening. For the first time you understand that there is a conspiracy – quite understandable for them, as they were trying to save their political hides. In the East the Soviets needed a change of relations with Europe because they were entering a protracted and very deep structural crisis; in the West the left-wing parties were afraid of being wiped out and losing their influence and prestige. So it was a conspiracy, quite openly made by them, agreed upon, and worked out.

In January of 1989, for example, a delegation of the Trilateral Commission came to see Gorbachev. It included [former Japanese Prime Minister Yasuhiro] Nakasone, [former French President Valéry] Giscard d’Estaing, [American banker David] Rockefeller and [former US Secretary of State Henry] Kissinger. They had a very nice conversation where they tried to explain to Gorbachev that Soviet Russia had to integrate into the financial institutions of the world, such as Gatt, the IMF and the World Bank.

In the middle of it Giscard d’Estaing suddenly takes the floor and says: “Mr President, I cannot tell you exactly when it will happen – probably within 15 years – but Europe is going to be a federal state and you have to prepare yourself for that. You have to work out with us, and the European leaders, how you would react to that, how would you allow the other Easteuropean countries to interact with it or how to become a part of it, you have to be prepared.”

This was January 1989, at a time when the [1992] Maastricht treaty had not even been drafted. How the hell did Giscard d’Estaing know what was going to happen in 15 years time? And surprise, surprise, how did he become the author of the European constitution [in 2002-03]? A very good question. It does smell of conspiracy, doesn’t it?

Luckily for us the Soviet part of this conspiracy collapsed earlier and it did not reach the point where Moscow could influence the course of events. But the original idea was to have what they called a convergency, whereby the Soviet Union would mellow somewhat and become more social-democratic, while Western Europe would become social-democratic and socialist. Then there will be convergency. The structures have to fit each other. This is why the structures of the European Union were initially built with the purpose of fitting into the Soviet structure. This is why they are so similar in functioning and in structure.

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. Similary, 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. I think Patricia Hewitt said this publicly.

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 liberaties and introducing emergency powers. Why do we need it right now? This can make a dictatorship out of your country in no time.

Today’s situation is really grim. Major political parties have been completely taken in by the new EU project. None of them really opposes it. They have become very corrupt. Who is going to defend our freedoms? It looks like we are heading towards some kind of collapse, some kind of crisis. The most likely outcome is that there will be an economic collapse in Europe, which in due time is bound to happen with this growth of expenses and taxes. The inability to create a competitive environment, the overregulation of the economy, the bureaucratisation, it is going to lead to economic collapse. Particularly the introduction of the euro was a crazy idea. Currency is not supposed to be political.

I have no doubt about it. There will be a collapse of the European Union pretty much like the Soviet Union collapsed. But do not forget that when these things collapse they leave such devastation that it takes a generation to recover. Just think what will happen if it comes to an economic crisis. The recrimination between nations will be huge. It might come to blows. Look to the huge number of immigrants from Third World countries now living in Europe. This was promoted by the European Union. What will happen with them if there is an economic collapse? We will probably have, like in the Soviet Union at the end, so much ethnic strife that the mind boggles. In no other country were there such ethnic tensions as in the Soviet Union, except probably in Yugoslavia. So that is exactly what will happen here, too. We have to be prepared for that. This huge edifice of bureaucracy is going to collapse on our heads.

This is why, and I am very frank about it, the sooner we finish with the EU the better. The sooner it collapses the less damage it will have done to us and to other countries. But we have to be quick because the Eurocrats are moving very fast. It will be difficult to defeat them. Today it is still simple. If one million people march on Brussels today these guys will run away to the Bahamas. If tomorrow half of the British population refuses to pay its taxes, nothing will happen and no-one will go to jail. Today you can still do that. But I do not know what the situation will be tomorrow with a fully fledged Europol staffed by former Stasi or Securitate officers. Anything may happen.

We are losing time. We have to defeat them. We have to sit and think, work out a strategy in the shortest possible way to achieve maximum effect. Otherwise it will be too late. So what should I say? 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.

Psychology of Jihad

Current international situation, being patently abnormal, can not be understood in terms of normal psychology and so needs to be considered in terms of psychiatry. This approach allows us to see real psychodynamic mechanisms at play and devise realistic measures to tackle them.

Certain mental maladies are contagious and can engulf whole nations. This is evident in cases of Communism and Nazism, medieval witch hunt and heresies, pacifistic and feministic movements, climate change scare and some other eco-doom eschatological hysterics and phobias. Many crazy cults have the same flavor of mental epidemic. They occur in situation of anomie and decadence, when crisis of traditional beliefs, norms and values has suppressed natural immunity to these spiritual viruses. As all opportunistic infections, they persist in latent form and wait until conditions are ripe for epidemic outbreak.

Now we have two concurrent mental epidemics, one in the West and other in Middle East, which aggravate and intensify each other. (Like AIDS and tuberculosis.) The pathology of Western society consciousness was extensively studied by Viktor Frankl, Holocaust survivor, who on the basis of his personal experience in Nazi concentration camps innovated the existential analysis — a new approach to therapy, going beyond Freudian and Adlerian analysis. The bottom line of his studies is that modern Western people have another type of universal neurosis than Freud’s or Adler’s patients: the core of it in permissive society with abundant possibilities of self-realization is not sexual frustration or frustration of will to power and success, but frustration of will to meaning. (See his books: “The Doctor and the Soul. N.Y., Vintage Books, 1973” or “The Will to Meaning. N.Y., Plume, 1969”.)

The notion of existential vacuum, or anomie, perfectly describe spiritual situation in post-Christian Europe and Europe-emulating subculture of godless American intellectuals. (Viktor Frankl also jokingly proposed to erect at the western coast of US a complement of Statue of Liberty, situated at the eastern coast, — Statue of Responsibility, somewhere in San-Francisco Bay Area.) A whole entangling of leftist soul pathologies is neatly described in terms of Frankl’s existential analysis.

In contrast, Middle Eastern medieval mentality is a mighty invitation to both Freudian and Adlerian approaches because of extremely repressive culture and stagnant social order of these societies. Usually the latter features result only in apathy and fatalism, so typical for the region during most part of the last millennium; but since WWII and decolonization a new factor came into play: frustration of self-esteem of these cultures. It was described by different names — future shock, cultural shock, clash of civilizations, — but underlying mechanism is simple.

Imagine some poor, backward, patriarchal tribe suddenly challenged by contact with advanced, prospering, affluent civilization, very different in its ways and customs. All its artifacts surpass everything that these savages can fancy; contemplate, for example, Vandals entering ancient Rome. These huge, magnificent buildings, statues, decorations, fountains; columns and aqueducts; wide paved streets and spacious squares; Colosseum, beside which these poor guys seemed to themselves gnomes or gnats. All these stones, it seemed, yelled to them: you are miserable, inferior creatures; you would never be capable to erect anything comparable! Guess, what their reaction were?

Of course. Vandalism. This is the name under which this tribe entered history pages. Inferiority complex, originated in patriarchal family with sexually frustrated young men and aggravated by unexpected, undeniable demonstration of their tribe inferiority, had fueled and triggered sudden and senseless orgy of destruction. Warrior culture built on honor and shame was wounded to the quick. Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?

And next, imagine rustic goat-herders or cameleers with most primitive conditions of everyday life, among whom European settlers are buying land, planting eucalypti at malaria swamps, cultivating, draining and irrigating wastelands, making greenhouses and vegetable gardens and do lots of other unseen things. And gather crops, plenty of them; several years passed — and these newcomers are rich! (Not by European standards, of course, but by Bedouin standards — very rich.) Also take into consideration that these poor folks are habitual robbers. Robbery is a long-standing tradition in Middle East; it comes along with goat-herding and cameleering. So, their reaction is fairly predictable. And reaction of those whom they rob is also quite usual and understandable.

Nothing previously unknown was going on here; this, at least for the time being, is millennia-old conflict of herdsmen and farmers. Only, usually nomadic herders arrive (or foray) on settled farmers lands; this time farmers arrive on the lands that herders used to reckon theirs. Conflict aggravates, escalates to all-out intertribal war, intermingled with external powers struggle, and, at last, is settled by UN resolution on land division (which farmers proposed from the beginning of the clashes). The later developments are too well known to describe again; I only sketched the psychological background of conflict: two very different cultures on very different stages of development, one on ascending, enthusiastic period of its history, another on stagnant and blind-ally path.

This conflict is not so important to global development as it is often portrayed; but, at a smaller scale, it really reflects general pattern and underlying mechanisms of much more dimensioned and epoch-making conflict of Western civilization with medieval or even more primitive barbarism of Muslim civilization. It also has already passed many stages of development to which the second, more wide clash, has not arrived yet, and so is a good predictive model for the latter. That is why it deserves more detailed scrutiny. Perception of this conflict is also a sensitive litmus test of sanity of West as a whole, of its different subcultures and of individuals as well. In this magic crystal we can see themselves and our future. So let us see — and try not to fear too much.