Hard on the heels of my last post about the way in which the federastic fill their arguments with dodgy illusions comes this piece of reasoned debate from the President's of Italy and Germany.
Report this week in the Corriera della Serra, Mr Napolitano and Herr Curler, sorry Kohler were speaking at the University of Sienna.
According to Mr Napolitano, Eurosceptics are in fact "psychological terrorists" because they suggest that their is a growing "European superstate".
The fact that there is a flag, an anthem, an army, a diplomatic corps, a currency, a central bank, a judiciary and so on is neither here nor there. (And yes i know they are taking comments about the flag etc out of the draft text to be agreed next week. So what, anybody who has been to Brussels knows full well that the symbols are in use, they do not need a sentence in the Treaty to allow them to do something that there are de facto doing).
It is not a European superstate he continues, oh no, it is a "a new form of democracy". What he means by this is where decisions are made without reference to the population, indeed against the wishes of a majority of the population in many cases. This is the current comprehension of democracy within the elites that have the temerity to believe they act in our name. It is in fact "post democracy".
'Post democracy' is a term coined by Colin Crouch in an excellent pamphlet for the Fabian Society and more recently here. Basically it means that with the great complication that exists in the modern world, it is only reasonable that our governance is expropriated by those with the intellectual capacity to deal it. The common mass, ignorant and stupid as they are, are not equipped to comprehend the intricacy of politics. (Prof Crouch is not an exemplar of this approach though he sympathises with it). It is a concept that has been taken up with alacrity by many on the inside track in Brussels. Peter Mandelson was referring to this when in a speech in Germany he uttered the infamous words "the era of pure representative democracy is slowly coming to an end".
What makes this attack by the German and Italian President's more extraordinary is that they claim that this new era is upon us, but also claim that it is "utterly false" that as the Eurosceptics say the EU is "an incomprehensible, technocratic and bureaucratic system".
It ism, in which case the technocrats should carry on as before without reference to the unwashed, or it isn't and the mob should be allowed their say. You cannot have it both ways.
When the two of them start attacking Eurosceptics as mouthing "populist demagoguery" than I really take umbrage. This actually shocked the Italian girl I asked to translate the article for me. Her comment says it all,
"These men are deliberately trying to associate Euroscepticism with Hitler and Mussolini. They must be frightened".
Update
It appears that the Sunday Express picked this up, and this comment,
"The words of the two men were seen by many in their home countries as a thinly veiled attempt to link euroscepticism with the demagoguery and populism of the fascist regimes of Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini."
Suggests a passing resemblemence.
No comments:
Post a Comment