A Euroskeptic attack

[Reflecter]

This was linked on a forum. Its pretty attacking of those who wish t remain out of the EU.

http://chimesofreedom.blogspot.com/2007 ... st-my.html

Eurosocialist and Antifascist
http://tinyurl.com/yqslpc

My readers will have noticed by now that the Chimes of Freedom blog is headed by the European flag under which is stated that it is both Eurosocialist and Antifascist.

Non-British readers may not be aware of the ongoing campaign by the extreme Right against Britain's membership of the European Union. These Europhobes --more kindly described as Eurosceptics-- are a motley group of Little Englanders, mainly of a xenophobic and reactionary right persuasion.

But, having lost an Empire and any sense of raison d'etre, it is not only the usual blimpish right that lays a claim to exercise British xenophobia. The malaise stretches right across the social and political spectrum to include a lot of lefties lost in a political wilderness and without an ideological home.

Whereas the concept of a united, European Left is both a popular and normal phenomenon in continental Europe, the British Left has retained its traditional aloofness and pukka attitudes by not joining that common European front. 'Europe' is referred to as 'somewhere over there' as if Britain is somehow separated from Europe.

Of course this is nonsense. Britain is and has always been indivisibly part of Europe in its geography, its culture, its religion, its politics and its language. Only in a strangely schizophrenic British attitude of mind will you find Britain to be a separate entity, where when fog obscures the Channel it is the Continent that is cut off, not this overcrowded little island.

And due, no doubt, to the dumbing-down of the British mainstream media (MSM) even the Continent is no longer referred to as such. It has become 'Europe', something which Britain is not part of. The traditionally conservative outlook of the Brit has become so insular it would rather cut off all contact with the non-English speaking world to live in an artificial bubble of unreality which it hopes will be forever England.

It is part of a serious social malaise that is now so advanced it is eating at the imperial foundations upon which the very United Kingdom itself was built. Britain is in post-imperial collapse and in denial, projecting instead its unhappiness with itself on 'Europe' and immigration.

This social malaise (or is psychosis a more appropriate description?) is now so widespread that Britain provides the Basil Fawlty-type xenophobic Right with a breeding ground for the narrow-minded, petty bourgeois attitudes that Mrs Thatcher implanted in the susceptible British psyche.

The so-called demand for what is referred to as a referendum on Europe perfectly describes the spell of reactionary-minded xenophobia the British (predominantly the English) have fallen under. Disguised by a blimpish indignation against having to use metric measurements instead of imperial ones and driving 'on the wrong side of the road' (it appears that most of the world has been driving on the wrong side) this xenophobia is currently expressing itself as (i) Europhobia, (ii) a general hostility towards immigration, and (iii) an Islamophobia fuelled by the Bush/Blair fake 'War on Terror'.

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As an ex-colonial Brit, I am able to gauge and understand the British mentality both from a peculiarly British view of things as well as to perceive it from an arm's-length-view of one who still has a colonial memory of being at the receiving end of British attitudes.

The world-famous Canadian author of The English Patient, Michael Ondaatje, is a fellow expatriate of mine. His father, Mervyn, a planter in the old colonial Ceylon of the 1930's, was a pal of my old man who was also a planter. The Ondaatjes used to visit my family from time to time and my elder sisters have a memory of Michael as a rather tubby, aloof little chap who used to love scoffing on a can of condensed milk.


Michael Ondaatje

In his book, Running in the Family, Michael Ondaatje writes of an occasion when Mervyn, who rather worse for drink, held up the Colombo to Kandy train by running along the top to the engine, getting the driver drunk on arrack, leaping off the hotplate to strip off his clothes and run naked into a tunnel from whence he refused to emerge, thereby playing havoc with the Ceylon Government Railways' wartime schedule.

But why did a Ceylon Army officer have to run along the top of the train?

Because, as a dusky Eurasian, he with every other non-white officer was forbidden to walk through the train's corridors where there were compartments occupied by pukka white officers of the stiff upper lip British raj. That kind of mixing simply wouldn't do. It just wasn't British.

Eurasians of my ilk grew up with a memory of the precious white attitudes of Brits who walked around Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) with a permanent, invisible wall of separateness that kept them in a constant state of undeclared apartheid from the rest of the dark-skinned rabble. Fortunately for me, any fake ideas of British or white superiority that might have been implanted within by colonial conditioning was soon knocked out in the nationalist upsurge of the 1950's when British colonialism was thrown unceremoniously out of the window.

That nationalist reaction to four hundred years of colonial rule, first by the Portuguese, then by the Dutch and finally by the English, was understandable. But sadly, like all extreme reactions, it too was destructive leading to the fifty-year civil war that Sri Lanka experiences to this day. But that's another story.

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Returning to the white, pukka attitudes of the British mentality: really, nothing has changed very much since it lost its Empire. The pukka attitudes simply submerged into a quite artificial, Basil Fawlty-type 'Britishness' and continued to emerge as a desperate distaste and even hostility towards 'coloureds', foreigners in general and now, together with the rest of Europe, as Islamophobia.

But none of these things can be admitted to. The British believe themselves to be far too tolerant and fair-minded for that. So they have to be thinly disguised by entirely nonsensical rationales such as a pretend 'Euroscepticism' which hides a fully-blown Europhobic, xenophobia.

A xenophobia which is a sign of an endemic mental weakness or malaise, exposing Britain as the perennial sick man of Europe. A sickness which right-wing politicians, 'neo-liberals', Atlanticists and Washington's Neocon, closet fascists fully use to their advantage to drive a wedge between Britain and the rest of the European Union.

It is highly significant that an anti-EU Referendum rally is to be held in London next week, preceded the day before by the blimpish racists of the No Sharia Here SIOE, led by the Fawlty-like Stephen Gash and masterminded by the ubiquitous political opportunist, the Danish Anders Gravers. You can be sure that a lot of the Islamophobes marching on October 26 will also be marching in the EU Referendum rally. The same petty-bourgeois closet-racists are behind both Islamophobia and Europhobia.


Stephen Gash out of Fawlty Towers

And these phobic types are being supported by media tyrants like Rupert Murdoch who, like the criminal Conrad Black, not only support the Bush fascists but would have Britain out of the EU and into the economic hegemony of the North American Free Trade Association (NAFTA).

Ever since the end of WWII, Britain has been under the military hegemony of the US and its foreign policy. During the Thatcher years, Britain became 'Airstrip One', a forward base for US imperialism and potential nuclear attack in a European Theatre of War. But it remained, on the whole, within the economic hegemony of the European Community, later Union.

Thatcher never like that idea and cashed-in on the natural anti-European sentiments of Britain's Basil Fawlty mentality by keeping Britain out of the Euro and the Maastricht treaty.

Homegrown xenophobic, Europhobia also provided the Thatcherites and their successors, the Blair/Brownites, with the political clout to opt out of various areas of European legislation meant to protect the rights of trades unions and, through the Working Directive, to provide a maximum limit of 48 hours to the working week.

Using Newspeak and by turning reality on its head, this socially progressive legislation by the European Union was presented to a wholly prejudiced and tranced-out British audience as somehow a threat to British liberties! And this in a country which remains the historical cradle of trades unionism and the struggle for a 40-hour week which, when finally obtained, was done in by Thatcher and her peculiarly British form of fascism.

Thus, in today's dark ages, even a 48-hour week is presented by British capitalists as something that we progressive Brits would rather not have! And, together with having opted out of that social legislation, the closet-fascists and their Tory fellow-travellers in the Cameron party of Neocons would have us give away our human rights as well, the Human Rights Act of 1999 being presented by Britain's lying media as something which militates against and threatens our human rights!

A Human Rights Act, by the way, which it took 49 years for the complacent Brits to get around to legislate into its own laws, such was the reluctance of the British ruling classes to deal with anything that smacked of rights for the lower classes! And now the Brits are being conned into believing that 'Europe threatens its independence'! In the 51st State what independence does Britain have? The British bubble of unreality again!

Reich Fieldmarshall Hermann Goering was right in one thing at least when he predicted in 1940 that in twenty years time Britain would become an overcrowded little island living on the glories of its past.

Overcrowded, yes. But not by immigrants. By a breakdown of infrastructure and public transport and an overpopulation of private transport. Living on the glories of its past, yes. But where the Neocon fascists in Washington are calculatedly using British xenophobia, nostalgia and an entirely false belief in its independence to stir-up racism, religious hate and persecution and to persuade a generation of British working people, ignorant of their past struggles, to forsake all their hard-earned rights by turning its back on protective European social legislation.

The call for a Referendum is a fake, carefully packaged by the Right to sound as if it were something to do with free speech. The same free speech which the Right constantly abuse by using it to promote xenophobia, race hate and to attack the people's social and civil rights.

It is for these reasons that Chimes of Freedom and New Civilization remains solidly Eurosocialist, in defence of the people's rights, and Antifascist against the pukka white nonsense of xenophobia and imperialist racism.

[Sandie Seward]

We ARE separated from "Europe". We are not the same, nor do we share most of the so-called "European Culture" of our Neighbours. We are not only separated physically (by the North Sea and the English Channel), we are separated mentally as well.
I agree with some of the above statements, though, we didn't exactly endear ourselves to those whom we colonised, our overbearing and superior attitudes that all "people of different skin colour" were uncivilised and barbaric, requireing the "Superior Englishman" to well and truely "keep the Natives in their place, was rather over the top, and not really conducive to our Colonists thinking good of us.
Hell, we only did it for their own good, they didn't know how to exploit their country's wealth, they couldn't mine, or quarry, or reclaim masses of jungle so that they could use the land for Tea and Rubber crops. They had no idea how to do this. We had to show them, we showed them how to work the land , but, they never reaped the rewards. Oh no, the White Masters did that, they had to be content with the crumbs from the Masters table!
So now, is it any wonder that the English are hated by our former slaves and lackeys?

I've gone off on a tangent here, but you get my drift, I hope? That England broke away from close ties with Europe many centuries ago, otherwise if we hadn't done so, we'd still be ruled by The Pope, we would still be a Catholic Country, we would not have fought two bloody World Wars for our Freedom, only to see it being given to our erstwhile enemies on a plate, and Hitler's dream of a "United Europe", (Jewless, of course) would have been a reality.

We cannot now let Europe take over the yoke by our spineless politicians selling us out, by removing our own Constitution and quietly handing the reigns of power to the very same people and their descendants.

[Reflecter]

Indeed Sandy.

I was bringing it to the table in the hope of responses headed toward its origins.

When there is fog in the channel the europhile still claims that Europe is cut off from its motherland, not realising it was never and should never constitutionally be related. The Euroskeptic meanwhile is pleased.

We haven't ever endeared ourselves to anyone by our actions, same for the USA and I am not surprised there are those that have good reason to hate us. I dont see any of them doing anything about it though, only claims that they have.

As much as I love this country, I do despise its military history and its backing of covert operations that have brought misery worldwide. The same for the US, where combined we have screwed every counrty on earth over at some time or another. As you say, we did give them 'civilisation' in return for their precious resources that were the cause for our interest in them. Now we pay the price it seems. Engineered by those that created our enemies, who claimed to be by, for and of our ancestors, who did hold power to account. The new crop being liars by and for themselves, for whom the seduction of quick profits lets them sell our souls without a second thought to those who fought to gain the freedoms they have long exercised and purposely legislated away.

[Sandie Seward]

Of course, Reflecter, our country wasn't the only Western Country to Empire-Build. Spain did it in the South American countries, Holland did it in the East Indies, France with Canada, Russia with it's many smaller neighbours.
Empire-Building was all the fashion for a while, even Japan did it with China and other nearby countries. All done in the name of Power and Glory, naturally, not to mention the almost untold wealth and riches that it would bring for it's exploiters!
The People of those conquered countries? Oh they didn't matter. They could be exploited too, keep them just slightly hungry, keep them largely uneducated, keep them "in order", and get them to work and work until they could work no longer, then dispose of them because they had become "economically inactive". (This term by the way, has been used more recently to describe pensioners and other groups in our own Country.)

[dave]

Non-British readers may not be aware of the ongoing campaign by the extreme Right against Britain's membership of the European Union. These Europhobes --more kindly described as Eurosceptics-- are a motley group of Little Englanders, mainly of a xenophobic and reactionary right persuasion.

I hadn't noticed that is true but I expect organised groups to be placed to block rational, reasonable and caring people from being able to wield influence. Any organisation has an agenda, then an image so I respect the view of individuals, or the the views that are expressed.

xenophobia is a different matter. I expect reasonable people to care about their nation, similarly they would disprove of their nation enslaving, torturing and murdering people in foreign lands.

Ever since the end of WWII, Britain has been under the military hegemony of the US and its foreign policy.

US foreign policy is set by the UK, the RIIA and roundtable exerting considerable influence.

During the Thatcher years, Britain became 'Airstrip One', a forward base for US imperialism and potential nuclear attack in a European Theatre of War.

Plans to create nuclear conflict were in operation and concord was built as the escape vehicle for the elites.

economic hegemony of the North American Free Trade Association

Canada is another nation controlled through the UK, Toronto being an operational base for the assault that took over America.

[dave]

A Human Rights Act, by the way, which it took 49 years for the complacent Brits to get around to legislate into its own laws, such was the reluctance of the British ruling classes to deal with anything that smacked of rights for the lower classes! And now the Brits are being conned into believing that 'Europe threatens its independence'! In the 51st State what independence does Britain have? The British bubble of unreality again!

I view that paragraph as seriously subversive, the EU is a polical organisation that is a threat to all nations within it, as some of the antics of Peter Mandelson have demonstrated, to nations outside of it.

Overcrowded, yes. But not by immigrants. By a breakdown of infrastructure and public transport and an overpopulation of private transport. Living on the glories of its past, yes. But where the Neocon fascists in Washington are calculatedly using British xenophobia, nostalgia and an entirely false belief in its independence to stir-up racism, religious hate and persecution and to persuade a generation of British working people, ignorant of their past struggles, to forsake all their hard-earned rights by turning its back on protective European social legislation.

Again highly subversive. If one surrenders the right to make up one's own laws from one's house, to the town, to a government, far worse to a remote completely unnaccountable cartel, one surrenders those rights. That paragraph is presenting the truth backwards. It is kind of like saying I will clean your house every week free of charge, just hand over the property deeds to me. Dangerous neurolinguistics. The EU is not the wolf dressed in sheep's clothing, it is only a wolf.

[dave]

It is for these reasons that Chimes of Freedom and New Civilization remains solidly Eurosocialist, in defence of the people's rights, and Antifascist against the pukka white nonsense of xenophobia and imperialist racism.

I don't agree. It is a ploy to create sides then ask people to pick sides, e.g. labour or tory. All these 'isms' were created to destroy rights, to destroy people and they have by the millions.

The age old adage is that small government is better than big government. Saying so does not imply any ism, it is simply stating facts, facts that are verified by history.

People were brainwashed into national identities to fight wars, now the brainwashing is engaged to destroy nationalism to place all nations under a unitary authority, the UN, the stay behind force that has been instituting socialism leaving a trail of poverty, death and dependence in its wake. Should the UK or any nation be given away to a monster dripping with blood, I suggest no nation should meet such a fate.

[dave]

I've gone off on a tangent here, but you get my drift, I hope? That England broke away from close ties with Europe many centuries ago, otherwise if we hadn't done so, we'd still be ruled by The Pope

The UK was chosen as a nation best suited to empire build from and that happened, the UK controlling affairs the world over, even setting up the UN, EU and forerunners. King George III was kept mad while America was taken over and secured in an attack launched by the british monarchy from canada. Religion confuses the issue, the crown and the vatican being corporations.

we would not have fought two bloody World Wars for our Freedom, only to see it being given to our erstwhile enemies on a plate

War is the biggest of cons, the British people were really fighting for their enslavement and that happened. The German and British people were victims of the war, that is a key purpose in war. American's celebrate independence day, same con and without a free press people have been none the wiser.

and Hitler's dream of a "United Europe", (Jewless, of course) would have been a reality.

Hitler was a quarter jewish, part of the Rothschild family which financed both sides in the war, pulling the supply lines as the German army would have marched right into the red square and the building of power and dismantling of existing power bases required more revolution and the cold war.