The EU was always about waging a class war against democracy and the working people of Europe
Mathew D. Rose is an Investigative Journalist specialised in Organised Political Crime in Germany and an editor of BRAVE NEW EUROPE
The CDU Headquarters in Berlin (Chancellor Merz’s Christian Democratic Party): The flags say it all
Photo: @watermelonmaaan
Sometimes what you do not see is just as important as what is visible. In the recent wave of mass protests by British citizens against its government’s support of Israel’s holocaust in Gaza and war crimes in the West Bank and other Middle East nations, the Labour party’s swinging austerity hitting mainly the poor, the government pandering to corporate interests as with water and railways to the detriment of the environment and British people, repression against those defending civil rights, is the astonishing absence of a single EU flag. This was once a symbol for the British professional managerial class and its children for neo-liberal authoritarian policies that they felt were being championed by the European Union, defender of Western values. No one seems to have noticed how the EU flag in recent years was discreetly replaced by the Ukrainian and Israeli flags (the Star of David rapidly becoming the modern equivalent of the swastika).
What does all this have to do with fascism and the EU? If we look at the current EU policies the parallels are striking with those of Nazi Germany: engaging in a genocide, a Russophobe war, a massive rearmament programme, an economic policy dictated by corporations at the cost of the working population, a highly effective propaganda machine, crushing of free speech and civil rights to silence opposition. With regard to the last, any German will say “I am not hindered from exercising my free speech”. But when it comes to saying anything critical concerning Israel’s genocide against the Palestinians and the war being waged by NATO in Ukraine against Russia, their fear of repression is so great that they would never exercise that right, instead seeking safety in self-censorship.
This fear is something a number of EU nations – and Britain – are trying to inculcate among their own citizenry. Exceedingly successful in Germany and a debacle for the British government, this shows once again how vast the political and cultural differences are in Europe and why national sovereignty is so important. Totalitarianism is the only political force that can unify Europe.
Why are the EU and Britain adopting the policies of Nazi Germany? Because this is what the European elites always wanted. World War II not only did not go as planned for Germany, but for the European ruling class as well. If we look at the Western discourse concerning that period, one should believe that evil Adolf Hitler imposed his will upon the victim Europe. To the contrary. Nazi Germany had many allies in Europe who also fought beside the Germans: Italy, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Finland, Slovakia,. Then there were the nations that collaborated with the Nazis: Vichy France, Norway, Belgium, Denmark, and the Netherlands. Add to this the “neutral” nations who assisted and profited from their relations and trade with the Third Reich, such as Sweden, Switzerland, and Spain. Most of Europe’s non-Jewish capitalists initially thrived under German Nazi hegemony.
Decisive for Europe’s support for Nazi Germany was the ruling class and its administrative willing helpers. It was not the Jewish holocaust that was so attractive to them, although anti-Semitism was apparently endemic in these groups. Decisive was Germany’s promise to destroy “Bolshevism”. That was not only the Soviet Union, but European workers movements, be it the unions, media, or culture. Corporate Europe and the European ruling class were fanatical supporters of the final solution of the workers movement, its eradication in Europe. As we know, in Britain there was great sympathy for Hitler in the ruling class as well.
Following the German defeat in Stalingrad, reminding many of Napoleons defeat in Russia, and the collapsing economic situation on the continent, which resulted in increased repression and exploitation by the Germans even among its allies, this support slowly crumbled. If we look at the true resistance to Nazi Germany on the continent, it was mainly led by members of communist political parties, not by the ruling capitalist class, the active supporters and profiteers of German Nazism. The capitalist class, governments, and administration were discredited by their collaboration with the German occupation.
With the beginning of the Cold War for propaganda reasons much of this was airbrushed away. A great deal of the history of this period reads like a Disney fairy tale. Suddenly Europe’s benevolent and paternal ruling class who were supposedly oppressed by Hitler were the heroes creating a “new” Europe. Driven by the pragmatism of the US and its fight to contain the Soviet Union, they assented to social democracy in Western Europe – for the time being.
The comeback of the hegemony of the ruling class that had initially enthusiastically supported the Third Reich was already being initiated as economic recovery in Europe began. The European Coal and Steel Community and Treaty of Rome resulting in the creation of the European Economic Community (EEC) consisted of the Western European Third Reich core nations – Germany, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxemburg, and France (Austria due to its neutrality could not join) – in the 1950s, whose ultimate goal was once again to create a single West-European economy, set the agenda. The European Court of Justice, established in 1952, was packed with judges who were former Nazis and fascists. By the way, the same process was occurring in West Germany, with most of the earlier Nazi nomenclature remaining in power. All of this under cover of a sanitised fascism. As George Galloway recently posted on X: “German fascism did not die. It just came back painted green, rainbow and pastel colours.” Germany’s latest risible chancellor, Friedrich Merz, somehow believes getting more brown back into German fascism will redeem his nation.
With the rise of neo-liberalism and collapse of the Soviet Block the way was open for the European elites to re-establish their total economic and political dominance over the whole of Europe, with the exception of Russia that was totally unacceptable to Russophobe Germany. The Maastricht Treaty of 1992 not only included the transformation of the EEC into the EU and its radical expansion, but also outlawed the ‘Keynesian’ polices that had been commonplace in the previous decades. 1999 saw the introduction of the euro, whereby member states subordinated their fiscal policy independence, as well as the introduction of the “Four EU Freedoms” (the free movement of goods, capital, services, and labour within the European Union). In Italy such EU policies were openly referred to as “vincolo esterno” (external constraint) introduced by the ruling technocratic power in Brussels by invoking “EU laws” to prevent any progressive governments wishing to introduce Keynesian econmomic policies of more liberal labour laws. Fascism is the final political stage of neo-liberalisn, removing economic policy from control by representative democracy.
The EU was now an entity to serve capital, not its citizens, as was so clearly demonstrated in 2005 after French and Dutch voters rejected the proposed EU constitution, which the EU ignored by adopting almost the same document as the Treaty of Lisbon that required no popular approval and interference by EU citizens. The priority of the interests of capital were now hardwired into EU law. The last time EU citizens were asked what they thought of the EU was Brexit. The holding of this referendum terrified the EU elite as they knew what was coming. The fact is that for many Europeans the EU is a technocratic authoritarian alien power only in touch with the managerial class.
By the mid 2010’s the media and the EU started to refer to the then German Chancellor Angela Merkel as the “Leader” of the EU. The might of Germany within the Union had been cemented by its financial dominance following the Great Financial Crisis. Germany’s de facto fascist Finance Minister, Wolfgang Schäuble, dictated EU finance policy. Nowhere was this German dominance of the EU more visible than during the Greek financial crisis of 2009 to 2015, where decisions were dictated from Berlin. Not only did Germany dominate EU financial policy, but also economic policy, as the EU was subordinated to Germany’s energy intensive industries powered by cheap oil from Russia, especially via the Nordstream pipelines, and German mercantilism, of which the rest of the EU was also a victim, but dared not protest. Germany incessantly ignored EU rules and laws knowing that other EU nations would not dare to challenge them.
In 2019 the Germans decided to dominate the politics of the EU apparatus as well. The German EU politician Manfred Weber was supposed to become EU Commission President, another unelected EU office, but as so many EU parliamentarians could not stomach him it became clear that he was not electable, so Germany decided in his place to name the German politician Ursula von der Leyen, who had never been elected to the EU. She was rubber-stamped by the EU parliament. We can assume that Germany had to pay a large amount in bribes to secure her election. It is worth mentioning that von der Leyen at that time had to be removed from Berlin due to a corruption scandal as she was defence minister, a scandal that was almost a carbon copy of the current Pfizer corruption case.
Von der Leyen did not have to introduce corruption to the EU parasitic class in Brussels. It seems at least once a year the EU parliament is rocked by major corruption scandals. Convictions never follow. Obey Berlin and you will be protected.
The EU has come a long way since receiving the Nobel Peace Prize in 2012. The EU is only one side of the coin. On the other side is NATO. What most people do not know is that all eleven East Block nations that joined the EU had to join NATO first. This has led to the claim that the EU is simply the civil administration of NATO. NATO which was initially a defence alliance has in the meantime become an international military intervention force. It waged war against Serbia in 1999 without a UN mandate. As NATO itself claims: “NATO Allies went into Afghanistan in 2001. From August 2003, NATO led the UN-mandated International Security Assistance Force (ISAF)”. NATO went on to contend that during the 20 years of NATO occupation of Afghanistan there had been no terrorist attacks on Allied soil from Afghanistan. Odd. No European or NATO nation has ever been attacked by Afghanistan. All of the hijackers from 9/11 were from the Middle East, most of them from Saudi Arabia They were led by a Saudi. 2011 NATO misused a UN mandate to enforce a no-fly zone in Libya for a direct intervention. In 2021, NATO members sent 21 warships into Asian waters where they conducted joint operations with all the regional navies that the U.S. is trying to pull into alignment against Chinese expansion. Today NATO is waging a proxy war in Ukraine – not a NATO member.
Outside of NATO the EU has also grasped the initiative of foreign military interventions. In 2013 for example the Germans, to placate France after its relegation to a second rate EU member, waved through the EUTM Mali (European Union Training Mission in Mali). Mali, despite its independence in 1960, was still effectively a colony of France. With its expensive nuclear arsenal France cannot afford a large army and suffers under a persistent shortage of boots on the ground, France needed support in its war against Islamic militants in Mali. German forces assisted France in their ‘war on terror’ missions Serval and Barkhane by using their role in the MINUSMA stabilisation mission in Mali to provide intelligence for French airstrikes. Through EUTM Mali the Germans and many other EU states trained up Malian forces to fight alongside France in their war. Former High Representative Borrell claimed that EUTM trained 90 percent of the Malian military. This mean it was responsible for training forces that went on to carry out multiple war crimes and atrocities. This was terminated after a military coup d’etat in 2021 that brought anti-imperialist forces to power who removed the French collaborationist government and then ordered EUTM, MINUSMA, and Barkhane to leave the country.
The EU today is playing a major role with its political, economic, and military support not only in the NATO proxy war in Ukraine, but also in Israel’s genocide in Gaza. With the warmongers von der Leyen and embarrassing High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Kaja Kalas, the EU has de facto adopted Germany’s support of Israel as Staatsräson (reason of state). The incredible hypocrisy of the EU in its treatment of Russia and Israel beggars belief and has led to astonishment outside of Western nations. While Putin is in the EU’s eyes a war criminal and Russia is committing genocide in Ukraine, Israel’s holocaust in Gaza is simply seen as self-defence and Netanyahu, against whom the International Criminal Court has issued an arrest warrant for war crimes, as an honourable head of state. What we are witnessing is the EU adoption of humanitarian fascism, known as “Feminist Foreign Policy” in Germany. This has enabled the EU to become the excuse for member states as well as allied nations not to comply with international law.
Meanwhile EU nations are resorting to austerity to reduce their deficits while yearly spending tens of billions of euros to support Ukraine financially and with weapons. Additionally EU member states are now expected to radically expand their deficits to finance re-armament programmes demanding still more austerity. In the past Germany had tried to expropriate the rights of other European nations through military means. They are now doing it via NATO and the EU. The EU economy, led by Germany, is stagnating due to the war in Ukraine. This is not a war against Russia. It is a war against the EU working class.
One of the principal claims of the EU is that it strengthens its member states by increasing their negotiating power. As Thomas Fazi so well explains: “For decades, Europeans have been told that only by pooling sovereignty into a supranational bloc could they wield enough collective clout to stand up to global powers. This was always a convenient fiction. In reality, the opposite is true: the EU systematically erodes the ability of individual nations to respond flexibly to domestic and external challenges based on their own economic and political priorities. This lie was exposed after the EU was forced to accept higher tariffs from Trump than stand alone Britain. In other words the EU has become a dead weight on many member states’ economies.
This has also become the case with Europe’s significance in geopolitics. Trump has reduced Europe to humiliated bystanders in his negotiations with Russia concerning NATO’s war in Ukraine and Russian security. Now European leaders will have to figure out how to spin their abysmal defeat in Ukraine as a victory. Having trashed diplomacy to heighten its moral posturing, Europe no longer has the ability to influence events in the world.
With the EU racking up one failure after the other, the EU authoritarian liberal elite found no further need to offer it citizens actual changes for the better, letting its mask fall and reverting to the pure pursuit of power that it always had been planning. In these difficult times the EU has reached for the German Nazi toolbox of political dominance. It has put political and economic pressure on nations that deviate from the policies dictated by Germany, as we have seen with Poland, Hungary, and Slovakia, as well as interfering in free elections as witnessed recently in Romania.
In the disorganised, delusional, and fragmented EU, which is rapidly losing its legitimacy, only violent repression can keep the population in check. In this sense, Gaza is the paradigm and laboratory for a new stage of European fascism. We are witnessing a systematic violation of civil rights as well as freedom of speech. In May the EU placed sanctions on red. media. It was the first time the EU has used this weapon. According to the EU, red. has “systematically spread false information on politically controversial subjects with the intent of creating ethnic, political and religious discord amongst its predominantly German target audience.” The EU elite realises that as bad as the present may be, the future will be worse, and so they are desperately clinging onto the present.
The EU, once the poster girl of European liberalism and enlightened values has transformed itself into a repressive, authoritarian, and, yes, fascist institution. Where once Nazi Germany led the attack on the Soviet Union, the Jews, and working class, today the EU is leading the attack against Russia, Muslims, and the working class. And just as Europe’s economic elite led the continent to ruin by hitching its fate to the German Nazi vision in World War II, it is doing the same again.
In the future we shall see less EU flags at demonstrations, fewer EU celebratory firework displays, as well as hearing less of Beethoven’s Ode to Joy. Instead the EU will continue promoting the destruction of democracy in Europe. Fascism is coming home.
The author omitted to mention an important Nazi ally. Important in its Nazi zealousness and enthusiasm in murdering of all the different people (not soldiers but civilians).
Nazi Croatia
Since WWI, european strategy has been for the United States to fight europe’s wars for them.
This was ever always only the real plan for Ukraine.