The European Union: Its Development and Inner Constitution, its Power Agenda, its Crisis and our Opportunity for Change.
1. The thunderclouds have passed.
A certain time interval having elapsed since the British vote to leave the European Union, it is appropriate to consider the present status of the EU, its transported political agenda, Europe’s crisis and the possibilities for the renewal of Europe which could catalytically follow from Brexit.
The period immediately following the Brexit referendum was clouded by the surprise which the Brexit advocates experienced following their own victory, by the fears stirred up in the populations of England and other EU states and by the defamation, disinformation and threats with which the powerful in the EU opposed England, presumably to nip in the bud any effect which might serve as a proactive example for other EU member states. Meanwhile, "the markets" have largely calmed again, Britain has clarified its high-level policy on personnel and has dissipated all collective fantasies about a repeat of the plebiscite or of a possible refusal to implement the referendum.
2. What are "European elites"?
The EU-powerful and their national vassals will long be remembered for their anger over the election outcome and how they showed their ugly, deformed faces, thereby providing an insight into their true intentions.
We owe to the European Union a complete change in meaning of an important sociological concept anchored in all European languages. Just a few years ago the word "elite" stood for that social minority who were distinguished for their especially excellent attributes and were prepared to apply these distinctions for the benefit of the community. The definitional range of the concept of an “elite” has always combined aspects of superior education and wealth of knowledge with moral integrity, consciousness of responsibility and dedication; and all this in conjunction with a certain formal status. Also the characteristics of modesty and willingness to make sacrifices were included generally within the precincts of the concept of an elite.
Those who use the word “elite” today really mean almost the exact opposite; only the fact that this group is a minority in possession of a formal status of power and influence is still congruent with the old meaning. Otherwise the “elite” of today stand for a reality-detached, arrogant ruling class who believe themselves entitled to force immature subjects, even against their will, into a new order of society, inclusive of an entire continent; they are an elite alleged to be somehow morally superior and functionally more effective and irreplaceable in the light of the irreversible developments of this world.
This elite not only consider themselves to be among the decision makers and functionaries of the EU and its member states, but also believe themselves among those entitled to the right of disposition over great economic syndicates and assets, including system-relevant media and other parts of the consciousness industry. Also included among the elites, therefore, are specifically intellectuals and university instructors, artists, entertainment specialists and the so called ‘creative minds’ of all kinds, insofar as they feel called to support the agenda of total transformation of the European society, including the implementation of a metapolitical [1], universal ideology, or to at least make it possible in the first place.
Since this project is understood as a struggle of absolute “good” against absolute “evil”, the members of the new elite feel justified in securing their dominance and power of disposition over societal resources by means which are incompatible with democracy and the principles of a constitutional state. For the members of the new elite their recourse to a bloated and hedonistic lifestyle is also characteristic, one in which their self-understanding consists in the exclusive we-feeling of the social avant-garde.
What is understood today as “elite” is therefore much closer to what under Soviet Communism was characterised as the “nomenklatura”: the totalitarian powerful and their ramified, virtual household.
3. Unprecedented Ignorance and Detachment from Reality
The elites themselves have not yet grasped that the word that designates them has undergone semantic change. On June 22, the German Federal President, Joachim Gauck, had the presumption to make the following astonishing assessment: "The elites are not at all the problem; the populations are the problem at the moment."
Following the clear 52-48 decision of the British people in favour of a withdrawal from the EU, the former EU Commissioner, Franz Fischler, allowed his indignation and horror free reign: he could not at all understand how the population could violate reason to such an extent, despite the entire elite having pronounced themselves in favour of remaining in the EU. In between these two manifestations of elitist self-understanding lay not only the Brexit decision itself, but also an entire bevy of aggressive attack torpedoes with which the representatives of pure (EU) doctrine attacked the supposed treachery of the Britains.
The Austrian scene was not spared the ambient noise from these torpedoes. In the Sonntags-"Presse", for example, after Brexit-day (June 26), [former Austrian chancellor] Wolfgang Schüssel, [deputy president of the European Parliament and Green] Ulrike Lunacek, the EU Lobbyist Gerald Knaus, and the well-subsidized writer, Lydia Mischkulnig, came to an agreement on a strong stance against separatism and EU deviationism. Schüssel denounced the Brexit decision as the sprouting up of the "dragon's teeth" of those who for years wanted only to avow a "Yes, but"-Europe. Consistently with that, Mischkulnig defines the "wrong Brexit decision" as the "product of demagogues and populists" whose "Führer-parties" had marshalled in "national partitioning" with "fascist symbols" which "the mob" would need.
By contrast, Lunacek’s attack on the "extremely dangerous nationalisms" has a virtually harmless appearance – especially if one takes into account that a "functioning mechanism for monitoring European values" after the manner of thought-police with special powers belongs to her European political self-concept (cf. Paneuropa Austria, May 2016). To the EU-critics, Knaus imputes "narrow-mindedness", "scapegoat-thinking" and the much-quoted "belief in simple solutions". He is thus a representative of the decades-long, monotonic lyre, an agent of the always continuously flogged, thought-killing phrases which function to immunise the EU against any criticism.
4. Uncertainty through Propaganda Bluff
In the style of feel-good propaganda – "Together instead of alone" – against petty statism, insularity, division, etc., the elite have for decades successfully prevented any constructive engagement with the deficiencies of the EU and have therefore sabotaged corrections to the concept at a time when these might still have been possible.
Thus Brexit voters too, and likewise all Britons sweepingly, were stigmatized in countless articles as wreckers of the sacred order. Immediately after the results were announced, the henchmen of the Eurocracy deliberately generated uncertainty: the British,
,shocked over the results of their decision, radically changed their opinion within hours; a repetition of the vote would produce a very different result. Within a single night, 420 billion euros were wiped out — as a result of plebiscitary wrong decision. The British, after having damaged the EU, must henceforth be radically punished by being made to feel, during the course of the exit negotiations, the maximum effect of their "isolationist and selfish politics". A parliamentary implementation of the exit from the EU must be refused; the English members of parliament must shoulder their responsibility for the EU as a whole – in particular, since the British had changed their mind again anyway. And referenda of this kind are generally to be prohibited in future. "What are elected representatives for when things get serious?" (Schüssel)’
5. Anti-Democratic Elite
In the attempt to delegitimise the Brexit referendum, the members of the elite have proved, and are proving, their radical anti-democratic attitude. But there is still more to it: many of them are showing on this occasion that the basic patterns of fascist thinking are anchored in their own minds and not in those of their opponents:
'The uneducated, the elderly, the economically unsuccessful or "progress-losers" have voted for Brexit, and a clear urban-rural differential shows the "provincialism" of EU-sceptics.
In contrast, 60 percent of the youth, as well as the educated and successful, voted with a clear majority for remaining in the EU. (Naturally it was not mentioned in this respect that altogether only 24 percent of the under thirty-year olds had taken part in the ballot); it is clear, therefore, where the future lies.’
For the first time since the Second World War the idea is blatantly being floated that the votes of particular population groups are worth less than those of others. Can it be denied that this inhuman attitude is very close to the dictum of "Untermenschen"?
Given all of the venom with which the elites persecute their critics, it is high time to hold the discussion which has been avoided for years concerning the true nature of the EU, its deficiencies and its future, and in a manner proportionate to the degree of complexity of the subject matter. The EU proponents have refused this until now under the mantra-like intoning of primitive advertising slogans and propaganda clichés. They, not the critics, are the ones who put forward "easy solutions" in the face of circumstances which are difficult to penetrate.
6. The Nature of the "EU Building”
The EU does not speak the truth about itself. It is no peace, freedom and prosperity project; not any longer. Its foundation myth is at best still a facade. Behind this facade is a building which was acquired by occupants who formulated the purpose of the building and its expansion in dramatic departure from the original plans of its architects. This does not mean that the building in its original conception would not have been suitable for the intended usage of its new owner; quite the contrary. It is true that the concept of a building and its practical use are initially two quite different things. But with continued habitation, the physical plant and the life that unfolds in it flow into one another seamlessly. A building for specific use continually emanates the genius loci, and this receives its form and characteristic expression through its habitation.
If this is not understood, then the nature of the EU and its specific situationality [Zuständlichkeit] in the present will not disclose itself. The deliberations which follow are not to be understood simply as a chronology or classification of events which have led to the structure of the EU in its present form; rather, they seek to grasp the EU and its formation in terms of a theoretical model; in other words, to place the completed steps toward integration, which have unfolded in chronological succession, into a functional connectedness that makes the EU recognisable as a quasi-self-moving formation. The purpose is to highlight the model of the EU in its distinctive wholeness by projecting the following central thesis: The EU is a product of planning, or rather, of a construction [2] and at the same time a product of the stepwise exploitation by a spirit which has spread and become established independently of the EU during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. It is the outcome of the interplay between planned objectives and rampant growth, and this artefact is suffused with an ideological agenda which is the result of the centuries old revolts against the Christian religion and the rational and cultural fabric which it brought forth.
7. The Founding Fathers and their Plans
The EU in its existing form was not planned or intended by any of its founding fathers. It is true, that Jean Monnet in particular (and with him Schuman, de Gasperi, among others) strove for a syndicalist interlocking of the economies of Europe, upon which an irreversible political community formation was to be superimposed little by little. It is equally true that Winston Churchill strove for a "United States of Europe" with transatlantic connectivity. But as surely as both had a unitary superstate in mind, it is just as certain that there is no evidence to suggest that they intended to prosecute a social and politico-cultural revolution of the type which today makes up the main agenda of the EU.
8. Delors' Plan: the Monetary Union and the Maastricht Treaty
Up to the time of the Maastricht Treaty (1992), "European Integration" could have developed in a completely different direction from the one it has in fact taken. And even after this caesura, with which the Economic Community was changed into a political union, there were significant forks in the road at which Europe could have taken on a significantly different organisation than it shows today.
In the European Council meeting in Hannover in 1988, the monetary future of a united Europe was determined. The mainstream concept of the then Commission President, Jacques Delors, according to which a single currency was supposed to be implemented over the course of a three-stage convergence phase, won through. But there had also been an alternative proposal for the formation of a harmonious European currency zone. Margaret Thatcher’s Chancellor of the Exchequer, Nigel Lawson, had in previous years already been supporting a concept, "which was based on the brilliant ideas of the Austrian Nobel Prize laureate, Friedrich August von Hayek" (Lawson), and which envisaged stable and efficient media of exchange through supply on the part of private issuers who were in mutual competition.
The socialist Delors prevailed over Lawson, and thus the monetary management of Europe arose by way of a centralized, unsecured single currency, the money supply of which has since then been expanded without restraint for political motives, and which represents the foundation for a continental redistribution. Europe owes not only a hapless banking and transfer union to the results of this mistaken decision, but also the germ of the still forthcoming greatest economic crisis of all time.
After that, the "monetary union" also became an explicit component of the Maastricht Treaty (1992), although all relevant decision makers denied – especially with a view to the then current candidates for admission (including Austria) – that the surrender of the national monetary autonomy became an obligatory component of EU membership.
Nevertheless, "Maastricht" was still by no means the formal basis of a superstate. The treaty concept envisioned entirely different intensities of co-operation. And it reveals – rather only upon subsequent reading – and then merely in hints and in a rudimentary way, the possible objective of eliminating the sovereignties of nation states. The famous 3-pillar model envisages – besides the classical, mandatory European Community sphere (1st pillar) – the sphere of Common Foreign Policy and Security Policy CFSP (2nd pillar) and the sphere of Co-operation in the Internal Policy and Judicial (3rd pillar). For the second pillar a mixed responsibility was defined; for the third pillar, a final responsibility and discretionary competence of the member states was explicitly set out.
The sphere of social policy was conceived only as a declaration of intent or as basic guiding principles within the framework of a supplementary protocol, the cultural sphere being addressed only in a non-binding way. In particular, the sections on family/family Policy, religious law, immigration, education policy/training and criminal law remained exempted from the "European harmonization". Since these areas are the decisive political determents of the cultural order, they were not yet conclusive in setting the course for a continent-wide cultural revolution.
This situation was to change dramatically with the EU treaties of the following years.
9. The Amsterdam Treaty as Ideological Milestone
The Treaty of Amsterdam (1997) established in its famous Article 13 an all-encompassing "anti-discrimination agenda". From now on, all “discrimination based on sex, racial or ethnic origin, religion or belief, handicap, age or sexual orientation” had to be combatted. With the dogmatisation of the term "discrimination", a powerful weapon was put in place for the destruction of any cultural tradition, which rests on what is and on what has grown in an inherently organic way [auf dem Bestehenden und Gewachsenen 3], on established normalcy, on majority opinion, on differentiation and objective inequality as well as on the diversity and non-equivalence of economic performance contributions and social or cultural consequences of behaviour.
Discrimination, as it is understood, does not simply refer to the unequal treatment of what is the same. Rather, this term incriminates the differentiated viewpoint, assessment and treatment of what is objectively unequal, insofar as inequality itself is defined as politically undesirable. The prohibition of discrimination forbids seeing and treating politically undesired inequality as unequal. The anti-discrimination agenda is not a socio-politically neutral concept such as, for example, the juridical principle of equality before the law. It is rather a normative concept for the implementation of social and cultural changes according to the ideal of those powers who wish to overcome the cultural fabric which has grown up in an inherently organic way.
The European Court of Justice (ECJ) in its grounds for judgement has repeatedly described the prohibition of discrimination as a "leitmotif of the EU Treaty" (see European Court of Justice, C-303/06, C-54/07, C-43/75, C-177/88, C-14/83, Council of the European Union 2000/43/EC, 2000/78EC, 2002/73/EC and 2004/113/EC).
This has dramatic and lasting consequences for the dynamics of the cultural and socio-political transformation of EU-Europe. The anti-discrimination agenda has proven to be the turbo for the propagation and implantation of Islam; for the worsening of immigration pressure; for the promotion of the interests of asylum seekers and economic and social migrants; and has proved as well to be an instrument for injuring the family and for accelerating the homosexual lifestyle.
10. The Amsterdam Treaty as Substratum for the Cultural Revolution
Besides the anti-discrimination dogma, the Amsterdam Treaty has cemented additional supporting pillars for the Cultural Revolution:
In order to "establish progressively an area of freedom, security and justice”, the areas of “asylum, immigration and safeguarding the rights of nationals of third countries” (Art. 73 I) are to be communitised.
Further, the treaty urges "promoting a balance of effort between Member States in receiving and bearing the consequences of receiving refugees and displaced persons" (Art. 63).
In addition, the fight against "racism and xenophobia" is to be made the subject of joint police and judicial co-operation (Art. 29).[4]
11. The Treaty of Nice and the Structural Determinants of the EU
The Treaty of Nice (2001) was the next step in the development of the EU. After implementation of the radical ideological positions in the Amsterdam Treaty, the formal and institutional conditions for a further strengthening of "horizontal and vertical integration" were in place from then on. Council, Commission and Parliament were enlarged or changed in their voting weights. In particular, the principle of unanimity was largely suppressed in favour of "decisions with qualified majority voting" so that countries, or rather, governments which are no longer willing to support a further de-nationalization are in future completely unable to mount a blockade. To increase pressure on the Member States, a mechanism for the application of sanctions against insubordinate countries was also established (Art. 6) after it had emerged that the then scandalous “sanctions of the EU-14 against Austria" (January to September, 2000) had been devoid of any legal basis. The EU therewith considered itself fit for the next round of admission of further candidate countries.
12. The Lisbon Treaty and the Comedy of its Ratification
The Lisbon Treaty was another step in social, cultural and political transformation.
Even its historical genesis must be seen as almost bizarre and understood as the point of culmination of the anti-democratic nature of the EU. Under Valéry Giscard d'Estaing a "Constitutional Convention" worked out a "Treaty establishing a Constitution for Europe". This was planned as the final and irreversible transition from the confederation of states to the superstate, for to have a constitution is definitively the exclusive property of a state.
While most member states carried out this substantial change simply within the framework of parliamentary decisions, the ratification initially foundered on the referenda in France and Holland. In 2007, the treaty was brought forward for signing in Lisbon, after a "period of reflection", and without any participation of the people of Europe. However, the Member States had to ratify this Act, which, with a single exception, they put into effect through their national parliaments. This exception was Ireland, which refused approval in the referendum of 2008. After intense international pressure and the propaganda offensive of the Irish ruling elite, this vote was repeated in 2009, and it brought the result which EU-Europe desired.
An integral component of the de facto constitution was the Charter of Fundamental Rights worked out under Roman Herzog (1999/2000), which was cautiously and "solemnly proclaimed" as early as 2000.
From the perspective of legal doctrine, the Fundamental Rights Charter differs in many respects from the historical collections of fundamental rights and freedoms. The latter took into account the protection of citizens’ freedom and private autonomy against tendencies of a state to abuse power and resource utilisation. The EU Charter, on the other hand, justifies this omnipotent claim to power simply by way of "social rights". And it dresses its socio-cultural policy intentions of transformation in so-called "European values", stylising them as the foundation of the Community, and in this way all doubt is supposed to be eliminated.
The principle of non-discrimination is expanded to include the criterion of citizenship, whereby the Charter creates the foundation for the project aimed at treating foreigners as equivalent to citizens, not only as regards legal interests, but also in respect of social and economic matters. (Art. 21/2). By elevating the so-called “diversity of cultures, religions and languages” — which is by no means limited to affiliation with the European cultural sphere — to a European supreme value, the way is cleared for the dictatorship of relativism and the phantasm of the "Multicultural society".
13. Lisbon Treaty and Superstate
The Lisbon Treaty itself definitively initiates the final stage of the emergence of a unitary superstate which marks the implementation of a very specific state objective. It takes account of this concept both institutionally as well in the formulation of the Union's objectives and competencies. The Lisbon Treaty did not yet take the originally planned final step to the "United States of Europe" because the ratification crisis had shown that the objective and subjective conditions for it were still not at hand
To take the wind out of the sails of those who feared the dictate of a European centralised state, Article 3a of the treaty even incorporated a formulation purporting to protect the integrity of nation states:
"It (the EU) shall respect their essential State functions, including ensuring the territorial integrity of the State, maintaining law and order and safeguarding national security. In particular, national security remains the sole responsibility of each Member State." [From English language version, Consolidated Treaty on European Union]
This formula contradicts a series of other, vastly more operative passages in this treaty (cf., for example, legislative competencies of the EU on the subjects of justice, domestic policy and immigration, as well as Article 205-227 on the "The Union’s External Action"). But it makes the overall text acceptable to many and precludes potential resistance to the ultimate act of fusion.
The Lisbon Treaty grants the EU its own legal personality. With the "permanent President of the Council" and the “High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy", the treaty's institutional reform brought in two additional symbolic figures of an obviously quasi-national power structure. And the establishment of the Union’s objectives and competencies shaped in advance the agenda to be followed in the future: the treaty mentions fundamental social rights, social progress and social justice to the same extent as the objectives of full employment, economic growth, and the state-objective of providing public services and the security of supply in the energy sector.
14. EU-Superstate and Excess Agenda
For the correct assessment of the hierarchy of objectives and the EU structure of competencies, it is necessary to make the following observation: No state or state system of modern times has defined its state objectives and competencies in its Constitution with a similar breadth and in a similar density and depth as the European Union. In any case this applies in a particular way to classical liberal constitutional states and democratic republics, namely, that they always, almost exclusively, limit themselves to the description of the political institutions, the structure and the procedures of political decision making, the formal preconditions for exercise and limitation of power and to the definition of basic civil liberties. It applies, however, also to the Communist dictatorships, whose constitutions, while they speak in general terms, and with pathos, of proletarian folklore, collective prosperity and social progress, they never reached the level of the European Union in respect of laying-down the organisation of social and cultural reality.
The EU is by no means a mere functional construct. Much more than that, under the cipher of the so-called community of shared values, it configures a compact, ideologically and clearly focussed model of social coexistence, containing a series of important key decisions in favour of a particular idea of man and view of history, a particular view of the nature of culture and of human coexistence and a particular idea of justice and the common good, based on assumptions which are mostly unspoken. This "spirit of the EU" produces – like any community spirit – a directed, operative dynamic in alignment with a particular societal ideal.
15. The component elements of the European Union
The social, cultural and economic model, the implementation of which the European Union has prescribed, can only be disclosed and understood if one brings the content stipulations scattered throughout the constitutive treaties of the EU into relationship and reconstructs their synthesis as these pertain to regulatory policy. Out of all the declarative padding and the wadding surrounding the relevant determinants, there emerges with perfect transparency a concept of state, or the agenda for a state, having the following structural elements:
- The EU strives for a paternalistic welfare state, which mandates, politically, the most important ways and means of social security and support (Art. 34) as well as health and other public services (Art. 35), and carries through their provision politically. "Social rights", as well as the right to access public services, are always addressed to the superstate as the grantor, which must be endowed with corresponding power. The infrastructural framework of the economy serves not only the safeguarding of its productivity, but also the goal of continent-wide consolidation of integration in particular: transnational energy networks interlock the former "national economies" and make them dependent; digitization and globally oriented communication technology create a single "data space". [For the English Language version of these references: Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union]
- The EU economy is not a market-economy system in the proper sense, and therefore does not constitute "capitalism". The EU-typical "harmonization of economic law" favours multinational corporations, which are mutually interconnected and clocked politically to the EU. They are syndicates, controlled politically in manifold ways by the economic, monetary and personnel policy of the EU, in which private participating interests are of subsidiary importance, which is why the term “neo-syndicalism” recommends itself for the classification of the EU economy.
- Insofar as the term "social market economy" is used in the EU documents, the adjective "social" refers not to a distinctive trait of the market economy but to the cultural and socio-political objectives of the EU. "Market economy" is not understood as a co-operative model of free and self-determining people, but as a method of releasing those productive forces necessary for the implementation of the “social”, or rather, the ideological objectives of the EU’s social and cultural policy.
- The subsidiary standing of the so-called market economy manifests itself in an especially clear way, for example, everywhere where it is a matter of implementing the EU-characteristic gender ideology. This is nothing less than another conceptual instrument for making man and woman equivalent [Gleichstellung] which is what gender ideology claims to do. Genderism flows directly from the association between anti-discrimination dogma and an image of man committed to the dissolution of tradition and biology. It only remains now for the economy to release those forces necessary to dissolve the traditional family concept and nationalise the raising of children.
- The cultural and social texture of the EU is that of a "multicultural and multi-religious society". "Cultural diversity" is defined as the parallel co-existence of identities, showing the highest diversity in their essential character, but of equal value no matter whether these are of European or of non-European origin. "Freedom of religion" is purposefully defined (Art. 10) without reservation of statutory powers; and as a result, ritual performances incompatible with European cultural and legal traditions are also accepted. The specific tolerance concept of the EU and the regime of anti-discrimination produce, almost automatically, a doctrinaire morality, which is to say, an ethical relativism which is to radically vanquish the organically grown Christian life-form of European everyday life.
- The constitutive criterion of every state is, among other things, the constitutive people. Since the EU superstate does not initially possess anything like this, then the necessity arises, from its standpoint, for deliberate population exchange. To the transformation agenda of the EU belongs the targeted elimination of the population substrate of the nation states and their replacement by a rootless and culturally mixed, supposedly indeterminate population. The working together of several basic elements of the constitutional order of the EU produces the artificial constitutive people almost as a by-product:
- the right of "free crossing of internal borders" (Schengen, 1985, etc.);
- the "freedom of movement and of residence" (Charter, Art. 45);
- the "right to asylum" (Charter, Art. 18);
- expediting measures pursuant to "immigration policy measures";
- the ubiquitous prohibition against discrimination, and
- the requirement for "balance of effort ... in receiving and bearing the consequences of receiving refugees ..." (Art. 63).
These points considered in combination, in the event of non-European crises, will of necessity lead to mass immigration and will result in the widespread incapacity of states and their officials to deal restrictively with migrants, or rather, with occupiers.
16. The EU: An Order Closed in upon Itself
One searches in vain through the constitutive foundations of the EU for an expression of the highest European traditional values, such as private initiative, individual accomplishment and initiative, personal responsibility, Christian work ethic, entrepreneurial creativity, inventive genius and practical charity in the immediate circle of personal relationships etc. Thus the definition lacks anchor points, from which a possible correction of the baseline of the EU edifice could be carried out — at any time whatsoever.
The building components 1-6, therefore, constitute a seamless order, which restricts the distinguishing characteristics of the EU to a centralistically homogenized, constructivistically [2] and arbitrarily decreed, neo-socialistically managed and anti-Christian deculturated mass society. Nowhere in its entire structure does the primary law permit of a different development or another content-related design.
Contrary to its lavish propaganda rhetoric, the EU is a system closed in upon itself, in which there is no manoeuvering room for later decisions that deviate from the predetermined direction. This fundamental lack of influence is true even for the workings of the mandataries and political functionaries of the EU, and even more for the citizens themselves.
17. Structural Determinism and Incapacity for Democracy
In addition to sketching the content stipulations of the present and future order of the EU, it is necessary to point to the institutional and formal determinants underlying the structuring of the European Union. The fabric of relationships among the institutions and the structure of the decision-making processes are by no means content by way of the content and value judgments which EU policy produces at all its levels and incorporates societally. Rather, there exists a strong institutional determinism, whose mode of operation and its consequences can only be adumbrated within the framework of this small paper, although they carry extraordinary implications.
The structural relationship between the EU bureaucracy – a structure whose acting nomenklatura-community of EU members of parliament are without any connection to their homelands – and the EU Council – which is under pressure from Commission and the laws of group dynamics – necessarily and without any alternative produces a radical, culturally-socialist project of societal transformation. This necessarily arises from the complete unrelatedness of the Brussels and Strasbourg EU-events to public opinion in the member states; from the complete failure to publically justify massive, ideologically relevant projects; and from the mechanics which pursue and set in motion high-criteria, socio-political objectives, implemented in seemingly harmless individual steps and amidst a confusing division of labour among the EU institutions.
All these structural elements favour, on their own terms, artificial and constructivist projects, with which an elite, divorced from reality and closed in upon themselves, work labouriously on the planned elimination of a traditional and organically grown order which they do not understand and therefore consider inferior, an order that was brought forth in Europe through the inculturation of Christianity.
One of many examples of the numerous, formal structural elements, which together fall into a rigid institutional determinism, is the legislative procedure laid down pursuant to Article 294 in the Lisbon Treaty. Those who are seriously studying the reciprocal interconnection among the Commission, Parliament and Council, will have no difficulty in recognising that this is a closed system in which only those elements that support the fundamental thrust of the EU’s transformation agenda and do not call it into question are authorised to take initiative and make relevant decisions.
This process substantiates Ralf Dahrendorf`s insight which he formulated decades ago, according to which there can be no democracy above the level of nation states. From this principle, and a series of other formal and functional principles with a similar construction, there arises in particular, an effective mechanism of transmission which ensures that the above mentioned six design principles are reduplicated and implemented at all levels of the EU, even if the result in each case is rejected by the majority of the population.
18. EU Transmission Mechanism and the Omnipresence of Realpolitik
The following components of this transmission mechanism can be identified:
- The EU secondary legislation;
- the so-called reports of the parliament and its committees;
- the target-directed operations as they are frequently carried out by the EU Council or the Commission, and with major outlay;
- the agreements with third countries or regions outside the EU;
- the large number of agencies and similar bodies, which receive endowments from the EU budget;
- as well as – seemingly very "low-threshold" – the communications of the Commission
A few examples will illustrate the events which are taking place in this connection:
- The anti-discrimination agenda (secondary legislation) was implemented alike in four EU directives, including the most famous, 2000/73/EC.
- The Estrela report on "Sexual and Reproductive Health and Related Rights" (2013/2040(INI)) of the European Parliament, among other things, called for the "safe and legal termination of pregnancy" as well as mandatory sex education in schools. (for the time being, not accepted).
There was the Lunacek report for the “combatting of homophobia and discrimination on grounds of sexual orientation or gender identity” (2013/2183 (INI)).
- The "Barcelona objectives" of the EU Council in connection with a report of the Commission on “the development of childcare facilities for young children in Europe with a view to sustainable and inclusive growth” (2002), by which the raising of children is to be transferred from the care of the family to the competence of the public domain [Quoted directly from original English language source: Barcelona objectives].
- The so-called free trade agreements with the USA and Canada, TTIP and CETA , which was secretly negotiated by the EU, by which the principle of non-discrimination is to be extended to the globalised flow of international merchandise.
- There is the activity of bodies such as the "European Commission against Racism and Intolerance (ECRI)" or the "European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA)". With these institutions, the EU implements its targets of this policy segment "primarily through the drawing up of country reports, the publication of general policy recommendations and through co-operation with the civil society, especially non-governmental organisations".
- The "Action Plan against Racism” (Commission Communication, 25 March 1998) (where under “racism”, “Islamophobia” is also to be understood), by which “ethnic and cultural diversity is one of the defining characteristics of "European" civilization and must be cherished as a positive and enriching factor".
In order to make intelligible the comprehensive compactness of the transmission mechanism between the EU-primary law and the political and social reality, and to show the claim to totality with which the design principles of the EU are applied, only one passage out of the last example (The "Action Plan against Racism") need be quoted directly:
"The action plan against racism consists of four main strands:
[...]
Mainstreaming the fight against racism: the sectors which could make a particularly useful contribution are employment strategy, the Structural Funds, education, training and youth, the information society, justice and home affairs, communication, audiovisual and culture, public procurement, research and external relations. The Commission will continue to apply the principles of non-discrimination in its own policies and internal practices; an inter-service group will be established as a tool for promoting the fight against racism as a mainstreaming principle across its policies.”
With the doubtless somewhat unwieldy presentation of the foregoing points, it should be apparent how the “spirit of the EU”, as it emanates from the constitutional documents or treaties of the Union, fights its way, with a directed, operative dynamic, in the direction of a specific ideal of society.
19. The Spirit of the EU and Radical Cultural Socialism
This social ideal rests firmly on the six component parts which have been brought to light above as the foundation of the EU. And it is just this social ideal which converges to a very high degree with the old left-wing phantasm of cultural revolutionary world redemption.
Socialism has failed dismally as an economic model and social system. But as an anti-traditionalist counterculture it has found in the EU a substrate, the force and efficacy of which has until now admitted of no serious opponents. Therefore, the EU has become the mature love of the Left from all backgrounds and denominations. In the EU, everything is incarnated which has always defined from the very beginning the earthly religion of cultural socialism:
- Hedonistic materialism and a present-oriented consumerism. Radical amoralism. Present-oriented disinhibition and short-term satisfaction of sexual desire. Dissolution of sexual identity and cultural homosexuality.
- A "one world" ideology and "global village"-globalism, institutionally supported through supranational institutions. Global economic egalitarianism through worldwide redistribution mechanisms ("developmental assistance", "climate protection programmes", "fall of trade barriers")
- Ideology of the "autonomous personality" or the arbitrary choice of a cultural identity. Multiculturalism or cultural relativism. Systematic uprooting from organically emergent cultural orders. Anti-nationalism and anti-regionalism.
Cultural socialism and its fundamental positions set out here exist, of course, outside the EU also and independently of it. This ideology has a long and ramified history of origin and development, which cannot be outlined even allusively within the framework of this short essay.
But it is important to understand that the concept of cultural socialism is not a product of the EU, but represents a spiritual reality in its own right, which in the course of many decades has taken possession of the metapolitics [1] and public opinion in most countries of this world. Educational institutions, cultural and entertainment industries, and in particular the most important media and other enterprises of the consciousness industry have to a great extent allowed themselves to be enlisted by the mainstream of world-wide cultural socialism. Through the mechanisms of metapolitics and the consciousness industry, cultural socialism could be fed into the design process of the Union. Of course the Union for its part, as outlined above, also projected its influence retroactively on cultural socialism by giving the latter a home, as well as providing a many-faceted and lavish financing for the material subsidies of its protagonists and operating authorities.
20. Social Evolution and the Unreformability of the EU
The structural nature of the relationship between the EU and cultural socialism is a massive interference process: both entities influence each other reciprocally and thereby indirectly act back upon their own development. Essential sequences of such a process can not be planned and therefore bear the characteristic traits of a spontaneous, evolutionary process.
The quasi-organic complexity [quasiorganische Komplexität], with which the Leviathan of the European Union confronts us, is therefore, in many respects not planned, but is grown [gewachsen 5], for which reason the EU cannot be characterised in its entirety as a product of conspiracy. This insight is of paramount practical importance. It means no more and no less than that the EU in principle is not reformable. It means, furthermore, that the EU cannot be placed in the service of other goals and agendas than those which now fuel it; that means, a correction in the direction of its effective influence is impossible. For if the goals and agendas are incorporated organically into the EU’s structural edifices and frameworks of authority, their commissioning for fundamentally different political contents and objectives than the ones up to now is impossible.
That the EU cannot, in its totality, be described as a product of conspiracy, does not mean, conversely, that nothing about it is a product of a conspiracy. In fact, the almost uniquely distinctive methods for the consolidation of European integration and the guarantee its effective irreversibility are the expression of a deliberate conspiracy of the EU-elites against their own populations. Between a more or less loose treaty community acting explicitly on mutual interests and an omnipotent superstate with a comprehensive authority over the agenda, there was a succession of apparently harmless individual steps, the final consequences of which were discernible only to the participants and to the initiated
The point in this succession at which the qualitative leap from mere co-operation to subordination took place can at best be established with a certain amount of legitimacy after the fact. Only one thing is certain, that in the course of the purposeful, continent-wide systemic change, the European people were not involved in the decisions; not at any single point during this metamorphosis, not even partially. And that means that the superstate construct of the European Union does not posses the least democratic legitimacy; not its individual projects, not its agenda as a whole.
For a super-union whose founding myth is rooted in the collective oath of "Never again Fascism", that is particularly remarkable; but in the face of excessively cultivated rituals of anti-fascist folklore, apparently it does not particularly attract attention.
21. Succession of Undemocratic Changes in Course
What is certain in any case is that this succession of undemocratic changes in course did not just happen, but key persons of the European nomenklatura consciously pushed it forward.
Giulio Amato, former Italian Prime Minister and later Vice President of the European Constitutional Convention, proclaimed on several occasions that it was necessary to proceed slowly in order "to destroy the sovereignty (of member states) little by little".
On this point, the long-standing chief ideologist for the ÖVP (Österreichische Volkspartei, Austrian People’s Party) and later candidate for the federal presidency, Andreas Khol, thought that in the chronology of individual decisions it is impossible to fasten on that decisive step at which a "total change of the Austrian federal Constitution" would occur, and therefore, the referendum which is supposed to be held in the event of a "total change", is not necessary.
Jean Claude Juncker was the bluntest in his description of the EU methods addressed here:
"We decide something, float it broadly and wait a while for something to happen. If there is no outcry and there are no rebellions, because most people do not understand what has been decided, then we go forward, step for step, until there is no turning back". (Spiegel from December, 27th,1999)
22. The Crisis of Europe and the Harm to Individuals and Peoples
A point of no return has long since past for the European Union. It has led the continent into the worst crisis in its history. By launching that agenda, which is indelibly incorporated in its innermost essence, it has implemented projects which are inflicting a harm on this continent and its peoples and which are well-nigh past the point reversibility:
- In the "welcoming culture" vis-à-vis so-called refugees – the immediate product of cultural relativism, the anti-discrimination regime and the desire to create an "EU-Volk" – an all-encompassing material and ideational dispossession of the indigenous populations is being carried out. Entire cultural landscapes are on the point of disappearing.
- The EU policy has pushed through the Islamisation of the continent in a downright brutal fashion. The greatly cherished "values" of "pluralism", "diversity" and "enrichment", and the phantasm of the "multicultural society" which corresponds to them, have supplied the underpinnings to Islamisation as much as has the EU-typical aversion to the organically emergent Christian order of the old Europe. The price of Islamisation ranges from the diminution of the average labour productivity, the spread of illiteracy and the lowering of the level of education to the emergence of parallel societies through to the dramatic deterioration in the security situation in the countries of Europe.
- The EU-specific gender mania and the establishment of the homosexual lifestyle have injured the classical family and in many ways have pressed it to the brink of the possibility of existence; they have dramatically lowered fertility; they have driven forward the "culture of death" with their hospitable accommodation to abortion, by violating the limits of reproductive medicine and by "open discussion of euthanasia"; they have damaged the psychological equilibrium of many children through compulsory early sexualisation; they have enforced a comprehensive and extensive state control of education and have forced the socialization of the young generation.
- The single currency of the euro has added a new dimension to the concept of Fractional Reserve Banking and has brought the "creation of money out of nothing" to an unprecedented order of magnitude. The imposition of European monetary prerogatives has led to a redistribution of wealth, which has brought about the widespread extinction of the middle class, has caused many misallocations in real economic terms and has brought about the misdirection of investment decisions as well as an intensification of the imbalance among the economies of the European countries. This monetary regimen has been kept alive artificially at the cost of manifold and time-spanning breaches of the EU's own law, and the deformation phenomena which it has evoked are so dramatic (see currently, for example, Italy), that sooner or later an inevitable economic collapse on the scale of a thermonuclear holocaust must be feared.
23. The Criticism of the EU and its Totalitarian Counter-Reaction
All these mega-projects have been undertaken and pushed through against the will of the overwhelming majority of the European populations. They possess – as in the design of the Union organism itself – no democratic legitimacy and are thus manifestations of classic foreign domination. Ever growing segments of the European populations are currently becoming aware of this, for the problems resulting from the implementation of the power projects of the elite are breaking through into everyday life in ever more evident ways.
With increasing mental distress, there is an insight gaining ground which is best formulated after the manner of Ronald Regan: the EU is not the solution to our problem, the EU IS the problem. Accordingly, not only is criticism forming up everywhere, but also systematic opposition.
This triggers, as is usual with autocratic ruling systems, corresponding reactions of the ruling nomenklatura and their apparatus. The EU generates its effect in this regard in two different spheres of activity:
- Division of society: Daniel Cohn-Bendit, veteran founder and respected guiding intellectual force of the EU, a few days after Brexit said ‘Europe needs more and not less independent sovereignty. Today there is no longer any left-right conflict, but merely an unbridgeable dividing line between Pro-Europeans and EU opponents.’ With this friend-foe schema the EU stigmatises their critics as evaders of reality and as enemies of peace, progress, prosperity and humanity. In order to marginalise the latter, they rally by various means a "coalition of the willing" around the hard-core of centralised-state fanatics and EU-functionaries. Brought into relationship with one another in several concentric circles and taken on as coalition partners are "Gutmenschen” (refugee aid workers!), ideologues, those who commit criminal offenses out of conviction, fellow-travellers, accomplices, profiteers, pragmatists and "realists". The enlisting of potential combatants is carried out within the framework of an enormous battle of matériel, in which the progress winners – frequently, kept-lodgers at the flush feeding troughs of the Union – are brought into position against uneducable “progress losers” who must suffer themselves to be represented as untutored Philistines with bad breath and rotten teeth. In the meantime, the societies of Europe are in fact deeply split, and one wonders who will one day bear the responsibility for this incalculable damage.
- Targeted elimination of freedom and the persecution of critics and political opponents: Martin Schulz, SPD politician and President of the European Parliament, said: "Even freedom of expression within the European Parliament must have a limit as soon as it calls the political objectives of the EU into question." None of the classical dictatorships of the twentieth century ever saw the inviolability of their agenda in any other way. The elimination of freedom came insidiously; but now, it is not only becoming very efficient on many fronts, but is also being pursued quite overtly. Speech prohibitions, newspeak, regulations, falsification of history, the reversal of meaning and taboos attached to prescribed doctrines dominate public discourse everywhere. "Indignation", "fear" as well as "rage and grief" are hurled like anathemas at the insubordinate if they do not adhere to the laws of political correctness. Even criminal law is brought efficiently into action: "incitement" and "denigration of religious doctrine" (always meaning Islam) are punished with imprisonment. Meanwhile, standing plans exist which are far-reaching and on the point of implementation; these pertain to the prosecution of “hate speech”, by which “Islamophobia” and xenophobia in particular are meant, but also the “emotional” speech of EU-critics is understood. In a manner befitting the EU, its Member States, under its direction, have already established a fully developed network of informers and a system of surveillance. This is still half-heartedly justified with the necessity of a "war on terror", as happened in Austria in respect of the "Police State Protection Act" which just became law. But this alibi is dropped in practice when it is a matter of harassing the real enemy. On 12 July 2016 the German Federal Criminal Police Office conducted raids on sixty (60) residences of "members of a secret Facebook group"; the raids were justified officially with the necessity for a "sensitisation of the citizens in dealing with Right-leaning statements on social networks".
24. "Stagnation is Regression" – Forward at all Costs
The more reality-detached, the more perverse and the more inoperable the project agenda is, the more totalitarian the dictatorship has to be in order to push it through. Therefore, EU-greats like Juncker, Merkel, Tusk and Schultz, on the day after Brexit, began to take the bull by the horns and secure a rapid finalisation of the elimination of all remnants of the nation-state structure of Europe, so that the "Sovereign State of Transeuropa" is not jeopardised on the home stretch.
The German Foreign Minister, Frank Walter Steinmeier, distinguished himself uniquely, for example, when at a meeting of the Visegrád states he presented a concept which
'transfers, as soon as possible, criminal law, the right to levy taxes, control over interior borders, the right to raise an army and the distribution of refugees to the competence of the EU, which is to be consolidated in its capacity as permanent debt and transfer union.'
In addition, the EU High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs, Federica Mogherini, a few days later called for a close co-operation between the EU and NATO, which she said was necessary in order to support the security interests of the member states and their mutual solidarity. As if to sprinkle the final seasoning over it, Jean-Claude Juncker, almost at the same time, trumpeted that the EU institutions naturally have the right to enter into binding trade agreements, such as with the TTIP, without the member states having a hand in the matter, because the states have transferred their sovereignty to the EU.
25. Opposition to the EU Leviathan
A growing number of citizens of all Member States are no longer allowing themselves to be impressed by strong-arm swaggering of this kind. And all available data show that the vast majority will no longer allow the EU Leviathan and its reality-detached ruling elite to dictate what policy they are must accept when it comes to "refugees", to the question of continental redistribution mechanisms, to the project of cultural transformation and to matters relating to the private sphere. Brexit, which Great Britain has adopted and will implement calmly from now on, must be working work like a catalyst for resolving the paralysing anxiety which individuals and peoples have built up whilst faced with the supremacy of the EU Leviathan over the recent decades.
Given the many daily adversities which the people increasingly recognise to be the product of an errant superstate collectivism, the potential for opposition is growing in all countries with every passing day. Soon the people will be ready to come to terms with real alternatives to the EU. And it is only a question of the circumstances under which the EU will be replaced by another form of European co-operation.
It is not yet possible to predict whether the EU will first suffer an economic collapse or an institutional one; or alternatively, whether it will fall victim to the cultural disintegration which it itself has caused. Decision-makers who are worried about the crisis should in any case be prepared for every possible variation.
26. Brexit as Catalyst for the Renewal of Europe
Brexit is an opportunity to work out constructive concepts for the renewal of Europe and bring them up for discussion. ÖXIT after Brexit? - Nonsense. Why? One does not withdraw from a dying union until the questions of the allocation of assets and the matter of succession are resolved satisfactorily. But particularly Austria, on grounds of her historical experiences, her structure of international relations and her prestige as well as her location in the heart of Europe would predestine her to take on a leading role in the renewal of Europe.
27. Principles of a new European Community Framework
These may be characterised by the following guidelines:
- Nation-states are a harbourage and protector of peoples and their citizens. Citizenship must bestow the privilege of exclusive utilisation of a range of state benefits.
- The future European framework of co-operation is to be purposefully built upon the Christian cultural bedrock to which Europe owes her essence and her civilisational superiority.
- Within the legal hierarchy, national law must always stand above supranational law.
- The legal relations between states are of a contractual and multilateral nature and do not constitute a new level of law.
- An Europe of the future must be a Europa à la carte.[6] Each state is to choose the level of intensity with which it strives to co-operate with other states or with the organisations they have jointly founded.
- Supranational institutions are to be so configured institutionally that a gaining of independence on the part of the bureaucracy is impossible. In this way pathologies are to be avoided, such as they arise today, for example, with commissioners (actually mere employees of the member states) presuming to set the agenda for policy.
- A possible harmonization of law must from the outset remain restricted to commercial law.
- A legally binding transfer of authority to negotiate on the matter of contracts with third countries is strictly inadmissible.
- Stipulations about content pertaining to a specific area of policy are inadmissible. In particular, so-called values have no place at the supranational level. Values are the main media for individuals and are the object of protection for the homeland.
- Elimination without replacement of the anti-discrimination regime and elimination of its power agenda. Reinstatement of private autonomy and of discretionary competence of self-responsible individuals.
- Restoration of civic freedom. Elimination of all elements of opinion adjudication and criminalisation of thought.
These and similar guidelines of a new order cannot be implanted in lockstep with all the countries of Europe. Countries and groups of countries have variable traditions and experiences respecting their conceptions about institutions. The initial endeavour would aim for a co-operative association (Verbund) of a Christian Core Europe.
The following countries recommend themselves as candidates: Austria (provided it can renew itself civically); the Visegrád states; the Baltic states; the so-called Western Balkans, Romania and Bulgaria; and the Balkan states of Slovenia and Croatia, whereby an expansion to Serbia, Macedonia and Montenegro would also be conceivable. And perhaps also Northern Italy and the southern part of Germany would desire to join, which would not constitute a problem for the sovereignty of their homelands because the new supranational order would only be a function-sharing association.
These countries could and should also enter into privileged partnerships with countries outside the present EU territory in order to strengthen the economic gravitational force of the community structure. Eligible for this would be Russia, Ukraine and Belarus to name some examples.
The suggestions outlined here do not, of course, constitute a fully worked out concept and they require detailed operational definition and evaluation. But they could function as a pathfinder for a vision which Europe urgently needs in view of the fact that the European Union is approaching the end of its life cycle.
Also urgently needed is a spiritual liberation from the defeatism by which the current multifaceted crisis in Europe is regarded as the normal condition. A project of renewal is possible as long as Europe still draws strength from her Christian cultural tradition, from her superior productivity and from the order of her cultural landscapes.
Optimism is a duty (Popper). The European peoples should not hesitate to press the "reset button" and tackle continental integration from new perspectives.
BREXIT: All will be well.
Translator’s Endnotes
[1]. "...included among the elites are notably the intellectuals ... insofar as they feel called to support ... the implementation of a metapolitical universal ideology...."
Metapolitics (Gk. meta, beyond, or behind) is mentioned three times in this essay in context of an ideology having a very high degree of social penetrance. Metapolitics is a political strategy for establishing that penetrance. The Italian Communist, Antonio Gramsci, developed the theory of metapolitics, which was to be used to establish "cultural hegemony". The establishment of a metapolitical foundation is also the thrust behind the "long march through the institutions" of the Frankfurt School's Critical Theory. Thus metapolitics establishes a new infrastructure of “values” to replace the self-evident moral fabric of the old-culture. Examples are multiculturalism and gender ideology, the "metapolitics behind party politics" (Thor von Waldstein).
“Political domination seizes upon psychological support of the masses, upon a cultural power distributed among the masses. Whoever wants political change must first conquer this cultural citadel.” (Thor von Waldstein)
For a more comprehensive treatment of metapolitics, see Thor von Waldstein’s “Metapolitics and Party Politics” at Gates of Vienna
[2] "The EU is at once a product of planning, or rather, of construction":
“Constructionism”, as the phrase suggests, is akin to social or societal engineering, which is to say “planning”. Being a conscious manipulation, Constructionism contrasts with “das gewachsene Kulturgefüge” or the organically emergent (unconsciously naive) cultural fabric, which is Christianity in this case. This contrast is a leitmotif in the essay.
[3] Das bestehende und das Gewachsene (that which IS, the existent; and that which has grown):
"discrimination", a powerful weapon was put in place for the destruction of any cultural tradition resting on what is [auf dem Bestehenden] and what has grown [auf dem Gewachsenen] in an inherently organic way.
"Das Gewachsene", or the inherently organic growth of a culture contrasts with Constructionism --- here, conscious social "planning" --- as a leitmotif in this essay.
"das Gewachsene" is the substantive form of the verb wachsen, “to grow”, and the adjective, gewachsen, is used six times in this essay. Duden lists organisch (organic) as a synonym of the adjectival form, giving its meaning as "following a certain (natural) lawfulness (Gesetzmäßigkeit)" (einer bestimmten [natürlichen] Gesetzmäßigkeit folgend) Hence gewachsen" when referring to the Christian European old-culture implies the characteristics of a living organism (an organum).
Culture emerges plant-like (Spengler) in a people, metaphorically speaking and without the implication of biologism.
The ruling concept behind "das gewachsene Kulturgefüge" (Zeitz), the cultural fabric which has grown up in an inherently organic way, is the unconscious unfolding implied by its organicity, the culture is a naive product proper to itself, or negatively expressed, it is unconstructed. Culture simply IS (das Bestehenede). A culture's surface elements, for example its moral principles, are therefore felt as self-evident, as simply natural, and absolute.
Constructionism, being a planned, conscious artefact, is the antithesis of culture, for it calls into question every principle of self-evident “established normalcy” (Zeitz).
[4] An English language version of the quotations from the Treaty of Amsterdam can be found in Consolidated Version of the Treaty Establishing the European Community. A fuller English language version of the Treaty can be found in Treaty of Amsterdam Amending the Treaty on European Union.
[5] “The quasi-organic complexity [quasiorganische Komplexität], ... is therefore, in many respects not planned, but grown [gewachsen]”.
This statement expresses a leitmotif in the essay, which contrasts genuine organic culture with its replacement by "product of a construction", which is at the same time the "product of the stepwise exploitation by a spirit" (cultural socialism).
Here the term “gewachsen” (organic in growth) is applied to a “constructionist” form, rather than to culture itself (cf. meaning of "gewachsen" in endnote 3). Using the meaning of gewachsen, natural growth, as a point of reference, "quasi-organic complexity" expresses an imitation of culture, an ersatz culture with corresponding spontaneous attributes. Therefore Christian Zeitz qualifies this "planned" complexity as “quasi-organic”. It is a top-down construction which 'takes on a life of its own', a kind of parody of a true organic cultural phenomenon.
[6] The significance of Christian Zeitz' expression “Europa a la carte”, while not part of the section on a Christian Core Europe of his last section, it nevertheless fulfils its meaning against the background of the similar expression "Europe a la carte" [sic] which Lamers and Schäuble used in their 1994 paper entitled “Überlegungen zur europäischen Politik” (“Reflections on European Policy”) (See also endnote 7).
For Christian Zeitz, "Europa a la carte" is a desirable feature of the broader post-EU Europe, because it expresses the autonomy of each individual nation. The "Europe a la carte" of Lamers and Schäuble is undesirable from their standpoint, because it refers to the practise of individual member states accepting willy-nilly some aspects of the aquis (accumulated legislation and court decisions of the EU) and not others.
[7] "A Christian Core Europe": A "Christian Core Europe" will for many German speakers evoke the concept of "Core Europe" [Kerneuropa] as used by Karl Lamers and Wolfgang Schäuble in their 1994 paper entitled "Überlegungen zur europäischen Politik" ("Reflections on European Policy"), which appears not to be available in English on the Internet. Lamers and Schäuble (currently the German Minister of Finance), wrote of a "Core Europe" [Kerneuropa] which would include a "solid core" of "five to six countries" including France, Germany, Italy, Spain and Great Britain.
Translated by Christian Zeitz
Christian Zeitz is scientific director of the Institute for Applied Political Economy.
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