Robert Zubrin writes, in a National Review article, about a secret meeting between Western national socialist parties and the agent of Vladimir Putin. The venue is what you would expect: a James Bond like setting with mysterious billionaires in attendance.
The chairman and financier of the meeting was Russian oligarch Konstantin Malofeev, the multibillionaire owner of the Moscow-based Marshall Capital. Malofeev, who has direct access to the Russian dictator, is known as “Putin’s Soros” for his role in financing movements and initiatives supporting the Russian fascist cause….
Malofeev was the producer and director of the event, but the star of the show was Aleksandr Dugin, the prime author of the “Eurasianist” totalitarian doctrine, which is serving its intended purpose as the ideological basis for the Putin regime’s transformation of Russia into an expansionist fascist state, as well as for its creation of a Moscow-controlled fascist international for the purpose of subverting other countries on behalf of the new empire.
Gathered to receive tutelage from Dugin and instructions from Malofeev in preparation for their potential supporting roles as the Pétains and Quislings of the Eurasian Reich was an impressive array of leaders of nominally “conservative” but actually radical national-socialist European parties.
This bunch is squaring off against a transnational Europe, with its informal presence in the Ukraine in the person of the real George Soros through his various foundations and advocacy groups. The EU has signed the Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Area (DCFTA) with the Ukraine, Georgia and Moldova as part of the drive East. “The DCFTA will be part of a future Association Agreement, which will replace the present Partnership and Cooperation Agreement between the EU and Ukraine (which dates from 1998).”
Events in Eastern Europe have assumed something of the character of attack and counterattack. Radio Free Europe explains that “Brussels had originally planned to sign the political and trade accords with Kyiv in November at a summit in Vilnius but was jilted by Viktor Yanukovych, then Ukraine’s president, when he came under heavy Russian opposition to the deal.”
That reversal led to the Euromaidan revolt and Yanukovych’s ouster. The EU signed the political accord with Kyiv in March following Russia’s annexation of Crimea.
Brussels had originally planned to sign political and trade pacts with Chisinau and Tbilisi by the end of this year, after each initialed agreements at the Vilnius summit.
But the signing date was moved up as the Ukrainian crisis made all parties nervous that Moscow might try to obstruct the process.
“Things have gone ahead much quicker because of the risk of the Russians perhaps derailing or creating high levels of tensions in both Moldova and Georgia in the run up to signature,” says Amanda Paul a policy analyst with the Brussels-based European Policy Institute.
“They didn’t want to have a repeat of the Vilnius scenario where for months and months before the Russians were like an octopus and threatening and creating tensions and stirring things up.”
In this struggle there are no neutrals. Russia has threatened to make the DCFTA signatories pay. “Moscow has signaled it will impose trade barriers on Kyiv over its free trade pact with the EU. … Moscow has not mentioned any specific retaliatory measures against Moldova. But here, too, there have been threats.”
Tbilisi is far less economically vulnerable to Russia, thanks to having turned its trade away from Moscow after the 2008 Russian-Georgian war. It also receives its gas from Azerbaijan, not Russia, thanks to the Baku-Ceyhan pipeline, which passes through Georgia.
But Russia still holds trump cards with the breakaway regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, which Tbilisi wants back and does not want to see annexed by Moscow.
The Russian government vowed there will be “grave consequences” for this act. And in this potential clash, who should one choose? Because apparently taking sides is mandatory. David Cameron found that you are either all-in with the EU or marked for subjugation. Unnoticed amid US headlines involving Obama promising to solve the immigration crisis by “executive order” and “borrow powers” from Congress which is ‘only obstructing him’ was David Cameron’s failed attempt to assert Britain’s independence from Brussels. Cameron had attempted to block the appointment of Jean-Claude Juncker as head of the European Commission on the grounds that he was unacceptable to Britain, a sovereign member nation.
But Hollande and Merkel insisted that the EU now had a character of its own. Britain had no veto. If the EU bureaucrats wanted Juncker, then what was Britain to object? It was as if Cameron attempted to check out of the Hotel California only to find the night man had welded the door shut. Daniel Hannan summarized what Juncker meant: “at teatime on Friday, it became clear that Britain could no longer remain a member of the EU.”
Other prime ministers weren’t even pretending to respect our sensitivities. On his way into the summit, Finland’s new leader, a Euro-fanatical former MEP called Alexander Stubb, brusquely informed the British people that they had better ‘wake up and smell the coffee’ and realise how economically dependent they were on the EU.
Afterwards, Angela Merkel, who had supposedly given David Cameron private assurances about blocking Juncker’s candidature, told the press that as far as she was concerned, ever-closer union was an obligation for all 28 members – albeit one they might fulfil at different speeds.
Viviane Reding, Luxembourg’s veteran Commissioner, was more succinct: ‘Game, set, match!’ she tweeted. So much for the ‘influence’ that our Sir Humphreys keep harping on about.David Cameron had pleaded with his fellow heads of government to choose someone more palatable to public opinion. Juncker’s appointment, he told them, would push Britain towards leaving the EU.
Yet, in the event, his opposition served only to solidify support behind the abrasive Christian Democrat. A number of EU leaders who disliked Juncker felt obliged to back him rather than be seen to have given in to British pressure.
The Telegraph put it this way: “One step closer to quitting Europe” — if Cameron can. But maybe he can’t. The EU is the Mother of All Obamacare schemes, the giant pot of taxpayer money that no one can seem to walk away from. The Ukraine, Georgia and Moldova at least, have proved their inability to resist its pull, at least in part because the alternative was absorption into the Putin Black Hole.
All over the world, from Vienna to Washington, giant bureaucracies are rising: in Beijing, the re-forming Caliphate, EU and even Putin’s ramshackle ‘Eurasianist’ empire. They are asserting a kind of hegemony over the planet that brooks no refusal. Everybody’s building empires and in many ways the West with its drones and technical surveillance feels no different from the Stasi. Nor do they shy from each other. Kerry’s talking to the Saudis, the Saudis are talking to al-Qaeda, the Turks are talking to Isis. It’s all one big happy family where the only ones unwelcome are the populations for whom government is supposed to be for. The world belongs to the elite, to the cosmopolitans, to the people bored with making money.
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From Obama’s point of view his main frustration must be his inability to match the expansionary efforts of his rivals. No wonder he hates the Republican Congress so; without their narrow minded obstruction he might already be a Herman von Rompuy.
And who’s resisting the trend towards gigantism? Nobody but a ragtag UKIP here and tattered Tea Party there. Rubin writes, “Europe certainly needs a genuine conservative movement to combat the creeping bureaucratic collectivism that is stifling the human potential of the Continent.” That it does, but where are they going to come from? In days past there were White Hats among the Black. Maybe there will be again. But right now the only obvious choices are between Bad and Badder. Like the late 1930s, all the chic people today are fans of the “virile” messiahs which are pretty much a drug on the market.
There are historical eras when virtue and even common sense are in short supply. In the England right before the Second War, you were either a Communist or a Fascist or fuddy-duddy. All the best and most beautiful people were Red or Nazi. Only the stupid believed in the old pap “God and Country”. Smart people had ‘friends’.
In the movie the Remains of the Day, it is gradually revealed that some of the best people were Nazis. But “Stevens [the butler] is quite incapable of believing his master to be wrong in this, as Lord Darlington’s upbringing and heritage carry a certain type of dignity that is above and beyond Stevens’ own.”
And indeed many of the best people were. In those days you wanted to be either like John Cornford or the glamorous Mitford sisters to make the scene. You might be a disciple of Stalin and or a girlfriend of Hitler but on no account should you wish to be like that washed up, balding old imperialist patriot, Winston Churchill. He was guilty of the cardinal sin of believing in White Hats at all. For it was then fashionable to affect the cynicism that is really an alibi for fashionable surrender. Today it is much same, in all the capitals of the Western world, glamour is socialist, or national socialist, or Islamist.
If you want to make a fashion statement today, wear a keffiyeh. If you want to be investigated for a hate crime, fly an American Flag or better yet, wear one as a t-shirt logo to school. The sleek black uniform and boots of the anarchist or the do-rag of the Muslim militant is in. Wave the Red Flag or the Black Flag, and you’re edgy. Wave the American Flag — now there’s a bigot.
Today we are witnessing a revival of glamour of authoritarianism unequaled since the dark days of the Second World War. The villains are gathering in all the best places getting all the best service. There’s no shortage of people ready to play the bad guys. And so it will remain until someone somewhere screws up the courage to play the good guy — which in the first instance means playing the rube, playing the fool — the role that America used to specialize in. You might even say the bad guys are waiting around for this character to appear, so history can start in earnest.
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