Farmers Building up Resistance

The New Imperialism is Beginning to Pull Its Strings

A.B. Already a number of years ago exactly the same phraseology was being used about Europe by the business and political elite in America: ‘Oh, you Europeans with your nostalgia, your babble of languages and all your traditions. There’s no profit in any of it, and it’s so inefficient!’ We Swiss, in particular, were accused of wanting to cling to our ‘tiny, old-fashioned little democracy’, instead of finally coming round to embracing NATO and great America. All this was expressed by people who were appallingly ignorant of European history and the origins of democracy, including Switzerland’s system of direct democracy. For the psychologically educated listener it was obvious that this exaggerated preoccupation with efficiency already bears clear signs of megalomania.
When exactly the same arguments as those heard verbatim ‘on the other side of the Atlantic’ several years ago simultaneously appear in Le Monde and Der Spiegel (see box) at the same time as the foot-and-mouth epidemic in England is raging, then it is clear that the spin-doctor system of the great imperium is trying to teach Europeans what to think. Modes of thought differ somewhat between the leftist liberal sectors of the German and French populations and the conservatives.
Ideas like replacing British farming areas by primeval-like forests have coursed for years in Switzerland too: Agitprop leftists, such as the director of the Swiss Forestry Office, hotly demand that the Alps should be turned back into a forest area, where wolves and lynxes roam, despite the fact that this runs contrary to all reason and common sense.
Such ideas have existed for years, hatched in international bodies and in so-called ‘think tanks’ which are part of the PR system of the new imperialism. These are modelled on the ‘agitprop’-department of the college for training communist leaders in Soviet Moscow, which Western European cadres also attended. What is new about the propaganda system of this new imperialism is the fact that it is interlarded, polished and refined with all the theories of social sciences. Alastair Campbell, Tony Blair’s special friend is an expert in this field. During the Kosovo War he managed to stifle the growing opposition in Europe against the NATO bombings, assisted by 40 specialists. What he also tried out successfully in the Kosovo War was that by subjecting the various language regions to different ‘treatment’ you can manipulate each of them in a different manner. They might call this ‘social engineering’ nowadays, but it is still remains what it always was: planned economy and ‘agitprop’. Instead of the Soviet form of state-controlled economy it is now the global stock market economy, which is totally devoid of any legal control. Hegel’s world spirit continues to move on – until it finally implodes.
What must be avoided is:
that democracy and the state of law in Europe are not strangled by using the foot-and-mouth epidemic as well as a possibly man-made tuberculosis epidemic with resistant bacteria strains as a pretence to introduce emergency measures with all their implications: suspension of civic rights, human rights, freedom of assembly, free speech and freedom of movement, the basic right to democratic debate and thereby legitimisation of proceedings in the public sphere.
The fact that Tony Blair sent for his top general of the Gulf War, and made out that he was the helper in their hour of need – illustrated with an impressive close-up in The Independent – is a bad omen.
Democracy is too costly a good of mankind’s struggle to safeguard equality, mutual respect and freedom of decision for all citizens, and to protect the common good as well as every citizen. If the people of Europe were prepared to tolerate democracy’s downfall, the world would really become totalitarian. Even if the EU has already brought this about in its member states, freedom and democracy are not yet lost. ‘Let us win it back’, an Austrian organic farmer recently said. •