The European Union, a collection of states bound together by currency, foreign policy and a military alliance, has its foundations in the Western European bloc built via the US’ Marshall Fund and rabid anti-USSR rhetoric. France and Germany came together to found an economic alliance in steel and coal. This rapidly expanded into an ‘economic community’ and then spread across many other Western countries, with accession in 1972 capturing Ireland. We, the Connolly Youth Movement along with much of the principled left of the time campaigned against accession into the EEC, warning that it would be a fatal error and undermine the sovereignty of Ireland. Not only were we proven right but the European Union and the institutions that stem from it, such as the Commission, have intensified efforts to discredit the EU’s only real formidable opposition. We have to ask ourselves why? The answer is rather straightforward. Western Europe was strengthened to withstand the onslaught of Socialism from the East, to assuage the working classes and undermine their ability to organise, to provide breadcrumbs in the form of social welfare and a temporarily increased portion of the wealth that European workers create.
To this day, the EU continues to attack Socialism-Communism. On the 18th of September 2019, the European Parliament tabled a motion ‘on the importance of remembrance for the future of Europe‘ which stems from a report issued by the Commission from 2010. What this document does, is suggest that codification of laws towards banning symbols of totalitarianism. The document speaks of nationalist and socialist (communist) symbols in countries that have already banned them, as well as criminalising the denial of the linear version of events as presented by the State. Countries that have such legislation include the Czech Republic, Poland, Hungary and Lithuania. It is worth noting that Hungary was a collaborator of Nazi Germany until 1944, Poland refused to fight against Nazi Germany at the requests of the USSR and the Czech Republic was betrayed by the West in the first place.
Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia had military dictatorships in the run up to the Great Patriotic War and it was not so long ago that marches in each country took place celebrating the volunteers who collaborated with the Waffen SS in the war, as recently as 2017.
What the European Union is engaging in, with the active participation of most of the European countries is re-writing history. The Red Army was the greatest bulwark against Nazism and saved the liberal free market ‘democracies’ of the West. The Soviet Union bore the pain and scars of the refusal because the Western powers of Britain and France refused to align themselves firmly against Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy. The Soviet Union lost 29 million people because Bolshevism and Communism were enemies of Empire and sought to liberate the millions that were under the yoke of British colonialism. After all, what Nazi Germany brought to Europe, the European powers brought to the rest of the world in even greater destruction.
The European Union is attempting is intensifying their effort today because the Communist Parties of Europe are once more resurging. Their membership is growing, their influence is growing and their shared denunciation of the European Empire is resonating with the working classes of their countries. In order to undercut any potential resistance to the European Empire, it is engaging in the historical comparisons of the Socialist countries to Nazism.
The documents, as per usual, are dressed up in the language of the liberal imperialism. The Empire must establish itself to be the centre of all human rights and values so that it may then justify it’s denigration of actual societies which valued human rights and values. It was not in these Socialist countries, ravaged by six years of war that poverty of such an immense scale persisted though, was it? It was not in the Socialist countries that homelessness, endless mass migration, precarious work, evictions and the destruction of public infrastructure was policy, quite the opposite. What we saw in the Socialist countries were attempts to create a society where the working class formed a proletariat state and through the proletariat state, through a plural, participative democracy were able to make decisions that directly benefited them on a day to day basis. That is why the nature of the economy, the provision of public housing, of amenities, of well organised communal spaces, of leisure time and of many other wonderful resources was in abundance.
Socialist delivered for hundreds of millions of people and it did so at the expense of exploiters, bankers, vulture funds and industrialists. Today, these are the same class – the ruling class that utilise the mechanisms of European states and EU institutions to ensure their hegemony and power is maintained. That, is why they must attack the enormous and immeasurable achievements of Socialism and compare them to Nazism. They make effort to criminalize Communist symbols because that is where the working class of Europe has a noble past and indeed, a noble future.