Why The EU Is Like The Old USSR

Vernon Coleman





Many people now believe that the EU is, in many critical ways, indistinguishable from the old Soviet Union.

In a speech delivered at the House of Commons in 2002, Vladimir Bukovsky noted the following similarities between the old USSR and the EU. I have paraphrased and expanded on his thoughts below:


1. Anyone who opposes or deviates from the socialist system will be ostracised. For example, when the Austrian people had the temerity to elect `the wrong sort of Government' (it was considered too nationalistic and right wing by the EU) the EU pronounced the new Government unacceptable. With apparent magnanimity, the EU announced that it would `accept' an Italian President elected by the Italian people. All sorts of tricks are used to isolate and marginalise those who opposed the EU. Those questioning the EU are often portrayed as insular and parochial.

2. Like the USSR, the EU is governed by a group of people who appoint one another, are unaccountable to the public, enjoy generous salaries, massive perks and huge pensions, are pretty much above the law and cannot be sacked. The EU, like any committed socialist government, operates without any real feedback from the people, and certainly without any concern for what the people think. The state must always come first. The only people who benefit (as with all socialist and fascist organisations - and the two are, of course, interchangeable) are those who have put themselves and their friends in charge. The workers never really benefit from socialism. The profits of the hard working, the creative and the thrifty are redistributed to the bureaucracy: the lazy, the unthinking and the wasteful.

The central planners (in the case of the USSR they were in Moscow, in the case of the EU they are in Brussels) insist on making all the judgements and decisions but their lack of experience means that they get everything wrong so there are constant shortages and black markets.

State socialism in the EU has not led to affluence, equality and freedom but, effectively, to a one-party political system. (All three main parties in Britain support the EU and the destruction of Britain). The fascist EU has,inevitably, created a massive bureaucracy, heavy-handed secret police, government control of the media and endless secrecy and lies.

The socialist bureaucracy of the EU is run by people who arrogantly believe that they are the only ones who need to know and that they always know best.

3. There was one political party in the USSR (and no opposition) and the same is true of the EU. Political parties which don't support the EU are denied the oxygen of financial support. Politicians who do support the EU can look forward to good jobs (when they retire or leave domestic politics they may, like Neil Kinnock or Chris Patten, get jobs as EU commissioners). The system looks after its own. When the EU constitution was being debated, the main sticking point among delegates was not the sovereignty of their individual nations, or the rights of the voters, but the number of delegates each country would be allowed to send to EU meetings. Each nation's individuality was pushed to one side as irrelevant and inconsequential, in favour of the rights of politicians to attend regular, all expenses paid beanos.

4. Like the USSR, the EU was created with little or no respect for normal democratic principles. Much of what has happened within the EU has happened secretly and without the normal principles of democracy being considered or applied. What has happened over the last few decades has happened largely in secret.

5. Instead of information about the EU we have been fed a good deal of propaganda. The bureaucrats organise and control people and they try to control the availability of knowledge. The people are always controlled with lies and misinformation. (Today these are known as `spin'.) Anyone who dares to oppose the EU or to promote England is likely to be described as a `racist'. My book England Our England has proved enormously popular with readers (and was, within the first year, reprinted numerous times) but advertisements for the book were banned by a number of publications. Although the book is one of Britain's bestselling books on politics, it has never been reviewed in any national newspaper.

Very few Britons realise exactly what has already happened, how what has happened has already affected their lives and how things will now develop unless we do something very soon. A poll quietly taken for Britain's Foreign Office showed that a quarter of Britons did not know that their country was already a member of the EU. Astonishingly, 7% of Britons thought that the USA was a member. This ignorance isn't unique to Britain. A poll in Germany showed that 31% of the public had never heard of the European Commission.

The bureaucrats realise that until there is more awareness of and interest in what has happened, and what is happening, there are unlikely to be any protests.

6. The former USSR was renowned for its vast number of laws, rules and regulations. But the USSR was nothing compared to the EU. The EC has become a law factory covering everything imaginable and enabling small petty-minded bureaucrats to hound small businesses and flex their puny muscles. One law on fire regulations alone cost UK businesses £8 billion. New regulations have poured out governing every aspect of our lives, and businessmen have been swamped by an avalanche of red tape.

Dairy farmers have been subjected, in the last few years alone, to 1,100 separate, specific new laws. Even teddy bear manufacturers have been targeted.

Huge numbers of new criminal offenses have been listed.

It is true that these new laws have to be debated by MEPs but the debates are managed at a such frenetic rate - with MEPs voting on as many as 400 issues in just 90 minutes - that in practice the laws proposed by the bureaucrats are just nodded through. Speakers in the European Parliament are allowed 90 seconds to read out prepared speeches. And then the voting begins.

There are so many new laws that the British Government cannot study them all. The Council of Ministers cannot even read the new laws which the EU passes. The real power now lies with faceless, nameless, unelected bureaucrats who have no accountability whatsoever.

The unknown bureaucrats in Brussels are so desperate to extend their own power and authority, that they have, through the production of miles and miles of unwanted red tape, effectively destroyed the European economy.

Our special tragedy is that Britain's economy has suffered more than most from these new laws.

The other big European nations (France, Germany and Italy) just ignore the rules they don't like. Both France and Germany have flagrantly broken the rules on government deficits but for these two countries there have been no sanctions, no fines and no penalties. `These are for smaller countries,' said a French Government spokesman with typical gallic arrogance. The French have ignored hundreds of directives relating to the single market (directives which Britain, of course, has obeyed slavishly). Commenting on why he had, like so many other Britons, bought a home in France, Lord Nigel Lawson (former Chancellor) said he'd bought it because it was such a relief to get away from the EU.

Britain, of course, obeys all the rules. And British people and British businessmen pay the ever increasing price.

7. It was a crime for individual countries to talk about quitting the USSR. Indeed, there was no procedure to enable countries to leave the soviet union. The EU is much the same.

8. Corruption usually starts from the bottom and works its way up through the system. In both the USSR and the EU the corruption starts at the top and works its way down. Corruption was systemic in the old USSR and it is systemic in the EU. The EU is riddled with the standard socialist form of corruption where the protagonists live by the motto: `what is yours is mine and what is mine is mine and I will chop your hands off if you try to take it'. This was the popular way of doing things in the USSR. Like the USSR, the EU operates in a way that ensures the redistribution of wealth. In both cases the system means that the wealth is redistributed from the workers to the bureaucrats.

9. Like a pyramid selling scheme the USSR needed to be aggressive and to continue growing in order to stay alive. If it stopped growing it would fail. The EU is the same. It makes absolutely no economic sense for the EU to take in small, poor countries. The countries encouraged to join the EU in 2004 were welcomed for ideological rather than economic reasons. The six original members of the Common Market have slowly become 25. And then how many will there be? The bureaucracy needs to grow to justify its existence and its demands for increasing amounts of money. All bureaucracies like to grow. It is, in part, their raison d'etre. As they grow so they become increasingly important. Assistants can have assistants of their own. Secretaries can have secretaries. The politicians of the existing countries are persuaded that if the EU grows they will have bigger markets. No one bothers about the fact that the new countries which join the EU will want to share in the subsidies which the EU hands out. Countries like the UK, which pay money to be members of the EU, will have to pay more money for even less reason.

The language problems are enormous. In the new EU there are hundreds of translation combinations. The EU now works like a series of Chinese whispers. Speakers in, say, Finnish are translated first into English and then into another language and then into a fourth language.

The new countries coming into the EU have many different cultures and laws. Just how they are going to fit into one superstate is something only the bureaucrats who have planned the whole thing can explain. (And, as always, they aren't talking.)

For example, consider Turkey, one of the new EU proposed members. Under Turkish law, if a rapist marries his victim he can walk free. The basis for this is that nobody would want to marry a girl who is not a virgin and so the rapist is doing the girl a favour.

Turkish law also allows a mother who murders her child to be given a reduced sentence if the baby was born out of wedlock.

Another Turkish law rules that kidnapping a married woman is a greater crime than kidnapping a woman who isn't married.

The Turkish authorities arrested a young journalist simply on suspicion of being linked to a banned political party. For this, she was sentenced to over 12 years in prison.

I mention all this not in criticism but simply to show just how much difference there is between Turkish culture and British culture. And yet the Turks and the British are expected to be citizens of the same 450 million citizen country; supposedly sharing customs, mores and laws. Naturally, all governments want harmonisation to be organised on their own terms.

(The Americans, incidentally, are desperate for Turkey to join the EU. They believe that if this happens it will make it impossible for Bin Laden and others to claim that the EU is another `Christian Superstate'.)

10. In the former USSR the citizens of individual countries were told that they should forget about their former national identities. They should, they were told, consider themselves members of the USSR rather than citizens of Ukraine or Russia. Exactly the same thing is happening in the EU superstate.

The EU is intent on destroying and absorbing national states. Britain and England will both disappear completely as the EU superstate develops its identity.

11. The USSR was an ideological dictatorship. That is what the EU is. The aim of the EU is the formation of a state, the preservation of socialism within the state and the expansion of the principles of political correctness. Most political groups which oppose the EU are small, and will remain small, because it is virtually impossible to obtain funding or publicity for any group which opposes the EU.

In the UK there are just three main parties - all of which are supportive of the EU. This is manifestly unfair since it means that a majority of the British population must inevitably remain unrepresented.

Organisations which represent national interests (particularly English interests) are denied power, money and publicity on the grounds that they must be racist. Anyone who supports Britain or England will find themselves branded a racist. (Supporters of Wales and Scotland are never accused of being racist since both these countries will still exist as regions in the new EU superstate.)

12. The USSR had a gulag and so does the EU. The EU has an intellectual gulag; if your views differ from the `approved' views you will find it difficult to get them published.

Naturally, those who disapprove of the EU will find it difficult or impossible to obtain a job working for the EU. Making a speech or writing a book which criticises the EU (or the laws of the EU) may be regarded as a crime if it is considered subversive. (It is, of course, up to the bureaucrats of the EU to decide whether or not something is `subversive'.) One Englishman made the mistake of standing up at a public meeting and defending the rights and freedoms of English country people. As a result of his comments two police officers visited the speaker's home, arrested him (refusing to tell him why) took him to a police station and threw him into a cell.

When five Britons visited Brussels and drove around the city in vehicles which were decorated with posters which called for a referendum on the EU constitution they were arrested for `disturbing public order' and `demonstrating without permission'.

13. Citizens in the old USSR had to carry ID cards. The loss of civil liberties which this entailed used to be regarded with suspicion and some contempt by Western European democracies. In the new EU, citizens are losing their freedom and must carry ID cards. (It is a myth that ID cards contribute anything whatsoever to national security. ID cards always exist for one reason only: to take away the freedoms and civil liberties of the citizens who must carry them.)

It is very easy to lose your freedom, but very difficult to get it back.

14. Officers in the new EU police force have even greater privileges than officers in the much feared KGB. All members of the new EU police force have diplomatic immunity. They can walk into your home, arrest you, beat you up and steal your property and you cannot do a darned thing about it. Now do you believe me when I say that the EU is a fascist organisation?

Taken from Saving England by Vernon Coleman, published by Blue Books. `Saving England' is available from the webshop on this site (and from all other good bookshops whether online or not).


Copyright Vernon Coleman 2005 Home