advertisement


Brexit: give me a positive effect (2022 remastered edition)

Status
Not open for further replies.
eternumviti said:
That's both frustrating and quite hilarious.

1.I didn't 'drag the EU into the discussion', the discussion, if you recall, was about someone (Gurnah) who dragged the British Empire into the discussion about Britain leaving the EU. The conflation was not mine.

2. Any discussion about Brexit is inseparable from the EU, because without the EU, there could have been no Brexit.

3. Anyone who thinks the EU is not quasi-imperial, or is benign, is either delusional or stupid. You are not stupid. The foundational notion of what has become the EU was progressive economic and political union of the European States, with the ultimate aim a single political entity with centralised government, a single currency, central fiscal control, a central bank, a single foreign policy, an army, and all of the trappings of supranationalism - great positions of state, flags, anthems, the not-so-subtle cultural appropriation, and so on. Macmillan and Heath's grubby little secret.
Click to expand...
Congratulations on an ambitious triple axel and double lutz combination, nicely executed apart from the fluffed landing. The flaw is that Gurnah didn't call the EU an empire: that was your contribution. Without calling you delusional or stupid (where's the fun in that?), I just pointed out some of the many reasons why the EU does not qualify as an empire, and why comparisons between the EU and the British Empire in particular are not just excessive but plain wrong, as they fail to see the British Empire for what it was.
 
Charles Moore agrees with EV (or maybe it's the other way round):

"Charles Moore agrees that the EU is not, as some of my fellow Brexiteers think, a dictatorship, but an empire. Empires are not necessarily all bad, Moore adds. When they work, they can bring more peace, more order and better drains, as did both the Roman and the British. When they don’t work, they impoverish, oppress and kill millions, as did the Soviet Union. On a scale out of ten, if the British Empire is seven and the Soviet Union is one, the EU is three or four.”





 
Kirk said:
Charles Moore agrees with EV (or maybe it's the other way round):

"Charles Moore agrees that the EU is not, as some of my fellow Brexiteers think, a dictatorship, but an empire. Empires are not necessarily all bad, Moore adds. When they work, they can bring more peace, more order and better drains, as did both the Roman and the British. When they don’t work, they impoverish, oppress and kill millions, as did the Soviet Union. On a scale out of ten, if the British Empire is seven and the Soviet Union is one, the EU is three or four.”
Click to expand...
I don't know who Charles Moore is, but I do know he needs to retake history class. And English class, at least the part covering words starting with the letter E.
 
Kirk said:
Charles Moore agrees with EV (or maybe it's the other way round):

"Charles Moore agrees that the EU is not, as some of my fellow Brexiteers think, a dictatorship, but an empire. Empires are not necessarily all bad, Moore adds. When they work, they can bring more peace, more order and better drains, as did both the Roman and the British. When they don’t work, they impoverish, oppress and kill millions, as did the Soviet Union. On a scale out of ten, if the British Empire is seven and the Soviet Union is one, the EU is three or four.”
Click to expand...
I think that both the British and Roman Empires managed to impoverish, oppress and kill millions. I’m guessing that the Government would like to make it illegal to say that about the British Empire.
 
PsB said:
Congratulations on an ambitious triple axel and double lutz combination, nicely executed apart from the fluffed landing. The flaw is that Gurnah didn't call the EU an empire: that was your contribution. Without calling you delusional or stupid (where's the fun in that?), I just pointed out some of the many reasons why the EU does not qualify as an empire, and why comparisons between the EU and the British Empire in particular are not just excessive but plain wrong, as they fail to see the British Empire for what it was.
Click to expand...

Impressive, but fatally flawed from the off - I didn't say that Gurnah did call the EU an empire. Neither did I directly compare the British Empire with the EU, merely pointing out that the the EU is an empire, and of the irony of his position in regard of blaming the UK's exit from the EU as some kind of a yearning for empire.That of course is only part of what he was saying, as he was gaming the brexit vote to make other points.

Your definition of empire is very narrow. Empires don't need to be formed by defeat of nations or states in battle. They may be brutal, or relatively benign. However, a common attribute of empire is that it comprises a collective of former sovereign entities where political control is aggregated towards a centre, and away from the peripheries. It might be argued that the EU is primarily a technocratic empire, but that would entail denial of its political ambition. It has advanced the cause of political union not by battle, but to a greater or lesser degree by suppression of consent, sleight of hand, legal activism, obfuscation and denial. Its governing and lawmaking institutions are structured in such a way as to be fundamentally both undemocratic and anti-democratic - even their nomenclature is (deliberately) confusing. Its greatest triumph the has been the single currency, which serves to entrap and disempower the EZ members, and which must ultimately lead to fiscal, and thus full political, union. It uses its economic power to advance a kind of technocratic colonialism way beyond its borders, and its wealth to buy off the elites of poorer nations in order to exploit their resources, a more traditional form of colonialism. It doesn't shirk from malign or even brutal power in order to defend or advance the sanctity of its institutions and dogmas, to defend its borders from unwanted immigration, or its industrial power bases from geopolitical disruption. And, as I said above, it has awarded itself all the trappings of a sovereign entity. If it looks like a duck...

"Since the European Union was formed as a polity in 1993, it has established its own currency, its own citizenship, established discrete military forces, and exercises its limited hegemony in the Mediterranean, eastern parts of Europe, Sub-Saharan Africa, and Asia. The big size and high development index of the EU economy often has the ability to influence global trade regulations in its favor. The political scientist Jan Zielonka suggests that this behavior is imperial because it coerces its neighbouring countries into adopting its European economic, legal, and political structures.[80][81][82][83][84][85] Tony Benn, a left-wing Labour Party MP of the United Kingdom, opposed the European integration policies of the European Union by saying, "I think they're (the European Union) building an empire there, they want us (the United Kingdom) to be a part of their empire and I don't want that." Wikipedia.
 
mansr said:
I don't know who Charles Moore is, but I do know he needs to retake history class. And English class, at least the part covering words starting with the letter E.
Click to expand...

Writes for The Telegraph and advises Boris among other things.
 
EV, you forget to quote this bit, "usually created by conquest..."

And quoting a comrade? Strange times.
 
eternumviti said:
Impressive, but fatally flawed from the off - I didn't say that Gurnah did call the EU an empire. Neither did I directly compare the British Empire with the EU, merely pointing out that the the EU is an empire, and of the irony of his position in regard of blaming the UK's exit from the EU as some kind of a yearning for empire.That of course is only part of what he was saying, as he was gaming the brexit vote to make other points.

Your definition of empire is very narrow. Empires don't need to be formed by defeat of nations or states in battle. They may be brutal, or relatively benign. However, a common attribute of empire is that it comprises a collective of former sovereign entities where political control is aggregated towards a centre, and away from the peripheries. It might be argued that the EU is primarily a technocratic empire, but that would entail denial of its political ambition. It has advanced the cause of political union not by battle, but to a greater or lesser degree by suppression of consent, sleight of hand, legal activism, obfuscation and denial. Its governing and lawmaking institutions are structured in such a way as to be fundamentally both undemocratic and anti-democratic - even their nomenclature is (deliberately) confusing. Its greatest triumph the has been the single currency, which serves to entrap and disempower the EZ members, and which must ultimately lead to fiscal, and thus full political, union. It uses its economic power to advance a kind of technocratic colonialism way beyond its borders, and its wealth to buy off the elites of poorer nations in order to exploit their resources, a more traditional form of colonialism. It doesn't shirk from malign or even brutal power in order to defend or advance the sanctity of its institutions and dogmas, to defend its borders from unwanted immigration, or its industrial power bases from geopolitical disruption. And, as I said above, it has awarded itself all the trappings of a sovereign entity. If it looks like a duck...

"Since the European Union was formed as a polity in 1993, it has established its own currency, its own citizenship, established discrete military forces, and exercises its limited hegemony in the Mediterranean, eastern parts of Europe, Sub-Saharan Africa, and Asia. The big size and high development index of the EU economy often has the ability to influence global trade regulations in its favor. The political scientist Jan Zielonka suggests that this behavior is imperial because it coerces its neighbouring countries into adopting its European economic, legal, and political structures.[80][81][82][83][84][85] Tony Benn, a left-wing Labour Party MP of the United Kingdom, opposed the European integration policies of the European Union by saying, "I think they're (the European Union) building an empire there, they want us (the United Kingdom) to be a part of their empire and I don't want that." Wikipedia.
Click to expand...
Good to see somebody with right-of-centre views quoting Tony Benn as a reference: always the sign of a winning argument.

I had to look up the other bloke (Jan Zielonka), who seems to be a political "scientist" of some mental flexibility, at least judging by the titles of his works: he's gone from "Explaining Euro-paralysis. Why Europe is Unable to Act in International Politics" (Macmillan, 1998) to "Europe as Empire. The Nature of the Enlarged European Union", (Oxford University Press, 2006), all in less than 10 years. By his broad definition of imperial, the old FRG was imperial (DIN imperialism). I'm not sure which neighbouring countries have been coerced into adopting the EU's political structures, but don't think I'll buy the book to find out. As for the anonymous genius (Zielenka himself?) who wrote in the Wiki article that the EU "exercises its limited hegemony in the Mediterranean, eastern parts of Europe, Sub-Saharan Africa, and Asia", I'd be curious to hear how an organization that can't even get its own member states to toe the line (see most recent examples with Orban) manages to find a way to exercise hegemony in Asia. It must be very limited.

My definition of empire may be "narrow", but it involves some form of coercion. Britain, Spain, Russia and France had empires (the Russians are still trying to hold on to theirs). India did not join the British Empire voluntarily, Algeria did not apply to join France in 1830, etc. The US has imperial tendencies, but doesn't really meet the classic definition these days. The EU is a group of nations that decide voluntarily to pool certain elements of their sovereignty, in areas where scale matters. Members have to apply and be accepted. It's not even a federation, even though it might become one. The EU has never invaded anyone, barely registers on the scale of military or even diplomatic clout. Completely different animal, in my view. If the EU is an empire, what do you call ASEAN, Mercosur? NATO, or the WTO? I know I'm not going to convince you, but I reserve the right to point out occasionally: the EU is not an empire, or the EUSSR, or the 4th Reich (and for the avoidance of doubt, I'm not saying you've claimed all these things all the time).
 
Status
Not open for further replies.


advertisement


Back
Top