Manufacturing consent works.
> "No one is putting into question the existence of the EU anymore, but they fundamentally disagree [on] what they should do,*"
This is a little misleading because this has actually been the main contention, not the very existence of the EU/EC even since the days of Margaret Thatcher. The debate has always mostly been about political integration, and that's what is being suppressed more and more.
The far right may have been, in general, opposed to the EU but the fallacy, again, is the current use of the term "far right". Taking France as an example, the National Rally is now the largest party by votes and number of MPs, it is the main party of the right and not "far right", which is FUD. It has embraced the general euroscepticism of the traditional French right, including from the Gaullists (De Gaulle's political movement) but not the outright dismantling of the EU.
Edit: Really the HN crowd has become very obtuse and narrow-minded... What's the point of posting these articles if commenters are only allowed to agree, or disagree, depending on what is the expected correct reaction?
How do you envision, say Lithuania standing up to Russia, China or the US?
What is your preferred model? All of us staying in little insignificant countries, kowtowing to larger powers?
Also, the National Rally is clearly far-right. It was founded by former Waffen SS-members, for chrissake.
Why would "Europe's survival" be at stake without further integration? Why would Lithuania need to stand up to Russia, China, or the US? (In terms of defense there are military alliances. They have never required political union or giving up sovereignty)
Edit as you added things:
> Also, the National Rally is clearly far-right.
Making outrageous claims does not make them factual.
> It was founded by former Waffen SS-members, for chrissake.
That's the FN that preceded the RN, some other founders were involved in the Resistance, too. That's the typical FUD narrative I mentioned, which takes the situation in 1972 and uses it to describe 2025. Are you saying that the majority of French MPs are Nazis? That's obviously ridiculous. Most US founding fathers were slave owners, so obviously the US are pro-slavery, like the Democratic Party that used to support slavery... Equally ridiculous. Again, today the RN is the main party of the right, nothing more. Their positions today would have made them in Chirac's rightwing government in 1986, not in the FN of the time.
The situation today is more like this: "Why Serge Klarsfeld, the renowned Nazi hunter, says he's ready to vote RN" [1] clearly a little different from your claims...
[1] https://www.lemonde.fr/en/politics/article/2024/06/23/why-se...
What you're asking for is effectively to become a client state of one of the above.
I notice you didn't address the elephant in the room regarding the National Rally, i.e. its founders being actual Nazis. (like, the Hitler kind, not just random right wing extremists).
Changing their name does not make this any less true - hell, one of their founders was talking about putting a Jewish singer in the oven (!!!) only a few years ago.
You optimist! It seems more like one has to be a client state for all of the above simultaneously and be punished whenever contradicting orders are handed down.
Do you think Lithuania, or other such small countries like Serbia, Albania, Bosnia, Georgia, etc, can negotiate on equal terms with the EU?
I got news for you, when you're small country bordering large empires, you're gonna get absorbed into one or the other, whether you want to or not, because you don't really have a choice.
The others can't, of course. That's the point! We become one of the predators instead of staying prey like them.
> I got news for you, when you're small country bordering large empires, you're gonna get absorbed into one or the other, whether you want to or not, because you don't really have a choice.
Exactly! That's why we need to build our own empire based on our own rules instead of letting foreign dictators gobble us up.
Unless the EU gangs up on you and takes away your veto ability "in case of emergency", in which case you have to shut up and take it.
>The others can't, of course. That's the point! We become one of the predators instead of staying prey like them.
Do you not see the irony here?
I do not feel represented by my national government at all, all they do is get in the way. If we can finally get rid of those impediments, we will be able to project so much more power.
Says who?
Tribalism along with own group preference, is one of the core human instincts, in line with the search for food, shelter and the reproductive instinct. You are free to ignore this instinct because you feel more academically enlightened or something, but you will be in for a rude awakening when you'll find yourself in the minority and eliminated from the gene pool by those who let themselves driven by basic instinct and will vote and reproduce accordingly.
>If we can finally get rid of those impediments, we will be able to project so much more power.
Yes, if we can get rid of local democratic governments with direct accountability and replace them with an unaccountable EU dictatorship, we'll have so much power projection.
I'm glad we agree! I think a Titoist approach would work best, though I also like some elements of Xi Jinping thought - namely the technocratism. What would your preferred model be?
I don't, with or without further integration. Not everyone or everything is meant to survive. Everything has a shelf life. The Roman empire also collapsed. Rearranging the deckchairs of the titanic doesn't change the outcome.
>What is your preferred model? All of us staying in little insignificant countries, kowtowing to larger powers?
A union is good, but the EU only worked at preventing another world war between members, not at helping us be united against foreign entities, because you can't force unity between different dethatched cultures just because we're neighbours, as proven by Yugoslavia, the USSR, etc.
Every EU member is still driven by self interest and own group preference, which will be the EU's doom. Like Spain doesn't really care as much about the Eastern war as Poland or Romania do because they're far away from the war and don't see why they should pay more taxpayer money for it. Germans care more about something happening in Austria than about what's happening in Bulgaria. And so on.
Why have strong opinions if you're really just a doomer?
Yugoslavia broke up mainly due to ethnic not cultural differences, it wasn't Croatian Serbs against Bosnian Serbs.
And the entire point of a healthy relationship is to compromise and try to understand the other side, which is the point of the EU.
So Spain contributes to the east as a compromise for getting heavy subsidies themselves.
Are you the opinion police?
>the entire point of a healthy relationship is to compromise and try to understand the other side, which is the point of the EU
The problem with compromise is that everyone becomes equally unhappy. And when everyone is unhappy strange results come at elections.
EU member states are so different, that you can't have regulations that benefits an economy like Denmark and also simultaneously one like Romania. Which is how places like Romania now have German energy and grocery prices but Romanian wages and pensions. Not exactly a great compromise for a lot of Romanians.
>So Spain contributes to the east as a compromise for getting heavy subsidies themselves.
It doesn't matter how it is in reality, what matters is how Spanish voters perceive it come election times. Elections are always won on vibes and feels rather than facts and arguments.
For asking a question?
>The problem with compromise is that everyone becomes equally unhappy. And when everyone is unhappy strange results come at elections.
And the alternative is exactly what?
Compromise is not a negative or a positive otherwise healthy relationships wouldn't be defined by those who find compromises.
>EU member states are so different, that you can't have regulations that benefits an economy like Denmark and also simultaneously one like Romania. Which is how places like Romania now have German energy and grocery prices but Romanian wages and pensions. Not exactly a great compromise for a lot of Romanians
What specific regulation is causing tremendous benefit to Denmark but is causing harm to Romania?
And if Romania pays a lot for energy spot price then that is on Romania, similar to Germany, on top of this grocery prices are not regulated by the EU.
>It doesn't matter how it is in reality, what matters is how Spanish voters perceive it come election times. Elections are always won on vibes and feels rather than facts and arguments.
Then the fault is at those who do understand facts for not approaching vibes with better vibes, I can agree with you that neo politics has been the biggest catastrophe for Europe.
But the only reason why people follow vibes is because of the lack of social, political and cultural issues being part of what it means to be political and instead politics is portrayed as at best as a numbers game and at worst technocratic (just look at chat control, sounds wonderful when your experts are the police and lobbyists but sounds awful if politicians were invested in social perspectives).
>>Are you the opinion police?
>For asking a question?
Calling someone a doomer then pretending you were just asking a question is bad faith argumentation so I'll have to end the conversation with you.
>What specific regulation is causing tremendous benefit to Denmark but is causing harm to Romania?
That was only a though exercise for an example. But to answer your question with something concrete it would be auto industry regulations for example. If China would destroy Eu's auto industry, Denmark wouldn't care since they don't have one, they'll reap the benefits of cheap Chinese import but it would wreck auto making countries like Slovakia or Romania.
>And if Romania pays a lot for energy spot price then that is on Romania, similar to Germany, on top of this grocery prices are not regulated by the EU.
No, that's on the EU, since the EU forced everyone to tie electricity to gas energy prices in the name of environmentalism which disproportionately affects poorer countries.
> On top of this grocery prices are not regulated by the EU
Doesn't matter that the EU doesn't regulate the food prices, but it's the outcome of the EU free market it led to for poorer nations like Romania and obviously Romanians aren't happy.
A lot of EU market regulations have negativity affected the poorer people of the poorer member States. And they still have a right to vote.
> What is your preferred model?
There are lots of alternatives to turning the EU unto a federal state with its own armies. Alliances for one. It has been NATO that filled this role for over 70 years, and successfully so against a far more powerful threat than Russia.
> All of us staying in little insignificant countries, kowtowing to larger powers?
Lots of "insignificant little countries" seem to do rather well. Switzerland, Singapore, Norway,.....
I can see the nationalist appeal of belonging to a big powerful country, but it does not really do the people of a country much good.
Think about economic extortion from the US and China, how would little Lithuania defend against that?
Two of those three little countries have to follow EU law without having any say in it - my point exactly!
The same is true for any treaty. The same is true for internal negotiations within the EU.
> Think about economic extortion from the US and China, how would little Lithuania defend against that?
Could the EU do much better than the larger countries can do by themselves? Especially in the long term its much lower growth rate means its going to be a relatively smaller and smaller economy compared to the US or China.
Despite all the expansion, the EU at the time the UK left was a much smaller proportion of the global economy than the EU at the time the UK joined.
Exports: China 3.8, US 3.2, EU 2.80
Imports: US 4.0, China 3.2, EU 2.6
You can't just add export/import number for each EU countries to find the EU number because EU countries trade a lot among themselves.
Do you have import and export number that adjusts for transhipments? What is the economic impact of the trade?
Even the UK which was an EU member until recently, has a free trade deal with the EU, and is right next to the EU geographically trades more with the rest of the world - and that is including a lot of transhipment trade (look up "Rotterdam Effect"). You can find the same for lots of EU countries.
As we say in the EU: to avoid fake news. You either agree with us, or we cancel you. /s
Why is Thatcher significant here? She was strongly pro-EEC - she supported remain in the 1975 referendum but she had been long out of any significant political influence by the time integration became more political.
Looking at more recent British politics at the time of the 2016 referendum it was very common for remainers to claim that the EU was just a trade organisation and not going to evolve into a full political union or federal state.
I think part of the problem is that the EU's founding treaties both indicate it is a supranational organisation and promise ever closer union. I would argue that just reflects differences in what different groups of people want.
Exactly, she was pro-EEC but "Eurosceptic" in that she didn't want this to morph into a political union. I mentioned her to illustrate that the debate on what the EU should be and how far political integration should go, if go anywhere at all, has been going on forever but is more and more "smothered" by accusations of being "far right" for often being not too different from Thatcher.
Remember a famous speech in Parliament in which she said that the single currency was political union by the backdoor. Exactly right.
> it was very common for remainers to claim that the EU was just a trade organisation and not going to evolve into a full political union or federal state.
That's not true. Of course it was a political union, and that was the point of the referendum. Remember the pro-Brexit's line that the people had been sold a trade organisation (in 1975) but got a political union, instead. Now there were claims that the EU would not evolve into a federal state, and this aligns with what I wrote about EU political integration being insiduous and often deceiptful
I do not think it was much of a backdoor. Anyone who looked at it could see where it should lead.
1. Further political integration was expected at the time of currency union 2. A currency union requires some amount of fiscal union to be stable so its idiotic to have one without the other
> Now there were claims that the EU would not evolve into a federal state, and this aligns with what I wrote about EU political integration being insiduous and often deceiptful
I think part of the problem is that people do not understand how the EU works. A lot of people have a very poor understanding of how their national political system works.
Yay, a millitaristic EU bureaucracy, after decades of dismal economic and social outcomes, with the typical bureucratic disdain for European peoples, and Germany at the helm. What could possiby go wrong?
If nukes were such an obvious cheat code to victory, Moscow would have just nuked Kiev instead of struggling in embarrassment for 4 years.
The reason why Russia hasn't used nukes against Ukraine is simple: it would cause Russia to be isolated completely from China and even seen as a unhinged potential enemy and it would most likely be seen as an attack on nato and if nothing else would normalize nuke proliferation as now countries who don't have nukes sees that a new precedent.
No, but I think the threat of nuclear holocaust will make it so Russia won't move beyond their little toy excursions.
As far as I know, nuclear powers have never been invaded before.
Especially since the EUs bigger competitor is US and China, and they could very well use it as an ally, never mind getting the far cheaper gas and other resources than they get now. The whole treatment of the whole thing the last decade or so has been beyond stupid.
> Or they could integrate it within a wider framework of allyship, or at least let it be, as both of which it has been asking for several decades, instead of advancing towards, ramping up the rhetoric, fueling millitarism, and crossing red lines.
This approach worked so well that missiles are now raining down on European cities every night, killing innocent people in their homes, with no end in sight, as the Russian dictator relentlessly demands a return to the Cold War era, when half of Europe was a Russian prison camp.
That was never their problem. The latter not selling out to their conglomerates was (even if that was because local scumbags kept that loot). The elites could not give a rats arse for "authoritarianism", when 'allies' embrace it, like Bibi and his ethnocide, or the new Syrian ISIS guy, they are fine with it. Just a pretext to increase arms spending and gather special powers.
The elites couldn't care less about the direct toll to "innocent people in their homes" either. When that toll specifically and shamelessly targetted an enclosed population of millions, including children, the sick, and the elderly, they kept full diplomatic ties and supported the thing with arms, trade, and other methods of collaboration. (Russia too of course, only a few shining examples like Ireland didn't).
As for the "Cold War era, when half of Europe was a Russian prison camp", funny times those. Are we to believe that, the, no stranger to enslaving people France, still fighting wars to keep its colonies in the 1950s and 1960s, and ever since keeping its grubby hands in Africa, was so heartbroken at the plight of eastern Europe having to suffer "really existing socialism"?
Or, maybe it was Germany who was moved to tears about it, after first having no problem supporting the mustache man for over a decade, ethnically cleaning those same eastern provinces, gassing several million, and voting and maintaining ex-Nazis in positions of power well into the 70s.
With so much democratic sensitivity, it's strange then that most of Europe didn't appear much concerned with several European countries having western-approved dictaroships - anything as long as it wasn't that pesky communism!
Russia grew into the cancer that it is today not because it had been under imagined attacks from all sides for decades as you claimed (a favorite trope of many dictators), but because of the opposite: Russia was treated like a savage and uncivilized land from which respect for even the most basic human rights was not demanded as a prerequisite for cooperation. Global big businesses were given access to Russian natural resources at below-market rates, and in return Russian kleptocrats were allowed to skim off the top with impunity and park their loot in NYC penthouses.
We can see the same pattern in the current "peace negotiations": Putin is offering Trump and his business partners a chunk of frozen Russian assets and access to natural resources in occupied parts of Ukraine in exchange for the US pressuring Europe to unfreeze the funds and coercing Ukraine to surrender. Big business gets cheap resources and Putin takes another step toward his dream of an empire. What a lovely alliance of big business and Russian imperialism.
Let me know when Russians will be able to establish air superiority over Ukraine. Attacking NATO without any plausible way to build air dominance will not end well for Russia. Furthermore attacking NATO will open Russia to attack from Ukraine, which will want its territory back.
Now it's evocing emergency acts to bypass union member states when it sees fit.
On using Russian frozen assets:
>> The vote put forward by von der Leyen reframed the issue of frozen Russian assets as an economic emergency rather than a sanctions policy. This allowed the Commission to invoke Article 122 of the EU treaties, an emergency clause that permits decisions to be adopted by a qualified majority vote instead of unanimity, effectively bypassing veto threats from countries opposed to the move.
That's not true. To quote its founding document:
> lay the foundations of an ever closer union among the peoples of Europe
https://www.cvce.eu/content/publication/1999/1/1/cca6ba28-0b...
And then, now and then the people suddenly realise, too late, that on an ever growing range of issues their country has become powerless because a change of policy is either no longer within the country's power and is banned under EU law and treaties... and the web is being woven tighter and tigher little by little.
There is no support in member states for leaving the EU or dismantling the EU. "Eurosceptimism" is by and large only wanting to loosen and restrict EU oversight of member states(which again has been the main debate for decades) but even that is anathema and "far right", which should really raise red flags in people's minds even without going full conspirationist.
You are not the people and you do not speak for them. You are one person, just as I am. I want this, and I was told this - clearly, it's in the founding charta!
Right wing populists always pull this parlor trick of framing their views as the views of the people. The people have many different views, you do not speak for us.
The EU started with noble goals, but given enough time, the purpose of any large bureaucracy shifts to growing even larger and only existing to justify its own existence, rather than serving its original intended purpose.
Remember the "What would you say...you do here?" Bobs from Office Space where workers in useless jobs couldn't explain why their job is needed but they insisted they were needed.
You see this in the corporate world on a daily basis, but government bureaucracies are no different.
Lets hope we still get chances to vote out autocrats peacefully and smash oligopols as the sovereign.
Didn't I say the same thing?
>We humans still havent figured out how to structure institutions without constructive destruction in the end.
And we never will. There's nothing to figure out here, since human greed is constant everywhere. No matter what perfect system you think you create, over time, power hungry greedy sociopaths climb to the top, and steer it to favor them and their cronies until it collapses.
And the EU was always meant to be political, even the EEC was political since I have no clue how you form economic ties without passing legislation.
If anything the EU was built to respect sovereignty of a member state than a union considering they have to evoke emergency power to avoid violating that sovereignty.
Only thing which stands in the way is jingoistic nationalism, luckily thanks to internet and social networks kids does not really develop sense of nationalism to their country as they can tell no difference between somebody from Albania, France or Niger. And they can see that all the people have more less the same problems and more less the same desires and only thing which separates them is language and few obscure traditions of their ancestors.
This also runs contrary to dismantling EU - European states weren't merged from outside by some Godlike power, but from inside by European themselves. It was a logical thing to do, to increase trade and to make Europe more competitive. If you would erase EU today with a magic rubber, something like EU would exist again within 30 years.
> luckily thanks to internet and social networks kids does not really develop sense of nationalism to their country as they can tell no difference between somebody from Albania, France or Niger...
That's both incorrect, younger generations do develop a strong sense of patriotism, it is even actually on the rise in Europe, and a ludicrous and very sinister rejection of culture ("few obscure traditions of their ancestors"... sounds like New China or the USSR...)
In fact, in the current international context what the article describes is the rise of a pan-European nationalism.
nephihaha•1mo ago
Personally I wish the EU had modelled itself more around Switzerland than the USA which is fast turning into its primary model.
(By the way, some far rightists have pushed a united Europe for some time. The two ideas are not necessarily contradictory. Oswald Mosley was such a person.)
saubeidl•1mo ago
derelicta•1mo ago
jack_tripper•1mo ago
That's how you have massive pro an anti EU splits in the same country. Because central planning tends to produce massive economic gaps between the winners and losers of the planning policies.
derelicta•1mo ago
nephihaha•1mo ago
It is currently bussing in lots of Mandarin speakers into Hong Kong to undermine Cantonese. It has done a good job of undermining Tibetan as well.
vee-kay•1mo ago
https://thehimalayantimes.com/nepal/mandarin-made-mandatory-...
https://www.regentschool.edu.np/chinese-language-classes/
China will destroy or subsume all native culture in every nation/land it gains control of. China is following the Colonial model of divide, conquer/conquest and containment, except this is all happening in the modern era.
saubeidl•1mo ago
nephihaha•1mo ago
saubeidl•1mo ago
nephihaha•1mo ago
saubeidl•1mo ago
What are you talking about then? These are quite serious claims to make, it would make sense to substantiate them.
vee-kay•1mo ago
vee-kay•1mo ago
But China is not a neighbour of any of these nations, unless if you admit that China colonised Tibet and it's doing the same to Nepal too.
saubeidl•1mo ago
It's just a useful language to learn that'll increase the opportunities of the learner.
vee-kay•1mo ago
But Mandarin is not of Tibetan or Nepalese origin. In fact, their origin is Bharat/India.
China is NOT a neighbour of Tibet, and Nepal. Their closest neighbour, and the one whom they share most of their culture & traditions with, is India.
Tibet and Nepal were subjugated by China, they never welcomed China. China invaded and seized the peaceful Tibet, and systematically dismantled the Tibetan learning centres and cultural centres. Tibetan monks were exiled or executed by China to destroy the Tibetan culture.
Chinese Maoists caused the massacre of the Nepalese royal family, and seized the government after a brutal violent civil war.
China/CCP is using Mandarin (forcibly taught in Tibetan and Nepalese schools) as a weapon to destabilize and destroy the native cultures, language and traditions of Tibet and Nepal. This is why Hindi is no longer the secondary language taught in Nepal schools, even though it makes better economic sense for Nepalese to learn Hindi, due to lots of Indian tourists and cross-border trade with India.
So your arguments don't sway anyone who knows what evils China is doing in these ancient Himalayan lands.
saubeidl•1mo ago
vee-kay•1mo ago
Google for "Macaulay Doctrine" to understand how the colonial British brutally enforced English as the primary language in Indian schools, with evil intention to erode and destroy ancient Indian education system (Gurukul system) and learning traditions (including outlawing the learning of classical martial arts, banning the teaching of Hindu/Sanatani scriptures in Indian schools, banning classical Indian music & arts in schools, etc.).
But thankfully, after India for Independence after centuries of oppression and enslavement/subjugation by Mughal and British, it is ironical that English is not mandatory in Indian schools, and there is stil significant population (hundreds of millions of citizens, especially in rural areas) of India who don't know English (but they know their native language as they learnt it in school as a primary language).
So what China has done in Tibet, Nepal and other lands it has seized, is similar to the evil colonial Macaulay Doctrine, by enforcing Mandarin as a mandatory language in schools, with the evil intent to destroy the traditional language, history, culture.
But Chinese government (CCP) didn't start such native culture destruction in other lands first. It did it in China first. CCP destroyed thousands of classical literature, Chinese Buddhist sacred texts and other traditional knowledge repositories, with the singular evil aim to enforce its own mutated corrupted version of Chinese Buddhism across China. That's why CCP tried to arrest & assassinate the Tibetan religious leader (His Holiness The Dalai Lama; but he managed to escape to India in the nick of time when China invaded and seized Tibet, and he's been living and teaching peacefully in India since then) and when it failed to do so, the CCP brought in its own fake Dalai Lama to confuse and mislead the subjugated Tibetan population.
But this is modern era and Age of Information, so all such evil tactics and corruption of history and culture are getting exposed. World knows what evils China is up to, especially in Asia and Africa.
derelicta•1mo ago
nephihaha•1mo ago
jack_tripper•1mo ago
The EU has not modeled itself around the USA, what are you on about?
>(By the way, some far rightists have pushed a united Europe for some time. The two ideas are not necessarily contradictory. Oswald Mosley was such a person.)
Had no idea who Oswald Mosley even was, but looking him up, he's been dead for 30+ years now. It's disingenuous to paint such long deceased people as still representative for their original cause today.
People change, organisations change and countries change over the decades. What was a democratic/left-wing point 30 years ago (strict immigration controls) is now considered far right extremism.
The EU, in its form back then from 30 years ago is different than the EU beast of today which swallowed the previously separate EU, EEC and EC post 2009. The US of 30 years ago is different than the US of today because society has changed a lot since then both demographically and economically.
You can't dig up people from 70 years ago as representative for the same ideologies because both the ideologies and the people are different now. That's like driving forward while only looking in the rearview mirror.
Right wing people have and will be Eurosceptics (Euro here meaning the EU org in Brussels, not Europe the continent) since they don't want to be led by a foreign org that's not directly accountable to them.
coldtea•1mo ago
He explicitly said what they mean: "which is fast turning into its primary model".
What it WAS (emphasis in past tense) modeled itself around is not the point here.
nephihaha•1mo ago
I heard ideas being promoted in the early to mid nineties that are only coming about now. In fact the 1980s, "Star Trek the Next Generation" does that in several instances (such as AI assistants and tracking everyone's location electronically.)
"Had no idea who Oswald Mosley even was, but looking him up, he's been dead for 30+ years now."
Erm, that was my point. It's not a new idea and has long been promoted across the political spectrum including the far right.
"The EU, in its form back then from 30 years ago is different than the EU beast of today which swallowed the previously separate EU, EEC and EC post 2009. The US of 30 years ago is different than the US of today because society has changed a lot since then both demographically and economically."
I see it largely developing to plan. It started as a kind of customs union in Benelux and has been on that road ever since.
The absorption of the Iron Curtain countries has been its biggest challenge, and if it expands outside Europe that won't be some great shock either. There has been talk of adding Turkey and even Morocco to the EU for decades.
"You can't dig up people from 70 years ago as representative for the same ideologies because both the ideologies and the people are different now. That's like driving forward while only looking in the rearview mirror."
Yes, you can. It's historical progression. There was a roadmap for EU development that was being discussed as far back as the seventies and even the fifties.
"Right wing people have and will be Eurosceptics (Euro here meaning the EU org in Brussels, not Europe the continent) since they don't want to be led by a foreign org that's not directly accountable to them."
That isn't true. Plenty of right wing people have been Europhiles, even the far right.
On the flipside, there have also been plenty of left and far left Eurosceptics. Left wing Brexiteers in the UK are/were a thing. They called their movement "Lexit" but have been mostly written out of accounts, which tend to focus more on Farage and the right wing ones. Their arguments are not usually based around migration, but local democracy and also their notion that the EU was capitalist and neoliberal, and revolved around trade and money.
jack_tripper•1mo ago
Did those far right people wish for the current version of the EU, or the 1970's ideal of the EU?
Because without accounting for the massive societal changes since then, it's disingenuous to say those people were having the same ideas of today back then.
Pretty sure back then the far right's ideal of the EU was one when you could leave your bike unlocked without it getting stolen, christmas markets didn't need to have anti-terrorist attack barriers, and Sweden and Germany didn't top the charts of sexual assaults per capita.
>That isn't true. Plenty of right wing people have been Europhiles, even the far right.
Like who? Give me someone living and active today.
nephihaha•1mo ago
Far right MEPs in the European Parliament have their own grouping... There are enough to do so.