For many years Europeans have said the European Union was the only way to have peace on the continent. I always had a tough time seeing the direct correlation. I often wondered if the thinking was: Europeans are so bloodthirsty and savage that they have to join themselves together just to keep from killing each other. It reminded me of English critic A.A. Gill’s explanation of why the English line up in a queue so well – because, “if they didn’t, they’d kill each other.”

So how on earth did they make it to India – where there is a line to the front, but it’s a horizontal one – without killing them en masse? Oh wait….

I’m not one to be down on human nature – something very English – but sending arms to Ukraine, the first time the EU has sent lethal weapons, seems to explode the idea that the EU is a peaceful venture.

How many Nobel Peace Prize winners have sent guns to one side of an armed conflict? Besides Barack Obama. “But ultimately, the EU is institutionally programmed to favour peace and not the use of military force,” recently wrote the UK’s The New Statesmen.

This completely ignores the EU’s role in sanctioning – and profiting from – the breakup of Yugoslavia, but the main problem is that such a statement – inexplicably – comes before this one: “Though it can and does leave the challenges of confronting violence directly to other organisations (NATO particularly), the EU signals a pacific intent.”

If the EU is inherently attached to NATO – responsible for three of deadliest wars in the 21st century (Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya) – then where has been this alleged favouring of peace?

The claim that the EU is a force for peace only works if one looks at it this way: There has not been a war between the current members of the EU since 1945, therefore, all one needs to do in order to enjoy peace is to join the EU – those who won’t join will either get invaded, destabilised or forced to join. Basically, join the “universal value” of the EU or face a “humanitarian intervention” of some sort – people behave as if these ideas are passé just because the politicians who originally uttered them have aged out of office, but they are truly part and parcel of EU ideology.

The claim that the EU is somehow pacifist and benevolent was always nonsense but it was an idea pushed endlessly by the UK’s Remainers and Europhiles. They will have much more difficulty now. Even if a definite European army isn’t going to come out of the current two-day meeting at Versailles of EU leaders, there’s going to be a giant step towards that. The average European knows – via the Age of Austerity – that the EU is not at all benevolent, and many of them want out, still. A February poll conducted by France’s top polling agency found that a whopping 63% of France are favourable to a referendum on Frexit.

What’s interesting is that only 11% of respondents were totally opposed to a referendum – it’s truly just a small minority which is strongly attached to the EU. That minority is the hardcore half of the “Bourgeois Bloc” in France, which is led by Emmanuel Macron. Macron and the Bourgeois Bloc are thrilled over current developments: France is set to profit immensely, as it’s the EU’s largest arms producer by far. From the very start of his term Macron has pushed for an EU army, and the massive rush to arm Ukraine shows that the EU’s 1% and their Bourgeois Bloc lackeys have been ready and waiting for an arms race opportunity.

It’s extremely fitting that the meeting is in Versailles – the very symbol of autocracy and anti-democracy – but not for the most commonly reported reason: that it’s where the peace treaty for World War I was signed. Versailles is also the little-understood birthplace of the neoliberal empire which is the European Union. It’s perfect the EU army takes its big step there.

Versailles is synonymous with absolute monarchy and anti-democracy, but in 1871 it was the place where France’s 1% ended their collusion with Bismarck in waging a 4-month siege of Paris, in an event known as the Paris Commune. Adolphe Thiers led the French traitors who colluded with occupying Germans to attack the capital of their own country – is that not treason? Theirs was rewarded with the presidency of the new Third Republic.

The 1% of European countries colluding to attack Europeans – this is exactly what has happened to the peoples of Greece, France and everywhere in Europe during the Age of Austerity – thus, 1871 truly marks the birth of the neoliberal empire which is the EU. The Franco-Prussian army which worked together to defeat the sovereigntists and progressives in the Commune – those are the first troops of an “EU army”.

But wait, there’s more – it also marks the true birth of neoliberalism. European liberalism was fully installed for the first time ever in 1848 with France’s 2nd Republic – it was the only victory in the Revolutions of 1848. By 1851 European liberalism, or what I term “Western Liberal Democracy” had already been totally discredited: President Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte initiated a self-coup (setting up the Second Empire) against WLD’s always-awful and always-elitist parliamentarians, a self-coup which was later overwhelmingly approved by what was then the largest popular vote ever.

1871’s at-gunpoint restoration of Western Liberal Democracy, via the Third Republic, is thus the true (finally, the true!) origin of “neoliberalism”, a term which is bandied about constantly but which is neutered of this true birth and thus its long true history of failure. Neoliberalism did not begin with Thatcher and Reagan – it began in Versailles in 1871 with the treaty to end the Franco-Prussian War.

1871 as the birthplace of the neo-imperial empire which is the EU and the birthplace of neoliberalism – these are two major concepts which I defend in detail in my upcoming book, France’s Yellow Vests: Western Repression of the West’s Best Values.

Western Liberal Democracy should have been gone for good after it was voted out after just three years; European elite violently colonising the European masses must be included in the definition of neo-imperialism – what’s going on in Versailles right now is a continuation of these concepts, as would be the creation of an EU army. It’s all in the book – Western Liberal Democracy is not peaceful, nor is the European Union. Ask a Yellow Vest.

Ramin Mazaheri is the chief correspondent in Paris for PressTV and has lived in France since 2009. He has been a daily newspaper reporter in the US, and has reported from Iran, Cuba, Egypt, Tunisia, South Korea and elsewhere. He is the author of ‘Socialism’s Ignored Success: Iranian Islamic Socialism’ as well as ‘I’ll Ruin Everything You Are: Ending Western Propaganda on Red China’.

Courtesy: The Saker

https://thesaker.is/remaining-in-the-eu-means-peace-ukraine-explodes-that-bourgeois-bloc-idea/