Sleepwalking Into Tyranny
There are two YouTube videos that I will be linking to in the course of this post that I believe need to be as widely aired as possible. If you own a blog please write a piece linking to the videos too.
The first video is of a sizable protest made by MEPs of both the Left and Right from many different nations within the EU Parliament in December. The protestors were admirably calling for referendums to be held on the adoption of the Lisbon ‘Reform’ Treaty – a treaty which is essentially identical to the EU Constitution; a stance previously accepted by many MEPs and state governments until it became apparent that the people may in fact vote ‘no’.
In the video you will see the complete intolerance with which the European Parliament treats those protesting for a referendum. Parliamentary officials are ordered to remove Referendum banners and persistent attempts are made to prevent the perfectly legal filming of the event.
The second video assembles extracts from various speeches made by different MEPs in the European Parliament across a number of months. They go some way towards highlighting the complete hypocrisy of those opposing referendums on the Lisbon Treaty and just why the denial of such promised national votes is wholly undemocratic.
The video also highlights the plight of Conservative MEP, Daniel Hannan who has all but been thrown out of the EPP. The comments that he made can be seen in the video. Firstly watch the polite and mild-mannered way in which Mr Hannan compares the undemocratic and probably illegal actions that gave Parliamentary President, Hans Gert-Pöttering arbitrary powers to prevent protest within the EU’s chambers to that of the Enabling Act. Then watch and listen again to comments from Martin Schulz, Graham Watson and Daniel Cohn-Bendit which openly question the mental stability of those calling for referendums on the Lisbon Treaty; claim that such referendum protests were ‘intolerable’ and claim that eurosceptics remind them of Hitler.
Daniel Hannan on his Telegraph blog points out just why this is so utterly hypocritical:
You can see the Liberal leader, Graham Watson claiming that the sceptics’ behaviour “recalls the actions of the Communists in the Russian Diet and the National Socialists in the German Reichstag”. (Can this be the same Graham Watson who claimed that my own far more discreet reference to the Enabling Act “plumbs new depths in UK-EU relations and in the Tories’ approach to democracy in the EU”?) And you can see the Socialist leader Martin Shulz saying that the sceptics made him think of Adolf Hitler. (Can this be the same Martin Shulz who said I should have no home on the European Parliament?)
I’ve always been of the view that references to the Nazi era should be made, as the Common Prayer Book says of marriage, “reverently, discreetly, advisedly, soberly.” I’ve explained why before in this blog. Even so, I find myself attacked on all sides for making even the most tangential and qualified reference. So why does no one criticise the Watsons and Shulzes who habitually dismiss their opponents as Hitlerite?
This is the true face of the undemocratic European Union. These are the actions which the EU’s most ardent supporters do not want us to see. Without most people realising what is happening we are slowly sleepwalking into tyranny and away from the hard won democratic freedoms which took generations and two world wars to secure.
