Anthropoid wrote:
Shame that that whole pan-national union thing didn't work out for you folks. Better luck next time!
History itself would have suggested that one should have expected it to fail as a result of ethnic tensions between the various European cultures/nations. But quite the contrary, it seems that the average French person, Brit, German, Dutch, etc. were all pretty much fully capable of "getting along" just fine. Rather, your "elites" and perhaps a very deeply historically ingrained tendency for elites to strive for autocracy seems to have killed it. It is probably far more complex than that, but that would be my superficial starting stab at understanding wtf. Given the amount of blood, suffering and treasure that has been expended on behalf of intra-European conflicts over the last two or three thousand years, the idea of some sort of "UNITY" among you lot seemed like a great idea _on paper_. But the difference between theory and practice is huge after all!
In 1960 the Lord Chancellor advised Edward Heath that entering the EEC "is the first step on the road which leads ... to the fully federal state." But Heath told us, "there are some in this country who fear that in going into Europe, we shall in some way sacrifice independence and sovereignty. These fears I need hardly say are completely unjustified."
Yet when asked later (1990) if he wanted "a United States of Europe," he replied, "Of course, yes." I think on the continent they were more honest about what the intention of the EEC ultimately was. But in the UK there was always the reek of deception about it thanks to Edward Heath. Apparently during the referendum campaign mentions of Heath at Leave events provoked shouts of 'Traitor!' even though we're talking about events before most were born let alone politically aware. That deception was remembered, and has seriously poisoned the image of the EU. Only the very young, born post forming the EU in the 90s, seem to be sufficiently brainwashed to be unaware or uncaring of that original lie.
The EU has certainly attempted to indoctrinate people, it has a huge marketing budget and is quite overt about what it's doing. 'forging a European identity', well, that's propaganda, in it's most original form. And it's done a pretty good job, they aren't stupid. There's talk of 'opinion multipliers' and stuff like that in EU publications, by which we mean influence over media broadcasters, teachers, academics, etc. But I think this sort of indoctrination is a pretty shaky basis for the state without genuine grassroots buyin. And there have been a lot of blatant EU policy failures in the past 20 years. In fact it's kinda hard to put a finger on any EU policy successes when you think about it.