A call for civil disobedience in Europe

Regarding the EU’s prohibition of the screening of a 17 minute movie about Islam in a conference room in the EU Parliament building, Ron L. writes:

Are even the right in Europe dhimmis? Are all the men dead or emasculated? Has no one the courage to start the movie and dare the Fascist EUcrats to prove their totalitarian nature in front of the press?

Are they so cowed as to fail to engage in civil disobedience against encroaching tyranny? Making speeches in the EU Parliament is not a show of force, it is collaboration. They are working within an illegitimate system and are now too afraid to hit “play,” lest they lose the right to be the modern version of the East German Christian Democrats.

LA replies:

The reality is that European right-wingers along with other Europeans are products of a system that drains away initiative and kills the spirit of freedom. Let’s start with the fact that all parties in Europe are subsidized by the state.* So there is no such thing as an independent party, a truly independent point of view, in European politics. Everyone, from the far left to the “far right,” is a creature of the state.

Worse than standing by while a movie screening is prohibited is standing by while all the governments of Europe passed anti-“hate”-speech laws that criminalized normal political speech and made it impossible for Europeans publicly to debate the most pressing issues facing their societies. Has there ever been a single demonstration in any European country against such laws? Not that I know of. Has there ever been any organized effort to repeal these laws? Not that I know of. So the peoples of Europe, including the right wing, have already allowed their freedom to be taken away, have already allowed their tongues to be cut out.

I’m not saying that Americans are good in this respect, because we have allowed outrages against freedom and our Constitution that are far worse than the abuses of power that led to the American Revolution. But we have some spirit in us, some “native vigor,” as a British VFR reader once put it. The Europeans seem to have none. Where can they get it, if they don’t have it? I don’t know the answer.

(* I’m not sure that this is true of all Western European countries, but it’s certainly true of many.)

Ron L. replies:

You probably have a point. Any party that refused to play the game according to the stacked deck would be banned, after an organized smear campaign by the state-subsidized press.

Few have resolve to take on the Muslims, Communists, Greens, Tranzis, Corporatists, Media, religious groups and social organizations at the same time. They would endanger and impoverish themselves and their families.

The tyranny builds slowly enough that the subjects fail to to realize their subjugation.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at December 17, 2008 09:25 PM | Send