In a private exchange with a fellow blogger several days ago he speculated that the Anders Breivik mass murder would bode ill for dissenters. Well, one assumes it was private, but who knows what is being monitored and by whom…
Anyway, being a ‘glass half full’ kind of chap I replied that seeing as the Norwegian intelligence service has shown Breivik up to be a dangerous and well armed Walter Mitty, attempts to tar dissenters with the same brush will fail. I stressed the importance of continuing to cite evidence and push our arguments so the powers that be will be forced to speak to them.
After all, I pointed out, 7/7 didn’t really change anything and subsequent plots haven’t really changed anything, so therefore it follows a Norwegian mass murderer will not change anything either.
At this point my blogging friend said he was not so sure. He qualified his concern by providing me with a link to a piece on the French language version of EurActiv, translated roughly by Google.
Reading and reflecting upon it made me reconsider my inital assessment, hence my post yesterday. All bloggers should take a few moments to take the article on board.
Mentioned in that piece is European Commission spokesman Michele Cercone (pictured). It seems old Michele has had a fair bit to say lately – some of it extremely illuminating and far reaching. Consider this, attributed to Cercone by Balkans.com:
The European Commission is building a security system to issue early warnings on threats of extremism, xenophobia and other forms of radicalism
Or this quote reported by Hurriyet Daily News:
Compromises are more easily reached after shocking events like those that happened in Norway.
And International Affairs Magazine, explained that: ‘Various forces will be trying to capitalize on Norway’s bloody drama. Interestingly, the European Commission championed the cause. Breivik left a thorough description of the costs of the bomb ingredients, the result being that the EU rushed to impose regulations on the sales of chemicals that can be mold into explosives,’ and reported Cercone as saying:
The European Commission will speed up the introduction of new regulations on chemicals sales after a Norwegian extremist who killed 76 people in last week’s bombing and shooting spree admitted he used fertilizers to make explosives.
But virtually none of this has been reported by our world beating media corps, which is too busy devoted column hectares to its navel gazing over phone hacking. Should we be worried by this? Absolutely.
It is a fact that the European Commission, an arm of the EU, is now increasing its efforts to apply control over people in the member states. No crisis must ever be wasted. The EU, being unelected, unaccountable and therefore wholly anti democratic, is seizing the moment to empower itself still further at the expense of our personal freedoms. We are being dictated to by an entity that is taking an opportunity to use the actions of one individual as justification to clamp down on anyone who opposes this essentially socialist construct – hence the focus on right wing ‘extremism’ where the EU decides what constitutes extreme.
The issue is one of mission creep. We have seen it all before, where legislation enacted for one purpose becomes a convenient measure that is applied for a different purpose that was never intended. The EU is engaging in naked opportunism to exert greater control, while setting itself as the sole authority to determine what dissent against it will be tolerated.
It is frightening that the EU, with its goal of eradicating the nation state, will be deciding whether its opponents are too radical, whether their views can therefore be shared on the internet, and will define what constitutes xenophobia and whether that should be punished – all backed by European courts and European arrest warrants.
In hindsight I got it wrong. We are indeed staring into an abyss where our enemy, the EU, could take advantage of the Breivik attacks to effectively criminalise anti EU sentitment, or at the very least prevent people from sharing those sentiments with others, citing them as ‘extreme’, ‘radical’, ‘xenophobic’ or even potential ‘lone wolf terrorists’. This response isn’t being driven simply by Breivik’s actions, but crucially the rationale he gave for them.
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