Apparently we freely entered the gang of bullies picking on little Austria, without any pressure from anyone: that is seriously disheartening. The public justification is that the EU is a community that shares certain values. Really? In which case, we can only conclude that overnight there was a coup d'etat by Politically Correct Liberation Theology curates, who are now about to preach us all to death.
So what are these values, please? Do they only count when the country which is being examined for them is small enough to push around? And who can fault the Austrian ambassador, Paul Leifer, when he points to the appointment of fascist ministers in Italy, and communist ministers in France, as proof that double standards - coated, I might add, with a large dollop of sanctimonious hysteria - are at work here?
Respect for life
Are the values in question to do with respect for human life? Are they based on a regard for the ballot box? Are they rooted in the rule of law? Are they predicated on the the precepts of democracy, of governments being formed freely from those who have been elected? Because there is a state in this island in which a government was formed recently from a movement which in the past most emphatically did not have any regard for human life.
Which, far from respecting the ballot box, routinely murdered those who had been elected by it. Whose contempt for the rule of law caused it to murder judges or their family members. Which entered government through rigged rules which compelled democrats to share office with it.
Dear me; and we are giving the Austrians lessons in shared values? How very droll; how very droll indeed.
There is only one country in the EU which has a statue to a Nazi collaborator in its capital. This one. Dublin Corporation, contemptibly, donated ground at Fairview Park for the erection of a statue to Sean Russell, the pro-Nazi IRA man who - I'm happy to say - died in a U-boat on a mission for the Nazis. Had Russell had his way, we would have become a protectorate of Nazi Germany, united in Jewlessness, tyranny and totalitarian fascism; and we raised a statute to him.
Dear me; and we are giving the Austrians lessons in shared values? How very droll; how very droll indeed.
When the Austrian Social Affairs Minister, Elisabeth Sickl, attended a meeting of social affairs ministers in Lisbon, the only fellow minister to greet her was her host, Eduardo Rodrigues. The others, including Tom Kitt, ignored her - from which one must also conclude that rank bad manners are one of our shared values.
Walked out
The French and the Belgians went one stage further. Their two ministers - both women; incidentally or coincidentally, I cannot say - walked out in protest. I see. Is this the France which sank the Rainbow Warrior? Is this the France which has never prosecuted a single policeman for the mass murder and disappearance of scores, perhaps even hundreds, of Algerians in Paris in October 1961? Is this the Belgium which tolerated rings of paederastic child-killers?
Dear me; and they are giving the Austrians lessons in shared values? How very droll: how very droll indeed.
What is so particularly objectionable about Jorg Haider? Is it that he speaks his mind outside the platitudinous left-liberal Euro-crat consensus, the woolly Euro-babble of Brussels, and, vitally, belongs to a country which is small enough to bully? But what has he said which is so terribly wrong, inaccurate, inflammatory, that should cause Austria to be turned into a pariah state?
He said that most SS men were patriots. That is an irrefutable truth: how else can you define soldiers who were so willing to die for their country? He said, to a Turkish magazine no less, that Turks in Austria refused to integrate into Austrian society. "They say, `We don't want to be Austrian, we want to stay Turkish.' So I say, `That's your problem, make up your mind.' "
Shared values
He didn't demand that the Turks leave, merely raised the issue that they didn't integrate; and is not a statement of the truth? It is, of course, not uttered in the obfuscatory language of Euro-babble and of - what is that term again? Ah yes - shared values. So. Is he not allowed to make an observation which the people of any country with large numbers of immigrant workers also make? Is that it? That there is a Brussels-vetted list of politically correct topics which politicians might discuss in public, and a list which they may not, regardless of what their electorates are saying?
Dear me. And we are giving the Austrians lessons in shared values? How droll; how very droll indeed.
Frankly, I suspect that I wouldn't like Jorg Haider one bit if I were an Austrian; but I'm pretty sure I'd be backing him fully if foreigners tried to overthrow a government which the Austrian people have democratically elected into power. Pretending that the year 2000 is the same as 1932, and that the Austria of today is potentially like the Germany of the Third Reich is infantile and unhistorical. So too is the belief that a display of ministerial bad manners brings down governments. The entire affair raises many more serious questions about the European Union than it does about Austria.