Vladimir Moss – Orthodox Christianity Author

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BREXIT, DEMOCRACY AND THE ANTICHRIST

Written by Vladimir Moss

BREXIT, DEMOCRACY AND THE ANTICHRIST

 

     British commentators are describing the failure of the British parliament to fulfill the will of the people and take Britain out of the European Union as a failure of democracy that even portends the collapse of democracy itself. Whether or not democracy will fall is difficult to say.  What we can say with more certainty is that the Brexit process has revealed the internal contradictions of democracy as nothing else. 

     This is indeed a remarkable, perhaps unprecedented, situation. On June 23, 2016, in the largest democratic vote in its history, the British people voted by a narrow but decisive majority (52% to 48%) that their country should leave the European Union. Then, in 2017, both of the major parties formally committed themselves in their manifestos to implementing this decision, and then voted overwhelmingly that the date of Brexit should be March 29, 2019. Now we are past that date, and yet Britain is still in the European Union, while every means of extracting her from Europe in an orderly manner – that is, through a legal treaty agreement with the Union – has failed to pass in parliament. The reason does not lie in the evil machinations of any actor, whether British or European. The reason lies in the fact that there is no majority for any single course of action. In other words, there is no single will of the people, neither a Rousseauist general will, nor a single proposed course of action that commands a majority in parliament. And since democracy cannot work without a majority, that means that democracy in “the mother of parliaments” has ceased to work.

     Democracy is a mechanism for getting things done in a divided community that would otherwise fragment. In a monarchy the king decides, and that is the end of the matter. He may or may not be wise, and he may or may not have the agreement of the majority. In any case, the people accept his decision. In a democracy there is no king. There is an elected executive, but in major decisions the executive cannot act without the consent of the majority of elected representatives. In this Brexit process, not only has the executive failed to get a majority for its preferred course of action: parliament has failed to agree on any other course of action. There is a total impasse.

     The logical course now, in the opinion of many, is to have a general election or another referendum. But in the opinion of many others, this would be undemocratic as putting the original decision, by 17.4 million people, in jeopardy. In any case, there is no guarantee that it would resolve the impasse: more votes may mean still more division and sclerosis – and more passion.

     A radical solution would be the break-up of the United Kingdom, allowing, for example, Scotland and Northern Ireland, which both voted to stay in the European Union in 2016, to make their own decisions and make their own treaty with the Union, while Wales and England, which voted to leave, would similarly make their own decisions. But where would that leave London, which, unlike the rest of England, voted to remain? And would the European Union agree to negotiate with what were now in effect separate countries?

     We are reminded of the Lord’s words: “A house that is divided against itself cannot stand.” Believers in democracy claim that it is the panacea for all division, a way of resolving conflicts in a peaceful and just manner. But the present situation proves that this is not always the case. In the past, democracy failed because the people unwisely voted for a person or power bent on destroying democracy – such as the revolutionary socialists in Russia in 1917, or the national socialists in Germany in 1933. Today, as far as we can tell, there is no Lenin or Hitler waiting in the wings to take over the rule of Britain. And yet democracy has manifestly failed.

     Democracy is based on a fiction: that there is such a thing as a single will of the collective organism called the people, as opposed to the many wills of many individual people. Of course, it is a useful fiction and serves a useful purpose in very many situations. But it remains a fiction, and it is important to understand why it is untrue.

     Democracy is based on an aggregate of many personal wills. This aggregate changes from day to day, even from hour to hours; so there is no constant thing called “the will of the people”. Moreover, at one time certain wills are good and wise, whlle others are bad and unwise; whereas at other times the reverse may be the case . Summing up an aggregate of wills by no means guarantees that the collective pseudo-will that emerges will be good and wise. In other words, democracy is only as good as the people and the wills that make it up at any given moment.

     The historian Norman Stone has expressed this important truth as follows: “Hitler’s democratic triumph exposed the true nature of democracy. Democracy has few values of its own: it is as good, or as bad, as the principles of the people who operate it. In the hands of liberal and tolerant people, it will produce a liberal and tolerant government; in the hands of cannibals, a government of cannibals. In Germany in 1933-34 it produced a Nazi government because the prevailing culture of Germany’s voters did not give priority to the exclusion of gangsters… 

     In a world pushed hither and thither by the “multimutinous” wills of men (van the Terrible’s phrase), some kind of compromise must be effected if a state of permanent war is to be avoided. Democracy is such a compromise. As such, it is not to be despised by those who prefer relative peace to constant war. But it must be recognized for what it is: a convenient fiction that guarantees nothing except relative peace. It is a method of conflict resolution, not a path to wisdom, or true peace and prosperity; and even as a method of conflict resolution it has its limits, as the present impasse over Brexit has proved. When a truly momentous decision approaches, democracy shows itself to be at its weakest. For when supremely important issues are at stake, relative peace becomes less important than truth. In an obscure but definite way, the British people feel that the decision to leave the European Union is one such momentous decision. Let us briefly examine why.

* 

     The root difference between “Leavers” and “Remainers” is not primarily over economics, even if most of the argumentation we hear on the media is indeed about economics. The Remainers believe that Britain’s long-term economic interests lie in remaining within the very large free trading area that is the European Union, and that leaving that area, with all its privileges, would damage British business both in the short- and the long-term. The Leavers accept that there might be some short-term disruption, but that the long-term advantages of being able to conclude trading agreements with countries all round the globe as an individual trading nation and not as a member of the European cartel, outweigh the short-term losses.

     But the Leavers care less about economics than about political sovereignty and national identity. They argue that Britain in the European Union is no longer a sovereign nation in that decisions passed in bodies such as the European Commission and the European Court of Justice can overrule decisions passed in the British parliament or the British courts. In other words, Britain is a vassal state whose real ruler is no longer the Queen in parliament but the (usually unelected) institutions of the European Union. This is not disputed by the Remainers, who argue that political sovereignty is an outdated concept in today’s globalized world whose problems can only be solved by global or at any rate regional “super-nations”. Moreover, there is the strong feeling among Remainers that the European Union represents modernity, and that if Britain wants to be part of the modern world and prosper in it she must integrate herself into it and not “miss the train” as it leaves the station for a radiant if indeterminate future. But Leavers see this as integration into a socialist super-power that exercises a despotic dominion over its member-states. As that notable anti-socialist Margaret Thatcher said in her famous Bruges speech in September, 1988: “We have not successfully rolled back the frontiers of the state in Britain only to see them re-imposed at a European level, with a European super-state exercising a new dominance from Brussels.” And, as Norman Stone writes, “she said, about the tired metaphor of not taking the European train as it was leaving the station, that ‘people who get on a train like that deserve to be taken for a ride’.” [1]

     In the end, for the British citizen this argument comes down to the question: do you feel yourself to be primarily European, and only secondly British (or English, Scottish, Welsh or Irish), or primarily British? Remainers see Brexit as a threat to their European identity, while Leavers see it as reasserting their British identity. It is this question that particularly divides the generations. Older people, who were born before Britain joined the European Union (then only the European Economic Community) in 1975, grew up in an independent Britain feeling Britain, not Europe, to be their real home; whereas younger people, having been born into the European Union see it as their real homeland. As Anthony Seldon writes, this issue of  “membership of the EU goes to the very heart of national identity. It is not just about what people think or where they perceive their economic interests to lie; it is about who they are.”[2]

 

    Since this is a matter of individual and social psychology, it is unlikely that it can be resolved by rational argument. But there is an aspect to this question that transcends both economic and political arguments, and questions of national identity and sovereignty. If Europe were a godly state from which there issued godly laws and godly people and influences, we should be glad to be part of it, as Britain was glad to be part of the Roman empire and patriarchate in the so-called “Dark Ages”. But Europe today is the gateway into the New World Order, whose creed is atheism and multicultural ecumenism (especially Islamophilia) and morality – the immorality of the LGBT rainbow, abortion on demand and the crazy world of universal human rights.

     As Orthodox Christians, we know that one day the Antichrist will be enthroned as the head of a world government and global state. His rule will be religious as well as political and economic. Among the main organs of religious globalization are the World Council of Churches, which has already ensnared all the Local Churches of World Orthodoxy, and the World Constitution and Parliament Association (WCPA). The latter was founded in 1959; although its aims are political and economic, it clearly has ramifications for religious organization, as the following 1992 report makes clear:"Its members in their turn are representatives of such organizations as, for example: the United Nations, the World Council of Churches, Green Peace, the World Muslim Congress, the Council on Foreign Relations, the World Court, and the ambassadors and ministers of many countries. This organization has already arranged several meetings of a Provisional World Parliament and passed eleven laws of a World Codex of laws. It is interesting that the WCPA has divided the whole world into ten kingdoms, employing precisely that term in English: 'kingdoms'. It is proposed that a new world financial system will be introduced immediately the first ten countries confirm a World Constitution, since the remaining countries will then be forced to accept this constitution for economic reasons. At the present time the WCPA is trying to convene a Constitutional Assembly so as to substitute the constitution of the USA for the World Constitution. In 1990 the WCPA sent a letter to all heads of government in which it declared the formation of a World Government, and after this many leaders of states openly began to speak about the New World Order."[3 

     Now the American president in 1990 was George H.W. Bush, who saw European unity as the model for world unity, while the core of that unity would be the United Nations: "I see a world of open borders, open trade and, most importantly, open minds; a world that celebrates the common heritage that belongs to all the world's people.... I see a world building on the emerging new model of European unity. ... The United Nations is the place to build international support and consensus for meeting the other challenges we face.... the threats to the environment, terrorism... international drug trafficking... refugees.... We must join together in a new compact -- all of us -- to bring the United Nations into the 21st century."

     “I see a world building on the emerging new model of European unity.” So global unity depends to a certain degree on European unity. Europe has a huge diversity of nations, languages, traditions and creeds from which two world wars have emerged in recent times. It follows that if unity can be attained in such a divided and complex region, there is hope that the wider, global unity can be achieved, too. If, on the other hand, European unity fails, the march towards global unity and a single world government is also halted. Hence the great importance of the Brexit issue for Europeans and globalists.

        Like Marx and Lenin, today’s globalists believe in the march of history. There is no arguing with History – if you do not want to be crushed by it and cast into its dustbin… For, asthe economist  Roger Bootle writes: “European integration has had an air of inevitability about it. It seemed to be the summation and healing of the past and the way of the future. Nation states were on the way out, passé. A united Europe would embody the best of European traditions while securing Europe’s future in the modern world.”[4]

     But “what is the point of the EU? Is it to link together countries and peoples that are ‘European’? Is it to link together countries and peoples that are geographically close together? Is it to link together countries that conduct themselves in a certain way and are prepared and able to obey EU law? Or is it simply to carry on expanding as far as it can, because bigger is better, so that the EU can be regarded as an early progenitor of global government?

     “Without a clear answer to these questions, it is difficult to see why the EU should not contemplate expansion to nations that are geographically close, such as Israel or the countries of North Africa, even though they are not strictly European. (Interestingly, the remit of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) does extend into the Middle East and North Africa.) Or if the key concept is cultural, what about countries that are European in character and history but are far distant, such as Canada, Australia or New Zealand?

     “This question is of exceptional importance. For if there is no clear answer to the question of how far EU membership should spread, perhaps it should be restricted to a smaller territory – or indeed, perhaps the EU should not exist at all…”[5]

     There are other issues and nations threatening to undermine the unity of Europe. The four “Vishegrad” countries of Poland, Czechia, Slovakia and Hungary have set their minds firmly against uncontrolled migration and the undermining of their Christian civilization by Muslim immigration; they are defying ne the EU’s four major principles, that of free movement. These are very important concerns that are felt in Britain, too – it is generally agreed that the main motivation for the original Brexit referendum result was fear of uncontrolled immigration.

     And there are other incipient rebellions. Italy now has a government which is openly Eurosceptic. France has a powerful anti-European party led by Marine Le Pen. Germany’s AFD party is rapidly increasing its membership and influence, and its leader recently made a powerful speech in the Bundestag sympathizing with Britain and blaming the EU for Brexit. So-called “populist” movements are spreading throughout Europe and threatening the security of its centralizing elites.

     There is a more than symbolic importance in the fact that the first country to vote to leave the EU apart from tiny Greenland has been Britain. Was not Britain the first country to build a truly global economy through its control of the seas in the nineteenth century? And was it not Britain that first formulated and popularized the principles of laissez-faire economics and parliamentary democracy that the globalists pay lip-service to even if they disregard them in practice? How then can this founder-member of the New World Order want to leave the NWO? What does this tell us about the NWO?

     The globalists do not want to face this question squarely, for it would undermine faith in the radiant future of the globalizing movement, the twenty-first century’s equivalent of the twentieth century’s Comintern. They didn’t mind that tiny Greenland wanted to leave. But Britain must not be allowed to leave. Or she should be allowed – but at such a cost to herself that it would put off any other potential leavers. Otherwise, the whole global experiment might be in jeopardy. So the Europeans continue to assert that the problems of Europe can be solved, not by a reassertion of the sovereignty of the nation-state, but only by “more Europe” – that is, the tightening of the screws that bind the states of the European super-state together until the nation-state is suffocated completely…

      The expansionist, globalist project of which the European project is a part recalls the very first such project in history, the Tower of Babel. Moreover, the Europeans seem willingly to accept this parallel.

     Thus Andrew Drapper writes: “The EU Parliament building is pretty obviously intended to look like or is modelled after the biblical tower of babel. Or perhaps more accurately it is modelled after Pieter Brueghel the Elder’s painting ‘The Tower of Babel’ (1563).

     “Though modernist in style, the parliament building is recognisably intended to represent the unfinished Tower of Babel. This is further supported by things like the famous Council of Europe poster depicting the EU Parliament building in the process of being finished by the people of Europe. The test on the poster, ‘Europe: Many Tongues, One Voice.’ Here a very strong connection is made not only to the image of the Tower of Babel in Brueghel’s painting, but also to the record of the Tower of Babel as recorded in the Bible.”[6]

     And so history has come round full circle: contemporary globalization returns to the world’s first globalization project, Nimrod’s attempt to unite the people in building a tower to reach from earth to heaven in order to make a name for himself and to make himself equal to the gods. We know how that attempt ended: it remains to be seen how the contemporary effort will end…

 

March 20 / April 2, 2019.

St. Cuthbert of Lindisfarne.

 

 

 

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