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Ed West

Ed West is a journalist and social commentator who specialises in politics, religion and low culture. He is @edwestonline on Twitter.

If opposing the European Union makes one an extremist, count me in

By Ed West Politics Last updated: July 22nd, 2010

140 Comments Comment on this article

Nigel Farage of UKIP (Photo: STEPHEN LOCK; GETTY)

Denis MacShane is a decent man. He was a strong supporter of Solidarity in the 1980s, he campaigns against the recent revival of anti-Semitism, and is also a member of the pro-liberal democracy Henry Jackson Society.

The latter fact, in particular, makes his attitude to our own democracy so strange. As he wrote on Twitter:

Farage on Q Time and Griffin at the Palace. MEP extremists running the show

He’s referring to the fact that the BNP leader was supposed to be at Buckingham Palace for a tea party today, while UKIP’s most well-known politician, Nigel Farage, will speak on BBC Question Time tonight.

Griffin, certainly, is extreme in some of his views, not just on race but also on economics, his party advocating – among many socialist plans – greater tariffs (just like the Greens, whose economic policies are almost identical).

But Farage? UKIP’s policies are available here, but I imagine MacShane is referring either to their policies on Europe or immigration.

On immigration:

· End uncontrolled mass immigration
. Introduce an immediate five-year freeze on immigration for permanent settlement

· Regain control of Britain’s borders to stop foreign criminals from entering our country

· End abuse of the UK asylum system and expel Islamic extremists

· Introduce a strict new points-based visa system and time-limited work permits

· Triple the number of UK Borders Agency staff engaged in controlling immigration (to 30,000)

And on international affairs:

· Leave the EU and continue in free trade with the other European countries. No jobs will be lost

· Establish a Commonwealth Free Trade Area with the other member countries

· Regain Britain’s currently dormant seat at the World Trade Organisation

· Promote democracy, genuine human rights and free determination around the world

Are these ideas extreme?

Wikipedia describes extremism as “a term used to describe the actions or ideologies of individuals or groups outside the perceived political center of a society; or otherwise claimed to violate common moral standards”.

So what this senior Member of Parliament is saying is that anyone who advocates withdrawal from the EU is beyond the pale of common moral standards, and so their opinion must be worthless.

And yet survey after survey has shown a majority or large minority sharing the UKIP view of national independence. In a Channel 4 poll last June 39 per cent agree with the statement “The UK should withdraw completely from the European Union”, compared to 38 percent who disagreed, and 16 percent who said they neither agreed nor disagreed. Twenty two per cent agreed strongly. Most polls give a similar figure.

MacShane’s not the first, of course; David Miliband said last year that the Tories were flirting with “Euro-extremism” just by advocating joining the more sceptical European Conservatives and Reformists.

But what’s different is that MacShane is a supporter of the neocon Henry Jackson Society, which aims to promote liberal democracy around the world. How can someone hold two such conflicting ideas simultaneously? The very idea of liberal democracy is dependent on the nation-state, and that it arose in England, an independent, unified kingdom since 927, is no coincidence. No nation-state, no liberal democracy.

As Roger Scruton wrote: “Democracy involves the ability to grant a share in government to people with whom you profoundly disagree, including people of another faith. This is possible only where government is secular, and where nevertheless people revere the process of government as the expression of a shared national identity.”

And yet a small group of intellectuals following the ideas of French politician Jean Monnet and Russian philosopher Alexandre Kojève have managed to make what was once universally accepted “extremist”.

Monnet was the architect of the European project, who, following the First World War, dreamed of creating a new empire of Europe “in which the ghost of nationalism had been finally exorcised”. It was essentially a crazy idea thought up by people deranged by the horror of the war, but through his “Monnet method” of “integration by stealth” what was once considered insane is now universally accepted in the corridors of power.

Kojève was the intellectual godfather of European unity, a Russian émigré who influenced a whole generation of French thinkers to believe in the new empire. It was Kojève who, in Scruton’s words, identified “the normality of the nation state through its pathological examples. As Chesterton has argued about patriotism generally, to condemn patriotism because people go to war for patriotic reasons, is like condemning love because some loves lead to murder.”

Kojève was, incidentally, working for the Soviet Union the whole time.

So which side are the extremists? As the second part of that Wikipedia definition puts it:

In democratic societies, individuals or groups that advocate the replacement of democracy with a authoritarian regime are usually branded extremists, in authoritarian societies the opposite applies.

If opposing this new empire in Europe makes one an extremist, then count me in.

Tags: BNP, david miliband, Denis MacShane, eu, Henry Jackson Society, neocon, nick griffin, Nigel Farage, Roger Scruton, twitter, U