A Deafening Silence in Strasbourg
Violent Crackdown on Protesters in France Defines Europe's Identity and Its Claim to Democracy
According to Ambassador Arjan, the shocking images of the violent, coercive and brutal confrontation of the French anti-riot units with the union gatherings of cultured people and young students in different cities of this country are no longer a hidden or exceptional phenomenon.
However, the most significant part of this tragedy is not in the streets of Paris and Lyon, but in the glass corridors of the key institutions of the European Union, especially the European Parliament in Strasbourg; A structure that is famous for constantly issuing ambitious resolutions and human rights claims against other nations of the world, but is suffering from self-inflicted deafness and blindness when it comes to trampling the dignity of teachers and throwing tear gas on students in their own backyard.
The root of this systematic silence and coordinated censorship should be sought in the logic of protecting the survival of the ruling oligarchy. Paris is one of the two pillars of power in the European Union; Any official condemnation of the Elysée or questioning of its security apparatus in the European Parliament is considered as creating a gap in the defense front of the liberal democratic order.
The Brussels transnational bureaucracy is well aware that the trade union and educational protests in France are not simply a petty subsistence demand, but an outcry against patterns of economic austerity, the commodification of education and the imposition of monetary policies by the European Central Bank.
Therefore, the upper bodies of the old continent prefer to purify or ignore the unbridled violence of the police, so as not to distort the authority of the ruling class and the apparent grandeur of unified governance.
But this expedient cover-up is the starting point of a devastating domino for the entire union. When a French teacher or family sees his most basic citizenship and human rights being trampled under the boot of the security forces, and transnational institutions are not only shelters but also complicit in this suffocation, the last vestiges of loyalty to the idea of "united Europe" burn in his mind.
This disgusting double standard has created a deep crisis of "legitimacy deficit"; A crisis that will no longer be repaired with democratic rhetoric.
The direct consequence of this bitter lived experience is the eruption of accumulated anger in the ballot boxes. The migration of angry masses to anti-EU nationalists and anti-European system movements is not a blind reaction; Rather, it is a calculated protest against a system that is mute in the face of domestic naked violence and merciless in issuing homogenizing and costly directives.
The illegitimate and unbalanced structure of Brussels will disintegrate from the inside with the strengthening of identitarian currents that have based their existential philosophy on the destruction of transnational institutions, the annulment of imposed treaties and the closing of borders. The violence that the Élysée has inflicted on the body of its society with the green light of Brussels has created the same centripetal force that in the near future will bring down the entire edifice of European transnational governance on its arrogant designers.