Have you ever tried leaning out of a window, on tiptoe, trying to see what’s outside? That’s it. Exactly that feeling of precariousness, between what’s inside and what’s outside, that feeling that with one move you can get your feet back on the ground or plummet into the void. This is the condition in which the European Union is now. A Union that is living in a fragile equilibrium that risks, if it makes the slightest wrong move, to fall down.
This condition was well represented by US Vice President Jd Vance in his speech at the Munich Security Conference.
The Republican highlighted how the Old Continent is going through a moment of strong internal imbalance, more precisely from the point of view of values. An imbalance that, dramatically, does not derive from external factors, but rather from upheavals moving from the belly of the European countries themselves.
“The threat that worries me most aboutEurope is not Russia, it is not China, it is not any other external actor. What worries me is the threat from within. The estrangement of Europe from some of its most fundamental values, values shared with the United States of America,’ he said, adding that ‘When I look at Europe today, it is not clear what happened to some of the winners of that conflict. They are afraid of freedom of expression and run away from their voters’. But one cannot and should not be afraid of those ‘opinions that do not agree with the leadership’.
Because, and here Vance has opened the Pandora’s box that has been closed for too long: “Democracy rests on the sacred principle that the voice of the people counts.” Centred.
And then, again, another attack on the European Union, and subordinately on the woke culture: ‘You cannot force people to think a certain way, to feel or believe a certain way. Close the shutters to unorthodox points of view’. Hit again, and this time sunk.
From Great Britain to Sweden to Germany. All the cases where imposed thinking got the better of freedom of expression
Vance, in order to make this chilling state of affairs better understood, brought up several examples, highlighting how authorities at both the EU and national levels are essentially repressing freedom of expression by those citizens who do not align themselves with the dominant single thought. But also in terms of general democracy, according to the US Vice-President, there is a major crisis in the EU: “When we see European courts annulling elections and senior officials threatening to annul others, we should ask ourselves whether we are meeting sufficiently high standards of democracy,” he commented.
He went on to talk about how the European Commission intends to shut down social media during periods of civil unrest when they identify “what they have deemed to be, quote-unquote, hateful content.”
He also recalled that in Germany, police raids were carried out against citizens suspected of posting anti-feminist comments online, ‘as part of the fight against misogyny on the internet’.
And, again, in Sweden, where a fortnight ago the government convicted a Christian activist for taking part in the Koran burning that resulted in the murder of his friend.
Lastly, ‘perhaps most worryingly’, he mentioned the United Kingdom with the case of Adam Smith, a 51-year-old physiotherapist who just over two years ago was convicted for ‘daring’ to pray within two hundred metres of an abortion clinic, under laws that ‘criminalise prayer and other actions that might influence a person’s decision within 200 metres of an abortion facility’. This case, however, is not an isolated one, but rather representative of legislation that is demeaning towards freedom of expression and opinion, even the most private and personal.
“I fear that freedom of speech is in retreat all over Europe,” he commented, admonishing the audience in attendance and, in general, all those ‘aligned’ to the mainstream, who boast so much about freedom and equality and then are the first to call for censorship if something doesn’t suit them.
Focus migrants. For Vance ‘A change of course is needed’
Finally, the American patriot focused on the issue of migrants, one of the hottest topics on the world agenda.
“I believe there is nothing more urgent than mass migration,” he emphasised, adding that connected to this is a large ‘immigration of criminals’. An obvious problem and one that needs to be addressed. But not as the European establishment has done and is continuing to do.
“Today one in five people come from abroad, it is similar in the US, the number of migrants entering the EU has doubled by 2021. Europe must change course on immigration,” Vance said.
Europe represents a world adrift, caught between the meshes of woke culture
What Vance recounted yesterday, and which was greeted with deafening silence – amid a mixture of astonishment and disbelief – is a world adrift.
A world, or rather a Europe, that has forgotten its founding and fundamental values in pursuit of a universe in which there must be one and only one, incontrovertible thought.
A Europe that, sadly, is not far removed from the reality recounted almost a century ago by George Orwell in his novel ‘1984’. A reality, which, if at first only imagined and narrated, today no longer appears so distant, and is in danger of becoming increasingly true and real, unless action is taken now, changing course and re-establishing the necessary balance. So that no one fears for their safety and security any longer, and so that everyone is once again free to express their opinion and to speak and pray without being accused of being a criminal.
And so, if we are really to avoid living in a world with no more dreams and hope, we need to rediscover the principles that once led to the creation of beautiful Europe, defeating once and for all those wokist and cancel culture drifts that do nothing but demean and belittle man.
The US, by re-electing Trump, has realised this loud and clear and is shouting it out. And it is time for Europe, too, to wake up from its torpor and get back to fighting for its freedom and security.
