Back in the USSR - EU comparison game

In the mad world of political correctness some people can be compared to the Nazis and others (Mrs Soubry for example) cannot. 

It's all about, to quote something Lenin didn't say, who whom. 

Boris, by implication, was deemed to have compared the EU to the Nazis and was roundly chastised by idiots.

Not as bad as the wrong people comparing the wrong people to the Nazis, but still very bad, is the wrong people comparing the wrong people to Communists.

Michael Gove was in trouble for this offence, but was acquitted when Douglas Murray proved with a recording that he had certainly did not say anything that could be construed as comparing the opening of the Berlin Wall with Brexit.

To many people in England, though, that comparison seems valid. 

To me, for example. And plenty of others I know. 

An English academic first made the comparison to me. He was required to keep his vote to leave a secret at work, he told me. People in East Berlin who welcomed the opening of the Wall were free to say so.

There is a fake quote going around on Twitter that Gorbachev made the USSR-EU comparison but the Soviet dissident Vladimir Bukovksy did so in this interview. 


I quote from it.

VB: According to Communist doctrine as well as to many forms of Socialist thinking, the state, the national state, is supposed to wither away. In Russia, however, the opposite happened. Instead of withering away the Soviet state became a very powerful state, but the nationalities were obliterated. But when the time of the Soviet collapse came these suppressed feelings of national identity came bouncing back and they nearly destroyed the country. It was so frightening.

PB: Do you think the same thing can happen when the European Union collapses?

VB: Absolutely, you can press a spring only that much, and the human psyche is very resilient you know. You can press it, you can press it, but don’t forget it is still accumulating a power to rebound. It is like a spring and it always goes to overshoot.

PB: But all these countries that joined the European Union did so voluntarily.

VB: No, they did not. Look at Denmark which voted against the Maastricht treaty twice. Look at Ireland [which voted against the Nice treaty]. Look at many other countries, they are under enormous pressure. It is almost blackmail. Switzerland was forced to vote five times in a referendum. All five times they have rejected it, but who knows what will happen the sixth time, the seventh time. It is always the same thing. It is a trick for idiots. The people have to vote in referendums until the people vote the way that is wanted. Then they have to stop voting. Why stop? Let us continue voting. The European Union is what Americans would call a shotgun marriage.

PB: What do you think young people should do about the European Union? What should they insist on, to democratize the institution or just abolish it?

VB: I think that the European Union, like the Soviet Union, cannot be democratized. Gorbachev tried to democratize it and it blew up. This kind of structure cannot be democratized.