The EU: Bracing for the Fire

by Michael Walsh

WHILST MEDIA TRY to keep the lid on news of growing dissent, there is foreboding of seismic change among the 28 nations of the splintering European Union. The collapse of the Euro is openly discussed, as is grim acceptance that the political elite won’t be “infallible” for very much longer.

Zahar Prilepin, editor and journalist at Spain’s Russian-language newspaper, Komsomol Pravda: “The EU in the worst sense of the word is very much the new USSR.” His comments echo those of former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev: “Why is the EU trying to recreate the USSR?”

Well, not so fast, Mikhail; there is just one more reconstruction to come. Let us rewind to the 1980s, when peoples of the near twenty Soviet Bloc nations revolted against their tyrannies.

From a distance, we in the West watched anti-government protests fill the streets of Soviet-oppressed nations from the Baltic to the Black Sea. Police and protesters clashed; we watched as tens of thousands filled the streets of Danzig, Leipzig, Prague, Budapest, and Bucharest. Gradually, the Kremlin’s puppet regimes toppled and surviving despots hit the midnight roads. Some never made it before being lynched by the angry and the dispossessed.

Again and again I see everything going south for the equally corrupt and out-of-touch political elites of Brussels, Britain, Germany, and France.

The political oligarchs sense disaster. Is Angela Merkel — or France’s Emmanuel Macron — or Britain’s tottering PM Theresa May — to become tomorrow’s Romanian chief puppet? (The Kremlin stooge and his family tried the “midnight run,” but were cornered like rats and later despatched by troops.

Merkel & Co. know that their last defences are in the police and state-controlled media. What happens when there is a breaking of the ranks as happened in the collapsing Soviet Bloc?

During the Soviet Bloc’s collapse, I recall policemen’s and troops’ morale plummeting, followed by their refusing to obey orders to violently oppose demonstrators. Unsurprisingly, the pro-government media held out the longest.

Today, Germany, Estonia, Italy, and other EU nations surreptitiously print and stockpile their pre-Euro currencies. Media and police brace themselves for an escalation of public dissent. What might we expect when the new currency — and the political elite — begin to totter?

Thanks to the Internet, we can see the demonstrations that the censorious “MSM” won’t show us, all throughout Europe. (If there is mention at all of the protests on the controlled channels, the numbers taking part will be downplayed.) Hand in hand with such distortions, protesters will be dismissed as “radical fringe” outfits.

Watch the independent video clips — which media and police hate. You’ll see many thousands of anti-government protesters — ordinary people, not paid Soros shills. Someone has been telling you untruths; not the palace hacks, surely?

Protests invariably begin as placid gatherings. But a combination of factors, not least frustration and police heavy-handedness, lights the blue touch paper. Within an hour, a peaceful anti-elite protest can turn into open revolt.

This is when the makeshift street barricades are set up. Vehicle tyres, easily accessible, are gathered and set alight. Several burning tyre barricades scattered about a city give landscapes the appearance of Armageddon. Street lights are doused, transport infrastructure is sabotaged, banks close, and ordinary life becomes precarious.

National flags will be flown upside down, a traditional battle signal of mutineers. Tens of thousands of alarmed citizens will gravitate toward the demonstrations. Fired by the police brutality, they too will join in the fray. Darkly, everything seems to take on an impetus of its own.

Parts of cities become no-go areas for police and journalists. Many of the latter are in fact police officers gathering information and images of demonstrators. These immigrant Fifth Column apologists, once noticed, will have to become scarce quick — instant fugitives. There will soon be chants calling for government buildings, police stations, and media offices to be stormed.

The people become ungovernable. Broad civil disobedience, sometimes erupting in violence, will set in all across the nation. Already, laws are in place that make it a criminal offence to demonstrate. In Spain, penalties for demonstrators approaching a government building are more draconian than those applied for murder and rape.

When the political elite brace and prepare for massive dissent, then ordinary people will follow their example. Perhaps, then, the words of former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, and others who saw what was coming, will likely be ‘I told you so.’

* * *

Mike Walsh is an international journalist, broadcaster and historian.
www.spinfreehistory.com
HISTORY WITHOUT SPIN
New stories and YouTube videos every day.