Europe

[Furunculus]

Hannan on the double standard that exists between europhiles and skeptics when it comes to tolerence of activities of their more eccentric members:
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/da...-them-extreme/

Supporters of the EU can be as xenophobic as they like, and no one will call them extreme

Is it “far Right” to posit a link between immigration and crime? Can a mainstream political party demand that legal immigrants have their nationality stripped away if they commit certain offences? Can it argue that juvenile offenders should be denied nationality when they reach adulthood? Can it couple such a campaign with proposals to dismantle gipsy camps and expel Roma?

Nicolas Sarkozy borrows Le Pen's language, but backs Brussels

The answer, it seems, depends on whether the party in question supports political integration in Europe.

You can imagine what The Guardian would be saying if one of the Conservatives’ allies in the European Parliament started making such noises. (Actually, you don’t have to imagine: read this for a flavour of how deranged that newspaper has become on the issue). But when it’s Nicolas Sarkozy, that’s different. His party, the UMP, is in the EPP, and so cannot possibly be extreme, for all that it sits alongside a number of parties with anti-American, anti-gypsy, protectionist and homophobic tendencies (see here for a selection).

This really shouldn’t need saying but, in most parties, you will find good and bad people. A few minutes with Google will reveal some hair-raising statements from minor figures attached to virtually every political movement in Europe. I’m getting slightly sick of the double standard whereby support for the EU serves as a magical vaccination against accusations of extremism, whereas Euro-scepticism reverses the burden of proof.

Plenty of fascists, from the 1930s onwards, have wanted a federal Europe: Oswald Mosley, for example, was an obsessive Euro-zealot, whose final act in politics was to campaign for a “Yes” vote in 1975. This obviously doesn’t mean that all Europhiles are secret Nazis; but it would be nice if they acknowledged, just occasionally, the liberal, internationalist and democratic case against the EU.

he has a point, the number of people singling out the ECR for containing fruitcakes, even here, when the other big euro parties are exactly the same if not worse.

a wonderful godwin from the guardian:

Although the fringe event was carefully stage-managed – terse political lines trotted out and limited time for questions – there was one unfortunate mistake. The basement room in which delegates gathered to hear the controversial Tory allies was in Manchester’s Midland Hotel, a building Hitler is said to have liked so much that he would have made it his northern residence if he had invaded.