Paris 2024 and Berlin 1936 in the service of an impossible imperial dream

Emmanuel Macron has never had any regard for French culture. During his first election campaign, he never ceased to mock it. His ambition was to become President of the French Republic, but in his eyes, this only made sense within the European Union. During his two terms in office, he solved few French problems, but patiently built the EU into an empire of some thirty states.

In his mind, the forthcoming Olympic Games will be an opportunity to manipulate the masses into magnifying the "United States of Europe", so that they will be spontaneously ready for the dissolution of the EU member states.

In his programmatic speech at La Sorbonne seven years ago, he declared, "A few weeks after the European elections [in 2024], Paris will host the Olympic Games. But it’s not Paris that’s hosting. It’s France, and with it Europe, that will keep alive the Olympic spirit born on this continent. It will be a unique moment of togetherness, a magnificent opportunity to celebrate European unity. In 2024, the Ode to Joy will ring out, and the European flag will be proudly displayed alongside our national emblems" [1].

Yes, the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris will be an opportunity for him to stage his vision of the world: every time a member state wins, the European anthem will be played. Without a doubt, the EU will be the victorious power. In so doing, he will be fulfilling the dream of Chancellor Aldolf Hitler in Berlin in 1936. In fact, he has already adopted its codes. For example, the Olympic torch relay, which did not exist at the original Games, is a remnant of Nazism. The German Chancellor had wanted to magnify the bodies of the Aryans and cross the Balkans, foreshadowing his future conquests. The French president intends to mobilize the French behind his impossible European dream, the better to manipulate them in the weeks to come. In fact, he has entrusted the construction of the torch to Usinor, now called ArcelorMittal, just as his predecessor had
In fact, he entrusted the production of the torch to Usinor, now called ArcelorMittal, just as his predecessor had entrusted it to the Krupp arms group.

Don’t worry, I’m not comparing Emmanuel Macron to Adolf Hitler to imply that the French president is a racist, but this historical allusion will be useful for the rest of my speech. For the moment, remember that there will be Russian athletes, but no Russian anthem, and no champion registered in the name of the European Union, but European anthems.

To understand the trap that is being set and into which we are all likely to fall, we need to retrace its previous stages.
In his speech on September 27, 2017, he declared: "We have turned the page on a form of European construction. The founding fathers built Europe away from the people, because they were an enlightened vanguard, because perhaps it could be done, and they moved forward proving afterwards that it worked". He was thus laying down the principles of a staging process that we have witnessed, and sometimes participated in, without understanding.

– On June 25, 2018, he launched the European Intervention Initiative. This was not a EU program. At least half the member states didn’t want it, including Germany. So, initially, only nine states took part, Today, they number 14. This initiative is currently at work in the Persian Gulf (European Maritime Awareness in the Strait of Hormuz or EMASoH). It initiates "Europe’s capacity for autonomous action, as a complement to NATO".

Please understand: there was never any question of creating an army for the collective defense of member states. Quite the opposite, in fact: the war in Ukraine is the pretext for gigantic arms transfers, so that today no member state has the means to defend itself for more than two days if attacked conventionally by a developed state. Contrary to all the talk about strengthening military power, the French Ministry of the Armed Forces, according to the Cour des Comptes, cut 3,599 military posts last year [2]. Ultimately, we are already, and will become even more, dependent on the USA and the UK, that is to say: on Nato.

– On March 4, 2019, Emmanuel Macron published an op-ed calling for the creation of a "Conference for Europe to propose all the necessary changes to our political project". It was to "involve citizens’ panels, hear from academics, social partners, religious and spiritual representatives". The aim was to define "a roadmap for the European Union, translating these major priorities into concrete action" [3]. Note that President Macron wrote "these major priorities" , not “its major priorities” to make it clear that the Conference was to express the means to achieve a goal which it would not choose itself, but which was imposed on it.

This is a reprise of the Grand débat national that followed the "Gilets jaunes" revolt. 10,134 public meetings were organized, 19,899 cahiers de doléances were opened, 16,337 town halls participated, 569 000 detailed contributions were written. All this discussion and paperwork ended up in the garbage can.

– A few months later, Germany’s Ursula von der Leyen, presented her administration’s program on July 16, 2019, saying that "Europe is like a long marriage. Love doesn’t necessarily develop on the first day, but it depends" [4].

From then on, the Élysée Palace and the Brussels administration began to work on transforming the Union into an "Empire", or as the press put it, a "federation". It was clear that it would not be possible to pass this upheaval by referendum. The Von der Leyen administration therefore intended to proceed in stages: changing the rules of adoption through a simplified procedure, then later dissolving the member states and replacing them with a centralized state.

– During his first term in office, President Emmanuel Macron visited each of the 28 EU capitals. This was his election campaign to justify his forthcoming appointment.

– From April 2021 to May 2022, 830 European "citizens" gathered to debate "The Future of Europe". This conference, opened by President Emmanuel Macron, produced 49 proposals and 326 measures addressed to the Presidents of the Parliament, the Council and the Commission [5].
First remarks: this presentation of the facts masks real problems. To give an appearance of legitimacy to the process underway, the idea is to give the illusion that the European Empire is not an idea from on high, but a fervent desire of the European people. We speak of European "citizens" when in fact there is no European State, no European People, and therefore no "citizens" at all. The participants were chosen by lot, giving the illusion of their representativeness and the legitimacy of their decisions. In practice, however, they were paid with our taxes, even though they were not a European institution. They have adopted certain measures which they have long discussed, but have also hastily voted in what Paris and Brussels wanted them to adopt, and which runs counter to their interests.

– On March 25, 2022, the European Council, then chaired by Emmanuel Macron, adopted the Strategic Compass. This first defined threats, from which it drew the guidelines for its strategy. This led to the creation of a 5,000-strong Rapid Reaction Force.

– On June 9, 2022, the European Parliament, after adopting various texts relating to the Conference on the Future of Europe, adopted a resolution (P9_TA(2022)0244) calling for a Convention to revise the Treaties, in application of Article 48 of the EU Treaty (Treaty of Nice).

– On March 10 and 11, 2022, Emmanuel Macron convened an informal meeting of the European Council in Versailles. At this meeting, the heads of state and government approved the creation of a budget to support Ukraine, as well as a program to change its energy dependency.

– On November 30, 2022, the European Council (i.e. the heads of state and government) listed the 18 measures proposed by the citizens’ panel (the Conference on the Future of Europe) requiring a revision of the Treaties (ST 10033 2022). These range from "a mandatory EU-wide guarantee of affordable kindergartens and free childcare" to... "moving from unanimity to qualified majority voting in the European Council", i.e. depriving member states of their sovereignty.

– A few days ago, on April 25, 2024, President Emmanuel Macron took stock of the situation in a second solemn speech at La Sorbonne [6]..

1- He congratulated himself on having achieved a joint indebtedness of 800 billion euros on the occasion of the Covid pandemic; what Olaf Scholz, then German Finance Minister, called "a Hamiltonian moment", by analogy with the pooling of debts during the American War of Independence, which led to the creation of the United States of America. Similarly, Covid was the occasion for a European strategy to supply itself with vaccines, an objective not covered by the Treaties. Of course, he did not note that these so-called "vaccines", as we are now discovering, were of no use against the disease. The important thing, in his eyes, is that the member states bought them together.
2- He also praised the unity of the European Union during the war in Ukraine. The member states exchanged their dependence on Russian gas for dependence on American gas. Finally, they managed to sacrifice all their defense resources to give them to Ukraine, which consumed them all. The European Union is henceforth totally dependent, economically and militarily, on the United States of America.
3- He went on to congratulate himself on having laid "the foundations for greater technological and industrial sovereignty" (with Germany in the battery sector, then in hydrogen, electronics and healthcare, and finally with the tank of the future, the air combat system of the future. And with the Netherlands on submarines). He then mentioned the project for a European anti-missile shield. The next day, the German Defense Minister, Boris Pistorius, proposed a German-State-United States-Israeli system, an illustration of what is meant by "European independence".
4- The Commission adopted the "Green Deal", a vast ecological program which is ruining entire sectors of the economy. In the run-up to the European elections, this program has already been stripped of its key measures against farmers.
5- The EU has reaffirmed its borders, devising a policy both to combat a few thousand illegal immigrants and to open its borders to a few million chosen immigrants.
6- The EU has "begun to rethink its geography within the limits of our neighbourhood. Europe now thinks of itself as a coherent whole after the Russian aggression, affirming that Ukraine and Moldavia are part of our European family and are destined to join the Union in due course, like the Western Balkans". At the start of this article, I spoke of a Union of more than 30 members; this will indeed be the case.

Now let’s think about what this strategy means. Its supporters tell us that they want to create an entity capable of competing with the United States of America and China.

It’s worth noting that the EU took over from the European Economic Communities (EEC), which the United States and the United Kingdom had wanted. The six founding states could not benefit from the Marshall Plan without committing to its formation. Later, when NATO was created, so too was the Commission, in order to transpose the standards of the Atlantic Alliance into national law. This dependency is still true today. This is why
– both the Union and the Alliance are headquartered in Brussels;
– NATO’s Secretary General is a frequent guest at the EU Council of Heads of State and Government;
– the enlargement of the Union to include the former Eastern Bloc states was announced by the US Secretary of State, James Baker, before the European Council met;
– the Treaty of Nice stipulates that the defense of the States of the Union is ensured by the Atlantic Alliance. This is governed by the Joint Declaration of 2023 [7].

The idea of competing with the United States is therefore ridiculous, since the EU, or the Empire that will succeed it, is a creation of the United States. As for rivalry with China, it’s a return to the neo-conservative vision of the world, which assumes inescapable "competition" between the great powers, and a rejection of the Chinese vision, which, on the contrary, envisages "harmonious cooperation".

Some French personalities denounce Emmanuel Macron’s imperial project in the name of the national sovereignty so dear to Charles De Gaulle. Personally, I wouldn’t mind belonging to a country larger than my own - at the very least, I’d have to feel part of its people - but the EU is no more than an aggregate of distinct peoples with different histories and cultures. Before he was elected, Emmanuel Macron used to make fun of an out-dated French culture. Today, he has failed to demonstrate the existence of a European Union culture, and therefore of a European Union People. I still feel closer to the Spanish and Russians than to the Poles and Lithuanians.

Last but not least, Emmanuel Macron’s imperial project will not come to fruition today, because it is long out of date. It is based on the idea that a vertical authority, exercised over a vast territory, would be powerful. This was true in the industrial age, when people thought in terms of huge organizations modelled on the factories of the great combines. But today, in the age of computers, digital technology and artificial intelligence, the only successful structures operate horizontally in networks.

Law professor Walter Hallstein conceived the "New European Order" that Chancellor Adolf Hitler tried to realize. His idea was to federate the various European states around a Germany enlarged to include all the territories of German-speaking peoples. By force of numbers, Berlin would then have ruled Europe. Walter Hallstein may not have been a Nazi, but he was chosen to negotiate this project with duce Benito Mussolini. In 1958, he became the first President of the European Commission, proof that the USA and the UK had adopted the "New European Order" on their behalf. That’s why, at the start of this article, I noted the similarity between President Macron’s intentions for the Paris 2024 Olympic Games and those of Chancellor Adolf Hitler for the Berlin 1936 Games. In both cases, it’s a matter of mass manipulation in the service of an impossible imperial dream.