Stephen Karganovic
A nation that tolerates at its helm foreign agents renounces effective control of both its present and future.
José Goulão is for the most part spot on in his recent lament, " Forty years of dismantling Portugal," over his homeland's absorption by the destructive chimera known as the European Union, into which in 1986, without genuine consultation with the Portuguese people, it was conscripted by decree of its treacherous political elite. His poignant recitation of the manner of Portugal's accession, perfidiously orchestrated under false pretexts and pretenses, could be repeated and paraphrased by citizens of virtually every other European country. That is especially true of the politically infantile societies of Eastern Europe. They were similarly deceived and sold a bill of goods about the marvels that awaited them once they became members of this self-proclaimed happy "family of European nations," founded on nebulous principles and moving in a direction that was carefully hidden from the view and deliberately kept beyond the comprehension of those, in both the "old" and the "new" Europe, that it ensnared with its false promises.
It is best to let Goulão explain it in his own devastating words:
"Enforced integration, because in this form of democracy - labelled "liberal" precisely to justify the systematic erosion of popular interests - there was never the elementary decency of asking citizens whether they accepted the country's incorporation into an international bloc that implied the loss of fundamental elements of national sovereignty. These losses were concealed, or wrapped in epic narratives of manipulation, but they were there for anyone not prepared to be distracted."
Speaking specifically of Portugal, he correctly states:
"No referendum was organised. No genuine public consultation took place. Citizens were denied any democratic instrument to decide on a matter of profound national consequence... A subject that required serious, detailed and honest debate was reduced to propaganda and sold as a modern-day El Dorado - a promise that European money would rain down on everyone and turn each of us into a beneficiary"
A broadly identical strategy of mass deception for which, to Goulão's justified regret, the good people of Portugal had foolishly fallen unfortunately also worked like a charm in most other European countries, some of them presumably more politically sophisticated, and some even less than Portugal.
The degree of Portugal's degradation (Goulão's preferred expression, dismantlement, is equally adequate) was on poignant display at a recent soccer match when the cheap and nauseatingly Europeanised fado singer Ana Moura, imagining perhaps that she could ever, even for a moment, compete with the eternal Amália , made a pathetic attempt see here and cry] of rendering her nation's majestic anthem, A Portuguesa. [Enjoy the unadulterated version here .] This is perhaps a minor detail by comparison to the gloomy panorama of a great country's ruin that Goulão paints, but it makes his point more effectively than most dissertations could.
And a desolate panorama it surely is.
"A journey through Portugal's industrial ruins," Goulão goes on with his lamentation, "offers a vaccination against European myths. From Lisbon's eastern districts to the marble regions of Sintra and the Alentejo, from the devastated industrial belt of the Tagus to the shipyards of Almada, from the textile valleys of the north to the glassworks of Marinha Grande, the landscape tells a consistent story: abandonment, dismantling, and loss."
It seems that the destructive steamroller of "European integration" spares literally nothing:
"In this context of accepted impoverishment," José Goulão bewails his once proudly independent country's European entrapment [remember orgulhosamente sós ?] dignity, history, culture, roots and even language - the foundations of a nearly thousand-year-old national community - were sacrificed without hesitation by a neoliberal power alliance increasingly tinged with authoritarian reflexes."
Has even the magnificent Portuguese language been offered up on the altar of the European chimera, as Goulão distressingly suggests, as if the renunciation of dignity, history, and culture were not bad enough ? Perhaps in a future text he can elaborate on that intriguing matter.
But returning to the main topic, the obvious and unasked question is who made it possible that after 1975 Portugal should have any assets for the neoliberal vultures to dismantle ? Senhor Goulão seems to be of an age to have grown up as a member of the Mocidade Portuguesa and presumably he remembers Portugal before the 1974 coup, so he should know the answer to that question. The forty years of his country's dismantlement and destruction that he denounces justifiably were preceded by forty years of patriotic nation building, guided by the salutary principle "Tudo pela nação, nada contra a nação." He must surely recall that and hopefully agrees that not just for Portugal but for every European nation in a similar predicament the application of that principle is the absolute and unfailing solution to their present plight. Every policy framework that sidesteps that principle leads directly and inevitably to Brussels, which is of course the metaphor for subservience to foreign, in this instance globalist, ideological and power centres.
Portugal's dismal condition, as José Goulão so eloquently describers it, and the circumstances that engendered it, were replicated throughout the continent , in country after country, as the pseudo-European imposture known as the "European Union" was being set up. It was organised on a foundation of lies and false promises and - most perfidiously of all - a cynical misappropriation of the civilizational and cultural trademark of the genuine Europe, now emptied of its historical substance and content. Unfortunately, almost everyone fell for the deception. Countries that once forged their own destiny and counted for something, and Portugal is a prime example, are now so enmeshed in this imposture's webs that disentanglement now seems well-nigh impossible.
A nation that tolerates at its helm foreign agents renounces effective control of both its present and future and consents to the injurious manipulation and distortion of its past. And all of that for an imaginary mess of pottage, for the delusional shower of "European money [that] would rain down on everyone." But that naively expected deluge of prosperity, of course, never arrived.