We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
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Why we are not Eurosceptics 1. skeptic, sceptic, doubter — (someone who habitually doubts accepted beliefs)
… so in reality we are not truly ‘eurosceptic’ as we do not ‘doubt’ the harmful nature of the EU, but rather we regard that as axiomatic. What is more, we have nothing against Europe per se, it is the regulatory statist political entity called the European Union we abominate. Hell, I used to work for the EU which probably explains why I dislike it so much: I know how it really works.
Scepticism seems to imply ‘doubt’. We have no doubt whatsoever.
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Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
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Hmm. Care to take a stab at coining a new word to describe those of us who aren’t mere doubters? Eurobjurgators doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue…
I rather like ‘Euro-septics’
How about ‘Roundheads’? 🙂
Misocabalists? Or why not reappropriate one of the terms the ‘liberal’ left glories in? ‘Antifascist,’ perhaps, given that libertarians are the polar opposites of fascists and that leftists have more in common with fascists than they’d like to admit, hence all their name-calling. Or ‘third-world-liberationists,’ now that Oxfam’s admitted that the EU protection racket prevents the third world bettering their lot through trading.
Roundheads? Levellers!
Roundheads? Levellers!
My vote goes to Anti-Fascists. Ian says the left has more in common with Fascists than they’d like to admit. It’s more dire than that. The left *is* Fascist. The two terms are totally interchangeable. Open a leftie’s mental closet, and there are the jackboots lined up, shiny and polished and ready to go.
What do we call pro-EU statists?
Eurosmoothies? Eurocreeps? Eurofilth?
Mark – Grâce à Perry (or is it David? – sorry), we’ve already got the perfect word: federasts. Although it is widely used among Libertarians, we need to get it out into the mainstream. Scare the Guardianistas and the embedded thought fascists at the curdled heart of the BBC.
“The left *is* Fascist. The two terms are totally interchangeable.”
– Liberty Belle
Yep. Totalitarian rules are all the same (shit).
“Grâce à Perry (or is it David? – sorry), we’ve already got the perfect word: federasts.”
If you put this puerile epithet into Google, the first hit you get is for this website. The second is for the BNP. You should be careful of the company you keep. Or is there more to this than meets the eye?
Susan: Oooo, we should complain to Google then.
Btw, what do you mean by there being more than meets the eye? Please spell it out, I really do not follow your meaning…
“If you put this puerile epithet into Google, the first hit you get is for this website.”
Bingo! I call that a result!!
Gabriel:
“Btw, what do you mean by there being more than meets the eye? Please spell it out, I really do not follow your meaning…”
Do I really have to? Strange that the term “federast” is so rare that it only gets a few dozen hits on Google, and yet Samizdata and the BNP website are the most prominent users. Perhaps you have more in common than child-abusers and federalists do.
Hm. The eighth and ninth hits are to the Observer and the Guardian, respectively. And we know what that means. Nudge-nudge, wink-wink.
Oooh Susan I’d be careful if I was you. You’re coming perilously close to breaching Godwin’s Law.
Come now, David! From a website that displays the EU flag superimposed with a swastika?
Susan, check out my last post. And the EU flag with swastika is sooo appropriate! We also have one with Stalin in each of the stars of the EU to complete the collection… Enjoy.
Susan,
No, not the same. None of us have tried to suggest that you are a national socialist whereas you have implied that we are.
I do not believe that courtesies of debate apply to an abstract political project in quite the same manner.
Jackie D writes:
How about “Euno”? 🙂
Could even turn into a verb: “I eunoed the debate”
The history books would write “And the Eunoze triumphed” 8)
Could get confusing though: “I’m a Euno, you know.”
I really do have to get out more… 😉
Well, for the record I’m not implying you’re a National Socialist. And I certainly do have some time for libertarian perspectives. But views I saw expressed here on the comments section last time I contributed did seem to suggest that this website attracts some people whose ideas might not be so far removed from the BNP. Someone was going on about Mexicans invading the U.S., someone else opined that states should be culturally homogeneous… and I can’t help feeling that the anti-EU hysteria and the promotion of an “anglosphere” masks, in some people, a certain xenophobia. That’s just my subjective feeling, and I’ll leave it at that.
David:
“None of us have tried to suggest that you are a national socialist whereas you have implied that we are.”
Liberty Belle:
“Open a leftie’s mental closet, and there are the jackboots lined up, shiny and polished and ready to go.”
Susan, the third term (?) of your argument is missing. None of us has suggested you are a leftie.
Susan writes:
“., someone else opined that states should be culturally homogeneous..”
I realise that telling blatant lies is all part of the EU propaganda technique (something else which it shares with totalitarian states) but what I *actually* said was that if a state is being formed it stands a better chance of succeeding if the peoples within it are culturally homogenous.
Your implication that I am a BNP supporter for having suggested this trusim is totteringly close to a libel.
You might choose to ignore the terrible recent histiry of Africa, but the rest of us have eyes that see beyond the little EU dream.
“Liberty Belle:
“Open a leftie’s mental closet, and there are the jackboots lined up, shiny and polished and ready to go.”
Don’t be so pathetic. A generalisation and one certainly not aimed at you (and you know it) and, incidentally, part of a comment posted prior to your grand entrance.
Susan, if that is the best your side has to offer (and in my experience it is) then I am assured and re-assured that my side is going to win.
G. Cooper – having just looked at the archives, what I wrote was “Your requirement for a state to be linguistically, culturally, economically etc. homogeneous disregards half the states in the world…” To which you replied: “I did not say it was a requirement – but clearly it is highly advisable.”
So it’s highly advisable for a state to be linguistically, culturally and economically homogeneous. True you didn’t say it “should” be, and for that mistake I apologise, but I don’t think the difference is so enormous that I’m totteringly close to libel.
Personally, I don’t think linguistic and cultural homogeneity to be “highly advisable”. I think people should speak whatever language and practise whatever customs they damn well please. On that point, call me a libertarian.
Susan, Whether the preachy, prissy, hectoring politically correct wish to allow new words or not, English, unlike, say, French, is not trapped in amber. A language as vigorous as English is a rushing stream of constant change and evolution. Meanings and usages are robustly diverted in new directions, fed by the worldwide genius of the Anglosphere. New words and definitions are welcomed and employed instantaneously. We have a neologism. Federast. You can’t push back the tide. Federast is here to stay.
Liberty dear, please use whatever words you wish. If you want to sound puerile, that indeed is your prerogative. And I hate to disabuse you, but the French language has changed mightily over the past 10 or 20 years. Some of the changes are homegrown, some come from immigrants from former French colonies or the Antilles, and an awful lot are from American influence. Pretty much like British English, in fact.
Well, pretty much like British English would be if the English appointed official government language police to try to stop such linguistic drift.
Susan,
You have lost. Now may I humbly suggest a polite retreat to preserve the last tattered remnants of your dignity.
Liberty Belle has hit it one the nose – anti fascists!
Excellent! 🙂
Drat! I hate coming into an argument after all the best venom has been spilt.
Regarding the question of what to call opponents of EUnification, I would vote for either the (semi-American) Sons and Daughters of Liberty or, quite simply, British Patriots. Take the bull the horn. Don’t let yourselves be defined in a snobbish, negative turn of phrase.
Now, carry on please. I love a good rhetorical bloodbath early in the morning.
Susan writes:
“Personally, I don’t think linguistic and cultural homogeneity to be “highly advisable”. I think people should speak whatever language and practise whatever customs they damn well please. On that point, call me a libertarian.”
Then you are as ignorant of modern history as you are of the way the EU has affected the UK.
Have you learned *nothing* from Rwanda? Yugoslavia?
Artificial states composed of people with little in common are inherently fissile. And when they spilt apart people die.
It is revealing that either this hasn’t occurred to you or you simply do not care. I’m not sure which is the more shameful.
I can’t believe I’m about to wander into this thicket. I must be really bored or something …
The original comment implies that “eurosceptic” refers to those who “doubt the harmful nature of the EU.” This rather ungainly phrase, in turn, is better parsed as “those who doubt that the EU’s nature is harmful.” I assume that d’Estaing is one who doubts that the EU’s nature is harmful; hence, if this is the correct meaning of the term, then d’Estaing is a most ardent “Eurosceptic.” Indeed, the more one admires the EU, the more “eurosceptical” one is. This is precisely the opposite of how the term is normally used.
So, someone has the term backwards: Either everyone else has been using it wrong, or the original comment has parsed the term badly.
It seems to me clear that the “euro-” prefix is meant to modify the “sceptic” root, in the sense that it identifies the object toward which the scepticism is directed; a “eurosceptic” is a sceptic OF the EU, (which in this context means that he doubts that it is a worthwhile organization). This is in line with the way “sceptic” is normally used, as in “UFO sceptics”: the modifier identifies the object or class ABOUT WHICH a person is sceptical.
The comparison to “UFO sceptic” is a apt in another way. Some such sceptics merely doubt that there is sufficient evidence to believe in UFOs; others believe that there is sufficient evidence to conclude that they DO NOT exist. (It’s like the difference between agnosticism and atheism, both of which count as “sceptical” attitudes toward religion.) In the same way, one’s attitude toward the EU can vary from mere doubt that the EU is all that it is cracked up to be, to the certainty that it is well worth avoiding at all costs. Samizdata’s scepticism, which clearly inclines to the latter, therefore deserves to be classified as a fairly hard-core variety of “euroscepticism,” in that it decisively rejects the EU project, and does so precisely because it harbors no doubts about the harmfulness of that project.
I realize this is completely off-topic, given the way the discussion has actually developed. My apologies.
J Allman: Nice one! How about calling the pro-Europeans “septic-sceptic”… they are sceptical tabout the septic nature of the EU.
I too must be bored