A bad message from the European Parliament

23. September 2019

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On 19 September 2019, the EU Parliament in Strasbourg passed a resolution that allegedly dealt with the “significance of the European past (or European historical consciousness) for the future of Europe“. 535 MEPs voted for this resolution, 66 against and 52 abstained.

The FIR and its member federations can in no way agree with this resolution. The text of the declaration does not show the future of Europe, but is an ideological relapse into the worst times of the cold war, which are expressed in this resolution, which came about on initiative of the Baltic States and Poland. Contrary to all scientific findings, it is claimed here that it was only with the German-Soviet Non-Aggression Treaty that “the course was set for the Second World War”.

The reconstruction of the events that led to the Second World War is narrow-minded, emissive, instrumental, and has no scientific basis: in a single reproach. It links the oppressors and oppressed, victims and slaughterers, invaders and liberators. The resolution is a text of gross ideological propaganda, worthy of the worst moments of the Cold War.

Only perverse is the statement in the resolution that “it is of decisive importance for the unity of Europe and its people and for the strengthening of Europe’s resistance to the current threats from outside that the victims of totalitarian and authoritarian regimes are thought of”. What is the current external threat that parliamentarians are talking about?

The declaration criticized in fact a new historical revisionism. Although the EP-members condemn in some EU-states the glorification of people who collaborated with the National Socialists, at the same time they adopted the historical narrative of the same EU states that Russia allegedly falsifies historical facts and glosses over the “crimes committed by the totalitarian regime of the Soviet Union”.

The FIR and with it all federations of the survivors of the fascist persecution, the fighters against the Nazi barbarism and all anti-fascists say no to such historical falsifications. While there is a growing danger of fascism, racism and nationalism, the Resolution chooses a path of lacerating division rather than a responsible and rigorous unity. FIR calls the European Parliament to convey, to protect and confirm its own authority and credibility, a clear sign of a radical rethinking, in the wake of the principles that inspired the creation of a United Europe, daughter of Anti-Fascism and the Women and Men who opposed the Nazi-Fascist Regimes. We recall for that the opening speech of the new president of the parliament.

FIR rejects the recent resolution of the European Parliament where it equates and condemns Nazi fascism and Communism, in clear contrast to its Anti-fascist, anti-Nazi and anti-racist Resolution of 25 October 2018.

In addition, we remember the Literature Nobel-Prize winner Thomas Mann, who warned in 1945:
“To place Russian Communism on the same moral level with Nazi fascism, because both are totalitarian, is, at best, superficial, in the worse case it is fascism.
He who insists on this equality may be a democrat; in truth and in his heart, he is already a fascist, and will surely fight fascism with insincerity and appearance, but with complete hatred only communism”.