{"id":65676,"date":"2003-07-13T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2003-07-13T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/2003\/07\/13\/le-royaume-uni-et-le-patriotisme-quelques-observations-sur-une-imposture-erigee-pompeusement-en-politique\/"},"modified":"2003-07-13T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2003-07-13T00:00:00","slug":"le-royaume-uni-et-le-patriotisme-quelques-observations-sur-une-imposture-erigee-pompeusement-en-politique","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/2003\/07\/13\/le-royaume-uni-et-le-patriotisme-quelques-observations-sur-une-imposture-erigee-pompeusement-en-politique\/","title":{"rendered":"Le Royaume-Uni et le patriotisme: quelques observations sur une imposture \u00e9rig\u00e9e pompeusement en politique<\/em><\/strong>"},"content":{"rendered":"

Le Royaume-Uni et le patriotisme : quelques observations sur une imposture \u00e9rig\u00e9e pompeusement en politique<\/h3>\n<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\tNous avons d\u00e9j\u00e0 signal\u00e9 ce texte de George Monbiot, du Guardian, du 8 juillet.<\/a> Nous le pr\u00e9sentons ici avec un commentaire rapide, parce qu’il nous semble si parfaitement illustrer la rencontre entre GW Bush et Blair, cette semaine, telle qu’elle aura lieu, dans les dispositions o\u00f9 on voit les Britanniques.<\/a><\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\tMonbiot \u00e9nonce quelques \u00e9vidences. Il montre l’extraordinaire sophisme qui, au Royaume-Uni, r\u00e8gle le d\u00e9cha\u00eenement patriotard constant, notamment lorsqu’il s’agit des liens avec l’Europe, adoss\u00e9s \u00e0 la plus compl\u00e8te abdication de souverainet\u00e9 nationale qu’on puisse imaginer. Les liens du Royaume-Uni avec les USA, sur lesquels s’appuie la d\u00e9nonciation de tout recul de la souverainet\u00e9 nationale \u00e0 cause de l’Europe, rythment effectivement cette abdication compl\u00e8te de la souverainet\u00e9 nationale, et pour un b\u00e9n\u00e9fice nullissime. (La plus redoutable question que vous puissiez poser \u00e0 un fonctionnaire britannique flegmatique, dans l’ambiance feutr\u00e9e d’un s\u00e9minaire, est celle-ci : que vous a rapport\u00e9, du point de vue de l’int\u00e9r\u00eat national, votre compl\u00e8te suj\u00e9tion \u00e0 la politique am\u00e9ricaine depuis 1941 ?)<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\tCe texte ne nous apprend rien. Il nous confirme, avec style et ampleur de vue, l’existence aujourd’hui, au Royaume-Uni, d’une contradiction qui marque la trahison constante des soi-disant patriotes britanniques depuis des d\u00e9cennies. Cette trahison intellectuelle approche un caract\u00e8re insupportable, \u00e0 cause du comportement et des exigences am\u00e9ricaines qui impliquent de continuelles concessions vers les USA sans r\u00e9ciproque. On peut \u00eatre assur\u00e9 que les diverses gymnastiques r\u00e9centes de Blair, notamment lorsqu’il mart\u00e8le que nous sommes d\u00e9sormais dans un monde unipolaire<\/a> et qu’il faut donc rallier les USA, n’ont d’autre but que de tenter de justifier une politique contrainte de constante d\u00e9mission avec des soi-disant exigences de la r\u00e9alit\u00e9. Ses r\u00eaveries utopistes sur l’interventionnisme sont \u00e9galement l\u00e0 pour justifier l’alignement britannique.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\tMonbiot expose la crise qui, aujourd’hui, d\u00e9chire le Royaume-Uni, au-del\u00e0 des palinodies grotesques sur les armes de destruction massive et les soi-disant achats d’uranium nig\u00e9rien par les Irakiens. Notre seule r\u00e9serve concerne la conclusion du texte, sur la raison fondamentale de cette politique (\u00ab But perhaps most importantly, our fake patriots know where real power lies. Having located it, they wish to appease it. For the very reason that the United States is a greater threat to our sovereignty than the European Union, they will not stand up to it<\/em> \u00bb). Cette raison n’est pas fausse mais elle n’est que circonstancielle, donc accessoire. Il s’agit d’une politique qui dure depuis 1941-45. L’explication \u00e0 chercher est de l’ordre du fondamental, c’est-\u00e0-dire dans la psychologie britannique. L’explication de la nostalgie de l’empire<\/a> nous para\u00eet d\u00e9cid\u00e9ment convenir.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\tLe Royaume-Uni est un pays sous influence, de lui-m\u00eame comme d’actions ext\u00e9rieures compl\u00e8tement accept\u00e9es (comme cette possession des principaux organes de presse par deux hommes compl\u00e8tement acquis \u00e0 l’am\u00e9ricanisation du Royaume-Uni). La crise britannique durera jusqu’\u00e0 ce que les v\u00e9ritables termes de son malaise aient \u00e9t\u00e9 mis \u00e0 jour.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Our fake patriots <\/h2>\n<\/p>\n

\tBritain is fast becoming Bush’s doormat so why isn’t the British right saying a word?<\/strong> <\/p>\n<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\tBy George Monbiot, July 8, 2003, The Guardian <\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\tThe prediction was not hard to make. If Britain kept supporting the US government as it trampled the sovereignty of other nations, before long it would come to threaten our own. But few guessed that this would happen so soon. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\tLong ago, Britain informally surrendered much of its determination of foreign policy to the United States. We have sent our soldiers to die for that country in two recent wars, and our politicians to lie for it. But now the British government is going much further. It is ceding control to the US over two of the principal instruments of national self-determination: judicial authority and military policy. The mystery is not that this is happening. The mystery is that those who have sought to persuade us that they are the guardians of national sovereignty are either failing to respond or demanding only that Britain becomes the doormat on which the US government can wipe its bloodstained boots. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\tA month ago we discovered that our home secretary had secretly concluded an extradition treaty with the US that permits the superpower to extract British nationals without presenting evidence before a court. Britain acquires no such rights in the US. The response from the rightwing press was a thunderous silence. Last week, we learnt that two British citizens held in the prison camp in Guantanamo Bay will be denied a fair trial, that they may stay in prison even if they are found innocent, and that they will not be returned to Britain to serve their sentences. There were a couple of muted squeaks in the patriotic papers, offset by an article in the Sunday Telegraph which sought to justify the US action on the grounds that one of the men had been arrested before. The story was spoilt somewhat by the fact that he had been released without charge. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\tBut by far the most significant event passed without comment. Two weeks ago, the defence secretary, Geoff Hoon, told the Royal United Services Institute that he intends to restructure the British armed forces. As \u00a0\u00bbit is highly unlikely that the United Kingdom would be engaged in large-scale combat operations without the United States\u00a0\u00bb, the armed forces must now be \u00a0\u00bbstructured and equipped\u00a0\u00bb to meet the demands of the wars fought by our ally. Our military, in other words, will become functionally subordinate to that of another nation. The only published response from the right that I can find came from Bernard Jenkin, the Conservative defence spokesman. \u00a0\u00bbThe real question he must answer,\u00a0\u00bb Jenkin rumbled, \u00a0\u00bbis how he can deliver more with underlying defence spending running behind the total inherited from the previous Conservative government.\u00a0\u00bb For the party of national sovereignty, there is no question of whether; simply of how. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\tLet us imagine for a moment the response of the patriots, had these assaults on our independence been attempted by or on behalf of the European Union. No, let’s not imagine it, let’s read it. In April, the Daily Telegraph pointed out that a few hundred men under the command of the EU had been deployed in Macedonia. This, it feared, could represent the beginning of a European army. Blair, it demanded, \u00a0\u00bbmust logically reject the plans for both political and military union\u00a0\u00bb. The Sun was terser. \u00a0\u00bbThe new army will need a flag,\u00a0\u00bb it said. \u00a0\u00bbHow about a white one?\u00a0\u00bb But when Hoon raises the white flag and hands over not a distant possibility of cooperation, but our entire armed forces to another country, the patriots are silent. Why is it that the right has chosen to blind itself to what is happening? And what does it take to persuade it that the greatest threat to national sovereignty in Britain is not the European Union, but the United States? <\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\tThe double standards are baffling. A few months ago, Paul Johnson, ancient custodian of our independence, wrote in the Spectator that the world \u00a0\u00bbneeds hero states, to look up to, to appeal to, to encourage and to follow\u00a0\u00bb. A sole superpower, he argued, \u00a0\u00bbis a much safer and more responsible step towards world order than a corrupt pandemonium like the UN or a rapacious and blind bureaucracy like the EU.\u00a0\u00bb It is better, in other words, to humbly obey another country than to participate, with negotiating rights and voting powers, in a system of regional or global governance. This notion reflects the creed of the Tory party, some of whose members have been flirting with the idea of leaving the EU and joining the Free Trade Area of the Americas. The difference between the two, of course, is that if we joined the FTAA we would have to accept the outcome of negotiations in which we took no part. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\tIt is the conceit of rightwing commentators that those who contest the surrender of British sovereignty to the US do so not because they are concerned about national self-determination, but because they hate the Americans. Their hypocrisy is breathtaking. On February 4, Michael Gove, in the Times, wrote an article headlined \u00a0\u00bbThe ’68 reasons why Germany will always fail: Gerhard Schr\u00f6der’s nation has not enjoyed a single success in 10 years\u00a0\u00bb, in which he raved about \u00a0\u00bba historic weakness in the German character\u00a0\u00bb and the \u00a0\u00bbanti-liberal\u00a0\u00bb urge of the German people to follow \u00a0\u00bba special path, a Sonderweg\u00a0\u00bb. Three weeks later he wrote another piece, headlined \u00a0\u00bbStop the war! Give up bashing the Yanks\u00a0\u00bb, in which he claimed that \u00a0\u00bbIn defining whether Britain is, or should be, closer in sympathy to the US than the continent, a host of prejudices is unleashed.\u00a0\u00bb <\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\tSo why is it deemed by the right to be patriotic both to oppose the EU and to appease the US? Why has the old reactionary motto \u00a0\u00bbmy country, right or wrong\u00a0\u00bb been so smoothly replaced with another one: \u00a0\u00bbtheir country, right or wrong\u00a0\u00bb? Why does the British right now believe it has a God-given duty to defend someone else’s empire? <\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\tI think the first thing we must recognise is that the \u00a0\u00bbpatriotism\u00a0\u00bb that informs the attacks on the EU is fake. The newspapers that are responsible for most of the hysteria about straight bananas and regulated sausages are owned and run by a Canadian (Conrad Black) and an Australian with American citizenship (Rupert Murdoch). These men seem to care nothing for the \u00a0\u00bbBritish values\u00a0\u00bb their papers claim to defend. Their conglomerates are based in North America, and they have much less of a presence in continental Europe. They would appear, therefore, to possess a powerful incentive for dragging Britain away from the EU, and handing it, alive and kicking, to the US. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\tAmerican empire, unlike European convergence, is also unequivocally a project of the right; it establishes the political and economic space in which men like Murdoch and Black can work without impediment. But perhaps most importantly, our fake patriots know where real power lies. Having located it, they wish to appease it. For the very reason that the United States is a greater threat to our sovereignty than the European Union, they will not stand up to it. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\tGeorge Monbiot’s book The Age of Consent: A Manifesto for a New World Order is published by Flamingo.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\t[Notre recommandation est que ce texte doit \u00eatre lu avec la mention classique \u00e0 l’esprit, Disclaimer: In accordance with 17 U.S.C. 107, this material is distributed without profit or payment to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving this information for non-profit research and educational purposes only..]<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Le Royaume-Uni et le patriotisme : quelques observations sur une imposture \u00e9rig\u00e9e pompeusement en politique Nous avons d\u00e9j\u00e0 signal\u00e9 ce texte de George Monbiot, du Guardian, du 8 juillet. Nous le pr\u00e9sentons ici avec un commentaire rapide, parce qu’il nous semble si parfaitement illustrer la rencontre entre GW Bush et Blair, cette semaine, telle qu’elle… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"neve_meta_sidebar":"","neve_meta_container":"","neve_meta_enable_content_width":"","neve_meta_content_width":0,"neve_meta_title_alignment":"","neve_meta_author_avatar":"","neve_post_elements_order":"","neve_meta_disable_header":"","neve_meta_disable_footer":"","neve_meta_disable_title":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-65676","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-notes-de-lectures"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65676","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=65676"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65676\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=65676"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=65676"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=65676"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}