The seemingly longest divorce proceedings in history continue as the United Kingdom is still struggling to ever so slowly wiggle its way out of the EU. The British are trying to work out a post Union trade deal that will work out for their best interests and is hammering home the threat of abandoning negotiations and bailing without any agreement if they don’t get what they want in time. Perhaps, at one point the threat of London abruptly leaving would have had more weight than after years of watching the British “kind of” slowly leaving the EU party one at the speed of a glacier. In 2020 it is hard to take any threat of abrupt action from them seriously. Obviously, the economic impact of Brexit has been much discussed and for some feared, but the British are taking something else entirely with them that is not being discussed. And this aspect of Brexit should raise many questions for the future of the EU – the removal of the EU’s native English-speaking core.
In theory, the ideas that unite the EU are beliefs in Western Style Democracy, Human Rights (and the West’s monopoly on the interpretation of the idea), the geographic unity Europe (excluding the evil Russians) and a sort of friendly-faced Capitalism with a Nanny State side. To what extent these pillars of the union are taught in schools across the many nations is up for debate. Very often the ideas in society that should be known to all are pushed into the realm of the esoteric due to their exclusion from mainstream public education. As an American growing up in the Cold War it is still very surprising that we never had “Capitalism” as a school subject. During my childhood I knew we were fighting for Capitalism and that Communism “doesn’t work” but we never had it explained to U.S. until much later. And this was only due to the fact that I was in “AP” classes into which only a tiny percentage of the student body actually went. Who knows what they told the normies about economics, probably not much. But in contrast to this, one thing that is definitely taught to all children in the EU regardless of educational system is English.
Again as an American we are bombarded by media fear porn that Spanish (aka “Mexican”) will take over the United States and our wonderful version of English will be subjugated/die out. This narrative works well in the U.S. as few people ponder what the rest of the world is doing, but once an American steps foot in places like Eastern Europe they can begin to see the big international push for English goes from the cradle to the grave with no exceptions. In places like Poland, Russia and Kazakhstan the stock answer as to why the entire planet needs to learn English is something like “but it’s the international language”. When you ask them, why that is the case (who deemed this to be so and by what authority?) you are met with just blank stares as either their minds are open or they feel like a parent having to explain to their son why the sky is blue for the third time. The NPC programming has not worked out this if-then statement yet.
Image: The real reason why English is the “International Language”.
The uncomfortable actual reason that Europe “speaks” English is because the United States won the Cold War. After WWII half of the continent was occupied by the Soviet Union and the other half was occupied by the United States only we called it the Marshall Plan and NATO and other more friendly terminology. Had the Soviets won the conflict, then every human on Earth would know how to at least read the letters of the Cyrillic Alphabet. English today in Europe has left the same mark as Western European languages did in Africa – as a symbol of subordination.
This is not to say that this is bad or good, but it is the way it is. There are arguments as to the pluses of living in a cultureless future with only one global language regardless of which one crushes the others. I don’t believe in them but they are at least coherent.
How many Africans use French in contrast to how many French colonizers learned local African languages? With few if zero exceptions the losers of history are forced to speak the language of the winners. So for the EU, its English based internationalism is a big Elephant in the room that no one ever speaks of and it was the presence of the United Kingdom that kept this question down for years. Having countless millions of native English speakers in the Union made universal English education seem reasonable or at least didn’t raise any red flags in the subconscious mind of the masses. But now the British are gone and they aren’t coming back. So why should children in Germany spend so much time fiddling with English?
Image: There is no longer a dominant nation of native English speakers in the EU, if you don’t count Washington’s influence.
With the UK gone the only really big English-speaking country is Ireland, which is not particularly proud of this fact. Inside of Ireland itself the restoration of their native language is an issue that at least makes the news on a regular basis and is something politicians pander to. Ireland’s attitudes towards English are far from fanatical. Furthermore, and with no insult to the Irish intended, the EU logically should not gravitate itself to revolve around Irish-English as the nation is a smaller player farther from the heart of Europe than even England was. Europe is not going to learn English for the sake of Ireland nor should they.
Image: The “Blue Banana” shows where Europe’s population is most dense.
The real center of Europe is shown by the so-called “Blue Banana” that goes right over the territory of the old Holy Roman Empire + England. This is the economic and population heart of Europe. Removing London from the picture linguistically, we are looking at an EU master language that should be something Franco-German-Italian. The languages of the Blue Banana are the actual means of human communication of the EU after Brexit. It seems much more logical for this organization to orient itself towards this language realm rather than to now foreigners outside of the European Union.
If the EU is actually as independent as it says it is, then perhaps now would be the time to start forcing children across the continent to learn French, German or Italian or some sort of combination of the three. Continuing to be dominated by the English language only proves the Political Realists right – that the EU is and always has been just a tool of Washington. A powerful independent union would surely speak its own language(s) wouldn’t it? With England gone now would be a good time for Europe to speak European and not the foreign squawking of the Anglo-Saxons.
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