Prominent UK right-winger, Peter Hitchens lays out the involved history of the Czech land in a typically tendentiously deranged piece of writing in the Daily Mail, a newspaper once vocal in its support of Mussolini, Hitler and the annexation of Czechoslovakia. Today, Hitchens has the gall to go to Prague and pretend that Czechs are the only thing standing in the way of totalitarian rule from Brussels. At every turn, he dips into any available pocket of intellectual dishonesty to deliver his predictably venomous anti-EU diatribe.

PETER HITCHENS: How the Czechs are fighting the marshmallow EU tyrant | Mail Online All the great conflicts of Europe have swept violently through this dark, beautiful and sinister city.

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It is entertaining that Hitchens brings his bile to bear even on the matter of his visual perception. Today's Prague is anything but dark or sinister. Full of brightly-colored buildings and artificially lit up at night, it is the closest thing you can find to a Disneyland without paying an entrance fee. But worse is yet to come.

The Second World War can be said to have started here, with Hitler's first occupation of a non-German capital, in March 1939. Many of the battles of the Cold War left blood on the cobblestones.

Now another great struggle - between the European superstate and the very idea of national independence - is being fought in Prague.

To compare Nazi occupation with EU membership would be hilarious if it wasn't so nausiatingly inappropriate coming from someone whose countrymen were once instrumental in letting Hitler have his way with Czechoslovakia's independence and then proceeded 6 years later to allow Stalin draw the line of influence just west of Prague.

You might call it the Battle Of The Flag. Look up at the majestic castle on its hill and you can just see it, proud on its solitary staff.

It is the personal standard of President Vaclav Klaus, a rather lovely piece of Continental blazonry with the fine motto 'Truth Prevails' inscribed upon it.

Every other official building in the city flies the dreary European Union dishcloth - but not the castle. Why ever not?

Well the answer is simple, president Klaus, the Thatcherite Eurosceptic populist who travels the world lecturing world leaders on the 'myth' of global warming doesn't like the EU. It is not surprising that Hitchens would feel an affinity with this man who is considered by many to be an embarrasment for the country and maintains his popularity by rabid nationalism. But most Czechs are genuinely proud of their EU presidency and have always seen EU membership as the accomplishment of their struggle for freedom rather than a threat to their independence. They like Klaus' blowhard posturing but would be violently opposed to the consequences of his foreign policy ideas. Hitchens latches onto Klaus' supposed heroism like a right-wing limpet citing Klaus's meaningless mantras like 'But it is post-democracy, really, that rules the EU.'

And post-democracy is not democracy - Czechs are especially good at spotting the difference between the real thing and counterfeits, having been told under communism that they lived in a 'democracy' when they most certainly didn't.

Yes, Czechs are good at spotting the difference and that's why they don't think the current situation is anything like the communist rule. Some might succumb to regionalist nationalism but those sentiments are just as imported as their purported democratic ideals. Hitchens sucks up to KIaus' adviser Mach:

'Democracy cannot work in a supranational state,' Mach explains. 'We feel we must permanently fight for our freedom and national sovereignty. This fight is never won for ever.'

Well, this is nonsense. I'm constantly amazed how thoroughly ignorant the EU haters are of the situation in the US which is much more of a supranational state than people admit - deceived by English as the prevailing medium of communication. How about the issues of 'states' rights' in the US, different customs, traditions, extradition laws, speed limits, death penalty, and so on? We don't see it from over here, but the US is much more like the EU than it might seem. But Hitchens in all his patronising splendour sees the fact that  there is no border check on his train ride from Berlin to Prague (widely applauded by all Czechs) as a signal that the end is near:

And so it is that for the fourth time in a century, the poor Czechs are about to see their independence snuffed out because it is inconvenient to greater powers in a vast continental scheme.

Repeatedly invaded, occupied, suppressed, Germanised one year, Russified the next, their survival is amazing. But the threat of absorption into an EU superstate menaces the Czechs, perhaps more permanently than before.

This 'menace' is only real in as much as it will deprive Hitchens of a country to safely ignore until he needs to make another tendentiously predictable point. As part of the EU, the Czechs have much more of a say than they ever did and are safer from takeover than they were in 1939, and 1948 and 1968 when the likes of Hitchens in the West were advocating throwing us to the wolves as an acceptable sacrifice.

The sticky, marshmallow bonds of the EU are obviously not the iron shackles of the old dictators. But they are bonds all the same, and once they are in place, the Czechs will have little to distinguish them from their neighbours apart from their beer, their literature, their music and their complex language.

From having been a country, they will become a regional oddity in a state called Europe.

Perhaps we should remind Hitchens of the words of his compatriots like Shakspeare who ascribed a coast to the landlocked Bohemia and Neville Chamberlain who refused to care about a 'far away country' of which he 'knew little' and cared less. The truth is, since about the mid 1400s, Czech have been a regional oddity in Europe distinguished from the rest by 'beer, literature, music and language' and they know it. In fact, they're pretty proud of that. The EU can hardly make it worse but it has the potential to give them a voice - like these six months of EU presidency or the hosting of NATO summits - that they would have previously been denied. Hitchens living in a country deriving much of its relevance from its morally ambiguous colonial past doesn't see that it is separatism that starts the slide into irrelevance not being part of a bigger whole.

We may imagine that this fate will not overtake us, safe as we foolishly think we are beyond the Channel. But, as happened once before, the fate of the Czechs is inextricably linked with our own.

Their courage alone cannot save us. But if we showed some backbone, we might save them, and ourselves as well.

Well, Peter, good luck! But please next time use your own country to weave your metaphors of EU doom. Or at least have the decency to start with an apology for the role your land and newspaper have played in our 'dark' history you're so eager for us not to repeat. As it is, the Czechs as nation collectively wish you had 'showed some backbone' 70, 60 and again 40 years ago and saved us from some real threats. Being patronised through faint praise today is hardly going to make up for it.

 

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