ELITE PROPAGANDA TRICK: By conflating “Europe” and “the EU”, anti-EU people can be easily depicted as anti-Europe, as xenophobic or nationalistic, by Brendan O’Neill. The upcoming “Brexit” referendum is on whether or not the UK should remain in the EU, the Brussels-run union of 28 member states. But the media often refers to it a referendum on “Europe”, which is a vast continent, so it would be some sort of mental illness to think the UK can vote to leave Europe.

The EU is anti-democratic and illiberal.

Supporters of the EU tell us it is a happy-clappy union of the European peoples. Nonsense. It is a union of European elites who want to avoid their peoples. The EU is the mechanism through which national governments outsource various powers and decision-making processes to distant, aloof, mostly unaccountable bodies like the European Commission and the European Court of Justice.

The true instinct behind the Brussels machine is not to bring Europe together. It is to absolve national governments of the burden of having to consult us, the plebs, about important political and social matters, in favour of allowing various experts and cliques in Brussels to discuss and shape such things on our behalf. The EU’s fuel is not cosmopolitanism — it’s democracy-dodging. …

The EU is not an expression of European people’s will. On the contrary, it has been constituted time and again in direct opposition to people’s will. The people’s will is a “danger” to this project.

Read it all. It develops into a top-class rant.