Daniel Hannan points out the irony of the way in which the Fourth Reich’s second annexment of Austria is actually less democratic than the Third Reich’s was:
Two anniversaries are marked this week. Fifty years ago, the European Parliament met for the first time; seventy years ago, Austria was annexed by Hitler. The first anniversary is the subject of official self-congratulation; the second of official obloquy.
It’s funny how things look in retrospect. Both the Treaty of Rome and the Anschluss were acts of political integration. But whereas the Anschluss was endorsed by 99.8 per cent of Austrian voters in a referendum, European treaties are habitually rejected in referendums. The odd thing is that we are expected to deplore the former and applaud the latter in the name of democracy.
I’m very skeptical of democracy. But I’m even more dubious of non-democratic conquests hidden behind a faux-democratic veil. One needn’t be a Christian eschatologist to see that the EU is not going to end much better than Europe’s last totalitarian takeover.