The European Union has been distressing us for some time. She was a cold machine, more concerned with teaching us to think in the nails of political correctness, while looking elsewhere when it came to defending what is supposed to constitute our value system. Where was the European Union when Nagorno-Karabakh was attacked by the Azeris? Where was she when Poland, even in the countryside where tractors immobilized the roads, demonstrated for the right to abortion? Where is she compared to Malta where all abortion is illegal? Where was the European Union when France stood alone against the aggressive Turkish navy and its illegal incursions into the eastern Mediterranean, making the Greeks tremble?
It was, until today, fashionable to smile – even to laugh heartily – when we mentioned a European defense or when we slipped, timidly, the embryo of the idea of a European power. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has frozen the European Union, which thought it would continue to reap the dividends of the fall of the Berlin Wall, before it shook itself off, suddenly awake, suddenly aware of living in a dummy bubble of peace.
The Islamists did not succeed in this, while their ideology as well as their tactics of destabilization are at the extreme opposite of Western values, while they attacked us head-on and their purpose, displayed, assumed, struck down, is the destruction of the West and the imposition of Sharia. But the useful idiots of Islamism, by integrating their doxa, confused Islamists and Muslims, slowed down the struggle. They have contaminated all public institutions to pour their moribund ideologies into them, which reduce each man to his birth, transforming a religion into a race. Above all, they distilled fear, which bends many backs, and stifled resistance by presenting it as intolerance, even pure racism.
Huge chance to be in the European Union
But now Vladimir Putin, in line with his predecessors who only think of territorial expansion, has invaded Ukraine. Putin’s useful idiots tried to scramble to shift the blame to NATO and the big bad American. If the European Union, too comfortably installed in its illusions of the end of History, has allowed things to happen in Georgia, Transnistria, Crimea, if the United States, since Barack Obama and its refusal to react militarily in Syria after the crossing the red line drawn by himself, turning away from conflict zones in Europe and the Middle East, this time, however, Vladimir Putin has gone too far. By attacking Ukraine, he woke up the Europeans who suddenly recognized themselves in the Ukrainians, remembering that war kills people, that freedom is not a given, that our system is not eternal, that Democracy is a fragile reality that must be defended.
While we had become accustomed to seeing parades in France, as elsewhere in Europe in favor of the pandemic, demonstrators denouncing the dictatorship they were subjected to, because they were offered something to avoid dying or contaminating the weakest thanks to a vaccine, confusion had spread, the rupture between democratic institutions and citizens seemed proverbial.
It only took a few days, it was enough to see the Ukrainians rise up in the face of a disproportionate invasion, demanding to integrate the Union, thus becoming armed Europeans who wanted to live like us, with the same rights and same duties, so that we realize how lucky we are. But will this be enough to make Western pride shine again, which, if it must not hide anything from the mistakes of its long history, must affirm its pride?
The consequences of the war will directly affect our wallets. It will no longer be enough to display a Ukrainian flag and hearts on its social media profiles to feel solidarity. It will no longer be a question of turning to the State, with an open mouth, to claim aid and subsidies. No, this time, to show our solidarity, we must accept the financial sacrifice and hold on, in the name of our values. We will then measure the reality of Western awakening.