Dance of the dictators

Men with notebooks standing behind leaders and taking down their precious words are, writes Dalrymple,

a constant of communist iconography. Someone like Nicolae Ceaușescu had only to step into a turnip field for him to become the greatest expert on growing turnips. Usually the leader was dressed in some kind of pseudo-proletarian costume, with or without a specially-tailored cloth cap.

Ceaușescu, Dalrymple notes,

was much influenced by Kim Il-sung. There is a wonderful film of Kim’s state visit to Rumania in 1975 in which Kim dances with Rumanian pseudo-peasants in colorful national costume. How communist dictators loved folk-dancing!

Particularism and Gleichschaltung in synergy

The fear of being overwhelmed culturally is, writes Dalrymple,

entirely understandable.

He notes the strength in Europe

of both centrifugal and centripetal forces.

The politicians,

who want to be important in a way that the merely national stage will never allow them to be, desire an organisation that is

• a launching pad for a career of international importance
• a pension plan for when they lose power in their own countries
• a trough to feed at.

This explains why no European politicians of any importance reject the idea of the European Union, however damaging it may be to their own country‘s interests.

Co-existing with

this drive to Gleichschaltung

is a growing

ethnic and regional particularism.

Far from the two trends opposing each other,

they are in synergy. The weakening of the national state in Europe strengthens the undemocratic and self-appointed centre. What is left to the regions is folk-dancing, national costume and parking regulations.