Is Jean-Claude Juncker a paedophile?

I ask this question for two reasons, neither of which are meant to be sensationalist.

First, as the convenient way at the moment to be seen to be dealing with ‘the paedo problem’ is to accuse old blokes with a history of being pests 50 years ago of fiddling with girls “some of whom were as young as nine”, it seemed entirely appropriate to tar Juncker with the same brush – he being someone those in charge need as a distraction from yet another crass policy boob from David Cameron. Allegedly he’s a drunk (not Cameron, Juncker) and has doubtless done the old DSK jumping rumba with unwilling ladies now and then now in his somewhat pointless life; so it really wouldn’t take much to get him out of the game. I thought a good tabloid line might be ‘he groomed a Union’.

Second – and a more serious point – I ask the question because he displays one psychosis that all truly predatory paedophiles have: a passionate, deranged belief that the unpleasant attentions he wants to force on his victims are exactly what they want and they’re gagging for it.

I had the misfortune in a professional role thirty years ago to interview a small number of child sex-offenders. It was easily the creepiest event of my life, if you don’t count meeting Peter Mandelson. All the offenders shared this sneering “you’re just an unenlightened dinosaur” approach to disapproval of sex with infants, and all were convinced that one day, they’d be seen as martyrs.

Jean-Claude Juncker holds exactly the same idée fixe about a Federalist EU: it’s not that we’re going too fast, he thinks, it’s that we’re dilly-dallying. The sooner we all have the same laws, the same all-powerful unelected Commission, the same capital City and the same luvery-jubbly fabbo euro, things will all calm down, and there’ll be no problem, please make mine a large one Gustav.

The degree of altered reality required to hold such a view is more than enough to get most people committed, but what it got JCJ was an EU Presidency committed to out and out federalism.

It took the US nearly two hundred years to get a federally powerful government (and guess what, most Americans don’t like it) and along the way they needed a civil war and then a century later a civil rights act. That was with just two ethnicities, two religions, three languages and people who were there because they wanted to be Americans. Juncker’s insane goal involves 27 cultures and 24 languages, existing sovereign nations, and according to the last euro-elections, at least 27% of citizens who, on the whole, would rather be in Philadelphia.

Philadelphia, as it happens, is in the State of Pennsylvania, a place that is home to the immensely rich and powerful Amish community, which rejects pretty much every value most Americans hold dear. There is no way Washington would even dream of passing a law that pissed the Amish off: frankly, they wouldn’t dare. Fully 238 years after the USA was formed, States’ rights are still alive, well, and jealously guarded.

The multicultural nightmare this little man from a corrupt little banking country wants to make reality would have unimaginably disastrous consequences; but it also (as always with megalomanic Believers) ignores every known tenet of social anthropology. However, if that isn’t enough, the empirical evidence before us suggests that the multicultural thing isn’t going awfully well as it is.

Basically, currency union has been a disaster. It’s a disaster chiefly because it works only for those countries with a focused techno and manufacturing export-driven economy. Nordeuropa is thus doing very nicely thank you out of the model, and ClubMed is doing very badly. The more successful Germany’s exports are, the more undervalued its currency is, and so the more successful and competitive its exports become. For southern European countries, the reverse is true.

The problem here is culturally structural, and it is not going to go away because some overblown disc-jockey wants to be the Emperor of New Rome. It can only get worse…and this is why I say that Jean-Claude Juncker is an irrelevance as President, for exactly the same reason that having Wolfie Schäuble as  Überstürmbannführerfinanz is an appalling prospect – but almost impossible.

Back on Planet Earth, over half of the intended Fiskalunion members are either impoverished thanks to the lunacy of austerity, or insolvent, or both. At least seven banks in the eurozone could be busted by any one of eight different (and likely) events, and you can bet there are another seventeen at least we don’t yet know about. And France remains the obvious target for the next debt-bonds attack.

Greece is wandering dangerously towards civil war, and will be in default again come September without further help. Italy is becoming, literally, ungovernable. Spain is showing signs of divisive regional unrest. The economy of the eurozone is beyond intensive care and looking more and more in need of a bed in the hospice.

There will be no federal Europe, there will be no EU within ten years maximum, and there will be no UK member of whatever survives if the Conservatives are reelected. The appointment of Juncker may well have sealed David Cameron’s fate, but nothing can now save the Unholy Roman Empire. Jean-Claude Juncker is probably not a paedophile, but he is a non-event. We should ignore the development and continue to argue the case for Britain exporting to new markets without the pain of bagful of Brussels Sprouts up its backside.

Related at The Slog: The europhobe beginner’s encyclopaedia of myths

Filed under: Is Jean-Claude Juncker a paedophile? Tagged: david cameron, Jean-Claude Juncker’s federal farce, Juncker’s federalist fantasy, States’ Rights, The Amish community