DISINFO: The EU is racist and Josep Borrell advocates European supremacy
SUMMARY
EU sanctions on personal care products of Russians are racist. But it is not a surprise, since HRVP Josep Borrell refused to apologise for his racist metaphor of the Garden surrounded by the Jungle. Afterwards, instead of apologising for his words and taking them back saying there was a bad script or a slip of the tongue, he further elaborated on them assuring there is a golden billion and the rest of us are not golden. He said very clearly that the rest of the world must serve this golden billion.
RESPONSE
Disinformation promoted by the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs about the EU being a racist neo-colonial power enslaving other peoples and that HRVP Josep Borrell admits this openly.
In autumn 2022, Josep Borrell, High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy and Vice President of the European Union commission inaugurated a Bruges-based pilot programme for a new European Diplomatic Academy, or EDA.
The speech stirred up some controversy, especially the metaphor of the “garden and the Jungle”. Contrary to Moscow’s narrative, Josep Borrell does not explain this metaphor by a racist vision of the world but by an opposition between a law regulated by a system of norms (the garden) and the law dictated by strongest (the jungle). This metaphor has nothing to do with racism, colonialism, slavery or golden billion. He explained his thoughts in an interview on 31 October 2022:
if my words have caused any misunderstandings, I wish to clear them up. Public debate is an integral part of political action. I will do so while immediately rejecting any proximity with neoconservatives, whom I have absolutely nothing to do with. Let me explain…
Let us begin with some background. Your readers — who are well informed — know that the origins of today’s interpretations of the world lie two visions: a realist one for which world order is dominated by competition between States, and that in the absence of global regulation, the strongest prevails over the weakest. Hence the metaphor of the jungle.
There is also a so-called liberal vision, which believes that international relations can be peacefully achieved through common principles. This is the metaphor of the garden.
At the global level, through the creation of the United Nations, a balance between the sovereignty of States and cooperation to prevent confrontation between them was sought. In other words, tempering force through norms.
But the world is changing, and not always for the better. The reason I used this metaphor, which I did not come up with, is simply to express the idea that in today’s world, strength — the jungle —tends to override norms — the garden. This idea does not have any particular national, regional, ethnic, or religious significance.
In fact, it would be totally absurd to think so, since today the law of the jungle is prevailing at Europe’s doorstep, in Ukraine, where a great power is taking advantage of its strength to crush its neighbor.
The theory of the golden billion is a conspiracy theory promoted by the Soviet Union and more recently Russian officials with the aim of discrediting the US and EU, suggesting that a privileged Western group, a billion people, would rule and exploit the entire world.
The claim that sanctions on hygiene items are racist measures - that Russians are denied the right to have toilet paper- comes from a misinterpretation of regulation 833/2014 article 3i and its annex XXI. A clarification was issued on 12 September 2023:
For goods which raise insignificant circumvention concerns, like personal hygiene items or clothing worn by travellers or contained in their luggage and clearly destined for a strict personal use during their trip, national competent authorities should continue to apply the prohibition in a proportionate and reasonable manner.
The sanctions are not “russophobic” or racist as they do not target people but objects.
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