Forget the far right. The kids want a 'United States of Europe.'

Let me know when Russians will be able to establish air superiority over Ukraine. Attacking NATO without any plausible way to build air dominance will not end well for Russia. Furthermore attacking NATO will open Russia to attack from Ukraine, which will want its territory back.

Especially since the EUs bigger competitor is US and China, and they could very well use it as an ally, never mind getting the far cheaper gas and other resources than they get now. The whole treatment of the whole thing the last decade or so has been beyond stupid.

If I've learned anything from my 40+ years on this earth it's that there are no guarantees that adults/grownups are more reality-based than late teens, but they are usually more convinced they are.

Exactly, she was pro-EEC but "Eurosceptic" in that she didn't want this to morph into a political union. I mentioned her to illustrate that the debate on what the EU should be and how far political integration should go, if go anywhere at all, has been going on forever but is more and more "smothered" by accusations of being "far right" for often being not too different from Thatcher.

Remember a famous speech in Parliament in which she said that the single currency was political union by the backdoor. Exactly right.

> it was very common for remainers to claim that the EU was just a trade organisation and not going to evolve into a full political union or federal state.

That's not true. Of course it was a political union, and that was the point of the referendum. Remember the pro-Brexit's line that the people had been sold a trade organisation (in 1975) but got a political union, instead. Now there were claims that the EU would not evolve into a federal state, and this aligns with what I wrote about EU political integration being insiduous and often deceiptful

> What is your preferred model?

There are lots of alternatives to turning the EU unto a federal state with its own armies. Alliances for one. It has been NATO that filled this role for over 70 years, and successfully so against a far more powerful threat than Russia.

> All of us staying in little insignificant countries, kowtowing to larger powers?

Lots of "insignificant little countries" seem to do rather well. Switzerland, Singapore, Norway,.....

I can see the nationalist appeal of belonging to a big powerful country, but it does not really do the people of a country much good.

I don't, with or without further integration. Not everyone or everything is meant to survive. Everything has a shelf life. The Roman empire also collapsed. Rearranging the deckchairs of the titanic doesn't change the outcome.

>What is your preferred model? All of us staying in little insignificant countries, kowtowing to larger powers?

A union is good, but the EU only worked at preventing another world war between members, not at helping us be united against foreign entities, because you can't force unity between different dethatched cultures just because we're neighbours, as proven by Yugoslavia, the USSR, etc.

Every EU member is still driven by self interest and own group preference, which will be the EU's doom. Like Spain doesn't really care as much about the Eastern war as Poland or Romania do because they're far away from the war and don't see why they should pay more taxpayer money for it. Germans care more about something happening in Austria than about what's happening in Bulgaria. And so on.

Why would "Europe's survival" be at stake without further integration? Why would Lithuania need to stand up to Russia, China, or the US? (In terms of defense there are military alliances. They have never required political union or giving up sovereignty)

Edit as you added things:

> Also, the National Rally is clearly far-right.

Making outrageous claims does not make them factual.

> It was founded by former Waffen SS-members, for chrissake.

That's the FN that preceded the RN, some other founders were involved in the Resistance, too. That's the typical FUD narrative I mentioned, which takes the situation in 1972 and uses it to describe 2025. Are you saying that the majority of French MPs are Nazis? That's obviously ridiculous. Most US founding fathers were slave owners, so obviously the US are pro-slavery, like the Democratic Party that used to support slavery... Equally ridiculous. Again, today the RN is the main party of the right, nothing more. Their positions today would have made them in Chirac's rightwing government in 1986, not in the FN of the time.

The situation today is more like this: "Why Serge Klarsfeld, the renowned Nazi hunter, says he's ready to vote RN" [1] clearly a little different from your claims...

[1] https://www.lemonde.fr/en/politics/article/2024/06/23/why-se...

Lets hope we still get chances to vote out autocrats peacefully and smash oligopols as the sovereign.

And then, now and then the people suddenly realise, too late, that on an ever growing range of issues their country has become powerless because a change of policy is either no longer within the country's power and is banned under EU law and treaties... and the web is being woven tighter and tigher little by little.

There is no support in member states for leaving the EU or dismantling the EU. "Eurosceptimism" is by and large only wanting to loosen and restrict EU oversight of member states(which again has been the main debate for decades) but even that is anathema and "far right", which should really raise red flags in people's minds even without going full conspirationist.

He explicitly said what they mean: "which is fast turning into its primary model".

What it WAS (emphasis in past tense) modeled itself around is not the point here.

I heard ideas being promoted in the early to mid nineties that are only coming about now. In fact the 1980s, "Star Trek the Next Generation" does that in several instances (such as AI assistants and tracking everyone's location electronically.)

"Had no idea who Oswald Mosley even was, but looking him up, he's been dead for 30+ years now."

Erm, that was my point. It's not a new idea and has long been promoted across the political spectrum including the far right.

"The EU, in its form back then from 30 years ago is different than the EU beast of today which swallowed the previously separate EU, EEC and EC post 2009. The US of 30 years ago is different than the US of today because society has changed a lot since then both demographically and economically."

I see it largely developing to plan. It started as a kind of customs union in Benelux and has been on that road ever since.

The absorption of the Iron Curtain countries has been its biggest challenge, and if it expands outside Europe that won't be some great shock either. There has been talk of adding Turkey and even Morocco to the EU for decades.

"You can't dig up people from 70 years ago as representative for the same ideologies because both the ideologies and the people are different now. That's like driving forward while only looking in the rearview mirror."

Yes, you can. It's historical progression. There was a roadmap for EU development that was being discussed as far back as the seventies and even the fifties.

"Right wing people have and will be Eurosceptics (Euro here meaning the EU org in Brussels, not Europe the continent) since they don't want to be led by a foreign org that's not directly accountable to them."

That isn't true. Plenty of right wing people have been Europhiles, even the far right.

On the flipside, there have also been plenty of left and far left Eurosceptics. Left wing Brexiteers in the UK are/were a thing. They called their movement "Lexit" but have been mostly written out of accounts, which tend to focus more on Farage and the right wing ones. Their arguments are not usually based around migration, but local democracy and also their notion that the EU was capitalist and neoliberal, and revolved around trade and money.