A group of conservative Eastern European Members of European Parliament called for justice commissioner Franco Frattini to include communist symbols in the proposed ban. Led by Hungarian MEP Jozsef Szajer and former Lithuanian President Vytautas Landsbergis, the group of MEPs that included Estonia's Tunne Kelam called for the red star and the hammer and sickle to be included in a ban of symbols of all totalitarian regimes. Eastern Europeans need to speak out, as the suffering caused there by Soviet backed regimes as well as outright occupation is continually being shunted to the background thanks to Russian propaganda.
The issue would have been on the table even without Harry, as the justice and interior ministers of the 25 EU countries will meet later this month - coincidentally on Estonian Independence Day - to discuss an EU law against racism and xenophobia. Frattini had proposed the ban against Nazi symbols, but before the Szajer-Landsbergis call he had not included communist symbols in the ban. Roscam Abbing, a spokesman from Frattini's office responded to the Eastern European initiative by suggesting that this inclusion "might not be appropriate" under the present anti-racism rules to be negotiated. Why? Because while the swastika was and is seen as a symbol specifically associated with anti-Semitism, the hammer and sickle is not. Abbing tried to slide away from the topic last week, suggesting that the issue "warrants further political debate."
Landsbergis, for one, was not amused. He pointed out that the hammer and sickle was not only a symbol of oppression but also a manufactured one - just like the swastika was taken out of its ancient religious symbolic context for the use of an ideology. Landsbergis called it a "fake symbol of unity of workers and farmers," as repulsive to many in Eastern Europe today as the swastika may be in the West.
Note also that the idea that an EU-wide ban on Nazi symbols would be unwise originated from Frattini's home country, Italy. Not only has Italy's post WW II ruling past seen communists be part of coalition governments, the present Italian government includes the National Alliance, a party whose roots can be traced all the way back to Mussolini. Of course, Frattini did acknowledge that Europe is free today only because the continent rid itself of communism and fascism.
A BBC report of this Tuesday covered Frattini's letter of response to the Szajer and Landsbergis-led group of MEPs rejecting their proposal, while calling for wide-ranging debate on Europe's past with extreme ideologies. Frattini called them similar yet different - differing in their "origin and fate", but similar in the fact that both slaughtered the innocents who were perceived or regarded as "objective enemies."
It might be the time to suggest to Frattini that symbols aside, the similarities are what the EU should be looking at. Even after war had broken out, as late as February 5, 1941, Adolf Hitler boasted in a speech that, "basically, National Socialism and Communism are the same." As Walter Goerlitz' 1953 book, "History of the German General Staff " points out, the Nazi high command was riddled with Communist agents who were able to infiltrate precisely because the ideological similarities allowed them to operate undetected. Yet Frattini trotted out the tired and true "disagreement between historians" about whether Nazi and Soviet crimes can even be compared on a scale of evil. As John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr noted in their excellent book "In Denial", revisionist historians are among the worst offenders when it comes to denying factual evidence.
True, any EU law that banned the symbols of evil would be difficult to enforce - as Honor Mahony asked in the EUobserver on Tuesday, how do you legislate that, for instance, "satirical articles or cartoons containing the symbols would not fall foul of the law"? But the EU is not lampooning or making fun of the past, as Harry, in his youthful wisdom, allegedly attempted to do last month. (We can safely suggest that the international outcry and foofaraw would have been minimal, had the Prince worn a five-pointed red star and a Soviet uniform.)
The EU is, in theory, trying to make itself a safer and more honest community, less racist, xenophobic and oppressive. It must not single out one symbol at the expense of another. They would be wise to follow Szajer's home country Hungary's example - Hungary has bans on both communist and fascist symbols. And though Landsbergis agreed that a ban on symbols is best achieved by national governments, Frattini and his fellow commissioners should lead by example, not apply double standards.