28/02/2015
It was actually in
2006 that we were pointing out that
Open Europe wasn't a eurosceptic organisation. How could it be with a "mission statement" almost identical in tone to the robustly Europhile organisation
Business for New Europe. And by 2012, we were openly calling it the "
enemy within", so obvious were its pro-EU sympathies.
That, however, did not stop the media routinely labelling it a "eurosceptic think-tank", and continuing to do so almost to this day. Amongst their number, as you would expect, was
Conservative Home, helpfully reinforced by the European Commission which in 2009, according to
Mary Ellen Synon, declared Open Europe "a eurosceptic think-tank to the right of the conservatives in the UK".
Reuters routinely called it "a eurosceptic think-tank", the
Economist in 2010 backed up the Commission, calling it "a small but assiduous Eurosceptic campaign group", and the
Guardian in June 2012 also helped the lie on its way. It told us that: "Britain should stay in EU, says report by Eurosceptic think tank".
A month later, the
Financial Times chose a variation on the theme, referring to
OE as a "broadly eurosceptic think tank", even though the think tank had "acknowledged recently that EU membership remained the most beneficial arrangement". And, of course, the
BBC was to the fore, observed as late as June 2014, referring to the "influential Eurosceptic think tank Open Europe".
Even the supposedly eurosceptic
Spectator went along with the myth in November 2012. And predictably,
The Times fell into the trap, calling
Open Europe a "Eurosceptic think-tankâ in
October 2013. Sadly, the
Telegraph was no better. It used the term "Open Europe, a Eurosceptic think tank" in November last year, as indeed did the
Express and the
Daily Mail.
But one other media outlet that was giving
Open Europe the "eurosceptic" accolade was
EurActive. It was keeping up the charade
into 2013 but, by December of that year,
OE had become "the Euro-critical think tank Open Europe". Then, as of yesterday, it has been fully outed
to become "a critical but pro-EU think tank" (see illustration).
This is a major step. After all these years, the truth it out and, as a false flag operation,
Open Europe is no more. However, a replacement is already in place, in the form of
Business for Britain - or
Business for Elliott as one critic calls it, after its founder and major beneficiary, Matthew Elliott. He is the man who started
Taxpayers Alliance - ostensibly an independent organisation but in fact a Tory front to broaden the attack on Labour's public expenditure agenda.
Elliott's latest cash cow has stepped into the breach with a "renegotiation" agenda identical in principle to that of
OE. And it has already spawned
the first of a number of
Münzenberg-esq "front organisations", the equivalent of the "Innocents' Clubs", stacked with "
useful idiots", used to bolster Soviet Russia.
This "clone" of
BfE,
Historians for Britain, is to be followed by others, all adopting the same basic pattern, launched on the back of a list of prominent signatories willing to perform the "useful idiot" function to a gullible media. In due course, we can expect the likes of "Nurses for Britain" and even "Roadsweepers for Britain", the aim being to swamp the anti-EU movement with "false flag" operations and to suppress the established "outers".
With the media corporations inherently sympathetic to "renegotiation", and the average journalist
apparently unable to tell the difference between a WWII tank and a mid-sixties self-propelled gun, they are hardly going to bother outing these sham anti-EU organisations, any more than they did
Open Europe. More likely, they will suck up the highly polished propaganda that Elliott can provide them, as a cheap substitute for real journalism.
Willi Münzenberg would have been so proud to see his work
so deftly exploited. Maintaining plausible "front organisations" is a demanding process and the pro-EU faction has made the most of his pioneering work.
