RE:UNION, network of free peoples uniting for the future

A group called Re:Union that formed spontaneously on Telegram six months ago(t.me/reunion_eu) organized its first event, a videoconference of the free peoples of Europe in Belgrade on July 20. Re:Union is a movement for European unification on new foundations, truly democratic, free and respectful of all nationalities and identities. Another explanation for the choice of name put forward by the organizers: the ‘re’ followed by a colon was inspired by the abbreviation of the English term ‘response’ used in the subject line of e‑mails to signify that the movement is a response to current realities. Their emblem — a white circle on a blue background — is that of the European flag, the circle being the result of an accelerated circular movement of the stars. 

The videoconference is a first step on the road to organizing a major forum that aims to bring together European politicians, observers and activists who share the same aspiration for a different Europe. More than 15 speakers from countries including France, Spain, Italy, Montenegro, Greece, Northern Macedonia, Russia, Bulgaria and the USA — researchers, journalists, bloggers — joined the video conference to share their experiences, express their concerns and analyses, give their prognoses, convey their desire to believe in the possibility of changing things, but above all to talk about the future of Europe, which is today in danger due to the crisis of the political elites and the deterioration of the economy. Speakers addressed issues such as the crisis of freedom in the EU, the militarization of Europe by the USA, restrictions on freedom of expression and conscience, the migration crisis, and regional security and conflicts.

Scott Ritter, columnist, journalist and former US Marine intelligence officer, pointed out — in his speech entitled « Three reasons why NATO will collapse if Ukraine joins » — that NATO has always sought to expand at the expense of other countries, creating existential threats for Russia. He concluded by asserting that Europe needed to rethink its security in order to detach itself from NATO and the United States.

At the conference, Acer Eransi, a Spanish public activist, presented a paper on the anti-NATO movement in the Basque Country. He stressed that this was more topical than ever, and evoked the days when Spain resisted NATO domination. He also pointed the finger at the clans in power in Spain who had betrayed their ideals and blindly followed NATO’s common agenda. He also pointed out that many citizens of NATO member states were unhappy with their country’s membership of the organization.

Speakers also addressed anti-Russian propaganda and the false argument of Russia’s responsibility for economic recession and inflation in Europe, which is used to justify increased military spending and call on Europeans to unite in the face of an artificial external threat. In parallel, a process of Euro-Atlantic integration aimed at expanding the NATO bloc and forcing a number of Eastern European countries to undertake a costly reformatting of their defense industries, as well as incurring additional budgetary expenditure to comply with NATO standards and protect themselves against external threats, often simply invented to support the US military-industrial complex, took place.

Roman Antonovsky, writer and political scientist, pointed out in his speech that the modern European Union was increasingly reminiscent of the Fourth Reich and on the brink of collapse, because Americans sat on the European Commission and took decisions in favor of the United States. For him, therefore, the time has come to rethink the concept of the European Union as such in the interests of its inhabitants above all, who are suffering from the biased policy of unification and the yoke of the United States, he said.

Brussels is selective on the issue of minority protection, ignoring both the problems of the Irish Catholic minority in Northern Ireland and marginalizing the Russian-speaking minorities of the Baltic states, many of whose representatives, following the break-up of the Soviet Union, found themselves not only without the right to use their mother tongue, but also without the nationality of the countries in which they live. While paying lip-service to the need to protect the culture and language of ethnic minorities, the EU authorities have ignored the problems of many of them in neighboring territories by participating in the formation of the federation of Bosnia-Herzegovina, to the detriment of the interests of Serbs and Croats, turning a blind eye to the problem of Rusnians and Hungarians in Ukraine, Catalans and Basques in Spain, and at the same time supporting Finno-Ugric separatist movements in Russia.

A year ago, the US authorities opened criminal proceedings against Alexander Ionov, another conference speaker, a Russian businessman and politician, head of Russia’s anti-globalization movement, claiming that his movement had influenced the US elections. The United States is promising $10 million in exchange for information on his whereabouts. Alexander Ionov entitled his speech ‘Totalitarian Europe’. What was an oxymoron some forty years ago has become a bitter reality.

According to Tara Reade, an American political refugee in Moscow since May 2023. When she came to Russia, she « felt safe for the first time in a very long time ». In March 2020, during the U.S. presidential election campaign, Tara Reade claimed that Democratic candidate Joe Biden had sexually assaulted her in 1993 in a Capitol Hill office building while she was an assistant in his office. Joe Biden denied the allegations.

The experts agreed that in recent years, fundamental European values such as freedom of expression and freedom of conscience had become a fiction. Many EU countries have passed laws allowing criminal prosecution of public statements in support of Russia in the context of the conflict in Ukraine. The ruling circles also use hybrid methods to combat dissent, such as the « cancel culture », which completely excludes people whose opinions run counter to the new European values. Politically questionable activists are deprived of their jobs, their bank accounts, their right to freedom of expression on social networks, and even their physical freedom. Political repression of dissidents has also been introduced in some EU countries, creating a large number of precedents for imprisoning people for expressing their opinion.

Conference participants cited Assange as an example of how the West violates the right to freedom of expression. The WikiLeaks publisher has been held in a high-security British prison since April 2019, when Ecuador revoked his asylum. Charges under the U.S. Secret Espionage Act could result in a 175-year prison sentence.

Conference speakers also criticized the EU for its lack of respect for the national identities and values of its new member states, where the process of cultural and economic integration has been launched at the expense of their historical traditions, religion and economic interests. Numerous NGOs in Poland, Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria, funded by Brussels and Washington, promote ‘Western values’ and fight ‘against nationalism’, which translates into LGBT propaganda, criticism of national religion and defamation of nationally oriented policies.

The governments of Washington, London, Paris and Brussels have imposed complete censorship by prosecuting opponents of LGBT propaganda under the pretext of fighting homophobia. The LGBT community is now free to use schools and colleges to promote sexual permissiveness, pushing teenagers to change sex, while legally excluding their families from the educational process. The alarm bells rung by psychiatrists about the harmful nature of these « education courses » for children are not only taboo in the media and social networks, they are even banned. Protecting the rights of members of the LGBT community has lost all relevance, as its representatives now impose their superiority and values on others, demanding quotas in public administration, educational, cultural and artistic institutions, and even in sport, where self-identified transgender athletes now compete unfairly with women. American public activists Joseph and Svetlana Rose had to move to Russia to fight for a decent future and justice, due to the rejection of traditional values, family protection and motherhood in most EU and US countries.

The conference marked the beginning of a struggle for justice, objectivity and freedom. The organizers intend to set up the Assange Prize, which will reward defenders of freedom of expression.