the European Nation in 1933. The Europe this French thinker envisaged was spiritual, moral, and intellectual. He encouraged intellectuals to follow clerkly values (i.e., dedicate their lives to the pursuit of universal truths) and to save people from power-driven passions for race, nation, or class. Return to paradise (i.e., to pristine universalism) could be achieved by giving birth to a new, spiritual Europe where the passion of reason would reign (1933/1993). According to Benda, endeavors to create a united Europe had ended with fiasco because Europeans did not want to be unified. He believed that to convince people about the need to transcend the existence of nation-states and create a new Europe, to make them love the idea of Europe, steps had to be taken to shift people’s political passions from the nation-states to the “European nation.” To realize this project of rebirth, intellectuals, once they converted to true intellectuals, were entrusted with the task of fostering people’s moral and spiritual metamorphosis by making new gods, inventing a new religion. Today’s Euro-bureaucrats champion themselves as an enlightened order of priests possessing spiritual power and representing the real source of moral authority in Europe. They seem ready to accomplish the task Benda attributed to clercs: vanquish nationalist passion with another passion, replace old idols with new idols, old myths with new myths, old mystique with new mystique.
Roger Griffin’s concept of “palingenetic ultranationalism” (1996) may help us better understand the underlying fantasy of the European federalist agenda. Palingenetic refers to the myth of regeneration; it is driven by the vision of the triumph of a new life over decadence and decay, by the expectation of an imminent rebirth following literal or figurative death, by the desire to leave behind what is perceived as an intolerable present to be born anew. Eurofederalism seems to be dominated by Euro-nationalistic connotations in which the problems of the old European nationalisms reverberate on a new level. Applying Griffin’s theory we could portray “palingenetic ultra-Europeanism” as an ideology driven by the mythical force of a regenerated European Union that emerges when ultrafederalism combines with the myth of a radical crusade against populism and nationalism and considers the utopian project of the United States of Europe as its symbolic manifestation par excellence. For the prophets of this soteriology, the realization of Europe’s mystic rebirth is hindered by the invasive presence of the nation-state. According to this view, the European Union requires not simply the erosion of national barriers to facilitate the free circulation of trade, capital, and persons, but the complete elimination of all state borders, seen as rocks in the sea journey toward federal Europe. Thus, collective renewal, the construction of a new Europe (the USE), must be preceded by the dismantling of the nation-state and its associated ideologies of nationalism.
Similar to “palingenetic ultra-nationalism,” the federalist soteriology is born of a human need for a sense of transcendence. It offers to its followers the prospect of returning to the golden age; it resorts to the sacralization and dramatization of discourse as a means to conjure up a spiritual and mythical atmosphere that may facilitate the emergence of new order, a new faith, a new transcendental community. Through the persistent use of myths, symbols, and rituals, it seeks to convince citizens that they belong to a supranatural reality, to replace the primacy of affective attachment to the nation. “Palingenetic myth” itself is the belief in the imminent transformation of the old world into a new one. As in rites of passage, the new status (“European citizens”) represents a new beginning, the possibility of entering a new, more mature phase of life. In this sense, the progress toward the United States of Europe becomes the journey toward a rebirth and the dawn of a new era.
The federalist discourse portrays the robust reaction against the “populist,” “nationalist,” and “Euroskeptic forces” as a soul-saving crusade against the evil, as an intent to destroy those who threaten the paradise dream from coming true. It aims to purify from the community of “true Europeans” any “anti-European” myths and influences, to destroy the virulent social disease menacing European democracy, and to restore and disseminate the cult of federal Europe. The European federalist agenda has strong Romantic components; its vision is inherently unattainable. Just like romantic nationalism, it is a kind of chiliastic doctrine seeking perfection on earth. It preaches an ethic of brotherly love, the purification of the elect, the destruction of barriers, and the abolition of this corrupt world for a new dispensation of absolute love and justice on earth. The federalist agenda doesn’t take into account the real world of the European Union in which there is imperfect organization and dividing lines among members are growing in number and becoming deeper, all the while the willingness to unite weakens more and more.
According to Stefan Auer, like the Great Gatsby of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel, the European Union is “never satisfied, always wanting more; insanely rich, yet unable to pay their bills” (2013). Like Gatsby, Europeans grew accustomed to living in a fantasy world in which everything must be possible. The European elite became so infatuated with the vision of “an ever-closer union” that they chose to disregard real-life obstacles to their plan (Auer 2013: 2). To reinvent himself, Gatsby is ready to remake not only his own history but also Daisy’s past (to wipe out her husband forever, she must deny that she ever loved him). In a similar vein, the supranational elite, in order to reinvent themselves and their object of love (Europe), are not just ready to recreate through new narratives Europe’s past, but they seem to be committed to deny unacceptable factors (present and past moments and periods of distrust and conflicts between nations). All those who embrace the religion of European federalism need act as if cleavages did not exist, as if unconditional love characterized the relationship among the members of the European family.
Federalists perform on the stage Žižek’s “politics of jouissance.” The fantasy that supports their political agenda and what is supposed to bind together the members of the European family is the shared enjoyment of the mother imago. Identity entrepreneurs appear on the political stage resolute (and desperate) in their willingness to liberate European citizens from the suffocating feeling of castration, to create a new order free from the burden of the Law of the Father. This particular jouissance is transmitted though verbal and visual (mythical) discourses and reinforced by rituals. The revival of the fantasy of the USE exemplifies the willingness to deny the loss and to celebrate the everlasting mother-child union. For the new European family to resurrect, the phantoms of the past need to be entombed. The construction of a new European order cannot be accomplished without seizing the “cathartic moments” of the fiscal and debt crisis as they allow for purification, for experiencing a miracle, for transformation.
Perhaps supranational architects’ plans for a federal Europe and the populist movements’ (Syriza in Greece, Podemos in Spain, Five Star MoVement in Italy, and so on) projects of direct democracy and “liquid politics” in reality represent different versions of the same phantastic object, different versions of the same paradise dream. Palingenetic ultra-Europeanism and “populist movements” (re)appeared on the political scene for the same purpose—to interrupt the painful reality of chaos provoked by the economic (and identity) crisis with a utopian topos of sacred serenity. Both supranational identity entrepreneurs and Euroskeptic populists are driven by the (omnipotent) fantasy of constructing an idyllic community. Both models have mythical connotations: they are disguised cosmogony projects in which the goal is to initiate a new era in European politics. Alexis Tsipras, Beppe Grillo, Pablo Iglesias Turrión, and Nigel Farage on the one hand and José Manuel Barroso, Herman von Rompuy, Vivian Reding and Mario Draghi on the other present their own plans as the last occasion, the last opportunity of a Greece/Italy/Spain/Great Britain and Europe dangerously sliding toward the edge of the abyss. Their catastrophic discourse exemplifies a black-and-white thinking. In case regeneration does not happen, the phantoms of the past will return: skies will collapse on us, the crisis, the enemies (both inner and external) will destroy our lives, deprive us of our pleasures, and prevent us from recovering for a long time to come. However, if we are successful in our struggle, then we can again be the first. Failure of the mission would entail the demise of Europe, while victory would allow her to become an archetype, a model to emulate.
While both supranational architects and populist leaders seem to be active in building a new
