FACILE GRAND HISTORICAL COMPARISON ALERT: Usually these involve America being the Roman Empire. This one in the American Chronicle is at least novel: The EU gets to be the Manichaeans.

50 Years of European Manichaeism

Dr. Muhammad Shamsaddin Megalommatis
March 25, 2007

What European politicians and statesmen, intellectuals and philosophers tried to exorcise with the most ardent fervor is precisely what they have immutably been so far: Manichaean!

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Around the middle of the 6th century, Manichæism seemed to have died out in Western Europe, but in reality it survived through a number of secret societies down to the times of the Paulicians and Bogomili. When the latter were driven out by the Byzantine emperors, they met with groups in the North of Italy and the South of France whereby the quintessence of Manichaean teachings had survived, and they merged with them, giving successively birth to the formidable Cathars, the Knights Templar, the Rosicrucians, and the Free Masons.

The Manichaean Nature of today’s Europe

Two diametrically opposed groups of power for various reasons supported the rise of a European Union, trying - each one - to pull the institutions under formation close to their own ideals. We attest these two groups in frontal battle of ideas and concepts, not followers and armies thus far.

The Catholic pledge for Christian Europe clashes with the Free Masonic concept of a secular Europe; associations fight against or in favor of abortion, and issues like Euthanasia have risen to points of discord. Homosexual marriages and homo-parental legislation have become issues of fundamental political determination. Soon or later, Europe – united or not – will have to choose between two diametrically opposed groups that have shaped its History, leading Europeans to battlefields and death.

In parallel with this ideological confrontation between the Catholic church and the descendants of European Manichaeism, another issue should draw more attention; even if eliminated at the ideological level, Manichaean dualism reigns in the sphere of political language and behaviour.

Suffice it that we refer to the highly symbolic Berlin Declaration that is expected to be signed in terms of a 50 years European panegyric, and we are met with an abundance of duplicitous statements that are made to hide realities and to unveil imaginative considerations.

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The essay includes a long summary of the history of the Manichaean movement. Use at your own risk; I'm not familiar enough with the details of this history to be confident of catching errors. I'm not sure I follow the overall argument (the core of which I have tried to excerpt here), but have a look if such things amuse you.