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http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2016/06/24/im-so-sorry-united-kingdom/
I’m so sorry, United Kingdom
British-flagOr should I say, I’m so sorry, England and Wales? Because it looks like you’re going to have to drop that “United” stuff soon. You might also want to reconsider that “Great” prefixing “Britain”. Brexit won their referendum. The UK is going to begin the process of breaking from the EU. Stock markets are reacting with shock. The people who despise Nigel Farage are also shocked. Other countries in Europe are dismayed.
I’m afraid I see it in terms of what’s going on in the US today, and that worries me. Gary Younge’s take on the vote is informative. He talks about the incompetence of the Remain campaign, and how it was oblivious to the concerns of the people and set itself aside as the smart people who know better than you do, and never made a good case for remaining in the EU. And then he tears into the Leave campaigners.
It is a banal axiom to insist that “it’s not racist to talk about immigration”. It’s not racist to talk about black people, Jews or Muslims either. The issue is not whether you talk about them but how you talk about them and whether they ever get a chance to talk for themselves. When you dehumanise immigrants, using vile imagery and language, scapegoating them for a nation’s ills and targeting them as job-stealing interlopers, you stoke prejudice and foment hatred.
The chutzpah with which the Tory right – the very people who had pioneered austerity, damaging jobs, services and communities – blamed immigrants for the lack of resources was breathtaking. The mendacity with which a section of the press fanned those flames was nauseating. The pusillanimity of the remain campaign’s failure to counter these claims was indefensible.
Not everyone, or even most, of the people who voted leave were driven by racism. But the leave campaign imbued racists with a confidence they have not enjoyed for many decades and poured arsenic into the water supply of our national conversation.
In this atmosphere of racial animus and class contempt, political dislocation and electoral opportunism, the space for the arguments we need to have about immigration, democracy, and austerity simply did not exist. Our politics failed us. And since it is our politics only we can fix it.
I see this same dynamic playing out here in the US. The almost-successful Sanders campaign tells us there’s a huge part of the electorate that wants change from politics as usual, and yet the Democrats have anointed a moderate conservative, status quo candidate. Will Clinton actually respond to that productively? Will she make changes in party policy that will appeal to that broad swathe of the country that wants a more progressive government? She could end up the David Cameron of America.
Younge’s description above also fits the Trump campaign. The know-nothings are always a force to be reckoned with in this country, and if Brexit could win, could Trump rally the same forces to win here? That’s possible (but unlikely, we say, although everyone was saying Brexit was unlikely, too), but one way it could happen is if the Democrats try to take an uninspiring middle course.
What do I mean, “if”? The Democrats always take the path of trying to avoid offending anyone, and thereby end up pissing everyone off.
The world’s a somewhat scarier place this morning. I hope my country doesn’t end up contributing even more to the fear.
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Waterfield, unless I misread you, I think you’re contradicting yourself.
It looks like you first said the older voters were more likely to want to stay, and then with the last comment, more likely to want to leave.
Then, again, I think I may need some more coffee. So I might be wrong.
:>)
I think I’m the one that needs coffee Billy. What I meant was that the youngsters wanted to stay the oldsters wanted to leave. Which would make my earlier post about racism nonsensical.
No worries, Waterfield. It’s a very confusing world out there. To be really Zen about it all, we need to go with the flow and be confused and confusing ourselves. Something I’ve always been really good at . . . even before I discovered Zazen.
;>)
WV,
Hope you and yours are more than just okay. Just heard your state has had massive flooding, with loss of life, and nearly every county is considered a disaster area.
We were hit with heavy rains, lightning storms and flooding too, but not nearly like the other Virginia.
Again, hope all is well.
he Brexit vote wasn’t racism. It was nationalism.
“Nationalism” can be the foundation for “racism”. Just another way to excuse it. 87% of Britain’s population is white. Immigration fears was in large part the fuel that drove brexit. My own definition of racism includes the “I don’t like you because you’re different than I am”. Britain has a long hx of this type of thinking. My wife is Irish. My neighbor is from England and (jokingly) refers to her as the “mick” across the street. If he was serious I would call that a racist remark.
The push back from globalization can also be said to be racist based. The uneducated older working class saw their jobs being taken by those “different”-hence the move toward “nationalism”.
The EU was born from two world wars and provided a sense of economic security among a fractured Europe. Now Germany will once again become the strongest economic power in Europe a forbidding thought to those who recall the past. Putin could not be more happy today.
A personal anecdote: My closest friend owns a manufacturing company in the sports business. A huge market for his equipment is in Europe and the far east. He is rightfully concerned that with the loss of our strongest ally in the European market he will be unable to continue to access those markets with the same economic freedom as before. And yet he is still a strong supporter of Trump who champions brexit. Go figure.
I think you go out of your way to find racism. It is what democrats are prone to do because within the party they are rewarded for it. The UK voted for independence. That isn’t racism. Why is it that people of color can take pride in their culture even when they have fled from their country to a country with a completely different culture yet caucasians are never afforded the same right? The EU was dumping immigrants and criminals into the UK. The people realized that their vote didn’t matter since their government was subservient to Brussels. After 40 years they said enough. It was a voluntary union from the start.
Mick is a racist remark? I don’t get that at all. Polock, Dago, Wop, Kraut are not racist either. Irish, English, Polish, Italian, German are all predominantly caucasian so how can that be racist? Now spic or spear chucker sure that is racist since that isn’t about a specific nationality. Just like cracker is racist. I grew up in St. Louis and we used Mick, polock, dago, wop, kraut and others all the time and there wasn’t a chip on anyones shoulder.
I disagree that opposition to globalization is based upon racism. That is so insulting, so out of touch. For those who have been harmed by their jobs being sent overseas or over the border it is about the strain on their family, community, and region for no other reason than to make some greedy son of a bitch a little more profit by committing economic treason. After decades of this the pain adds up and people have had enough. It is exactly the same dynamic that Trump has tapped into for the presidential campaign. People want to work. They want their jobs to be a priority of their government. Before globalization that was the case.
Germany is the strongest economic power in europe followed by the UK, France and Italy. What is forbidding about that? Germany has already been hit hard by the sanctions placed on Russia since considerable trade takes place between the two countries. The UK remains a member of NATO so I can’t see Putin cracking much of a smile.
How have we lost our “strongest ally in the european market”? The UK is still the 5th largest economy in the world. Nothing will change between the US and the EU because of the Brexit.
The upside to being a Rams fan is heartbreak.
Sprinkles are for winners.
What I don’t get is the age difference in the vote-if in fact this was in part a racist fueled vote. By far the older generation in Britain-from what the polls show-voted to stay while the younger vote voted to leave. I would have thought the opposite would be the case if racism was behind the vote.
I believe you have that backwards. The polls I saw leading up to the vote showed that each age group progressively became more inclined to Leave the older the group was. And one of my Brit friends yesterday was complaining that it appeared young people weren’t turning out to vote (and he was a strong Remain).
My brain was twisted. Aging is not for fools.
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