Is Britain about to leave the EU?

[Manfred Belheim]

I'm curious, when did I condemn the Leave voters as any of these things? Now that you mention it, I do of course think many of them were motivated by xenophobia, racism, bigotry, and hate (it's fairly obvious that this is the case and it was obvious before the vote from the nature of the Leave campaign), but certainly not all.

Well maybe I'm entirely missing the point of you linking to an article about "some racist things that have happened since the vote", along with a comment saying "so tell me again how this vote had nothing, nothing, to do with racism" (or words to that effect), but to me the point seemed to be to condemn Leave voters of being essentially guilty, as a group, of the same mentality as evidenced in the linked article. If that wasn't your point then what on earth was it?

As for the Scotland comparison, Traitorfish already said it:

I missed Traitorfish's reply before, but it's really just a "because they are" circular answer. To presume to know the motivations of millions of voters in either example is not really jusitifiable. "People who voted to leave the EU are right-wing xenophobes because they are, and people who voted to leave the UK are left-wing progressives because they are" is a terrible answer. It contains no justification whatsoever.

 

[Manfred Belheim]

No, sorry. You don't get to vote for something, and then when wholly foreseeable terrible things happen as a result, claim you aren't responsible for it. Own your vote and its ramifications, good and bad.

The direct ramifications, yes. The mischaracterisation of insulting assumptions of motive, no. Picking the worst possible motivations for a vote, and then collectively tarring all people who voted that way with the same brush, is not a defensible argument. Don't frame this as an "own your vote" issue when that's clearly not what I'm talking about.

 

[Lexicus]

If that wasn't your point then what on earth was it?

As I already said, my point is that this is not a victory for the Left.

The direct ramifications, yes. The mischaracterisation of insulting assumptions of motive, no. Picking the worst possible motivations for a vote, and then collectively tarring all people who voted that way with the same brush, is not a defensible argument. Don't frame this as an "own your vote" issue when that's clearly not what I'm talking about.

A better way to put it: my point isn't about motivations for voting, it's about consequences of your vote. The motivations are irrelevant. If you voted Leave you voted for racism and xenophobia regardless of the personal feelings or consideration that motivated your vote. I think that's metalhead's point as well.

I missed Traitorfish's reply before, but it's really just a "because they are" circular answer. To presume to know the motivations of millions of voters in either example is not really jusitifiable. "People who voted to leave the EU are right-wing xenophobes because they are, and people who voted to leave the UK are left-wing progressives because they are" is a terrible answer. It contains no justification whatsoever.

You're missing the point. You are painting the Scottish referendum as being the same simply so you can call people hypocrites and demonstrate how Clear Your Thinking Is, but the simple fact is that there is nothing to suggest the majority of those who voted for Scotland to leave the UK were motivated by racism or xenophobia, and there is plenty of evidence to suggest that lots and lots of people who voted for the UK to leave the EU were so motivated.

 

[aelf]

Brexit is a great win for democracy. I don't think it was a good call and would personally have voted to remain. But it showed explicitly and for the first time in a large Western country in recent memory that the new populist movement cannot be ignored. The people had their way, even though their way was (IMO) the wrong one.

The new populists are rather frightening given the sorts of people that they attract, but this is a function of the collapse of the labor movement across the Western world and the transformation of the center-left parties into neoliberal ones. This directly resulted in the stagnation or decline of the prospects of working-to-lower-middle class people throughout the Western world, as they were made to compete against people who were willing to accept much less for the same labor. The existence of a vast number of desperately poor people in the world was used to undermine the fortunes of people who were working under decent conditions, with most of the resulting profit going to the rich in the Western world and the new rich in the developing world. Combine that with a multicultural doctrine, and the result will be a great increase in racism.

The thing I'm most frightened about is that most leftists, even the ones who pretend to be radical, seem to fall in line with the global political and economic elites whenever an important decision is being made, and they seem content to ignore or ridicule the legitimate (and otherwise) concerns of most of the working and middle classes. This is pushing them into the hands of the right-wing populists, who are on the rise across the West. If we actually want not to end up with pseudo-fascists in charge, we'd listen to their grievances and try to address them. But the left isn't going to do this, and we really are going to end up with a variety of far-right governments across the Western world in the next decade or two.

This is an emotive way of looking at it, but given two bad options, choosing the one that is worse for you isn't what the working class should be doing.

As a leftist who is not residing in Britain, I don't have particularly strong opinions about Brexit, though I think it's not a good idea. Yes, Remain falls in line with the interests of the global political and economic elites, but as opposed to what? The interests of local political and economic elites who support Leave (the self-serving likes of BoJo, Farage and businessmen who want volatility and less regulation)?

If the working class is not organised or, worse, is being attracted by would-be fascists, then the choice of abandoning the existing order at a larger cost to themselves is probably a bad one. I think the EU is more-or-less a neoliberal order that is antithetical to the collective power of the working class, but to then go over and further the cause of hitlerites and libertarian cowboys, for lack of other options, is the opposite of helping themselves. I can be pretty radical, but I really cannot get behind purely self-destructive choices no matter what the motivations maybe. No leftist would rather have the far right take over, unless they don't care about the human cost of such a misadventure.

It's one thing if these working class voters vote for the likes of Corbyn as well (some do, but I suspect not that many) - I see that there are traditional leftists still, but to whom are the working class voters looking? UKIP or the Leave Tories? Eh. If you want proper representation, then look to those who would do that, not lash out blindly at foreigners and supra-national institutions. Blairites are not the entirety of the British Left, but people have chosen to be blind to that fact.

 

[metalhead]

The direct ramifications, yes. The mischaracterisation of insulting assumptions of motive, no. Picking the worst possible motivations for a vote, and then collectively tarring all people who voted that way with the same brush, is not a defensible argument. Don't frame this as an "own your vote" issue when that's clearly not what I'm talking about.

I said nothing of the motives, only of the effect. I don't know how many of the Leave voters were motivated by racism, nor do I really care. However, the effect has been to embolden people to be overtly racist to foreigners living in or visiting the UK. That is an effect that those who voted Leave need to take ownership of, and that your society as a whole needs to deal with. "I'm not racist" doesn't cut it.

For context, I consider the normalization of overt racism to be the most immediate threat of Trump becoming president, so this is much more to me than just idle stone-throwing in the direction of the UK. It can happen anywhere, and it should be considered a known risk of siding with anti-immigrant nationalists and racists, even if one's vote for Leave, or voting for Trump or Le Pen or whoever isn't a product of racism.

 

[Lexicus]

Heh, I got it totally right. Consequences of your vote, not your reasons for voting the way you did.

For context, I consider the normalization of overt racism to be the most immediate threat of Trump becoming president, so this is much more to me than just idle stone-throwing in the direction of the UK. It can happen anywhere, and it should be considered a known risk of siding with anti-immigrant nationalists and racists, even if one's vote for Leave, or voting for Trump or Le Pen or whoever isn't a product of racism.

Exactly. I'm sure I will be crucified for "Godwinning" but so be it: just because you voted for the Nazis because you hoped you'd get a job, doesn't mean you didn't vote for the Holocaust and World War II.

 

[Ironsided]

I'm a card-carrying Labour party member, and I'd sooner vote for the Lib Dems than for Corbyn. Useless, incompetent, and downright dangerous. We need an opposition that can actually oppose the current government. As it is, there is no opposition. There is nothing.

Why don’t you vote Lib Dems? Why don’t you carry their card? Why don’t you let Labour be for labour? If there is something useless, incompetent and downright dangerous it’s Blairites and 3rd-way liberals trying to morph Labour parties into something they are not meant to be. Get your own damn parties. Make yourself “electable” somewhere else, why don’t you?

 

[GoodSarmatian]

Why don’t you vote Lib Dems? Why don’t you carry their card? Why don’t you let Labour be for labour? If there is something useless, incompetent and downright dangerous it’s Blairites and 3rd-way liberals trying to morph Labour parties into something they are not meant to be. Get your own damn parties. Make yourself “electable” somewhere else, why don’t you?

As a social democrat in Germany - a country that currently does not have a social democratic party and where the second largest business-first party calls itself "Social Democratic Party of Germany" I approve this message.

 

[Ironsided]

I’m a Swedish social democrat and our party is heading the same way. Which leaves significant parts of the working class population disillusioned enough to vote for any Populist Party ready to throw a spanner into the works.

 

[Sommerswerd]

For context, I consider the normalization of overt racism to be the most immediate threat of Trump becoming president, so this is much more to me than just idle stone-throwing in the direction of the UK. It can happen anywhere, and it should be considered a known risk of siding with anti-immigrant nationalists and racists, even if one's vote for Leave, or voting for Trump or Le Pen or whoever isn't a product of racism.

To me this is one of the reasons a resounding repudiation of Trump is such a worthy goal. It's not enough for the country to barely reject his antics. I would like to see him trounced, to send a message the US is overwhelmingly not on board with his brand of politics/policy, and anyone else running on that platform will be trounced. The Brexit situation has shown that anti-establishment movement has legs and it may not be enough to just call it racism and hope to shame a slight majority into voting against it. The UK situation should be instructive to other countries in the middle of similar/related political/ideological struggles.

Get your own damn parties. Make yourself “electable” somewhere else, why don’t you?

Is a phrase that seems ironically applicable to the Bernie Sanders campaign in the US... On a more serious note, is that fault with the neoliberal-ish candidates co-opting the nomenclature of more progressive movements, or is the fault more with said movements failing to produce viable candidates? Or is it possibly just that progressivism on that scale isn't appealing to (the majority of) people? I mean if I sell a breakfast cereal that is called "Candy-coated sugar-bombs" and I find that people will buy it as long as I keep the actual sugar content low or at least comparable to all the other cereals, why would I pump up the sugar content just to stay true to the name of the brand?

As a social democrat in Germany - a country that currently does not have a social democratic party and where the second largest business-first party calls itself "Social Democratic Party of Germany" I approve this message.

So like how the "Democratic People's Republic" is anything but?

 

[Tahuti]

As a social democrat in Germany - a country that currently does not have a social democratic party and where the second largest business-first party calls itself "Social Democratic Party of Germany" I approve this message.

The social democratic party of Germany IS social democratic. As are Labour and PvdA. Social democrats always somewhat have an idea have should be done, their main problem being that they rely on governments and unions. Given that technology has developed as such that capital travels faster than humans possibly can, for-profit corporations have a distinct power advantage on unions. Since the 1980s, government are increasingly influenced by corporations as well.

Social democracy has failed its supporters because it is ideology that seeks in vain to make the institutions that fundamentally support capitalism oppose it.

 

[Kozmos]

I missed Traitorfish's reply before, but it's really just a "because they are" circular answer. To presume to know the motivations of millions of voters in either example is not really jusitifiable. "People who voted to leave the EU are right-wing xenophobes because they are, and people who voted to leave the UK are left-wing progressives because they are" is a terrible answer. It contains no justification whatsoever.

Really, if you are going this way, you can't really know anything for certain. However if you go into demographic breakdown of the vote, tie that then with political affiliation and furthermore education and income factors you gain a pretty overwhelming probability that people of X educational/financial status usually hold Y views. I'm sure you can stand on a barrel then and rant about sample sizes and methodologies, but these findings have been overall consistent across countries with similar political setups.

Your chosen political stance shares common ground with a lot of unsavory stances of other groups.

 

[Lexicus]

Is a phrase that seems ironically applicable to the Bernie Sanders campaign in the US... On a more serious note, is that fault with the neoliberal-ish candidates co-opting the nomenclature of more progressive movements, or is the fault more with said movements failing to produce viable candidates? Or is it possibly just that progressivism on that scale isn't appealing to (the majority of) people? I mean if I sell a breakfast cereal that is called "Candy-coated sugar-bombs" and I find that people will buy it as long as I keep the actual sugar content low or at least comparable to all the other cereals, why would I pump up the sugar content just to stay true to the name of the brand?

In many respects the situations in the US and UK are opposites here. In the UK Labor actually was a left-wing party that largely existed to push issues important to labor, whereas in the US the Democrats were never really left-wing in the same way. Really, for the Democrats the historical aberration is the postwar period, not the Clintonista period. Whereas for Labor, the Blairite period is much more of an aberration.

I would say there's definitely a potential for large majorities of voters to support 'progressivism on that scale.' A lot of people who would benefit most from that kind of politics simply don't vote. We need a better politician than Bernie to bring that message to people though. And we need to do work at the local level, and the level of the workplace in particular, to link the larger issues to the ones that actually impact people on a day-to-day basis.

The problem is if the ostensibly left-wing parties become Establishment parties (in peoples' eyes, whether they're in fact Establishment parties is of no relevance whatsoever) then the anti-Establishment sentiment is captured by people like Trump. And perhaps the best confirmation of that is that Trump is, in fact, much more "Establishment" even than Hillary Clinton, but people's anger at the system is such that they're ignoring that obvious fact and focusing on the narrative.

 

[Manfred Belheim]

As I already said, my point is that this is not a victory for the Left.

How is saying "so this has literally nothing to do with racism" (sarcastically) pointing out that this is not a victory for the left? If that was your point, it was a really bad way of making it no?

A better way to put it: my point isn't about motivations for voting, it's about consequences of your vote. The motivations are irrelevant. If you voted Leave you voted for racism and xenophobia regardless of the personal feelings or consideration that motivated your vote. I think that's metalhead's point as well.

But that's a stupid point because racism and xenophobia are not consequences of the vote. They're clearly motivations, not consequences. You can't vote to make people racist, but your racism can influence which way you vote. Leaving the EU is not an inherently racist or xenophobic act.

You're missing the point. You are painting the Scottish referendum as being the same simply so you can call people hypocrites and demonstrate how Clear Your Thinking Is, but the simple fact is that there is nothing to suggest the majority of those who voted for Scotland to leave the UK were motivated by racism or xenophobia, and there is plenty of evidence to suggest that lots and lots of people who voted for the UK to leave the EU were so motivated.

Right... so now you're back to talking about racism and xenophobia being motivations, not consequences. Can you make your mind up? There's no coherent or consistent argument here. You've just said the literal opposite of what you said in the previous paragraph.

It seems to me you're pretending that "racism and xenophobia" are actually consequences, not motivations, so that you can tar all Leave voters with that brush. Then, once they're tarred, you can switch back to calling them all racists and stating that this is what motivates them (I realise you've already stated that 100% of people are racist anyway, which kind of renders this point meaningless, but I'm glossing over that). I'm sure you're not intending to do this, and maybe I'm still not grasping your point, but it seems for all the world that this is what you're doing.

 

[Arakhor]

It likely backfired, but isn't your view that Bbc was clearly pro-Remain and not neutral? (i mean it shows even worse now).

I don't think that they're "clearly" pro-Remain at all. The BBC are frequently accused of being too preferential towards multiple sides in politics, which can't possibly be true all at the same time.

I'm guessing that Edward got that brilliant wheeze out of the Express or something like that, as it's so patently ridiculous.

 

[Kozmos]

But that's a stupid point because racism and xenophobia are not consequences of the vote. They're clearly motivations, not consequences. You can't vote to make people racist, but your racism can influence which way you vote. Leaving the EU is not an inherently racist or xenophobic act.

Of course they are. Before they were covert because people are always doing game theory with unknown actors and odds, now that you know the results you have between 30%-50% odds that people around are going to support your racist or xenophobic attitude it's going to become a lot more common, open and agitator-y.

 

[Old Hippy]

It seems to me you're pretending that "racism and xenophobia" are actually consequences, not motivations, so that you can tar all Leave voters with that brush. .

they can be both, just this evening I've seen news reports of a man stopping his car and having a go at a foreign taxi driver who happened to be born in the UK, a polish blonde haired child receiving printed go home cards, some youths on a crowed bus shouting go back to your own country and throwing drinks on a young man(I think he was American)

consequences and motivations it is hard to separate someone's reasoning from their actions
it is still racism and xenophobia
My mum is racist and xenophobic, but she is 90 and dose not see it, even when the rest of the family roll our eyes at some comment
needless to say she voted leave and watches reruns of 'midsummer murders' to remind her of a quaint England that never existed

 

[Lexicus]

How is saying "so this has literally nothing to do with racism" (sarcastically) pointing out that this is not a victory for the left? If that was your point, it was a really bad way of making it no?

Yeah, probably.

But that's a stupid point because racism and xenophobia are not consequences of the vote. They're clearly motivations, not consequences. You can't vote to make people racist, but your racism can influence which way you vote. Leaving the EU is not an inherently racist or xenophobic act.

Not in the abstract, but voting Leave in this election was arguably an act of racism regardless of individual motivation.

Right... so now you're back to talking about racism and xenophobia being motivations, not consequences. Can you make your mind up? There's no coherent or consistent argument here. You've just said the literal opposite of what you said in the previous paragraph.
It seems to me you're pretending that "racism and xenophobia" are actually consequences, not motivations, so that you can tar all Leave voters with that brush. Then, once they're tarred, you can switch back to calling them all racists and stating that this is what motivates them (I realise you've already stated that 100% of people are racist anyway, which kind of renders this point meaningless, but I'm glossing over that). I'm sure you're not intending to do this, and maybe I'm still not grasping your point, but it seems for all the world that this is what you're doing.

The 'consequences not motivation' concerned 100% of Leave voters. I don't believe that every single Leave vote cast was motivated by racism/xenophobia, but I think it's clear that a good number of them were. I do however think that 100% of Leave votes have had these racist consequences (and God only knows what racist consequences yet to come).

 

[Atticus]

Exactly. I'm sure I will be crucified for "Godwinning" but so be it: just because you voted for the Nazis because you hoped you'd get a job, doesn't mean you didn't vote for the Holocaust and World War II.

That's a different thing, since the referendum was about an issue, not about who's in power. That would be an apt analogy for voting UKIP in the parliamentary election. This would be more like referendum on building autobahns in the 30s Germany.

 

[Lexicus]

That's a different thing, since the referendum was about an issue, not about who's in power. That would be an apt analogy for voting UKIP in the parliamentary election. This would be more like referendum on building autobahns in the 30s Germany.

Well sure, if building autobahns in Germany was an issue that would have a huge bearing on the future politics of the country. I think this referendum is as politically important as an election in some respects - perhaps even more important than some elections. It has resulted in the fall of Cameron's government, as surely as if Cameron had been voted out.