#Brexit disaster: A great night for Anime Nazis, Trump fans, and dudes who say “cuck” a lot

Finger monkeys:

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@richardbillericay

Most media described the vote as ‘historic’ or some such, which is a subtle invitation to change, because after all, it’s not really historic if we choose the status quo.

That’s a very good point. I voted Remain and was totally confident Remain would win, because it had most of the establishment behind it. At the same time I felt that a Remain result would have been an anti-climax. If nothing changes, why did we bother?

The referendum seems to have become a protest vote against the establishment. People were unhappy with austerity, with the lack of democracy in Europe, with rapid social and demographic change that they hadn’t consented to, and with an out-of-touch political elite which increasingly consists of privately-educated career politicians. We’re hearing reports of some people who voted Leave without actually believing it would win, and are horrified at the result.

Not everyone is horrified, though. ‘Leave’ ran a positive campaign, emphasizing hope and independence, while ‘Remain’ focused on negativity – ‘Project Fear’. Two people at my workplace voted Leave, and both are jubilant at the result. They are convinced that the risk to the economy has been massively exaggerated. Neither likes our current politicians and they want radical change, which as they see it can only be for the better.

Personally I think we’ve shot ourselves in the foot, but the establishment brought it upon themselves. They’ve been ignoring the concerns of ordinary people for years and now it’s come back to bite them.

@wwth & Axecalibur

It’s worth noting that not all forms of immigration are equally hated by racists. They especially hate Muslims, brown people in general, and refugees. These three groups, of course, have a large overlap.

While it’s true that the % of UK residents born abroad has gone up, this is not only due to higher immigration, but emigration has also gone down.

The number of yearly asylum applicants has come way down from the highest levels in the late 90s and early 00s. It’s currently at its lowest level since the 1980s.

Just noticed a mistake I made in the comment above.

While it’s true that the % of UK residents born abroad has gone up, this is not only due to higher immigration, but emigration has also gone down.

This doesn’t make sense. What I meant to say was that the rise in net immigration is also in part due to lower emigration.

What WWTH said. Plus, one (out of many) reasons that the UK is in the mess it is now is due to its pathetic toadying to the US and the “special relationship.” A relationship where the fawning and eyelash-batting is all on one side.

So to say that the UK “doesn’t give a toss” about what ‘Murica thinks is both hypocritical and, well, *sad*.

@IP

It’s worth noting that not all forms of immigration are equally hated by racists

Yep

@Crys
Aww, but ‘person’ is boring *pouts*

@Croi

No, their response was to vote Leave, which is not the same. If it were, UKIP and the EDL would have 52% of the British vote

*Massive, extended sigh*
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Croi

Personally I think we’ve shot ourselves in the foot, but the establishment brought it upon (strikethough) themselves (\strikethrough) us all. They’ve been ignoring the concerns of ordinary people for years and now it’s come back to bite (strikethough) them (\strikethough) us. (well, them to some extent. But mainly us)

FIFY 🙁

@Beyond Ocean (I have the sudden and utterly unexplainable urge to listen to Caribbean Queen)
And no worries about picking on me. I need it sometimes?

My problem isn’t that these people are all racist. Everyone’s a little racist, but most people are just that: a little racist. That’s fine enough. My problem is that simplicity you brought up

We have ‘the people’ to keep the government in check. BUT. We also have the government to keep the people in check. People regress to the mean. Biases and ingrained heuristics lead people to the easiest answer. Parliament is also people, but more accountable than the general public and more able to make up for their myriad mistakes

That tribalistic “oh noes!” started turning into street harassment of remainers and minorities. Some people get hopped up on this stuff. When they do, it’s difficult to come down, even assuming they want to. As I mentioned before, there’s enough animosity towards one’s neighbors as it is without adding the volitility of direct democracy to the mix

The problem isn’t that racists can’t win. They can and do. Often. All by themselves or by playing on the fears of the less bigoted. They’re good at that. Good, republican government stops those tendencies from boiling over all at once and by a 3 point margin. Racist populace or not, none of this shoulda come up for a referendum

Does that make sense?

Just when I thought I would enter the job market when the recession was over. Fuck me.

The nationalism bubbling around Britan us frightening and disgusting. I don’t look very there, but I understand this country still has quite a bit if influence.

As the Trump story and the Brexit story have been developing over the past year, I have been increasingly uncomfortable with the standard left-wing analyses of these phenomena.
I grew up in a small New Hampshire mill town that, like so many others, was well past its boom days. I know how most of my peers were brought up, and how the standard social indoctrination made them into moderately racist, xenophobic, sexist — but not evil — people. I escaped the full force of that indoctrination for two reasons. First, I was raised by a man with strong democratic socialist leanings and a powerful tendency to question received wisdom and to rebel against what he thought was wrong. He was talking about the greatest problem of capitalism being the tendency to overconcentration of wealth at a time when that could get you accused of being a crypto-communist and Bernie Sanders hadn’t even been born yet. When I went to prison as a Vietnam War draft resister in the 70s, I could claim to be a second-generation political prisoner because my father had gone to jail in NY in the 30s for putting tear gas into the ventilation system of the New York Stock Exchange. (He blamed Wall Street for the general misery caused by the Great Depression. His own father was a reckless speculator.) Second, I went to Harvard as a legacy — apparently they didn’t look at my father’s record, or they might have thought better of letting me in. Going to an establishment but liberal-leaning university during a time of intellectual ferment made it difficult for anyone with more intellectual curiosity than George W. Bush not to question authority and tradition.

Here’s what bothers me. The US conservative movement has been aware all along that the Democratic-favored welfare state is highly popular, and since they have in contrast evolved as a socially authoritarian but economically libertarian movement whose policies strongly favor the interests of the rich, they have been aware that to have any power as a minority movement in a democracy they must somehow attract voters whose economic interests are damaged by their policies. They have done this by identifying social issues such as abortion, gay rights, and gun rights, and aspects of established belief systems including religion, racism, homophobia, xenophobia, and so forth. They have then taken advantage of the relatively poor education (and, to be truthful, lower intelligence) of their target audience to encourage, nurture, and as much as possible turn into political support, the conditioned prejudices of these people. My belief is that, in general, hatred is based on fear, and fear is based on ignorance, and the Republican’ts have been able to exploit the relative ignorance of less-educated Americans using sophisticated techniques (nudge, wink, dog whistle) to inflame already existing fears What Trump has done is to turn the dog whistles into screams and channel and validate the fears and hatreds that are already there, while blurring and disguising the economic policies that are objectionable to the base (e.g., cutting Social Security and Medicare).

The problem I have with the left-wing is that, while there is a lot of quasi-Marxist prattle about “the workers”, there has been very little effort to understand what makes the actual workers tick and to develop was to speak to their fears and overcome them. Most progressives have had the advantages I had, of a more liberal non-traditional upbringing and/or a liberalizing college education. But too often our response to the destructive attitudes that have been ingrained and nurtured in these people is to speak of them in a highly condescending manner, to point and blame and ridicule, which has the predictable result of hardening the attitudes we object to. The right-wing works hard to understand these people and nurture and exploit their backward-looking views. We don’t. We make virtually no effort to compete with the right, to try to diminish the ignorance and fear that the right exploits. And so the left has to shoulder part of the blame for Trump and Brexit, because we (and I emphatically include myself) did not work as hard to liberate them from their prejudices as the right did to enslave them.

@Grumpy I think you’ve got very good points. History gives us lots of examples of people moving down extremist paths when they’re put in extreme situations. There are people in real poverty in the UK, this is increasing, and many must be terrified that they are in danger of toppling into that pit, too. And many of them very well may be.

Also, the left in many countries has a frankly abysmal record of reaching the people who should be the most willing to embrace it. Which does leave the door open for the demagogues to come in and spin their tales about how everything would be rainbows and puppies if only wecould get rid of those X People. And I can imagine that if your back is against the wall, it’s tempting to believe in a neatly contained solution.

Brexit was odd, though, in that it wasn’t a strictly Left v Right situation. There were people from all parts of the political spectrum on both sides. Maybe the fractured nature of it is why it was so easy for the hate-mongers to grab the spotlight?

It also wasn’t a strictly class-divided issue, either, as Leavers seem to be from the highest and lowest on the socioeconomic scale.

So I think there are a lot of simplistic arguments going on here, with people trying to frame it in ways that don’t apply just because those frames are familiar to them. Criticising the racism of the Leave campaign is not just elite lefties sneering at the working-classes – though a lot of Leave voters want you to think that so critics look bad – because a lot of that shit came/is coming from the upper classes.

And again I point out: Trump supporters, MRAs, MGTOWs, Honey Badgers – all the people this blog regularly mocks for their shit behaviour and gullibility are ALSO people who feel disenfranchised and forgotten. And as far as justification goes, they run the same gamut as the absurd middle class Brit who feels they’re being oppressed by having to see brown faces in the street to the steel worker with three kids who’s about to lose their job with no prospect of a new one in sight and ever-decreasing benefits available.

So why do no regular commenters rush to defend these poor manospherians from the insensitive attacks of out-of-touch lefty snobs? Why no pleas to just stop the mocking lest we push them into even more extreme positions?

Ah yes: because none of that stuff is a valid excuse for being a bigoted shithead.

PS. Also, why do so few seem to get that assuming “working-class” = “ignorant and more inclined to racism” is ALSO a pretty snobbish and condescending attitude? I’ve seen some pretty cogent condemnations of Leave tactics by working-class critics.

@ crys t et al

So why do no regular commenters rush to defend these poor from the insensitive attacks of out-of-touch lefty snobs? Why no pleas to just stop the mocking lest we push them into even more extreme positions?

People are making some great points here. I think your MRA analogy is especially helpful. Don’t know how long you’ve followed this site, but I sometimes make a parallel between the way the manosphere grooms and radicalises naive/vulnerable/bitter men the same was terrorist groups do (although I think MRA groups are terrorists anyway)

But anyway, to get back to your point. One thing I’ve noticed on this site is that whilst people quote rightly mock guys who just come here to spew the usual MRA hate, if someone does come along who seems this perhaps they have just been lead down that path because they don’t know any better, people here will offer sympathy and steer them in the direction of better advice.

So if someone comes along and says “I’m a great guy but women are cu*nts, so MGTOW!” then it’s rightly gloves off time. However if a guy seems he might just have been unsuccessful with women because he genuinely was shy or inexperienced or not brilliant at social interaction and has been fed the “thats cos women only like douchbags” line then people will step in and maybe recommend sites like dr nerdlove and the like where such guys can get a healthier perspective.

Maybe there’s a similar approach to be had? Personally I think that some people are just shits, and they’re irredeemable. So there’s no point wasting time on inherent racists. Merely engaging with them lends false validity to their views. But there is, I would suggest, scope for engaging with people who’s situation has left them vulnerable to being mislead by racists?

You get my drift; or am I just making a distinction where’s there’s no real difference?