Guest post: A seething morass of racial animosity
Originally a comment by Claire on A noxious brew.
When I moved from the UK to the US, several years ago, I was genuinely shocked at the amount of open racism I saw from just people on the street right up through the rhetoric of politicians. I was appalled and admittedly a little complacent – I didn’t think the UK was some racism-free utopia, but it seemed considerably better by comparison.
The EU referendum campaign has opened my eyes to a seething morass of racial animosity that apparently was right there beneath the surface the whole time. It’s horrifying – what has happened to my country of birth in the years since I moved away? I hadn’t even planned to vote in the referendum since I’m living in the US permanently and have no plans to return to the UK to live. So it seemed perhaps I should just let the people who actually do live there to make that decision.
The campaign changed my mind, and I have now voted Remain. I actually do think we are better off in Europe than out. But even if I did not, I could not stand idly by and let racists and demagogues annex and corrupt democracy into an exercise in beating up Johnny Foreigner.
Maybe I feel it acutely because I myself am a foreigner now, and know something of the challenges that face a person who decides to emigrate. And I’m ‘lucky’ to be white and come from a country my adopted nation has a very favorable view of, so I don’t face the kind of crap that some immigrants encounter.
Maybe the Donald Trump effect has thrown it all into sharp relief. But I barely recognize the Britain where an MP can be assassinated in the street, where campaigners can stand up and say blatantly racist things or where images of refugees fleeing for their lives can be turned into a fear-baiting poster about intra-European movement of people.
Claire – it’s depressing. There has been increased attention paid to immigration and a growth of right wing thought since the start of the global financial crisis. It’s not just the UK, it seems to be a trend affecting Europe and the US. Nationalist parties, scapegoating of migrants, the kind of political rhetoric that wouldn’t have been possible ten years ago.
And yes this stupid referendum has bought out all the nasty stuff that was boiling away below the surface. It’s frightening how the level of insularity and “Little Englander” thought has grown – cheer led by Fuckwit Farage and his band of racist, homophobic, misogynistic, scumbuckets. And yet, while he’s a liar and a shitweasel, he couldn’t get where he is without speaking to some shameful part of the English psyche.
And now this. An MP gunned down in the street. Something else that would have been unthinkable (at least while the Irish Peace Process is still under way – and what will happen to that if we vote to leave? Europe was heavily involved in brokering the peace deal.)
I also feel that the “atmosphere” of England has changed even over the course of the campaign. It’s become more suspicious, angrier, lass secure nastier.
I’m not sure I recognise my country any more either. I’m having one of those, “Can I please resign my membership in the human race,” days.
What makes Farage so insidious is his cheery blokey man-down-the-pub persona. When Nick Griffin pops up on our TV screens, he’s easy to dismiss because he’s so viscerally unpleasant a person. Nigel Farage seems like the kind of person you could meet anywhere, and so when he says unreasonable things in that jolly, pseudo-Churchillian swagger, the response is mostly eyerolls and shrugs. And he says things that if you examine their content for a nanosecond, are utterly repugnant. And he gets away with it, time after time. Because, it’s just Nige innit?
I was in Mexico on holiday when Boris became mayor of London (we voted postally because no way were we missing out on voting against him). We heard the result on the bus to Cancun for our flight home and honestly I couldn’t believe it. Who on earth thought putting that buffoon in charge of a big complex city like London was a good idea? He was an unmitigated disaster. And now they’re saying he could take over as PM?
I can only hope that the polls are as wrong about the EU referendum as they were about Scottish independence. I hope people are quietly deciding to vote stay but they’re just not telling the pollsters that. Leaving the EU is one thing, Boris as PM is some kind of hideous post-apocalyptic nightmare.
Re ‘his cheery blokey man-down-the-pub persona’.
If I had a dime for every shit who could say what’s actually reprehensible in completely amiable tones, I’d probably be able to buy some pretty sweet real estate myself, move in next to whatshisass Mr. Common Touch…
Not that I would. Sounds like a bad neighborhood.
It’s the thing about this stuff. They know they can’t go full shrieking Führer on you, out of the blue, for one, and sell it. For another, they’ve probably found so many places it’s tacitly acceptable. So it’s no big thing for them. Just saying what they figure all their friends agree with them on. And apparently enough of them do.
I’m reminded of something I keep saying about religions: the trick to keeping the humbug going is partly getting people to play along, with constant social pressure, with its very ubiquity. And count on them to rationalise why they did, after the fact. _Anything_, however absurd, however poisonous, however self-destructive, can be normalized in such fashion. Whether humans are naturally disposed to such division (though this also I suspect) for other reasons may be beside the point.
Assuming that the UK votes to stay in the EU, it doesn’t seem likely that the social and racial tensions will suddenly dissolve after the referendum, in fact they might increase. Perhaps the British will be less inclined to assume the moral high ground and lecture other countries, perhaps not.
Boris as PM?? Whaaat? I haven’t been keeping close enough track of UK politics. I didn’t know that was a possibility. Then imagine the Dumpsterfire over here….
The world ends not with a bang but with gobsmacked stupefaction.
Basically, with Cameron supporting stay, if the Brexit campaign wins he’s lost political credibility and is likely to be forced to resign. Boris has taken the Brexit stance purely so there is a high level Conservative figure who can legitimately step into Cameron’s place in that event.
Boris as PM is a nightmare scenario – and not because he’s the buffoon he presents himself as. The buffoon with the funny hair is just a public-friendly persona – like Farage’s “bloke-down-the-pub” mask – hiding a very clever operator.
Yes, we live in a Britain where Farage and Boris are actually symbols of political thought, god help us. I maintain that this is because their public personas appear (erroneously) to provide an alternative to “mainstream” politicians – never mind that Boris is as mainstream as they come.
What stuns me is how many people have taken them seriously, have not peered below, what are to me, very obvious masks.
As for social and racial tensions increasing after a stay vote – yes, very likely. I hate the fact this poisonous, utterly unnecessary referendum has already increased tensions. It hasn’t created racism but it has pulled to the surface feelings that would probably have stayed safely buried if there hadn’t been this legitimation of them by politicians and news outlets.
The worst thing is that whichever way the vote goes, it’s unlikely to be seen as politically final. Firstly polls suggest the vote in England and Wales will be very close but with a slight majority to the Brexit side. There won’t be enough of a majority to be conclusive. Scotland is more likely to vote out (sensible people, the Scots) which will raise the whole Scottish devolution question again. If we vote in, it will be with such a narrow margin that Farage will start whining that X or Y factor skewed the vote and start asking again. So the whole thing is an utter, pointless mess that has done irreparable damage to the UK political scene.
Stop the world I want to get off.
Steamshovelmama – yeah you’ve got Boris nailed. I admit, I was taken in by him at first. He was a Tory boy and a buffoon and I didn’t take him seriously. My bad.
What was Cameron thinking when he agreed to this? Was his position that unstable in the party that this was the only thing he could do to shore up support?
The Liberal Democrats have a lot to answer for. I voted Lib Dem in 2010, because I was stupid enough to think that they were closer to Labour than the Tories and the Labour party were clearly no longer fit to govern. The pendulum was swinging back to the Tories and I thought the Lib Dems were well placed to provide decent opposition in parliament while the Labour party regrouped.
When Nick Clegg hitched the LD wagon to the Tory train I was utterly appalled. This was not what I had voted for. But I had to desperately hope that they would curb the worst Tory excesses. Maybe they did, but it didn’t seem like they were very effective.
If Nick Clegg had forced the Tories to form a minority government, it would have been gridlock and stalemate for the parliamentary term, but at least the Lib Dems wouldn’t have imploded in 2015. I was disenfranchised in 2015 but honestly I have no idea how I would have voted anyway. The Labour party were still a shambles and I’m no more going to vote Tory than stab myself in the eye with a fork. And I think this was a dilemma for a lot of people, if you liked what the Coalition government was doing, why not just vote Tory. And if you hated the Coalition, then I guess you voted Labour (or Green or another minority party or independent if that was available). The LD’s destroyed their raison d’etre.
But clearly, despite this, Cameron was not so secure within the Cons that he felt he could continue without throwing some red meat to the swivel-eyed loons. Why? I just want to shake the man and ask him why did he feel this was something he had to do? What on earth could he possibly have had to gain? Or did he call this referendum thinking it would be an easy win and shut up the crazies for a few years?
Poisonous is a good word. It describes perfectly how I feel about this whole thing. Politics is depressing the hell out of me at the moment.
Cameron was hoist by his own petard.
What seems to have happened, in as far as any of us on the outside can tell, is that Cameron agreed to a referendum to undermine Farage’s support by Tory voters – there was a perception, valid or otherwise, that Tory voters were migrating (ha!) to UKIP.
The thing is that Cameron appears not to have expected to have a majority. He seems to have expected another hung parliament. The referendum could then be used as a trading point to win support for something the Tory’s wanted from the coalition partner. As neither Labour nor the Lib-Dems were in favour of a referendum this would not be difficult.. Having achieved this, Cameron would be able to sorrowfully announce he just couldn’t hold a referendum, and it wasn’t his fault, it was that other party stopping him.
However the conservatives gained enough of a majority to be able to push through pretty much anything they wanted so no trading points were needed and Cameron was stuck with this totally obvious campaign pledge that he was not going to be able to fudge in any way (let’s face it. You’ve either had a referendum or not. Very little room for blurring the issue). Politically, he had no choice but to call one. And given that if the UK votes to leave Cameron will almost certainly be forced to resign, it’s clear this was never something he actually wanted.
Cue some behind-the-scenes scrambling for a strategy that would keep the Tories in power if Cameron had to resign. They need a figurehead to notionally lead a Tory Brexit faction and to face Farage. Enter Boris – who has never up to this point wanted to leave the EU. In fact, he’s spoken out against leaving in the past. But he’s loud and recognisable and, really, the mainstream Tory equivalent of Farage so he’s slotted into place. He’s ambitious and if Brexit wins he will probably be the next PM depending on how the internal vote for leadership of the Tory party goes (it’s him or Osborne at the moment and, having been the face of a successful Brexit campaign, Boris would stand a very good chance). If we vote remain Boris gets a bit of egg on his face but it just adds to the persona he’s crafted and anyway, give it a couple of years and no one will remember this anyway.
And, yes, I voted Lib-Dem in 2010 too. I feel your pain…