Bill Mitchell, “Why the Leave Victory is a Great Outcome,” Billy Blog, June 27, 2016.Bill recounts his experiences after strongly supporting the Brexit vote:
“On Friday morning (Australian time), as it became obvious that the Leave vote would win, I tweeted that it ‘Looks like it will be a great result for UK. Now British labour has to abandon its neoliberalism & provide people with a progressive future’.You’re lucky you weren’t called even worse names, Bill.
I was met with immediate hostility by so-called progressives tweeting that I was ‘delusional’ and that ‘you don’t know the UK very well, do you?’ and that I was a ‘billy goat’ (meaning stupid).
More nasty E-mails followed as the ‘progressive liberal elites’ interrupted their consumption of their cafe lattes and croissants to tell me that the hoi polloi outside of London didn’t have sufficient education to understand what they were doing or they were just mindless racists.
The Remain progressives, were by implication, full of knowledge and wisdom and non-racist.
I wonder how many of these ‘liberal elite’ types with good incomes and stable jobs had opened their well-appointed London homes to the migrants!
But, at any rate, I was told, categorically, in non-elite language, it seems, that anyone who feared for their jobs and opposed a flood of non-unionised workers who would work below minimum wages coming into their local labour markets, were despicable racists who should not be able to vote on these important issues.
Ok! Then who should vote? Certainly not the hoi polloi, it seems.”
Bill Mitchell, “Why the Leave Victory is a Great Outcome,” Billy Blog, June 27, 2016.
The Left’s ability to calmly and rationally discuss important subjects like this is at a low point, and truly disgusting to have to watch.
The mentality of a lot of university-educated, middle class, left-wing young people now has become this:
Update
Steve Keen talks post-Brexit here:
Steve Keen, “What Next After Brexit?,” Forbes, 27 June, 2016.
I am actually a bit shocked by Western attitudes towards working class white people.
ReplyDeleteWhenever a particular policy gets voted that people don't like, they say it was because of high school educated working class white people voting.
As if the vote of high school educated working class white people does not matter??? As if the government is meant for everyone else except them???
If they vote a certain way, does it not warrant scrutiny?
Great graphic.
ReplyDeleteThe post by Bryan Gould that Mitchell quotes is very good.
Here's one of the best "calm down" posts. http://www.the-american-interest.com/2016/06/25/the-problem-with-brexit-is-the-leaders-not-the-voters/
I thought Boris's speech very good. He was careful to try to calm people down, reassure the losers they won't be ignored, point out that there's negotiating to be done. The reaction I saw from Remainders was telling: "Oh Boris is backing down", "Oh even Boris knows it's a bad idea", "even Boris is having second thoughts/ All clearly wrong as you can see from his speech. What they cannot fathom is that someone from the other side wouldn't rub their noses in it, and beat his chest (as I suspect Trump might have done. Tells me aa lot about how THEY would have reacted had they won.
Prateek
ReplyDeleteYes, it is quite remarkable It's the one group, aside perhaps from certains kinds of Christian, who can be freely hated and contemned.
One of the most frequent reactions I have seen is basically the same shit I heard decades ago: "t'ain't right his vote should count as much as mine! T'ain't right!"
Cool graphic, I'll share that around! :)
ReplyDeleteIdentity politics is now being used as a shield for neoliberalism. Even critiques of trade policy and immigration that are based on largely economic arguments are roundly dismissed as "racism" and "xenophobia."
ReplyDeleteThomas Frank, an American author and historian, recently wrote a good book entitled "Listen Liberal" where he shows how the U.S. Democratic Party is dominated by upper-middle class professionals who have nothing but contempt for less-educated, working class voters (especially white working-class voters). They see this section of the population as hopeless, benighted racists who deserve whatever miserable fate is in store for them. No wonder so many working people are being wooed by right-wing populists.