thoughts on brexit?

Question

what are your thoughts on:

-jingoists being more openly jingoist

-the weakening of the eu

-whatever?

edit: brexit- brittish exit from the european union. there was a referendum held recently within the uk on leaving the eu and leave won.

Comments

It's normal to not be aware of what happens so far away. But never dismiss the capacity of those 27 small EU countries creating a huge mess for everybody!

Here are some pages in english. You can find all sorts of opinions on brexit but in general the establishment, upper classes and also many young people were for staying in the EU, while the areas with bigger economic problems were favorable to leaving.

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/jun/25/meet-10-britons-who-voted-to-leave-the-eu

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jul/14/left-reject-eu-greece-eurosceptic

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jun/28/succumb-brexit-disaster-save-future-referendum-fallout

---

Brexit is the symptomatic cause of the crisis of institution and its inability to understand its own body politic. Technically we voted leave but specifically England and Wales had and because England has that many more people than the other nation states combined, NI and Scotland were left in the dust. The EU was the only institution maintaining the global stand off, each main state with its own nuclear deterrent, each with its own interest tied to the middle east, each with their own view on how to annexe Russia, if at all. The EU was the shack we hid under when we found ourselves on the nuclear testing site. Now we are left exposed and once we had left, we realised that we were hidden underneath a shack. The wool had been pulled and the fear for our situation has intensified.

The vote was won on Jingoism with little regard for fact, absolutely. The United Kingdom is now perceived as two nation states clashing with the other two. The EU is the locus of political thought, whether you're for or against it determines where you stand politically as its roots are deeply embedded with our cultural history. Shit's going to go down, I can hear it in the sirens of police vans and the nervous vomitrons at three in the morning.

As an anarchist I believe in liberation to bring about localism where society can exist within the confines of the walls in front of you not this imagined, abstract geography.

The EU has freedom of movement along its nation states which was a step in the right direction. Its continual expansion is something I hoped for because liberation is a slow and painful process as I understand as a chain of events. There isn't going to be a rebellion anytime soon because our country has made us complacent. Jingosim being the placating heroin to our intellect. What's wrong here is that the instituions are eating themselves which is happening because of the surge of support of the facist right wing in the form of neo-nazism, zionism, jingoism, imperialsim and the anti-intellectual. Factions of political parties on the inside will disagree on how to fight its own political extremism because deep down, there is some empathy, disgustingly enough, for their causes as dictated by a neo-liberalist policy which is that of the majority which is therefore the white, european man.

The aryan male always prevailed within european politics, despite WW2 being firm in our cultural memory. Hitler was the best spin doctor, evil inc on the front of Time magazine and the crispest marketing campaign that anyone did saw. Aesthetics that breached the boundaries of letters and flags and found it way in art, our clothes, our frickin' kitchen ware when it should've been left in the instituions, to be used only to distinguish which side they're on. I saw mugs that said Leave and In, I shit you not! Its a system rigged against its own guilt creating the same outcomes as it did in 1939 but now its effects are crossing seas. Trump, the white, blonde man with all the spin doctors and emperor clothes you could shake a stick at is taking a punt. And sadly our people have been fed such little information on the subject matter and our educational institutions so old we are only just catching up with the zeitgeist, really, we are. In Britain there's a great deal of snobbery to the idea of the contemporary. We underestimated the power of new technology and its media, which led to the truth dissolving in a brew of lies. 'Fact' now becoming a shorthand for hide and seek.  

I personally think we're fucked and something bigger than we can never know is happening in Westminster and I'd hate to think what they're plotting in Moscow right now. All I want to do is hide underneath a rock, smoke weed, listen to the Minutemen and read my book about the IRA. Fuck this shit.

---

i wanted to delay sharing my opinion in order to not pose a leading question. so here goes.

i would have hoped that jingoists stayed under their bridge after the vote. there were plenty of other reasons to vote leave. also i suspect that treaties will be established that keep migration rights close to what they are.

i think that any event that weakens the power of a state (or in this case organization of states) is beneficial. i don't really see it as a reform, more like a strategy of moving to a more favorable battlefield. the eu was well on it's way to becoming a full blown state, and it's leaders have advocated establishing things such as an army to cement that status. i like the prospects for resistance a lot better in a politically fragmented world because the state is weaker.

that being said i acknowledge that most "national liberation" movements are unliberatory. and i don't really advocate secession in most other contexts because of the effort involved. but in this one, they made it so damn easy.

---

seraph9888, to some extent, I agree. Secession from a larger state of affairs to a smaller nation does seem logical in the fight to absolve power but we must keep in mind the UK is a union whose power lies with one nation, England. Without the EU the other nation states autonomy have been weakened as they relied on their support. Our revolution has been moved from the paddling pool to the Petri dish with the largest of the nation states attempting to swallow up the smaller amoebas. The EU wasn't on its way to becoming a state, people have saying this since its begun and our democratic elect had always voted with that fear in mind and so did all of our European kin. And we always had sovereignty, for Christ sake Britain invented the term. Brexit is a huge blow to peace, liberty and opportunism. The stage for The Revolution has become smaller and might now be irrelevant according to an empowered Westminster. It's a blow to the individual who had wished to mobilise and self organise without the limits of migration, education and protection for protest. Where folk get section 60'd on the spot for protesting against a cause that works within our nations interests, it may now happen much more often for the anarchic contrarians who hold the counter point of view. Ten percent of the worlds cctv cameras are set up here, we went to war with Iraq despite what had been said in the Chilcot imquiry, this is not a state to trust with more power. We have a political class who are just as irresponsible.

As to the migration question, there's talk of moving to the Australian points based system. But it is still very uncertain what may happen. It all depends on who we vote for. The next general election will be a big one.

---

"i think that any event that weakens the power of a state (or in this case organization of states) is beneficial. "

i don't necessarily agree, especially when the weakening of one state merely serves to strengthen another. which is usually the case, from everything i have read, observed and experienced in my lifetime. sometimes, the conflicting "states" reside within the same geopolitical borders.

but what do i know. i am just a dumb individual that has chosen to do my best to avoid all states and their power, as best i can. if i lived in somalia or syria (etc), i might think/feel differently.

Answer 1

Hi seraph9888,

I live in the EU and I'm positive about brexit because the alternative of things staying as they are, with expanding bureaucracy and authoritarism, would be even worse. I'm not sure what will the immediate results be; surely not a direct path to a more healthy anachist society. But at least it will rock the boat.

The idea that brexit voters are racist/xenophobic may have some truth in it as it is easier to blame your South or East european neighbour for the worsening of working condions and salaries in the country, than seeing that it is a deliberate strategy from those in power. However, there is also a lot of propaganda from the powerful media that serve the elites.

The EU, with Germany ahead, is crushing the economy of the weaker EU countries to produce cheap labour that then migrates north, for eg to the UK, competing with workers in those richer countries. This results in a progressive worsening of the working conditions everywhere, reversing hard fought conquests of unions, and moving us all closer to the ideal neoliberal society in which 99% of the population are slaves of the 1% elite.

The EU is a corrupt organization that serves this ideal and, so, everything that can make it weaker in this respect is positive in my view.

Comments

well funky, this is why anarchism for me isn't such an important thing as it once was, the destruction of society's institutions can only be accomplished by natural disasters ect., the total destruction of humanity. I don't prefer to walk around as a total misanthrope either, because that can only lead to total loneliness.

I'm still curious if nihilists have had any experiences in tiny destructions of social institutions that are heart-lifting/inspiring, lol

---

rs666: " the destruction of society's institutions can only be accomplished by natural disasters ect., the total destruction of humanity"

really? and you know this... how?

i do not equate the end of mass society, or the destruction of its constituent authoritarian institutions, with the "total destruction of humanity". though, that is one approach. :-)

i have very strong misanthropic tendencies, and i hate being around most people. yet, people that know me would consider me quite "social" when interacting with those i choose to interact with. it's not a dichotomy, for me. misanthropy might equate to loneliness for you, but not necessarily for me.

---

its not really a dichotomy, its that if im going to say "i hate people", then well, that doesn't mean "i hate certain people". To say "I hate certain people" isn't misanthropy at all

---

misanthropy: a hatred or distrust of humankind.

taken literally, that is both a mass generalization, and to me, largely essentialist (some definitions i have seen refer to a "human nature"). it does not in any way address individuals. which is the only way i care to relate to my world.

that's why i say i have misanthropic tendencies, i don't claim to be a misanthrope. but we digress from the topic of the question.

---

well, for ME, there are people who i don't hate but i see tendencies in their personalities that resembles that still contributes my general hatred for mankind, myself not excluded, i just choose not to focus on my hatred for mankind too often because it's counterproductive

Answer 2

I live in the UK, and I have mixed feelings about Brexit, most immediately dismay, because I'd prefer a world with no borders, not more than we have now; but also a feeling of anticipation, because finally something has happened that has the potential to shake up the status quo in Europe. After what the EU did to the Greeks it does feel good that the super-state project is now on the back foot.

I'll warn you now, this'll be a long post, and I'm going to go off on a couple tangents, but it's all relevant from where I'm sitting.

I'm not a leftist, but the outrage over how the current globalised order has immiserated, and is immiserating billions of people, which has propelled Europe's new leftist movements to prominence (Syriza, Podemos, Corbyn etc) is something that I feel too, and so I do sympathise with these movements. The problem for them is, as we witnessed with Greece, that the nation state is no longer sovereign, especially in Europe. So even the election of a radical leftist government (something which would ordinarily not be allowed to happen, but which couldn't be stopped because so many people were so angry at the establishment) was defeated by supranational, supra-state captialism. Britain leaving the EU is about the biggest 'fuck you' that my corner of the world could have given to all of that. 

However it won't fix anything that people want it to fix, no one will get more sovereignty, power or freedom out of this. It's not going to fix liberal democratic capitalism, which is in a long term crisis - in western (and now some eastern) economies, jobs are being automated and outsourced overseas, so demand is slack and people are pissed because we still have this ridiculous notion ingrained in our culture and socio-economic structures - that to live you must work, and there is less and less work. Capitalism's answer so far has just been to outsource, expand certain sectors like the service, tech and finance sectors, but it can't go on forever - unemployment and casualised work is incredibly high across much of Europe and no one has any idea of how to deal with it. Either automation or climate change will bring things to a head, when enough people are simply not able to make a living from work,and it may be in our lifetimes. 

On the other hand, for a great many people Brexit isn't about saying 'fuck you' to supranational authoritarian capitalism. It's about simple xenophobia, 'sending them (people who aren't white or don't speak with a British accent) back', having an excuse to be openly racist and unashamed. I'm not into morality, so maybe 'unashamed' isn't the best word, but racism is something I can't abide. Too many of the people I care about aren't white, and racism is based on essentialism, the denial of empathy and exclusion of those who are different,outsiders. It disgusts me, and thanks to this referendum non-whites and immigrants are now facing an emboldened tide of racist abuse and attacks. Even the police have said the referendum is responsible for Britain's 'worst rise in recorded hate crime'*. I'm worried that regardless of whether Trump wins or loses the US presidential election, when it's over we'll see something similar in the US, when either the racists are emboldened by his victory or enraged by his defeat (which he'll obviously claim was rigged...which it is, but not against him specifically).

If I'm honest, the most infuriating part of the Brexit story is how unoriginal it is. It's just the wealthy elites playing power games with each other and screwing over everyone else in the process, much like WW1, just with a lot less dead bodies. 

This whole thing began because (now former) Prime Minister David Cameron was afraid he wasn't going to win the last election, so he put the referendum in his manifesto to appeal to the Conservative party's support base, and keep them from defecting to UKIP. All the polls suggested that no party would win outright, so he anticipated having to go into coalition with the Liberal Democrats again, who would make him repudiate that particular manifesto pledge. Only that didn't happen, the Conservatives won outright, and from then on it became a personal power struggle between a couple of private school boys who'd been in the same exclusive dining club at Oxford University (look up the Bullingdon Club, it's a perfect example of the British upper classes' excess and exclusivity), and were then both leaders in the Conservative party. The referendum campaign was full of lies, false promises (shocker!) and toxic anti-migrant/'Make Britain Great Again!' rhetoric. Now there's a recession coming, and everyone who's not wealthy is basically fucked, but at least something's broken the inertia and stirred up some confusion in the institutions :)

I have many more thoughts on this shitshow, but that's where I'll leave it at for now, don't want to pop a vein.

*https://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/jul/11/police-blame-worst-rise-in-recorded-hate-on-eu-referendum

Comments

My own thoughts on Brexit are very, very close to those of Yosemite.  Only I don't have mixed emotions about it since the "anticipation" is by far the dominant feeling for me.

At root this is the same as the Black Lives Matter movement: dignity. The Leave camp in the Brexit debate could have called itself Limey Lives Matter.

Nature shows us that in our dimension of existence there are limits to the size of a whole (organism, society) beyond which the survival of its parts requires division into two or more distinct individual wholes. This limitation is due to imperfect, delayed communication between parts. The more parts there are who have to work together, the greater the problem of communication between them all and the greater the difficulty of concerted action. Think about how stressful it is to get all of your family out of the house and into the car versus how easy it is to get yourself alone out of the house and into the car.  Survival demands flexibility. In our dimensions large, hierarchical systems hurt the ability of the individuals to live more than they help.

Leaving the EU is great for Britons. But as said by others, it won't be enough. Even the UK is way too big. It is too inefficient with internal communication/understanding and mutual appreciation between parts to survive as an individual.  If only the spirit of "Leave" can continue and snow-ball, leading to the break-up of the UK into autonomous regions, and those in turn break-up into autonomous communities, and those in turn break up into autonomous individual humans who agree, individually, to respect, protect and empower each other as individuals...

Then, and only then, will the Leave voter get what he really cries out for.

You may saaaaayyy I'm a dreamer....