I have said, of course, that the campaigns have been racist. I’ve been remiss in not sharing links on that, so here are some:
The “Breaking Point” poster and reaction. Its similarity to Nazi propaganda.
75 million Turks coming for your NHS. And the “nicer” Vote.Leave version.
A former chair of the Conservative Party who was pro-Leave now Remain because of the racist campaigning.
I don’t think it’s simply about Muslims. There’s a healthy antagonism towards perfectly white and Christian East Europeans, too - Poles, for example - who are accused of ‘coming over here and stealing our jobs’.
I agree with OP insofar that there has been a nasty racist streak through the Leave campaign’s work, but I don’t think that means therefore every Leaver is racist.
UKIP: Millions of scary foreigners are coming to steal your money, your jobs, your government services and your women!
Other people: That’s ludicrous and bigoted.
UKIP: What? We just want a sensible dialogue about immigration. What’s bigoted about that?
OP: The fact that you keep referring to migrants as “rapists” and “parasites” is a bit of a clue.
Seriously, the “wide-eyed innocence” act that follows every time Nigel Farage gets called out on his latest piece of xenophobia is getting rather tiresome.
Also, Nigel keeps omitting the fact that immigrants, far from hurting the NHS, are keeping it running. Immigrants are three times more likely to be working for the NHS than using it; last figure I saw said that a full 20% of nurses were immigrants.
As an observer across the pond, I can say that if I had a vote I’d vote to stay, simply because the “Leave” proposal has not remotely projected the complications of unentangling the UK from the EU.
But I’d also like to point out that, as the OP acknowledges, it’s possible to support leaving and not be bigoted. Nor should the fact that bigots also support the move be a factor against it, any more than the bigots’ reasons should be ones that should be counted for it… in other words, the bigots’ position should simply be a nullity, neither persuading nor discouraging any decision.
…and neither, of course, does the OP.
I mean, that’s pretty clear, right?
I think you’re just making the same distinction that I made myself, there, aren’t you?
Well, there you go. You’re making a (proper) distinction between a set of ideas and a person. What would make you a bigot would be seeking to have all Muslims treated as if they were IS members. Advocating restrictions on the migration of Muslims because IS members are Muslims would be bigotry. I am not accusing you of this.
By way of analogy, we might say that Timothy McVeigh manifested a “credible reading and understanding” of the political principles and values that underlie the American republic, but that his was one of the “worst examples” of the range of possible readings and understandings of those principles. We would be wrong to treat all Americans as though they were, or might be, another Timothy McVeigh, but there could be no objection to seeking to identify individuals who do in fact share McVeigh’s reading and understanding, and protect ourselves from them.
Not quite. They used to have a pretty generous attitude towards migration from Commonwealth countries, but over a period of decades (starting, I think, in the late 1950s) they narrowed this down in stages by increasingly focussing it on Commonwealth citizens who could claim descent from people born in the UK. By an amazing coincidence, this tended to give white Commonwealth citizens preferential accesss to the UK. But by the time this process was complete, the UK already had a significant non-white population.
I feel we are seeing another attempt by centrists & leftists to stifle debate. Accusations of racism, either overtly or co-vertly, is a long used tactic to shut people up. Such tactics have generally backfired on social democrats throughout Europe. I believe this attempt will backfire too. An ebb of debate stifling will be followed by a flow of “indigenous discontent” in the near future.
My opinion on the state of both sides of this referendum: both sides have their far share of shysters and ne’er-do-wells. The leave side probably have slightly more nutters but the difference is relatively small statistically. For every mad racist on the Brexit side there is .8 of a terrorist sympathizer on the Remain side.
On the simple question of whether Britain should leave the EU or remain, you are of course right. The fact that racists might , for their own awful reasons, vote the same way as I intend to doesn’t make my reasons for voting invalid and it shouldn’t change my mind about that one question.
But nothing happens in a vacuum.This referendum is a major event in British politics, much, much bigger than general elections. It’s impact on our political culture has been enormous. And we have now got to the stage where the success of the Leave vote is, grotesquely, a measure of how convincing the British find racism.
Here are, in my view, the consequences of a Leave vote:
Claiming that accusations of racism are usually used by the left to “shut people up” is a long-used tactic by people on the right who don’t like it when their very real bigotry gets called out and are desperately trying to deflect*. It’s designed to avoid accountability for one’s views.
The campaigns of right-wing parties such as UKIP and Britain First are rife with xenophobia and anti-Muslim rhetoric. One can find literally hundreds of front pages from the Mail, Sun and Mirror containing unsubstantiated slanders about Muslims and migrants, and more politely-phrased versions of the same in the Telegraph and Times. And the Leave campaign’s rhetoric has been right in line with both. If occasionally someone putting forward similar arguments in a more reasoned and coherent manner catches some of the flak resulting from reaction to actual bigotry and xenophobia that is most unfortunate, but it doesn’t negate the existence of that bigotry and xenophobia.
*Generally speaking. I have no views on Fuzzy_wuzzy personally in this context; this is a response to the quoted statement.
I wouldn’t completely disagree with that, other than your over-estimation of racism within the Brexit side. No doubt there is a substantial element of racism within the Brexit support and camp. But the racism you cite I see in part as the general exaggeration of issues on both camps. Both sides are fear-mongering. Both sides are exaggerating the issues involved. Im quite sanguine about this. I see it as a temporary phenomena of a heated political debate.
My point about accusations of racism by the centrists and the left is not meant to suggest that the accusations are entirely wrong. Simply that as time goes by it is less and less effective. I do believe that at some point the tactic backfires.
Sadly it’s not a question of mad racists. Michael Gove (Lord Chancellor) and Boris Johnson (former Mayor of London)* are not mad racists. They’re mainstream politicians. Boris is part Turkish, for crying out loud. But they are both using outright lies about Turks “coming for your NHS” or even just “travelling visa-free” to court the votes of racists.
*job titles for benefit of US readers, not Fuzzy_wuzzy.
I’m not convinced this isn’t a false equivalence. There’s considerably more evidence that there will be a significant economic impact to voting Leave than there is that gangs of Romanian rapists will stalk the streets of Thetford or that millions of Turks are going to turn up at KCH A&E immediately after admission to the EU.
So all the actual bigots have to do is to keep being bigoted and eventually all opposition will fade into background noise? That’s a depressing thought.
Even if this weren’t true (which it clearly is) there is a *massive *difference in kind here. It’s one thing for politicians to exaggerate how much something costs. If politicians exaggerate the cost of leaving the EU, the worst that happens is that people have an uninformed opinion about EU inward investment. If they lie about the threat immigrants pose to our country, the worst that happens is that we become a nation afraid of our own neighbours, flinching and snarling at the suspiciously olive-skinned woman ahead of us at the GP.
Stoking up racism, as has been shown many times, is in a class of its own for fucking up a country.
it’s not only the Muslims. Its the gypsies, too.
You needn’t look ant further than at your thread title.
I’m watching the debate in BBC1… wow, what a train wreck…and as you have, you just can’t look away.
And the euro 2016 game on is pretty decent as well, but still… I’m watching the debate more.
Spare me.
I think it can be safe to say that if Cameron wins the remain vote, he’s faced three major elections in the last three years and defeated them all, which is quite impressive, considering how unpopular he and his party are with the public at large.
The fail is strong with this thread. The Brexit side don’t want to end immigration; they want Britain to regain control of it. Unfortunately, it’s all too easy to conflate that with racism, and there are racists on the Brexit side.