Guardian Watch: Insults fly in post-Brexit hysteria
by Kit
25
June, 2016
The
world is still reeling from the referendum results – there is
uncertainty in the air, real uncertainty, a rare creature in the
modern era of controlled media consensus and carefully directed
narrative. Again and again the thoughts are echoed: nobody expected
this to happen. David Cameron was positive
his side had won. Oliver Imhof wrote
an article threatening
to leave “Brexit Britain”, comfortable in the knowledge that “at
no point did I think it could really happen.”
You get the
impression even Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage never expected to win.
Nobody
expected this to happen – Least of all The Guardian…and the
reactions? They have been hysterical, in every sense of the word.
The sheer
volume of opinion is
evidence of an institutional panic. Polly Toynbee’s reaction,
always the paragon of understatement:
Catastrophe. Britain has broken apart. An uprising of resentment by the left-behind has torn us in two, a country wrecked by a yawning class divide stretched wider by recession and austerity.
You’d
be forgiven for thinking that the referendum had been for turning off
the sun, banning talking, or killing the first born son of every
family in Britain…rather than a return to a state of affairs that
has existed for all but the last 40 years of human history. Such is
the level of the destruction.
The Climate
is ruined.
The FTSE 100 plummeted to levels not seen since last Thursday. The
pound is now worth 7 cents less than it was last week.
British science
is already nearly destroyed.
The arts
world will regress, and collapse.
British stocks crashed…less than half as much as European stocks.
The FTSE 100 actually ended the week on a small gain…but ARRGHH!
Panic!
But
of course, the (as yet totally underwhelming and mostly imaginary)
financial costs are nothing compared to the spiritual, moral costs.
“We
woke up in a different country”,
says Jonathan Freedland, absolutely shocked that 52% of the country
should “reject authority” after only a generation or so of being
exploited, lied to and suffering a general decline in living
standards.
Who knows, perhaps the worst effects can be avoided altogether. But we should not be under any illusions. This is not the country it was yesterday. That place has gone for ever.
An
assertion that would, perhaps, be greeted with more than a few smiles
in many of the places we have recently bombed in the name of
protecting “European values”.
I
was not aware, until yesterday morning, that more than half of the
people of Britain were racists. For all of Britain’s various social
problems, I have never observed much in the way of strong racism.
Far-right parties like the BNP get almost no traction in elections.
There aren’t neo-Nazi marches in London that compare to the ones in
Lviv or Berlin.
Nevertheless…apparently,we
are now totally controlled by xenophobia. The country is now cruel
and racist. Joseph
Harker’s column declares:
…in the wake of the EU referendum people across the UK are fearful of the intolerance that has been unleashed…
Bear
in mind this piece was published at 1.37pm yesterday afternoon,
literally less than 12 hours after the result was announced. We’ll
do Joseph some credit and assume he spent more than forty minutes
writing this up – let’s say he started writing at exactly noon.
That gives him eight hours to survey these “people across the UK”
who, one can only assume, were merely the people on his bus route
that morning. He “understands” that the vote wasn’t about race,
that people want economic control of their country back…but
actually it WAS about race, and we’re all racists.
The
initial, panic-stricken, meltdown could not last of course. What
quickly became more important was BLAME. And you know who the
Guardian, a notionally liberal and inclusive paper, have chosen to
blame? The old, the poor, the uneducated…oh, and Jeremy Corbyn of
course. Who, I suppose, some
would argue is all three.
Pretty
soon after the results were announced, YouGov released their pretty
graphs demonstrating that Leave won because old, stupid, poor people
voted for them. I am unclear how exactly the YouGov figures were
collated, but given that right up to the wire YouGov were predicting
Remain would win, I see no reason to trust any of their information.
In fact they predicted a 52-48 result for staying the EU…so as far
as we know all of their figures are totally ass-backwards.
But
let’s put that aside – let us generously assume that YouGov have
even the faintest notion of what they are talking about. Do we demand
a revote because the wrong people won?
Is this how democracy works? According to Rhiannon
Lucy Cosslett,
the most forgettable of the Graun’s feminist-clickbait typing pool,
yes. Yes it is.
If you’re young and angry about the EU referendum, you’re right to be”
…declares
her headline. It is just one article, of many that have appeared all
over the media, citing the reported age demographics of the two
voting camps. Claiming that “old people” have ruined the futures
of the young…because they are old and stupid and racist.
The
general inversion in western society, compared to other global
societies, where we prize youth and inexperience over the merits of
elder wisdom, is an ongoing problem. A bigger discussion for a
different time. Talking only in the specific – only about this vote
– this is still a ridiculous and insulting position to take up.
The
“old people” being discussed would have been young in the 1960s
and 70s. They would be old hippies and baby-boomers. The idea of
“grandma being a bit racist in and old-fashioned way”, does not
work when today’s grandmas were listening to the Beatles and
marching against Vietnam. These “old people” are the generation
that voted FOR the EU last time, and now have 40+ years of experience
of living with their decision. Do we do them credit, and assume they
have changed their minds based on their life experience? Should we
respect that 40 years of living and working in this country means
people have EARNED their right to be heard? No, we are encouraged to
dismiss them and insult their motives.
Young
people, and I speak as one myself, tend to think selfishly. Teenagers
are, for the most part, egomaniacal monsters – certain of their own
brilliance, positive they are thinking original thoughts, and
dismissive of authority and experience. It’s a phase, you grow out
of it. Slowly. The young people complaining about old voters, and the
authors encouraging and enabling this attitude, are assuming that
older voters, likewise, think first of themselves. This is an insult,
voters in their 60s and 70s would more likely be voting for the
future of their children and grandchildren. To ignore that facet of
their vote is unfair and immoral.
Of
course, even if they were voting selfishly…so what? Everyone has
that right.
It
does not matter – the narrative is now set. The vote wasn’t fair,
because the wrong people voted. That will be the battle cry.
In
hedging their bets, should Leave win, the Guardian took up an odd
position pre-referendum. Its editorial line became that, perhaps,
voting isn’t that democratic.
First there was David Mitchell (sensible shirt and neat beard, every
inch the Guardianista caricature) arguing that Parliament
should decide this issue,
not us, because we are too stupid and underqualified. Then there was
NatNug, always a source of prime neo-liberal insanity, declaring that
“the mob” had too much influence, and that democracy should be
about our “elite institutions” telling us what to do. Yes,
seriously.
After what we have experienced in the past month, we need political reform more than ever. But the verdict on referendums should be a ruthless one. Never again.
To
back up his opinion he cites the European
Council on Foreign Relations,
a pan-European “think-tank” staffed by Blairites and funded by
George Soros, who say that there are too many referenda and it isn’t air.
No
one expected this to happen, and they will go out of their way to
make sure it never happens again.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: only a member of this blog may post a comment.