BF2S Forums Where are all the whiny peaceful "Enlightened" European now?

uziq wrote:

people are not so entirely stupid that they can’t cast a vote based on some semblance of reason, or be appealed to using reasonable arguments.

Last edited by Dilbert_X (2019-07-29 19:14:23)

Britain has taken a different route from the United States to cultural civil war, but we got there in the end. When the Republican Party and its media shapers smeared the phrase ‘identity politics’ with poison and turned it on their political opponents, they knew of what they spoke. The classic Republican definition of ‘identity politics’ – privileging one’s membership of a minority group over one’s responsibilities to the nation as a whole – is an exact definition of the Republicans’ own position now, under Trump. The patriarchal, white supremacist, American nationalist minority whose identity Trump channels is (from the point of view of American liberals) embarrassingly large – about a fifth of the entire population, and not far short of half of those who vote – but a minority nonetheless.

Britain veered away from sub-majoritarian identity politics after Thatcher, but returned to it in full force with the Brexit referendum. The accusation levelled by the right at women or immigrants or sexual minorities is that they use identity politics to seek special treatment, but identity politics as actually practised by the Republicans and now by the Farage-Johnson movement in Britain is the old demand for conformity, or subordination, to the cultural norms of the dominant minority. The concept of immigrant assimilation – that the native society should not be substantially changed by immigration, that immigrants should aim to be absorbed by it – foreshadowed the relentless call for unification that followed the Brexit vote. The meaning once implicit in national ‘unification’ – that everyone has to change so as to accommodate each other – has shifted to something more like absorption: not ‘We must unite with each other’ but ‘You must unite to us.’

As Britain struggles with the meaning of such concepts as assimilation and unification, so do its political parties. Many polls show that parties opposing a no deal Brexit are likely to attract more votes, combined, than the ‘no deal’ parties of Johnson’s Conservatives, Farage’s Brexit Party and the remnants of Ukip. And yet it seems very likely the no-dealers will find ways to collaborate in time for the looming general election. In some ways, Johnson and Farage might find it easier to campaign after ‘no deal’; diverting blame towards Europe for the post-Brexit disasters and humiliations caused by their own actions is something they’d be pretty good at.

The parties opposed to ‘no deal’ – call them the progressives – are more divided. As things stand, it’s touch and go whether they would even win a parliamentary vote of no confidence against Johnson, let alone avoid giving the Faragists a majority in an election by taking votes off one another. It may be that the best chance of crushing Faragism at the next election – surely a more important task for the progressives now than whether or not Britain leaves Europe – is simply for Labour, the Liberal Democrats, the non-English nationalists and the Greens to campaign as rivals and hope for the best. Jeremy Corbyn might win; more likely, he would have to work in a coalition with others. Or the divided progressives might lose, despite a larger combined vote share, despite the sense that the country is reaching a point of no return.

The practical, rational and emotional obstacles to co-operation between rival opposition parties are vast. Tactical voting doesn’t have a good track record; electoral pacts risk sapping party morale. Small parties risk being swallowed by big ones. Everyone’s ideological purity is tainted. Already confused anti-Faragist voters may become even more confused and bitter. The most obvious leg-up for the progressives would be an alliance between Labour and the Greens, whose vote share is big enough to damage Corbyn’s chances of victory but not big enough to translate into many new seats. But no wonder the Greens fear being smothered when the likes of the Guardian columnist Owen Jones propose a simple absorption of their party into Labour.

Beyond the mechanics of building an anti-Faragist electoral alliance, near impossible and absolutely necessary, there is something fundamental to consider in the difference between the two sides. The Faragist movement works for now because its central idea, quite openly, is that the white nationalist English minority doesn’t have to co-operate with anyone, in Europe, or in the United Kingdom, or in the world, and it acts accordingly. The progressive movement is struggling because its central idea is the opposite – co-operation – but as an electoral force, it demonstrates a failure to co-operate. Whether the progressive is Jeremy Corbyn, with his passion for international causes and consequent need to co-operate with overseas movements whose interests are bound to clash with those of the British working class, or Siân Berry and Jonathan Bartley of the Greens, whose determination to remain in the EU would involve co-operating with the increasingly vocal climate emergency sceptics of eastern Europe, the ideal of co-operation and its dreaded vehicle, compromise, is intrinsic to their politics, but at home, they repress it. How can you call time on the era of purely national politics when you cannot find common ground with the anti-nationalists in your own nation?

Yes, this is a right-wing coup. It is duplicitous or self-deceiving to pretend that British politics is still proceeding more or less as normal. We are told that it is ‘hysterical’ to argue that Boris Johnson’s regime is in any way comparable to the nationalist dictatorships of yesterday or today. If this is a temptation, I shall happily succumb to it as a patriotic duty. By every standard of measurement, the Conservative Party has been transformed into Britain’s own BJP. ‘Optimism with a hint of menace’ was how the Sunday Times approvingly described Johnson’s first days in power – pretty much the way you might describe the first hundred days of Narendra Modi, or Donald Trump, or Benito Mussolini. Yes, he has come to power by strictly constitutional means. So did they all. It is how they govern when they get there that counts.

First, there was the brutality of the cabinet cull. Macmillan’s Night of the Long Knives pales by comparison, as do Margaret Thatcher’s most far-reaching reshuffles. Both Supermac and Thatcher took care to include up and coming ministers from all wings of the party. Johnson has included only yes-people, or placemen who have vowed omertà in advance. His rhetoric has already assumed a strongman strut. He tears up prepared speeches in favour of sunlit-uplands rants peppered with sentimental appeals to ‘the will of the people’. Implicit in this waffle is a barely concealed contempt for the judiciary and for Parliament. In his two spells in the Commons, Johnson has never bothered to shine, or indeed even to turn up much. His most significant promotion was that of Dominic Raab as foreign secretary, the only man to have issued a veiled threat to prorogue Parliament to get his gang’s way.

We are already beginning to take for granted Johnson’s abusive tone towards international institutions and foreign leaders, except those like Donald Trump who talk the same mixture of bluster and treacle. At home, we are promised more mega-bridges and bonanza buses, the sorts of project with which dictators always like to dazzle the plebs. Here, the author of Boris Island Airport and the garden bridge is at least staying true to form.

What still puzzles some people is that so many old-fashioned Tories should have fallen for such a seedy, treacherous chancer. In fact, I think Johnson has succeeded because of his amorality, not despite it. The transgressive sayer of the unsayable breaks through the carapace of conventional politics with a mixture of humour and vituperation, slang and high-flown rhodomontade. Clowning is part of the act for the leader who wants to reach beyond good and evil in the fashion Nietzsche recommended. A cartoon Superman? Yes, but they all are. See Charlie Chaplin, passim.

How long will he last – five weeks, five years? I have no idea. All I can say is what I see. And it is not a pretty sight. Our new skipper has consistently admitted that he would love to be prime minister ‘if the ball came loose from the back of the scrum’. But that isn’t what happened. He collapsed the scrum, deliberately and repeatedly, and we are all now sprawling in the mud.

Last edited by uziq (2019-08-23 03:49:15)

Larssen wrote:

I mean it's true that people didn't vote for a no deal Brexit, but that also seems like a way for many to deflect responsibility. In a representative democracy it could be argued that whatever policy is implemented, 'the people never voted for it'. I realise it's a somewhat more complex issue, but the only thing this discussion can ultimately underline is the absurdity of referenda in our democracies (especially on issues as complicated as this) and the bankruptcy in the belief that decision by 'the people's vote' is healthy for democracy or even a good idea. Events like these are often used as propagand items in China to point out the foolishness of democratic rule. It touches on a painful truth as many reasonable people will be inclined to agree.

When the referendum was held probably about 90%+ of those who did vote had no idea what they were actually voting on, beyond resistance against the imagined future European federation. Brexit was mostly just an expression of the emotional nationalist response that illusion invoked among much of the general public. It had very little to do with reason, rather people invented reasons to try and substantiate their emotions.

Last edited by Dilbert_X (2019-08-26 03:22:18)

Dilbert_X wrote:

You mean United Kingdom, also Wales.