The saddest thing for me of all about Brexit (and there are soooo many) is that it's the country I was born in and have loved and been proud of all my life isn't the one I knew after all. I recently re-watched the London 2012 opening ceremony and it made me super sad because I remember being so proud of my country as I saw it - multicultural, diverse, open, tolerant, celebrating of knowledge, achievement, working together, ensuring fairness prevailed.
And since I've found out it isn't. There is more racism and more xenophobia than I realised. I found out so many of my countrymen have been simmering with so much anger, that what I thought was a bit of nostalgia is actually a real desire to live in the rose-tinted past, that we are sick of experts, that we so hate being part of the EU we are fine to screw over our the youth who overwhelming wanted to remain scientists (ditto) Scotland (ditto) Northern Ireland (ditto) etc. That we are more little England than Great Britain.
The huge rise in hate crime post Brexit has not personally impacted me but has impacted people I know. People who do and don't come from the EU have been told to 'go back to where you come from' and when speaking a foreign language told to speak English.
This German woman who rang into LBC radio show literally made me cry and feel heartbroken: www.lbc.co.uk/im-so-scared-now-german-woman-hit-by-xenophobia-calls-james-in-tears-132971
I know not many leave voters will have directly anticipated all these things happening but I want to know how they feel about them themselves? Other online trolls/posters I've asked just deny the rise in hate crime or say you can't believe everything you hear and say it's not happening. It is happening.
Equally if you've experienced something yourself as either an immigrant or is hate crime related I'd really like to hear about it.
Brexit
Does what make me most sad about Brexit make other leave voters sad?
TooTiredToTidy · 18/08/2016 21:41
whilst Leavers want to embrace the world
I acknowledge that you have a global outlook, but all Leavers? 
l must have imagined many things in the past few weeks, including a fair number of posters in here.
Of all the absurdities I have heard from the leave campaign I think the assertion that they are standing up for the rights of non UK nationals from the rest of the world in the face of the xenophobic EU is the oddest claim I have read. As a UK citizen based in another EU state who suddenly has no idea where I will fit in down the line in my child's country I have pored over these boards and others since the vote. I have rarely joined in as others are saying what I think far more eloquently than me but have been genuinely trying to find something from the leave side that makes me think ok fair enough, I get what you voted for. In all the thousands of posts I have read I am still waiting to find something that can't be immediately rebuffed as based in lies or being non-workable. I have read nothing that has made me think that people were partially motivated in their decision by wanting to do the right thing for the developing world. Everything I have read and heard here and elsewhere suggests that pulling up the drawbridge was a major motivation for leave. And yes OP I get your feeling of sadness. The only thing I can relate to on the Leave side is the concept of rose tinted nostalgia. Living abroad, albeit it happily, in my experience, often increases this feeling and I have on occasions been known to read Bill Bryson's Notes from a Small Island with a self indulgent lump in my throat and happily selective memories of the summer of '76 running through my mind 
. But my rose tinted nostalgia and that of a large proportion of the population of the country I love has suddenly been shown to me to be very, very different things. And that instead of nostalgia being recognized for what it is that it is now fueling policy and constitutional change. Which isn't just sad but is also very disturbing.
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