I think one of the reasons that there is a bit of a tendency to conflate voting to leave the EU with having racist or xenophobic views is because the government, which is in charge of shaping how the UK leaves the EU and what it does afterwards, itself has a tendency to adopt policies which tend to the discriminatory and xenophobic, to the point of being repressive and inhumane (I'm thinking along the lines of the hostile environment, here) and does seem to have been listening to, and catering to, those elements within the Conservative Party to the exclusion of everyone else.
This is such an emotive topic because there is a tendency across the country now to identify as a leaver or a remainer rather than as a tory or labour voter, and it''s quite uncomfortable to have part of your identity challenged, so both sides have a tendency to lash out. Personally, as a really ardent remainer who campaigned to remain at the time of the referendum, I've lived with two leave-voting members of my family and we frequently had polite and detailed discussions - my grandparents are both intelligent and well-educated, and I'm certainly well-educated, although probably not as clever. My grandmother could explain to me the political, economic and social issues which motivated her leave vote, and she is concerned about a lot of the same things in society as I am, just thinks they should be solved differently. She also told me that she was very young during WWII when it was official policy, and spread through propaganda, to hate German people. I was lucky enough to go to a multicultural school and live abroad during my childhood, so not being tolerant of other nationalities and faiths is just something that wouldn't occur to me, but actually I can completely understand why someone who was young during WWII would have fears and reservations about being more closely united with Europe.
I'm afraid I am viscerally angry and afraid about Brexit, though. Of course the EU is a flawed institution, of course we don't know what the future will be even if we do remain, but the fact is that the country will be much poorer, much more isolated, much less influential, much more abjectly in thrall to more powerful countries like the US and China, and that will do huge amounts of harm to a lot of people across the country. I was listening to a couple of people yesterday saying that nothing would change if there was no deal and their organisation wasn't preparing, and I didn't feel angry about their views, just scared for them, because my job involves advising businesses on how to prepare for Brexit in a certain area, and things will change, suddenly and dangerously. Even if leaving the EU is the right thing to do, it certainly isn't the right time when hateful, incompetent and frankly stupid politicians are in charge, which they are.
I also have emotional reasons to want to remain - I think humans can really only do great things and work against things like disease, climate change, conflicts and so on when we work together. As for the non-emotional reasons, people in all sorts of fields who are very knowledgeable have put forward compelling arguments to remain which I am persuaded by.
Finally, about the TTIP, because this is getting long - yes, that's a huge cause for concern. It's especially concerning that the UK is likely to end up with that kind of mechanism for resolving disputes once we leave the EU, not just with the EU itself but with the other countries we enter into trade deals with. I confess, I'm not an expert in this area but would love to hear more of your views about that, Curious.