Who else sees the parallels between "nasty right wing GC" slurs and "nasty right wing Brexiter" slurs?

[ConsiderTheLobster]

If you're GC, you know that a vocal majority within certain liberal left circles will denounce you as a right wing bigot. You know that you're actually GC because you've looked into this deeply and are trying to protect vulnerable people (women, non-conforming children, and trans people).

If you voted Brexit, you know that a vocal majority within certain liberal left circles will denounce you as a right wing bigot. You know that you're sceptical of the EU because it constitutes a corporate-favouring trading block, poses barriers to nationalisation of services such as railways, has deeply racist immigration policies (permitting free movement of predominantly white Europeans whilst restricting the movement of others), keeps people in many non-EU (e.g., African) countries locked into unfavourable trade deals, and reduces the influence of genuine democracy.

If you're GC and you work at a university, in the NHS or in left-leaning media, you're scared to say so. If you voted Brexit and you work at a university, in the NHS or in left-leaning media, you're scared to say so.

There are of course some genuine bigots who oppose self ID because they're transphobic. And there are genuine bigots who voted Brexit because they are racist. In each case, these are the narratives peddled by certain media about, respectively, all GCs, and all Brexit-supporters.

So - how many of us GCs still berate the nasty fascist Brexiters?

I freely admit that my remain vote was largely based on emotion - my parents lived through WW2 and passionately believed in a united Europe.
From my limited experience I would say the people I know who voted to leave - and are happy to talk about it - put a lot more research and thought into it than I did.
I still disagree with their stance - and they mine - but I'm really tired and frankly embarrassed at the way they're still depicted on a lot of threads like this.

Rabid remoaner and loony left but now centre and GC. Ashamed at how I viewed Brexiteers, which has been mirrored by some posters here.

I saw a really good documentary a couple of years ago. Nick Clegg wanted to understand why so many people (who stood to lose the most) voted to leave. He went to one place in Wales where they had a beautiful community centre, paid for by the EU. The people he interviewed said how lovely it was, but why hadn't the EU brought them jobs instead. It's true EU was seen as a middle class institution with a lack of understanding of the effects of globalisation on their towns. In Hungary the EU funded a fabulous museum/art gallery but no one goes, it is useless?? Why should they vote for a middle class institution? The EU has since recognised its error but that's a bit too late, mate. I think.

There seems to be a lot of talk of the working class as though they are some homogenous group who all voted labour. The self-employed are the group making waves, voting Brexit, voting Tory and are aspirational, not recognised by Labour who expect the WC to be the right sort of WC. You also have the 'left behinds' who had nothing to lose. These groups are all traditionally conservative, they always have been and voted Labour because they thought it must be for them, after all, the name says it all, doesn't it? They have now realised that the biggest cohort in their party is the middle class

There is a simplicity to the arguments on the left. I spent years spouting the same old, same old until I started to think about how much variety there is and how these simplistic socialist ideas are easy to teach because students think, oh great I can actually argue that one, nothing complicated here and if I shout that will be all the better and what's more it's cool.

After lockdown there will be massive economic issues to deal with. Unless Labour really gets it's act together and stops the demand, moan, demand, moan rhetoric, it will continue to alienate the people it needs to attract. Once the myth of 'only vote labour if you're working class' has been broken, only a really good party will bring them back. Labour is not anywhere near that

"The EU has no policies at all on immigration from outside the EU. They certainly don’t favour corporates - most of our employment law comes from the EU. They are the reason we have holiday pay and a whole load of other things."

1). The EU insists that all EU members have an "Open borders" policy - freedom of movement, which is a very obvious immigration policy. They then tried to sue/sanction Poland, Hungary, Czechia for closing their borders.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-42270239

2. The EU and corporates. Three of the EU presidents have come from Luxembourg, including the last one Jean Claude Junckers. Why has this country which is so corrupt, embroiled in maoney laundering and tax avoidance, had more presidents of the EU than any other? Such a tiny country, yet so much power?

www.reuters.com/article/us-eu-luxembourg-moneylaundering-tax/eu-starts-legal-actions-against-luxembourg-over-money-laundering-tax-avoidance-idUSKBN22Q1S4

3. Most of our employment law comes from the EU - really? Would you care to name a few? Zero hours contracts? The EU had nothing to do with holiday pay.

You only have to look at the map in the following link, to realise that freedom of movement leads to wealthier countries with good benefits systems, attracting immigration from poorer countries - Eastern Europe. This in turn causes a fall in wages for the wealthier countries. I am not just talking about unskilled work, this also applies to very skilled work in the scientific/engineering sectors. This creates a very unlevel playing field, where UK workers are competing with younger, cheaper competition from abroad.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_European_countries_by_average_wage

The foreign EU workers are also cheaper to employ, because for the first 52 weeks they and the employer do not need to pay NI costs.

"You and these employees are exempt from paying UK NICs for the first 52 weeks of their employment here provided that:

they’re not ordinarily resident in the UK
they normally work outside the UK for a foreign employer
they’re sent to work in the UK for a time by that foreign employer
when in the UK they continue to work for that employer"

www.gov.uk/guidance/new-employee-coming-to-work-from-abroad

That's me told ;) @fuckingcrustybread

I said where I think the similarities lie - thought-terminating slogans, re-writing of

history/science and simple solutions to complex problems.

You'd also see that I admit that's a feature of a lot of modern discourse - certainly not just brexiteers - remainers too - and that's not good. I certainly would not think/say 'all racists voted brexit' a. because its not true - and b. because its more unhelpful sloganning. c. Play the ball not the player.

I used to read your posts with interest and enjoy your views.
Thank you for saying that, genuinely - I do think its fine also to say "I like them on this issue - but they're an absolute twat on this other issue." ;)

When I was younger people did not expect their views to align on everything - there was lots of cross-party and across-the -divide co-operation on various issues- Compromise was key. I think this new approach or "purity politics" is not good - its the way disappointment and more power to the status quo lies.

highame

Brilliant post, thank you!

"GC people have strong, common sense arguments.
When you ask Brexiters for any benefits to Brexit, they can rarely come up with anything at all."

Let me give something that I think is a strong, common sense position:

"You should be able to deport dangerous foreign terrorists"

And you don't seem to be able to do that in the EU. While the European Court of Human Rights is technically distinct from the EU, membership of one requires membership of the other I believe. So the EU stands in the way of you being able to remove dangerous foreign criminals and terrorists.

I would say that it's essentialand common sensethat a nation state should be able to police its own borders.

Of course the other side would say, "No", "You can't do that", "What about their human rights?". Just as, people will claim it's a "human right" to be on a girl's sports team when you are a biological male. Claims about "rights" are used to override common sense.

@TirisfalPumpkin

Yeah, there are certainly parallels. Being both a GCer & a Brexiteer, feeling rather vindicated lately -although it’s been a shit few years being vilified, lectured, and losing friends.

Hope those that slurred us on both counts might have a reflection moment.

@TirisfalPumpkin, I'm really sorry about your last few years. It's awful, though no longer surprising, that you've lost friends over this.

I once had a conversation with a - usually very thoughtful and reasonable - friend in a pub a few years back, when I tried to talk about the EU (personally, I have/had very mixed feelings on it, and wavered massively before my vote). When I tried to talk about the possible positives to the world at large of not being in it (focusing on TTIP-related ideas at the time), he literally screamed at me "where the hell are my kids going to go for their Gap Years?" and "have you seen how long we'd have to queue at the airport if we leave?".

There are loads of very reasonable, open-minded remainers (as we can see on this thread - hello!), but to characterise Remain as the open-minded, reasonable position by default is baffling.

When you ask Brexiters for any benefits to Brexit, they can rarely come up with anything at all

And yet there's an obvious one staring us in the face: the EU completely cocked up vaccine procurement, while the UK is leading the world.

I voted Remain, incidentally.

We happen to have a vaccine producer in our own country. Might be relevant?

When you are a member of the EU, you make small compromises (like not being able to deport a foreign criminal occasionally, so you keep him in prison in the UK - rather safer that way, really) and you reap massive advantages. We have thrown away the massive advantages, and are in deep, deep trouble. I'd actually rather people in the UK had jobs, could buy things easily and reasonably cheaply, had good environmental, human rights and employment protections, had free movement, etc etc etc. I can live with the very occasional foreign criminal being in prison here.

@Floisme

I freely admit that my remain vote was largely based on emotion - my parents lived through WW2 and passionately believed in a united Europe. From my limited experience I would say the people I know who voted to leave - and are happy to talk about it - put a lot more research and thought into it than I did. I still disagree with their stance - and they mine - but I'm really tired and frankly embarrassed at the way they're still depicted on a lot of threads like this.

Mine was based on being able to swan through passport control on an EU passport sounds good. I put no further thought into it and no research.

So no, don't equate being GC, for the benefit of 51% of the UK population, plus many children of either sex, with being partly responsible for Brexshit.

Yeah that too. And even the thought that my son might do an Erasmus exchange (he didn't). Whether I agree with them or not, I think some of my leave voting friends had more pressing concerns.
I think the most sensible punditry I saw on Brexit was from Polly Vernon in Grazia, who made this point very well.

Soz cross post.

What the Tories worked out is that a good deal of the people who traditionally voted Labour for economic reasons are actually social conservatives, particularly on the issue of immigration which was weaponised for Brexit

I agree with the above. We have some politicians who have understood that there's a growing number of GC among left-wing voters who are dissatisfied with Labour and ready to vote for the Tories.

That said I tend not to trust politicians as they usually only serve their own interests, not their country, even when they promise to only care about citizens.

A GC stance aims at protecting women's rights and spaces.

Will the same ministers who authored "Britannia Unchained" help women and working classes? Hard to tell, one can only hope.

I agree with you OP and I voted remain.

slitheringsnakes

What are the "massive advantages" of being in the EU? Was the UK a total failure before we joined?

@highame

Rabid remoaner and loony left but now centre and GC. Ashamed at how I viewed Brexiteers, which has been mirrored by some posters here.

I saw a really good documentary a couple of years ago. Nick Clegg wanted to understand why so many people (who stood to lose the most) voted to leave. He went to one place in Wales where they had a beautiful community centre, paid for by the EU. The people he interviewed said how lovely it was, but why hadn't the EU brought them jobs instead. It's true EU was seen as a middle class institution with a lack of understanding of the effects of globalisation on their towns. In Hungary the EU funded a fabulous museum/art gallery but no one goes, it is useless?? Why should they vote for a middle class institution? The EU has since recognised its error but that's a bit too late, mate. I think.

There seems to be a lot of talk of the working class as though they are some homogenous group who all voted labour. The self-employed are the group making waves, voting Brexit, voting Tory and are aspirational, not recognised by Labour who expect the WC to be the right sort of WC. You also have the 'left behinds' who had nothing to lose. These groups are all traditionally conservative, they always have been and voted Labour because they thought it must be for them, after all, the name says it all, doesn't it? They have now realised that the biggest cohort in their party is the middle class

There is a simplicity to the arguments on the left. I spent years spouting the same old, same old until I started to think about how much variety there is and how these simplistic socialist ideas are easy to teach because students think, oh great I can actually argue that one, nothing complicated here and if I shout that will be all the better and what's more it's cool.

After lockdown there will be massive economic issues to deal with. Unless Labour really gets it's act together and stops the demand, moan, demand, moan rhetoric, it will continue to alienate the people it needs to attract. Once the myth of 'only vote labour if you're working class' has been broken, only a really good party will bring them back. Labour is not anywhere near that

This is a great post. I feel I owe my Dad an apology. He's very intelligent but not a formally educated man so was never able to verbally formulate the arguments demanded to justify his staunch Brexit stance. My sibling refers to him as marching his way to the Far Right and till recently I would have agreed with her but the more I listen to him and the more I read myself the more I see where he was coming from and what his concerns were. I remember he was apoplectic over the constant challenges and demands for a second referendum and I was very impatient with him over it but I now realise he was terrified that democracy might so easily be overturned and we should all be scared about that, not happy because if we won the 2nd referendum it would be going our - remain - way. I look at the state of the US at the moment and how Trump has destabilised his country by his refusal to accept the election outcome and then I also think back to how Clinton and the left refused to accept the outcome of 2016 election - though we never hear so much about that - and I realise what a precious, fragile thing democracy is and maybe my Dad and his Brexit voting cohort know more than I thought and how the kind, supportive men and women who I have know since childhood and never heard express a racist or hateful opinion have been utterly vilified and dismissed as Far Right for it.

@Ninco

With Jeremy Corbyn, yeah, he was very likely sincere in his politics, but I suspect that most people didn't trust him not to destroy the economy.

That was precisely my point. Anyone who is a genuine socialist that wants to fundamentally change how labour, wealth and distribution works in our society is going to create fear of "destroying the economy", particularly once the Tory press get their claws into them as they did with JC.

On the other hand, anyone who is perceived as being "realistic" and "pragmatic" enough to lead a Labour government without destroying the economy (like Blair, or Brown, or probably Starmer) will, precisely by virtue of that, not be in a position to change very much. And then people will come away saying "well that's all very well, but Labour didn't do anything for the working class".

You can't have it both ways, but Labour somehow is expected to. They're either defending themselves against the risk that committed socialist redistibution poses to capitalism, or they're defending themselves against NOT being committed enough to pose a risk to capitalism! Often the criticisms seem to come from the same people at different times (like andy upthread).

I accept that the 2019 manifesto went too far, although even so it was carefully costed with an acceptance that tax would have to be raised on high earners and corporations to pay for it. But I don't have any illusions that watering it down would have helped. I vividly remember the 2015 election campaign in which Labour produced a very tame, sensible manifesto based on widely accepted centre-left alternatives to austerity. I remember Ed Milliband explaining that while he would like to make higher education free again, that's not economically realistic right now so we would have to settle for reducing fees from 9K to 6K pa. Very "grown up" and sensible.

Then Sajid Javid came out with a Tory "manifesto" scrawled on the back of a fag packet in which there were no detailed costings for anything, and when questioned on it basically said "nah, can't be bothered with all that. You'll just have to trust us." Cos the Tories are good on the economy don't you know? That's why we're doing so well now (even before the pandemic) and austerity made everyone's lives so much better. Guess who got more votes?

I have no problem with people not wanting a socialist PM, that's a rational position if you're broadly happy with how capitalism operates in our society. But then we can't expect the Labour party to be a force for deep structural change either. More than anything, people need to understand that this dichotomy within Labour IS consistently, ruthlessly exploited by the Tory media propaganda machine, and WHICHEVER tendency runs the Labour party, it will ALWAYS be undermined in the minds of the public for not being the other one.

*@andyoldlabour"

"You think the Tories were the cause of "austerity measures" - please think again. I have studied European politics since before the Greek economic crisis. The EU is a very powerful political entity, which has had some very dubious figures at its head, past and present.*

Are you claiming that the Tories didn't really want to institute austerity, but were forced to by the EU?

FifteenToes

Not at all, but if you look across Europe, several countries have been forced by the EU to take economic routes which hurt the poorest in society. I voted Blair into power, thinking it would be a change for the better, particularly as he had pledged in 1995 to get rid of zero hours contracts - he didn't even speak about them when he was in power.
Likewise Clegg for the LibDem coaltion regarding tuition fees.
I think if Labour were in power and we were still in the EU, I think Labour would bow down to the EU.

Yes, the UK was going downhill as a country before it joined the EU. And being outside the EU will be far, far more difficult now than it was in the early 70s.

Very good post Fifteen toes. Especially the point that most Labour - or Tory / Liberal - voters haven't given this issue much heed up til now. The problems wont become apparent until it affects ppl personally , maybe in sports or their children's schooling. Brexit is complex. It is hard to know what people voted for really.

Haven't RTFT but I completely agree OP. Child of Eastern European immigrants here and my whole family voted Brexit. Apparently that makes us "racist" (against err... other Eastern Europeans? How does that work?)

I also see lots of similarities between Pro-Palestinian anti-semites and TRAs and in fact believe TRAs got a lot of their tactics from them.

And yes, I work in an industry where my view on TRAs and Brexit would make me unemployable and my views on Israel/"Palestine" have made me ostracised to some extent.

Yeah I agree OP.