{"id":1859,"date":"2020-02-01T18:18:25","date_gmt":"2020-02-01T18:18:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.markargent.com\/blog\/?p=1859"},"modified":"2020-02-03T19:30:05","modified_gmt":"2020-02-03T19:30:05","slug":"brexit-arrives-a-day-of-sadness-and-grief","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.markargent.com\/blog\/brexit-arrives-a-day-of-sadness-and-grief\/","title":{"rendered":"Brexit arrives: a day of sadness and grief"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

As it happens I was in London on \u201cBrexit Day\u201d (though thought better of going near Parliament Square in the evening). I saw someone selling The Big Issue<\/em>, with a front cover asking \u201cWould the Kindertransport be welcomed now\u201d. Yes, that is a reference to the Dubs amendment, rejected by parliament, that would have offered protection to unaccompanied children. But the xenophobia unleashed by Brexit is ugly. The stories of people who have lived in the UK for years being denied settled status brings up unsettling associations with the treatment of minorities \u2014 most especially Jewish people \u2014 in Hitler\u2019s Germany. It\u2019s easy to say that is \u201ctotally different\u201d. But is it?<\/p>\n

On a news stand I saw a copy of Le Monde<\/em>. The headline “Brexit: L’Europe entre dans l’inconnu” (Brexit: Europe enters the unknown) fits with the front cover of The Economist — a ship captioned “into the unknown“. That’s a more realistic assessment than None of Boris Johnson\u2019s crazy optimism.
\n<\/p>\n

A google search for something else produced a string of responses around \u201cBritish Empire 2.0\u201d. These are newspaper responses highlighting the nostalgic nonsense behind Brexit. It was topped by one in The Guardian<\/em> entitled \u201cEmpire 2.0: the fantasy that’s fuelling Tory divisions on Brexit<\/a>\u201d Yet in this day and age, to ignore the destructive side of the British Empire is somewhere between historical illiteracy and wilful ignorance.<\/p>\n

I mentioned Chistopher Wylie\u2019s book Mindf*ck, inside Cambridge Analytica\u2019s plot to break the world<\/em> to someone. The book is a devastating expos\u00e9 of Cambridge Analytica\u2019s work undermining faith in electoral processes and using the tools psychological warfare to find people susceptible to their messaging. This isn\u2019t about democracy. It is about the techniques that could be used in war to undermine and manipulate people. Among the comments that stand out in my memory are the tricks used to persuade people that the EU is racist (because most of the EU migrants to the UK are white), and to persuade people that \u201cthe economy\u201d is about bankers and rich people, not ordinary voters, which explains people\u2019s willingness to ignore the economic implications. But psychological warfare isn\u2019t just about persuading people. It is about spreading disinformation in a way that undermines trust in democracy, and plays with people\u2019s minds. That mobilises anxiety and minimises reason. No wonder the arguments from Leave supporters have been so simple.<\/p>\n

We\u2019d agreed to send an email to members of Huntingdonshire Liberal Democrats, which references to \u201cProfound sadness\u201d and \u201cdeep-felt grief\u201d. Talking about it with our Chair, I found myself fighting back tears. The emotions are real.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Parliament petition web site, 1 February 2020<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I looked on the Parliament petitions web site<\/a> to see if there was a petition being run to rejoin the EU. It has a notice saying that \u201cPetitions had to stop because of the recent general election. As soon as a new Petitions Committee is set up by the House of Commons, petitions will start again.\u201d So\u2026 it\u2019s possible to \u201cdeliver Brexit\u201d but not to set up a committee? Given the success of the last petition to stop Brexit, this stinks \u2014 it sounds very much like a government trying to avoid enabling a petition that would show the depth of opposition to Brexit.<\/p>\n

Come to that, the report into Russian interference in the referendum has still not been released<\/a>. The last Chair of the Intelligence Select Committee, Dominic Grieve, described Boris Johnson\u2019s delaying of this until after the election as \u201cjaw-dropping\u201d. If it doesn\u2019t cast doubt on the integrity of the referendum, why did Johnson want to delay it (and get a General Election in before it came out). Johnson can\u2019t delay indefinitely, but this needs a new Intelligence and Security Select Committee. That too hasn\u2019t been appointed yet. So, it\u2019s delayed until it is too late for a backlash to stop Brexit. <\/p>\n

So, we have grief and horror at Brexit, and a government fiddling to stop opposition being expressed and to suppress information that would fuel that opposition. The word \u201cundemocratic\u201d comes to mind.<\/p>\n

And the sadness\u2026 Yes, it is grief. Grief for all the cultural ties being damaged and the harm being done. More than that, it is grief at the co-operation being trashed. More than that, it is a recognition that playing with people\u2019s minds is a dangerous game. It \u2014 illegitimately \u2014 manipulates them into voting against their interests. But it paralyses thinking. It\u2019s the situation where a country becomes ripe for fascist thinking. This isn\u2019t to accuse Boris Johnson and his circle of fascism \u2014 it is to accuse them of rashly opening the door to the madness the EU was set up to contain. It may be more irresponsible than malicious, but it is deeply dangerous.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The arrival of Brexit is the triumph of nostalgia and folly. It\u2019s Britain launching on a rash denial of reality with serious consequences. It\u2019s turning our backs on an institution built to secure our future. It\u2019s ripping us from our cultural heritage. It has dangerous historical associations. \u201cGet Brexit done\u201d is the political lie since the claim that the Great War would be \u201cover by Christmas\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_wpscppro_dont_share_socialmedia":false,"_wpscppro_custom_social_share_image":0,"_facebook_share_type":"","_twitter_share_type":"","_linkedin_share_type":"","_pinterest_share_type":"","_linkedin_share_type_page":"","_instagram_share_type":"","_medium_share_type":"","_threads_share_type":"","_google_business_share_type":"","_selected_social_profile":[],"_wpsp_enable_custom_social_template":false,"_wpsp_social_scheduling":{"enabled":false,"datetime":null,"platforms":[],"status":"template_only","dateOption":"today","timeOption":"now","customDays":"","customHours":"","customDate":"","customTime":"","schedulingType":"absolute"},"_wpsp_active_default_template":true},"categories":[72,2],"tags":[274,275],"class_list":["post-1859","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-brexit-politics","category-politics","tag-brexit-day","tag-into-the-unknown"],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.markargent.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1859","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.markargent.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.markargent.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.markargent.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.markargent.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1859"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.markargent.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1859\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1868,"href":"https:\/\/www.markargent.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1859\/revisions\/1868"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.markargent.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1859"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.markargent.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1859"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.markargent.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1859"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}