An unsurprising Be Leaver interpretation of victory
My girlfriend just sent me this photo from #Newcastle. Absolutely unbelievable #BrexitBritain #Brexit #EUref pic.twitter.com/EhA96ZUHSq
— daniel watson (@DWxLW) June 25, 2016
Commentarion CrunchyFrog shared a link about responses to the success of the [ahem] populist Leave campaign.
People have been reporting incidents of racism believed to be fuelled by the result of the EU referendum, including alleged racist graffiti on a Polish cultural centre in London and cards reading “no more Polish vermin” posted through letterboxes and outside a primary school in Cambridgeshire.
And
In Gloucester, Max Fras said he was in a Tesco supermarket on Friday night with his young son when a white man became agitated in the queue for the checkout and began yelling: “This is England now, foreigners have 48 hours to fuck right off. Who is foreign here? Anyone foreign?”
And
Welsh businesswoman and remain campaigner Shazia Awan was told to pack her bags and go home after she expressed disappointment in the leave result.
And so on.
Couple of thoughts
– I hope the asshole be leavers ordinary, decent people settle down before they physically harm someone else, in the same way I hope someone will give me a million dollars. How they’re behaving when they’re happy is as unexpected as how they behave when they are unhappy.
– This is as good example as any of why wondering how Trump’s nastiest supporters will react if he loses strikes me as a strange and uninteresting way to waste time. And also why any discussion of these people’s motives that doesn’t put bigotry up front is at best, unbelievably naive. (As in, I can’t believe anyone is really that naive.)
But just in case I’m being a smidge too cynical, here’s how it always works: The bigot’s interpretation of any event imaginable is that it’s time to exercise his God-given right to lash out at The Enemy.
Don’t get what you want? Attack. Do get what you want? Attack. Not sure you’ll get what you want? Attack. Not sure what you want? Attack. Troubled by vague stirrings of anomie? Exactly.
The bigots who are willing to scream and assault are essential to the ones who still play that funky dog whistle for the sections of the public that will nod along while a politician outlines his three-step plan to make children into pies, provided he does so in a civil manner. (And he isn’t threatening their children.)
The pols and pundits in turn give their volunteer thugs a sense that they’re right, part of something big (and perhaps noble) and that they have something in common with people who in reality wouldn’t have their personal assistant piss on them if they were on fire. What remains (bremains?) to be seen in Britain is what, if anything, will the pols do with their mob? Maybe Boris Johnson will include that in his speech to breassure the nation.
As an aside, since I started writing this, a neo-Nazi traditionalist workers’ rally in Sacramento has ended in bloodshed.