[D66] Eurokwezels

Dr. Marc-Alexander Fluks fluks at combidom.com
Sat Jul 2 14:10:36 CEST 2016


Bron:   Spiked
Datum:  29 juni 2016
Auteur: Brendan O'Neill
URL:    
http://www.spiked-online.com/newsite/article/brexit-this-was-a-vote-against-bigotry-not-for-it/18514


Brexit: this was a vote against bigotry, not for it
---------------------------------------------------
The people have rebelled against the bigotry of the elites.

What is a bigot? That term is now so overused - to describe everyone 
from foreigner-hating skinheads to feminist academics who question 
transgenderism - that we have lost sight of its meaning. It's now 
basically a stand-in for 'unpleasant', deployed against people we simply 
don't like or understand. But bigot has a very specific meaning. It 
doesn't mean gruff or un-PC or even 'worried about immigration'. It 
means, as the Oxford English Dictionary spells out, 'intolerance towards 
those who hold different opinions to oneself'. A bigot is someone who is 
so 'obstinately and blindly devoted to his own church, party, belief, or 
opinion' that he comes to loathe those of a different church, party, 
belief or opinion. Which raises a pressing and intriguing question: in 
Britain's EU referendum debate, who, really, are the bigots?

The narrative pumped out by most of the media and political set, before 
the referendum and even more intensively after it, says that Brexiteers 
are the bigots. They voted for hate and xenophobia, apparently. Brexit 
was 'fuelled' by bigotry, says one observer, specifically 'bigotry on 
the basis of national origin'. It was a 'vote for hate', pro-EU 
protesters claim. The victory for Brexit means 'prejudice [and] 
xenophobia' have 'won out over common sense', says one columnist. All 
the talk among the well-connected of how out of sync they now feel with 
Britain, and how scared they are of the bigotry now finding public 
expression, is meant to give an impression of them as progressive and 
the others - the 17.5million people who voted Leave - as backward, 
hateful, possibly dangerous. Remainers are against bigotry, Leavers are 
for it - right?

This is an almost perfect inversion of reality. If we are talking about 
blind and obstinate devotion to a certain outlook, and a corresponding 
intolerance for those who hold different outlooks, then it is the Remain 
campaign and its media and political backers who have behaved as bigots. 
Their intolerance of the opposite side, of the masses who voted Leave, 
has been alarming. They have written them off as 'low information', 
racist, overemotional, lacking the expertise required to make big 
political decisions. 'The chavs have won', as one Glastonbury attendee 
told The Sunday Times. These people are 'mindlessly angry', says one 
observer. They are 'ignorant'. They are so lacking in basic nous and 
intelligence that they are 'ripe for canny right-wing operators to 
manipulate'. The leaders of Leave 'lifted several stones' to let these 
kind of views out, said one columnist, as if Leavers are insects. 'It is 
as if the sewers have burst', said another, as if they are shit. 
Newspaper cartoons have depicted Leave advocates as rats vomiting into 
the sewer of public opinion, and as dogs salivating at their computers.

You want to see bigotry? Look at all of that. It has been explicit and 
relentless and extremely ugly. After the referendum in particular, the 
media set has engaged in a great, long sneer at the hoodwinked idiotic 
public, looking with contempt, or even worse, pity, at the 
knuckle-draggers who have apparently destroyed our nation. Such is their 
intolerance that many are now demanding either that a second referendum 
be held or that the result simply be overturned. At a pro-EU - but 
really just anti-democratic - gathering in Trafalgar Square, where 
people held placards slamming white people and old people, a lawyer said 
from the platform that there is too much 'mass confusion' for decisions 
like this to be made by the public; instead they must be made by 
politicians.

That is bigotry. This intolerance for people who are different, the 
smearing of them as morally ill-equipped for political life, the 
depiction of them as animals, the attempt to override their political 
desires - that is the living, breathing definition of bigotry, of 
'intolerance towards those who hold different opinions to oneself'. 
Observers have casually asserted that Leavers are bigots, who hate 
immigrants, but the facts do not bear this out: a post-referendum ComRes 
poll found only 34 per cent of Leave voters gave immigration as their 
main concern, where 53 per cent said Britain's ability to write its own 
laws was their big issue. And yet even as the media elites make their 
unconvincing assertion about a vast swathe of British society being 
bigoted, they openly express bigoted views of their own, against the 
poor, the old, the white working class, chavs, the mindless mass of 
society. It takes a special kind of chutzpah to denounce your opponents 
as bigots even as you partake in bigotry.

Indeed, it has become clear in recent days that the worst bigotry in 
Britain right now is the 'anti-bigotry' of the liberal elite. It is 
through posturing against the alleged bigotry of the little people that 
the political and media classes express their own bigotry. Their 
obstinate devotion not simply to the EU but to the idea that their way 
of life is superior to poorer people's way of life, that their political 
and cultural outlook is better than yours, has made them alarmingly 
intolerant of political and moral difference. It has made them bigots. 
This explains why so many leading Remainers have responded with such 
anger and shrillness to the referendum result: because their starting 
point is moral obstinacy, not openness to debate or democratic change. 
One of the most rewarding things about this whole process is that it has 
exposed the hollowness of the political and media elites' PC platitudes. 
The veil has been torn aside, and we can now see the utter emptiness of 
their claims to care for ordinary people, to consider all views equally 
valid, to want to listen to us and empower us. In truth, they are 
bigoted towards us; they wish we would not speak.

And it is precisely this bigotry of the elites that many poorer and 
working-class people will have decided to strike against in the 
referendum. They seized an opportunity to protest against an 
establishment which for too long has treated them and their way of life 
with contempt, which has sneered at them for being too fat, unhealthy, 
bad at parenting, overly obsessed with flags and football, and basically 
unpleasant people in need of correction from on high. People kicked back 
against that. They protested against elitist intolerance and disdain for 
their way of life. Here's the thing: their vote against the EU was far 
more a vote against bigotry than for it.

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(c) 2016 Spiked Ltd


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