the day after the deadline: can the union survive brexit and other deep questions

The Final Solution isn't mainly about us as individuals. It's about the future of our country & its contribution to the world & world history over the long term - including those not yet borne & those not in Greater Germany. Your next 10 years are irrelevant.

Lolico was talking about the cultural/scientific brain drain loss of all the genius IQ's of European Jewry's exterminated holocaust victims the other week, he's not far off fucking insane and quite impossible to take seriously tbh!

He was just kicking some racial science with Jordan Peterson.

by Lolico's logic that shouldn't have been a problem in the long term, it was a mere 10 year blip

i mean i do understand the sweet, sweet taste of Remoany tears but these guys are so bad at it

but it’s a genuine question - is this some sort of deranged hayekian reification or even deification of The Market as supreme being to serve, which it is our duty to bring about? it doesn’t feel particularly nationalistic, more atlanticist neoliberalism?

I think in addition to the market concerns a lot of people take the (obviously real) xenophobic element of brexit to mean that it happening will lead the UK down an unstoppable road to becoming an isolationist, ultra-nationalist regime and I reckon that's partly what Lilico is handwringing about. Being part of the EU is like an identity thing for a lot of people.

could also lead us down the dark road to Carry On films and The Beatles

Good news for ILM and Julian Clary then!

Lolico was talking about the cultural/scientific brain drain loss of all the genius IQ's of European Jewry's exterminated holocaust victims the other week, he's not far off fucking insane and quite impossible to take seriously tbh!

― calzino, Saturday, 12 May 2018 09:17 (eight minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i know! he's one of these people who seems to have no qualification to talk about what he talks about, something that's exacerbated by the extreme pissiness with which he goes about it. one of those people, like hannan and JRM who consider themselves exceptionally superior because they are experts at what's in their own head.

I was gonna give some caveat that we don't really need to leave the EU to go down that road.

xp
In common with JRM I'd bet Lolico hasn't really changed that much or had a software update since he was 12 years old, his model of clueless dickhead's inception date! Just saying this after N Robinson played a vintage bbc soundclip of 12 yr old JRM talking the other week, presumably because it was meant to be charming.

but it’s a genuine question - is this some sort of deranged hayekian reification or even deification of The Market as supreme being to serve, which it is our duty to bring about? it doesn’t feel particularly nationalistic, more atlanticist neoliberalism?

I think this article where he explains his belief in 'duty-driven imperialism' is illuminating in where he's coming from - the white man's burden, basically?

I do not believe in self-determination, at all. And I believe that the proper role of democracy is as the handmaiden of liberalism, never its master. We have democracy because (a) once we have a sufficiently secure liberal state (but only then!) democracy allows for a peaceful change of rulers; (b) once we have a sufficiently sophisticated political class (but only then!) democracy is a legitimate expression of liberty; (c) if we have a sufficiently secure liberal state (with proper limits to the exercise of democracy), and a sufficiently educated and experienced voting class (but only then!) the threat to liberalism represented by democracy (which is always present, and always dangerous) is nearly offset by an appetite and respect for liberalism amongst voters.

Thus, we have a duty to assist the oppressed of the world, even when that is not in our national interest and even when they, collectively, would not like it afterwards. We will be hated when we invade, and hated when we stay; our blood and treasure will be spent on matters that do not further our national interest; and sometimes our interventions will go wrong, causing the deaths of many. So be it. Honour and duty demand nothing less.

http://conservativehome.blogs.com/columnists/2007/11/andrew-lilico-w.html

xp
In common with JRM I'd bet Lolico hasn't really changed that much or had a software update since he was 12 years old, his model of clueless dickhead's inception date! Just saying this after N Robinson played a vintage bbc soundclip of 12 yr old JRM talking the other week, presumably because it was meant to be charming.

my god, thanks soref. i think. that is truly deranged.

... little matter of a royal wedding a week from now. (xp)

we can only hope some of ISIS's finest can step up to the plate next week, allahu akbar!

that made me laugh quite hard so the person serving in the cafe asked me what i was laughing at.

“...er nothing”

just winding up Mordy tbh!

Mordy <3 Harry + Megz

listening to dont stand me down a *lot* recently and always get a real emphatic kick out of the line “you know how the english upper classes are thick and ignorant?”. v fine.

always sing that extra loud if i hear it in the pub

Meanwhile, peering through the other end of telegraphscope...

https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/958465/Brexit-news-Jacob-Rees-Mogg-BBC-Brexit-Northern-Ireland-border

"Brexit news: Jacob Rees-Mogg simply pointed out that the question was wrong" [read that in a haughty RP voice with added "you fucking pleb" rejoinder]

was going to catch up with the other night's QT w/ Chloe Westley (young grotesque from Taxpayers Alliance),Esther McVey, Chukka ... what level of hell is this? Tbf the young rapper guy Akala seemed quite good, but I couldn't get past 5 mins.

i was worried my Facebook friends who were approvingly posting about him would drop the "articulate" bomb so i stopped reading the posts

Try to watch the final five minutes for Akala mugging off a fairly obvious Tory Boy plant and Chuka bursting to join in the mug-off.

just ff-ed to that bit, yeah horsey faced Tory Boy got enjoyably mugged!

On the one hand, go on Akala, on the other hand, now I unfortunately know who Chloe Westley is.

I wonder if Chloe socialises with Kate Andrews, or maybe mysteriously they've never been seen in the same room together before!

Chuka straining to say something arch/woke to Tory Boy but hiding behind a harder lad’s mug-off tells you everything you might need to know about who Chuka was at school.

Akala shops at the farmer’s market I go to - inevitably he winds up chatting to younger people who work there who want to chat about ISSUES and it turns into an impromptu consciousness-raising sesh. He’s great, isn’t troubled by the interruption to his day at all; I think he enjoys sending these early-20s guys off with book recommendations.

i swear more democracy is done at your farmer’s market than in parliament, suzy.

Akala keeps his composure and calm much better than I could have if seated next that .. thing.

The last time I was seated next to that thing, she was in my friend’s garden in Canonbury, it was 1994, and ISTR she was happy to smoke the puff going around. I sincerely doubt my friend (Northern actress, hard lefty) remained her friend once she got involved with the Tories.

I can’t remember if we mentioned to Akala about David Cameron coming to the farmer’s market early in 2016 and getting yelled at - many decibels were involved - by the guy on the tomato stall to take in more refugees. One of Cam’s goons called tomato HQ and tried to have the vendor sacked, but was told to FRO.

Being part of the EU is like an identity thing for a lot of people.

I mean, yeah? You don't really need the 'like' there.

Andrew, without wanting to go back to ground we've already covered: to see the EU as part of yer identity isn't really something that extends across most of the EU, and means radically different things in different pockets of it, so I don't think it's a given.

I'm not sure what you mean by that last. I'm not suggesting that everyone in the EU considers themselves European - apart from anything else, this would require me to ignore the fact that the UK is in the EU. But nor should it be news that people do consider themselves European, and consider it a good thing.

Being European is not the same thing as being in the EU. The conflation of the two - and consequently the idea that exit from the EU is an attack on your identity as a European - is what has always puzzled me about many of the UK people I've met. It seems divorced from how the EU is perceived in most of its member states.

the greatest trick the devil ever pulled etc

Fwiw I also dunno if I'm entirely comfortable w/ the idea that being European-qua-European is a particularly good thing, what with us having collectively raped and looted the rest of the world for centuries before becoming vaguely respectable by virtue of standing next to the US and letting their monstrosity make us look good. But that's a separate conversation.

pretty sure Greek people are still proud to belong to the EU

They fucking love it.

I think they love it more than we do tbh.

if you love milquetoast capitalism, you'll fucking love the EU

Being European is not the same thing as being in the EU. The conflation of the two - and consequently the idea that exit from the EU is an attack on your identity as a European - is what has always puzzled me about many of the UK people I've met. It seems divorced from how the EU is perceived in most of its member states.

― Daniel_Rf, Sunday, 13 May 2018 11:48 (thirteen minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i think that's because the boris johnson imagination of the eu has managed to completely capture the popular narrative in this country so that its only seen as a load of belgian spoilsports with measuring tapes and clipboards shutting down hospitals for veterans because the door handles fall well outside common market guidelines. but there is a definite sense in other countries that participation in european institutions actually does contribute to a sense of national identity; a modern and internationalist placing of oneself in the world. Definitely I knew a lot of people that felt very strongly about this in Ireland when I lived there. One boyfriend in particular who would literally slap an EU flag on anything. This was like 2006 11`

To be clear, the EU is rather horrible. Its rhetorics of open-borders completely at odds with the heavy policing of its peripheries. It is a neoliberal expropriative machine at the service of global finance, etc etc. But the symbolic meaning it has in forming a kind of identity is real. In this sense I don't think it is possible to discount the very different experience that other European countries have had in their recent history of: colonialism, fascism, Stalinism.

v otm

Sure, they're not identical - the vision of Europeanness from the EU is the one that doesn't involve your Youtube suggestions being clogged up with people talking about European Destiny. It is designed as a reaction to proto-neo-Nazis.

I could definitely been clearer about that, you're right.

plaxico otm, but 'horrible', as they say, may depend on what you're comparing it to. As an example, the last million times I've heard a UK politician complain about being forced to do something by the EU, I've been firmly on the side of the EU - that impression accretes.

Sure, they're not identical - the vision of Europeanness from the EU is the one that doesn't involve your Youtube suggestions being clogged up with people talking about European Destiny. It is designed as a reaction to proto-neo-Nazis.

Come on now. The EU was designed as an economic counterweight to the US and USSR; it does not hold a monopoly on anti-nativist thought, and that kinda binary is part of what frustrates me about having these discussions in the UK.

but there is a definite sense in other countries that participation in european institutions actually does contribute to a sense of national identity; a modern and internationalist placing of oneself in the world.

Yeah, we had that in Portugal in the late 80's/early 90's - I even had a Panini sticker album about the EU! - but post-Eurozone crisis and enforced austerity from the EU, we've been pretty well cured of that. Same scenario amongst the other PIGS, from my experience.

The founding myths of the European Union - fraternity amongst peoples, rising back up after the trauma of two world wars, all that - are of course very inspiring but if you've paid attention to what the EU has been up to in the last decade or so it's pretty clear they have zilch to do with what the organisation functions for, and to frame the debate purely in those terms leads to this naive discourse that both a lot of leavers and remainers buy into, that it's about saying yay or nay to a set of "European values" that include bureaucracy and paternalism if you're pro-brexit or anti-nationalism and pacifism if you're anti.

FWIW I'd say the vast majority of people in this country just didn't notice the EU unless their attention was being explicitly drawn to it, which was usually via the right-wing press or when they were at the airport.

'Identity' is a particularly slippery issue here, given we are mostly talking about people who have never lived outside the EU - and when people disparage 'identity politics' they generally aren't talking about white British identity politics, which are never ever framed as such. I'd argue that the number of people who consider the EU to be part of their identity is dwarfed by the number that consider 'Britishness' or 'Englishness' part of their identity - and with it separation from EU, controls on immigration etc, which is the whole fucking problem.

(Of course the EU has not been a great advert for itself in recent years but I really don't think its behaviour towards Greece comes into it for many people in this country. And the cuddly brotherhood of nations thing, whatever's lurking behind it, is not easily dismissed when you consider most of the rest of Europe's history.)

Ultimately a lot of Brexit sentiment essentially boils down to English chauvinism of various stripes, and when you consider who always ends up at the shit end of it, opposing English chauvinism might actually be more important in the long run than the make-up of the British economy, or who leads the Labour Party, even if those issues can't be neatly separated.