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THOUGHT EXPERIMENT: IMAGINE you are Cillian Murphy at the start of 28 Days Later but instead of 28 days you’ve been unconscious for a year, and instead of a zombie apocalypse you awaken to the world as it is today. Would you believe what you were seeing?
It’s been over a year since I wrote a piece for TheJournal.ie about joining the Labour party and the startling rise of Jeremy Corbyn. In that space of time we have seen the UK vote to leave the EU, the USA vote to elect Donald Trump and a very near miss for the far right in Austria.
2016 was like some cosmic prank
We have seen Russia massively ramp up its military intervention in Syria, ongoing and widening divisions in the Middle East, Islamic extremism establish a foothold in mainland Europe and a general failure of western media to properly challenge blatant lies spouted by elected officials amidst a resurgence of populist, nationalist and racist rhetoric.
We have watched the beginnings (because it is only the beginning) of the greatest mass movement of people in the history of the planet in what is currently dubbed the Migration Crisis. Not to mention the apparent epidemic afflicting our most celebrated icons and the Killer Clown craze. Yes, it would appear as though 2016 were just an exercise in dystopian surrealism or some sort of cosmic prank.
Those on the political left have sadly responded by living up to the usual stereotype: either blaming each other or arguing about who to blame, while the far right have succeeded in lowering the bar for political discourse and gaining serious political ground.
Those in power meanwhile waste time attempting to diagnose the disease after the patient has gone into cardiac arrest. There is now a real danger that a lack of understanding and a too-slow response will push more democracies towards more radical alternatives.
France, for example, is now a major cause for disquiet. Even if the French cast aside Marine Le Pen’s racist demagoguery, François Fillon means the left will have already lost ground. The mere fact that he is being described as CENTRE-right speaks volumes when you scrutinise some of his social policies, which are far from centre.
My unease turned to anger and shock
I don’t really believe it is true to say that the Brexiters and UKIP won the referendum, but rather it is more accurate to say the other side lost. They completely dropped the proverbial ball. Cameron employed the tactics used so effectively in the General Election campaign.
When the American President came to the UK and told the people here that they would be at the back of the queue for any trade deals should they vote to leave, I couldn’t help but ask myself how they thought that would look. Of course one of the key tenets of neoliberalism is that people are rational actors and would therefore not act against their own interests.
But people are much more complex in reality. Besides, when did it become acceptable for the leader of a foreign power to actually visit another country and intervene in their democracy?
I was in Exmouth Market looking for lunch a couple of days before the referendum when I was stopped by a Government campaigner to ask which way I’d be voting. I told him I was a member of the Labour Party and would be voting Remain. I told him I was disappointed that David Cameron had effectively decided to employ the tactics of notorious right-wing strategist Lynton Crosby.
His response was: “I know, I know, I hate Crosby, he’s a ghastly man but this is really dangerously close now.” It was a quintessentially grassroots-Tory response and I couldn’t help smile a little at the use of the word “ghastly”.
Parallels between Brexit and Trump’s election
Just as the courting of fringe demographics by US Republicans over decades created the space for Trump despite the party’s own wishes, Brexit was the result of the Conservative Party indulging in long-held bogus claims about the EU.
Doing so was about appeasing a vocal minority within the party itself who refuse to let the Empire die. It might be difficult for people in Ireland to comprehend but there really were people here who cited “straight bananas” as a reason to vote leave and therefore “take back control” (presumably of their bananas).
These are the days of the populist and while it is unpalatable to many on the left to indulge in the practices so diligently and effectively employed by the right, it is surely self-evident that the main strength of the right is its simplicity.
Even unoriginal slogans like “take back control” and “make America great again” are simple and effective messages that give voice to a sense of loss or at least a loss of control that many people feel. It seemingly doesn’t even matter if they’re followed through or not. “Lock her up” anyone?
What do we know about Brexit so far?
Well, we know that it will be of a consistency that is yet to be decided: a soft Brexit or a hard Brexit. Colour-palette wise it will likely be either grey, or red, white and blue. The vacuity of these statements is almost Python-esque and yet they are circulated and repeated again and again until (almost) legitimised.
Labour’s leadership has been depressingly ineffective and the current strategy of appealing to both Remainers and Brexiters is impossible to actually achieve. The party’s recent win in forcing the Prime Minister into promising to give details of her Brexit plans gave some hope, however.
The other big news stories
We have seen the secret mechanisms exposed that enable the rich to hide their wealth in offshore trusts, remember the now curiously quiet Panama Papers?
Jo Cox, a Labour MP, was shot dead outside her local constituency surgery during the poisonous Brexit campaign for her welcoming stance on immigration. The UK has passed the use of the most intrusive surveillance powers in the developed world in the Investigatory Powers Bill, and around a year ago the world had finally reached some form of consensus on a combined effort to tackle climate change in the Paris Agreement.
The last of these is under serious threat now that a climate change denier holds the highest office on the planet, despite the fact that denying climate change today is the equivalent of standing in a burning house which you know is on fire but refusing to acknowledge the fire until you yourself are set ablaze.
‘I no longer feel welcome’
The spikes in hate crime after both Brexit and Trump have been well documented and the notion that this small but vicious sector of society now feels empowered is very worrying for many people.
What we are now bearing witness to is a complex set of circumstances which has ingrained disenfranchisement within large sectors of the developed world, something which will surely be exacerbated as vast numbers of people flee their current dire circumstances and migrate west in an existential desperation.
We find this extremely difficult to understand and our elected officials – wedded as they are to an outmoded neoliberal system – are categorically failing to deal with it.
There are seeds of hope within all this gloom. I think the current climate will force people to become more politically engaged by sheer necessity and there are already policy changes happening within the power circles of the world. The only real question is will they happen fast enough?
It is no longer acceptable to extol the virtues of the EU without acknowledging its many problems and we need to fix them quickly. When Europe rumbles the world should know, by now, to tremble.
Ruairí O’Grady is a journalism graduate, a Monaghan man and a London resident. He is a member of the Labour Party.
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It’s not difficult to understand at all, Ruairi. It’s actually really simple. Neo liberalism is dead. Unchecked immigration is dead. Any further expansion of an autocratic EU is definitely dead
What exactly do you mean by saying neoliberalism, unchecked immigration and an autocratic EU is dead? Neoliberalism will flourish because it is the wish of the wealthy to remain wealthy and neoliberalism, with all its tentacles in education, science and politics is the best means they have had of ensuring their survival since feudalism. Only the left is opposing neoliberalism, and rightly so, if we are ever to have a world with less inequality and any semblance of real democracy and justice.
Ruairi. You do realise that Brexit and Trump are the result of democratic votes? You write like these were coups forced upon the people.
@Peter Gavin:
and he fails to realise that Jeremy Corbyn has always been a Euro-skeptic despite Corbyn being the reason he joined the current Labour party.
also, Seamus Milne, Corbyn’s right-hand man and key aide, described Ireland as a “pariah state” in having a low corporate tax rate that should be increased in line witt the UK’s corporate tax rate.
lastly, the so-called “spike in hate crimes” since Brexit. Many of those incidents (the police cannot say how many yet) were reported through True Vision, a police-funded website that allows anyone anywhere to report something they either experienced or witnessed, anonymously if they like. No evidence is needed. Everything is instantly logged as a hate incident. That inevitably presents a warped view of reality.
O’ Grady says he no longer feels welcome but doesn’t say how that manifests itself or indeed how he was made feel welcome before.
The article is total confused Left wing diatribe from start to finish.
Ruairi is feeling less welcome?????? I have no time for”feelings” politics. Sick and tired of FAKE news. Britain is leaving the EU and fair play to them. Ireland should follow.
@John Burke:
I’d say the 50% increase in daily racial & ethnic attacks in the UK since the vote is making him feel less welcome alright.
@Fred Johnson: Any reliable stats to back up that comment Fred?????
@John Burke:
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/sep/07/hate-surged-after-eu-referendum-police-figures-show
@Fred Johnson: The Guardian is the home of the Labour party, any real government stats??????
@John Burke:
You don’t believe police figures now John?
Not as interpreted by the Guardian!
@John Burke: suck it up ffs
@John Burke Indeed John. The fabricated ‘racist surge’ is part of the anti democratic europhile strategy dedicated to undermining the majority decision of the British electorate: along with the odious, foul attempt to portray Leave voters as somehow unfit to take part in the electoral process. http://www.spiked-online.com/newsite/article/brexit-the-myth-of-a-racist-surge/18566#.WGOeaFnLfqA
A melodramatic opinion piece based largely on emotion and very lacking in statistical facts. The EU political union is not fit for purpose and is beyond saving. ‘Brexit and Trump made me feel less welcome in the UK’ – What a loaded leftie liberal title.
@John Fergus:
Yes, typical leftie emotional diatribe.
He doesn’t seem to realise that Corbyn has destroyed the labour party and made them unelectable. He’s putting the blame in the Tories hands yet he’s still calling the people who wanted to leave a bunch of misinformed racists. He’s seemed to have learned nothing except that the EU maybe has some problems that they should at least acknowledge. But no mention of the terror campaign being waged against Europe and how it’s being fuelled by ever more asylum seekers.
Congratulations Ruairí – great article. Fake news & unbalanced news has misguided many.
@John Fergus: it is your typical piece written by a member of generation snowflake. I’m sure he went to the effort of signing multiple online petitions.
Just as short in detail and evidence as your own comment. Emotion is important for decision making and the wellbeing of individuals.
@Richard O’Driscoll: Shouldn’t make decisions based on emotions. Bad idea
I’m English living in ireland I don’t get this journalist at all. No way has the election of trump made me feel less welcome in Ireland. What has trump got to do with anything? Also I’m glad england voted to leave, hopefully more European countries will follow
I’m Irish living in London and I don’t feel any less welcome either,silly stuff!
England didn’t vote to leave… the United Kingdom did. Not that your ignorance of the difference between the two surprises me in the slightest.
Yeah but in Scotland and Northern Ireland the remain vote was higher so it’s accurate enough. I’ll explain it in simple terms. If I have a yellow bicycle and I say “the handlebars are yellow”, that doesn’t mean I’m saying the rest of the bike isn’t yellow. I’d be talking about part of a whole.
@Allison Smith:
You realise you’re a migrant Allison?. Just so we’re clear. A migrant that has moved to another EU member state.
@Fred Johnson:
Are you suggesting that UK and Irish nationals who reside in these islands and move within them under the Common Travel Area agreement should be treated under EU free movement rules, now. or when the UK exits the EU?
When you grow up Rauiri, you will judge events in decades rather than one year at a time.
I am an Irishman, I can speak reasonable Gaelic and have fought a hard long battle to save the Irish landscape North and South from the encroachment of massive pylons and stupid wind farms. I admire Michael Collins and accept Eamon DeValera’s contribution to our constitution as part of my citizen’s rights. I worked hard to encourage British voters to support Brexit and sent 300 euros to the USA in August this year to help Trump get elected. I wont a considerable amount betting on Trump with bookmakers. I applaud and thank British and US voters for how they voted and feel they saved the world from a dangerous undemocratic rump best described as Commie, Socialist, Green, Neo Liberal, Celebrity guided, yes man, politically correct, mono-culture. Those who don’t agree with me better understand that I will never submit to your oppression and recommend you get a proper education, I am available for any public debate, which will never be allowed on MS Media, but is allowed here.
@Val. You’re a foreigner that sent 300 euro to an American billionaire….weird.
A lot of people without a proper education seem to have voted for this result..
@Red Marauder:
A lot of people with a proper education voted for this result as well. What’s your point?
Val, please help me understand what you are saying here. (I’m Irish, also speak Irish and have great respect for others who helped us gain the little independence we have, by the way). You actually think that your 300 euros helped save the US from neoliberalism, celebrity guided, socialist, politically correct, mono culture? So sorry Val, if all this wasn’t a misprint on your part, but you do know that Trump is a TV celebrity over there? You surely also realise that Neoliberalism, as espoused by Thatcher and Reagan back in the day and by the Tories currently as well as all US presidents is the highest form of monoculture, one in which the wealthy become ever wealthier at the expense of the poorest and most vulnerable, while celebrity culture encourages debt and enslavement to the machine of consumerism and never ending “economic growrh”. Just consider how many of our young people have begun to speak with an American accent, although they have never been near America! As for Brexit, I’m all for bringing down the failed European experiment that is the EU, but precisely because of its neoliberal agenda, and it’s lack of democracy. Have you just fallen for the ridiculous line that celebrity Trump fed those who couldn’t tell the wood from the trees but knew something was wrong? They just didn’t know how to fix it but Trump told them how. Build walls, make it them and us and we’ll be great! This is a lie, an ugly, bitter lie which already has given justification to crimes born of hate and most of all fear and ignorance. Finally I wish for all to have a genuine proper education, one where people are taught to use their critical faculties, consider how to end war, poverty, exclusion, inequality, creatively find better ways to live on our tiny planet and respect our shared resources. I hope you do too Val
The advantage Mr Trump had among whites without a college degree compared with whites who graduated from college was the largest seen in exit polls for a Republican since the surveys started in 1972
Plato had that idea in ancient Greece Only the philosopher class as he called them would vote They would understand the issues less educated or slaves should not have the vote Sounds very elitist
@Red Marauder:
Do you mean schooling?
And would you deny the unschooled a vote? That is a similar attitude that existed in opposition to universal suffrage.
@Joe Well put Joe. An unsavoury undercurrent is emerging in recent months, suggesting that Leave voters and Trump supporters are unworthy of being allowed a voice. It’s the mirror image of the venom directed against the Civil Rights movement in Ireland and America in the sixties. I.E. Restrict the suffrage to certain groups. A new subtle totalitarianism is emerging.
@Joe… why do you think we have a legal age limit, to allow people to vote?
@ Val. For someone so opposed to open borders you seem to be interfering at lot in other countries’ political processes
Not at all, everyone is allowed to vote, the uneducated ones are just more easily mobilized with false promises, while the rest spots the flaws from a mile away
@Red Marauder:
And you base that assumption on what Red?
The fact that the unschooled haven’t been exposed to the ultra left bias on campuses may make them more impartial and able to make judgement in their own interests.
The faculty in many US college campuses had a left wing bias of 1 to 4, 1 to 5 or 1 to 6 in the seventies, that has now increased to 1 to 12, 1 to 13 and sometimes higher.
That is not an indication of plurality of opinion or diversity of political reasoning, it is approaching a homogeneity of ideology reminiscent of the Soviet Union.
What a shower of cry babies the left are.
This sounds like the typical whinging\bawling from the virtue signalling, moralising far left when they don’t get their way. It was a Democratic vote, stop complaining and deal with it.
Far from delusions of grandeur and yearning for Empire, the British are about to discover that they are a medium sized nation in the middle of the global multinational supply chain. Nothing more and nothing less.
What’s your point. 80% of the world’s trade happens outside the EU
@Joe Mc:
It does and it’s funny how the Germans manage to export tremendous amounts to China and the rest of the world while being firmly part of the single market. Ireland exported €500 million of baby milk to China last year, while being firmly inside the single market.
Do you think we wouldn’t have been able to do a deal with China if we weren’t in the single market??
@Cathal S Byrne:
We can trade with them anyway, while inside the single market. So why do the Brits want to leave the single market? I’ve some news, there are no sunlit uplands.
It’s weird…in a nation supposedly in love with pith helmets and handlebar moustaches, the only times you’d ever hear about our ‘yearning for the Empire’ is usually when foreigners bring it up. It’s almost as though they’re more in love with the bloody thing than we are…
Your pensioners are certainly in love with it. That’s why they keep talking about mad trade deals with the commonwealth. And it’s also the main reason they voted for Brexit.
In all fairness,there is nothing startling about Jeremy Corbyn…https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4S2978XiAak
“The spikes in hate crime after both Brexit and Trump have been well documented and the notion that this small but vicious sector of society now feels empowered is very worrying for many people.”
I wonder if Ruairí uses this lie deliberately or not but it has been a common tactic of the remain propaganda machine which he clearly is a part. The fact that so called “hate crime” is purely subjective gives rise to an ever expanding occurrences being reported and recorded.
It is a ludicrous piece of law that anyone could fall foul of, for instance two Irishmen in a Manchester pub, overheard discussing the merits of Mr Bonner as a goalkeeper, could be hauled down the police station based solely on the subjective opinion of someone sat in the corner and took sensitivity to hearing Mr Bonner’s first name.
And God knows what might happen if they were also discussing a well known Bayern Munich winger of the 1970′s
Here is the text to the conclusions to a Civitas report about the spike Ruairi mentions. It pretty much debunks it.
“There was a rise in reported hate crime incidents in the immediate aftermath of the EU
referendum. Precisely what this signified, however, is open to question.
First, it should be noted that the vast majority of recorded hate crime incidents consist of verbal harassment
rather than physical violence. Further to that, the police definition of a hate crime is one that
is „perceived‟ by the victim to have been based on prejudice; this means that in the strictest
sense the surge in reported incidents only represents a surge in perceived prejudice. This is
an important caveat usually ignored in media coverage. Many crimes reported as being hate
crimes, most notably including specific incidents that have been highlighted by the media in
recent weeks, actually have little evidence to support them being classified as such. By the
same token, there is usually little if anything to connect individual incidents with the EU
referendum, even if there have been many more people reporting „hate crimes‟ since the
vote.
It should also be noted that reported hate crime has been trending upwards for the last few
years, long before the EU referendum campaign began.
Does this reflect a widespread increase in intolerance towards certain minorities? Or does it reflect the rising profile of hate crime as a category of offence and the opportunity to report it via, for example, True Vision?
It is difficult to say with any certainty but there is no objective barometer signalling rising
intolerance. Similarly with the surge in reports in the aftermath of the referendum. It seems
as likely that reports of hate crime were being fuelled by the perception of a rise of
intolerance, which was in turn fuelled by police and media reports driven by that perception,
in a vicious circle. “
Ruairi does not say anywhere in his article that ‘I no no longer feel welcome’ and the sub-heading in quotes is misleading. Now that he realses what a dud Corbyn is I hope that he will stay in the Labour Party and fight to make it electable again.
Since Trump and Brexit, I feel *more* welcome in the world. I know that the MAJORITY of people think like me, the democratic system works, and that these liberals aren’t so much a bleeding heart populus and moreso a whiny bunch of children who won’t accept the world as is unless it is going in their favour.
Do we ever tire of listening to these cassandras? Ten years ago the US and Britain were bogged down in a significantly larger military operation in Iraq, the former was ran by a man who believed he personally talked to God the world was on the cusp of the worst financial crisis of modern times. And you know what? Civilisation didn’t fall asunder.
Ruari As you are part of the Socialist Autocratic movement and infused with the average Guardian readers world view I would suggest you respect democracy and move on. The game is up for the EU and the Democratic party in the USA. People have grown tired of vacuous intellectual snowflakes writing and pontificating about world affairs.The cappuccino loving and celebrity endorsers have no place in the real world.
Some of these ‘hate crimes’ have been exposed as fakes, probably for Remoaner or anti-Trump propaganda purposes.
“..Yet dig into its provenance and things soon start to smell distinctly whiffy. For the ‘57 per cent’ number was actually plucked from a single press release issued by the National Police Chief’s Council on June 27, four days after the EU ballot took place.
The document in question specifically stated that police forces had recorded ‘no major spikes in tensions’ since Britain went to the polls.
However, its footnote added that 85 people had logged hate crime ‘incidents’ on True Vision, a website that records unverified allegations of such behaviour, during the four days in question, up from 54 during the corresponding period a month earlier.”
Four days after Brexit? Thats fast.
As for post-Trump election:
“…A Muslim teenager from Long Island by the name of Yasmin Seweid told authorities that she was harassed on the subway by men who yelled “Donald Trump!” while trying to remove her hijab. The police said within two weeks that she admitted she was lying because she broke her curfew; she now faces charges of filing and false report.
A Muslim woman in Louisiana claimied that she was attacked and had her hijab ripped off. The Lafayette Police Departmenet said that she “admitted that she fabricated the story about her physical attack as well as the removal of her hijab and wallet by two white males.”…”
Events don’t change people, people only use events to express themselves, to expose who they are.
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