Note: after I wrote this post, it was subsequently released that Jo Cox’s killer had Nazi paraphernalia in his house along with publications from American white supremacist groups. This comes as absolutely no surprise, as my post will show.
Most of you have probably heard of the murder of Jo Cox. If not, the short version is that a Labour MP for West Yorkshire, Jo Cox, was murdered by a 52 year old who is believed to have shouted ‘Britain first!’
The news of course is shocking in itself. Murder is never pleasant, and the murder of a young woman, a humanitarian and a Labour MP makes it all the more disturbing. But this is also an act committed out of ideology—this is important and must be understood.
Of course, the man was a nutter. I will not be so crass as to suggest that he is representative of the whole Brexit movement.
Nonetheless, history has lessons to teach us. The murder of Jo Cox was motivated by nationalism. Nationalism was what fueled the rise of the Nazi party; and indeed many others have committed many much more heinous acts out of a deluded sense of ‘defending the nation’.
And nationalism, I’m sorry to say, is obviously a great motivator for the Brexit campaign. ‘Take it back!’ they cry. (What, you may ask? The nation, of course.) With pictures of Dover and rivers of migrants they speak; their cartoons vulgar and fatuous.
Indeed, Brexit shares many other features with National Socialism. Both blame foreigners for the country’s social and economic ills; both promise that great promise, that great lie—that if only the nation were free from Europe, or the Jews, than the prosperity of the good old days is bound to follow.
In reality this is a delusion. Migrants are not to blame for the country’s unemployment and housing crisis, nor the Jews for the troubles of the Weimar republic. Such problems are the fault of national governments. Blaming the foreigners is no more than a convenient scapegoat; a failure to admit to the sins of one’s own country.
Let us abandon the notion that great invisible forces are conspiring against the nation—either in Brussels or in the international Jewry. Let us instead stick fast to reality and reason. Jews did not cause hyperinflation in the Weimar, nor draft the treaty of Versailles. Europe does not make our houses few and expensive, inflated by artificial limits on building and unprincipled lending by banks. Europe does not make us underfund our NHS or impose draconian contracts on junior doctors.
Let us also not pretend that Brexit is a vote for democracy or the future of Britain. The EU is no less democratic than this country—a country with an unelected House of Lords, until recently hereditary, First-Past-the-Post, and the gall to lecture the European Union on democracy. Let us remember that the EU was created under the principle of democracy: a principle hard fought for in those dark days of WW2.
The European Union is based on solidarity and peace between the nations of Europe. Brexit is based on the age-old trope of violent nationalism. Which would you rather choose?
Note: this is a special post that is not in my usual Magical Realm style. If you want a more pragmatic and detailed argument, see this
Addendum: you may also find my first political poem, That Great Continent, to be of interest.
