I wouldn't say they're similar. Brexit was because people lost faith in the leadership of the EU, mostly due to the migrant crisis, which is still ongoing years later. The Yellow vests are more analogous to Occupy Wall Street.
People were told the EU was the cause of all their problems, obviously it's not.
Migration is one of the bigger issues, but it's not the EU that waved the limits on migration in the early 2000s when Poland and the other eastern European countries joined, that was New Labour.
It's not the EU that fails to enforce the rules that are available to remove EU migrants. All you hear about in the press are the occasions where some regulation stopped a person being deported (likely for a good reason).
Brexit is a combination of nationalist propaganda and a scapegoat for the Tories and New Labour to blame the inequality they created on someone other than themselves.
It's sad that so many of the people that will loose the most from Brexit (should it happen) fail to see this.
Not really. The migrant crisis and anti EU sentiment was far more DailyMail and Telegraph generated (usually fake) outrage. The EU actually had a long running blog to refute and disprove UK press pieces on the EU: Always the Sun, Mail, and Torygraph.
The Brexit voting areas were, in the vast majority, the areas that had suffered from post-80s deindustrialisation, neglect, being ignored for 40 years by Westminster who brought no real regeneration, and a system that's become increasingly SE heavy and centralised. So local councils can no longer do much substantive without Westminster approval.
It felt far more about kicking the powers that be than any real anti EU loss of faith. After 40 years of getting the shit end of the stick, that was perfectly understandable. Wrong target, but understandable and deserving of sympathy. The political class that let them down wanted remain, vote leave.
Sure, UK has often been lukewarm on some aspects of Europe. Until Cameron had the bright idea of the referendum to put the Tory right wing back in the box, then whipped it up into outrage, it was mostly something to talk and joke about. Lost faith in the bullshit claims and spin during the campaign, certainly. No deal was explicitly ruled out...
Considering all the establishment propaganda, from posh media, celebrities, politicians, Brussels, etc, about how Brexit is analogous to economic ruin, mass destruction, the Brexit propaganda was like 1/10th the size.
And it didn't have the means to be much more: the state, the "City", the corporations, Brussels, the BBC, the celebs, and the mainstream media all pushed for Bremain...
Both sides had ads and propaganda, but it seemed like the anti-Brexit side was much more aggressive. The front page of reddit was swarmed with posts about how Brexit would be the end of the world and that anyone who votes leave is literally a Nazi controlled by Putin and yadda yadda yadda.
Yes the remain campaign had hyperbole (though far less than Leave imo, "Easier deal in history?", " We won't be leaving without a deal." etc.), but it's getting within touching distance right now with the current Tory government advocating no deal.
Let's stop downplaying what happened there and in the US: a similar, unethical & careful PSYOP teasing legitimate popular concerns to tip the vote toward a result that breaks the stability of the West.
The result being:
- both US & UK are shit shows at the time being;
- everyone else caring, spending time to adjust to/circumvent that, and/or to wait for these countries to get their together again;
- while doing that, they don't have time/resources to watch/care after other issues, which is ... surprinsingly, quite convenient for some other countries.
>Let's stop downplaying what happened there and in the US: a similar, unethical & careful PSYOP teasing legitimate popular concerns to tip the vote toward a result that breaks the stability of the West.
Actually let's stop altering what happened in the UK and in the US (and in France).
The masses, after 40+ years (beginning with Reagan and Thatcher) of getting the short end of the stick,
increased globalization and loss of domestic worker jobs (which the Left once, especially in Britain, was much protective of),
and the left (using the term loosely for people like Clinton, Blair, and co) and right elites agreeing on business as usual on everything that matters (including corporatism, trillion dollar bank bailouts, and war) and peddling token social/religious issues to divert their ever impoverished working class voters, while having pundits and specialists telling people who've seen their jobs and cities destroyed how they had it "better than ever",
decided to go off the rails and vote for a populist "bring jobs back, stop globalization, reduce imperialism wars" candidate in the US, and a "fuck EU imposed laws and German economic leadership, let's have a sovereign Britain again" brexit, or take it to the streets in France.
The 10% of well of "good hearts", who were never affected all those years, and probably have it better than ever indeed, consider them deplorables, unwashed masses, etc, wonder why the masses don't just "eat cake" and get on with the program, to let their favorite politicians continue business as usual, and of course are certain that they know better and everybody else
Unable to understand their defeat, those bleeding hearts, blame it on some inconsequential villainy on the part of Russia, on some BS "collusion", on the masses voting "against their own interests", and whatever other straw they can grasp...
They are the same people who consider a president who helped destroy 5 countries and turn them into hell-holes of civil war and fundamentalism a Nobel peace prize award winning good person, and another who tried to withdraw from 2 wars, de-escalated and met with the S.K, and acknowledged that the real competition to the US in the 21st century is China in trade, as a bad person (because he has no manners and tweets random BS, which, as we all know, is what's really important in a politician).
In the end everybody votes based on their wallets, and the 10% (and an additional percentage who feeds of them) never had reason to disturb the status quo.
US, UK & France situations are different. Widely. Each with their own issues. But every issue can be spun, let's say... elegantly. As you do. Amazingly.
I did not mention Russia. If that were a country, it could mean several other countries too.
I did not blame it on only manipulation, but on manipulation based on existing tensions & facts. That does not excuse the past 40 years of political morass of course. But that does not excuse populists lying and twisting this situation for their own interest - and certainly not the people's: see where the US & UK are today.
As for UK & France "masses", for the past 40 years, we have lived in _peace_ on our homeland, contrary to the few centuries before. Not by accident.
As for the rest, you can have it way harder than others and still consider populism, racism, mysoginism and cronyism supporters as "deplorables". They still are.
Tagging Trump as "has no manners and tweets random BS" is the least you could do. He's not bad only, he is a stain on US history. Not only does he lacks manners... I don't even know where to end if we go down this hole. The only thing he doesn't lack is ego. To the point it's embarrassing. Not only for him, but also for the future of the institutions and the nation that his role makes him supposed to protect. As well as the people that let him have his ways from the get go.
>US, UK & France situations are different. Widely. Each with their own issues.
Yes, and some of those issues are more common. Thatcher and Reagan for example, started the same big money / fuck working class policies at about the same time. The "left" parties similarly diluted their support for common folks and criticism of corporatism and got into warmongering and business as usual in both countries (e.g. Clinton, Blair, to today's TINA stars).
>I did not mention Russia
Sure, but many did so I addressed that too. I was giving the bigger picture as I see it of the situation, not addressing solely what you wrote.
>As for UK & France "masses", for the past 40 years, we have lived in _peace_ on our homeland, contrary to the few centuries before. Not by accident.
No, because UK and France had become less significant post-WWII, lost most of their colonial slaves, that span half the earth, and US and USSR became the dominant top dogs fighting each other.
Plus Germany was for half a century after WWII split into two, given to different countries to nanny, and deprived of an army -- precisely to avoid more wars in Europe.
So it would make no sense for UK and France to fight, as the stakes were low. When those were powerhouses, fighting for global expansion/dominance, sure it made sense. In the past 40+ years it makes no more sense than Luxembourg and Finland fighting.
US and USSR did fight a lot, had the whole Cold War thing, and tons of wars by proxy all around the world. Same way US and China today are at tension.
>As for the rest, you can have it way harder than others and still consider populism, racism, mysoginism and cronyism supporters as "deplorables". They still are.
Well, there's a long history of the good souls on the top towers of society looking down on the unwashed "Morlocks", and patting themselves in the back for how better they are.
Part of this is because most middle class/upper middle class people learn from a young age to consider a person's worth by their net worth, clothes, manners, school they went to, and so on, and those deplorables don't cut it.
(Of course the poor black, latinos, muslims, immigrants, etc, cut it even less, and are usually even more misogynist, homophobic, etc than the flyover state deplorables, but they're not usually classified as belonging to them. They vote the right way, plus, it's not like the bleeding hearts who "care" for them really care. They just want to signal their higher virtue to the rest of the whites.).
The funny thing is that the upper classes consider the "deplorables" as lesser persons, because they haven't adopted the intellectual fashions, that they themselves just got recently (a few decades ago, all the same "refined" classes were themselves openly anti-gay, misogynist and had no problem with it, in fact in the 70s and 80s you couldn't be in "good" society without be such).
"The leaflet suggests prices could rise and EU exit would lead to a decade of uncertainty"
Looking like a fairly accurate prediction then, so far. How's Sterling doing? How are the government's just released Yellow Hammer predictions compared to that gentle warning in the leaflet?
