To be honest I was a bit miffed at what Guy Verhofstadt said after the Richmond by election. He should keep his nose out of our business. Regarding 'fascists' I would be one of the last supporters of that ideology. I can just see the EU all falling down. It will be it's own fault because it doesn't listen.
Once more with feeling.... "And when you see a can I see a crook And when you see a crowd I see a flock It's sheep we're up against Sheep we're up against" I miss The Housemartins.
My point was that Ellers seems to think that the rise of fascism is a price worth paying to see the collapse of the EU. I disagree.
That is not what I said Stroller, that is what you said. I said because the EU doesn't listen to people it gives rise to groups like fascists.
I remember the first time somebody asked me to keep my nose out of their business. We were in the school playground. I went over to two kids who were bullying a third, smaller kid in the corner and asked them to stop. "What's it got to do with you?", they said. I didn't have the vocabulary to deal with it then, but I guess what it had to do with me was I wanted to live in a fairer, better world than one where the twisted, inadequate kids could terrorise a smaller, weaker victim and get away with it. Bullies don't like the glare of the spotlight and fascist/nationalists don't like open debate - because in an open debate, their views wouldn't be very popular and they wouldn't get that many votes. It isn't lack of sovereignty, immigration or the EU that is causing problems today. It's the way our politics has worked for some time, enabling the vested interests to improve their lot at the expense of the rest of us - yet persuade the rest of us that somebody else is to blame rather than them. "Baaaa"! Oh, FWIW, I don't think Ellers would knowingly support fascists or is one. He comes across quite differently to that.
Yet now we are in the perverse situation where certain elements of the vested interests are playing the populist card against other elements of the vested interests. The one thing which is certain is that the vested interests (whichever element) will either end up better off, or proportionately much less worse off, that the non vested interests that some of them are manipulating in the fallout of a situation which I am afraid I am becoming very worried about.
Do you see rascists, homophobes and fascists everywhere, Strolls, or are these just easy labels that people on the left use to smear anybody and everybody that doesn't share their own views?
It's one of the reasons that for decades anyone who dared say immigration was out of control and creating ghettos within cities and towns were immediately branded 'racists' by the media/politicians, in particular the smug panelists on Question Time. Their chickens have come home to roost...
The truth for Strolls might be more complicated than the A or B choice you're putting in his mouth here. Giving your own answer to the question would be enlightening. Do you think a rise in Fascism across Europe is better than the continuance of the EU? I'm quite willing to answer the "Am I, or have I ever been, a Communist" question in response.
There's some truth in what you say there. It's bloody obvious that a large group of people were being told how they should act when they raised these things as issues, instead of being listened to by the people who should have been supporting and representing them. However, if the fall of the "left wing elite" (as they're being labelled these days by the "right wing elite") also results in lower living standards for the poorer people in our country, then I don't see why "being right" or "winning" is such a great thing. It's our country and our lives, not a football team that we support, right or wrong. Yeah... "We showed those left wing elites what we think of them. Shame our living standards dropped so far as a result."
Yet now we have the complete opposite, with politicians of all parties jumping on the bandwagon and saying that we shouldn't criticise anyone who has concerns over immigration because they are 'patriots'. Ed Balls, Alan Johnson were peddling this on the telly this week. Even though, obviously, a minority of these people are also racists. It's people like me, who like to think that they are cosmopolitan, internationalist in outlook, socially liberal, 'citizens of nowhere', who are the enemy now. And I'm loving it. Excellent slot on the radio this morning about George Orwell. "Freedom is the right to tell people what they do not want to hear"
If the post-war, liberal elite in Continental Europe had been content with the Common Market, a club of respectful, trading nations, none of this would be happening. At times, it does, I agree, begin to look like the fall of the Wiemar Republic (except the Wiemar Republic was more democratic than the EU) and the rise of the darkness. I have this dream that the EU will fall on its pompous, wasteful, unaccountable, interfering nose, and we get the Common Market back
OK Ellers, I'm prepared to accept that you are not in favour of fascism - let's use the term far-right instead (that OK Uber?). You seem to be rubbing your hands together at the prospect of far-right parties taking over in Europe and causing the EU to disintegrate. I for one would be extremely worried at that prospect. Way back in this thread, when it was the EU referendum thread, I gave my primary reason for wanting Britain to stay in the EU as a geo-political one - the wish for Britain to be part of a peaceful, consensual European block that would militate against Putin's totalitarianism in the East and the prospect of a reckless Trump presidency in the West. I am extremely worried about what might fill the vacuum that would be created by the collapse of the EU - you seem to relish the prospect.
Not everywhere Uber, but there are plenty around, and they are becoming more vocal and emboldened. Angry white men.
We won't get the common market back though. We're more likely to get what we had when the Weimar Republic collapsed.
