Outrage

For the record, about the way this came about: Matthew asked me about this topic on Facebook here and also his points you see copied from Facebook above (with minor changes). I said to him privately I didn’t want to have that conversation there having seen and heard from friends some startlingly unpleasant remarks on this subject by some of our Facebook acquaintance who voted differently. I suggested Mathew and I could either have the conversation privately on email or here, in a closed (to comments) but public environment and I left it up to Matthew which to choose.

Hi Matthew. I’ve quoted you in italics below and given my response afterwards.

Matthew: I don't have many 'leave' voters in my friends list, but the ones I do have are (mostly?) thoughtful people who have good reasons for voting the way they did.  If their arguments were the ones that won the referendum, I think I could go along with it a lot more happily than I'm able to at the moment.  

People had many reasons for voting the way they did, which are opaque to the people they know in a way that the result was not. Some find it easier to make assumptions about what the reasons are.  Some ask.

Matthew: I feel it was won on false pretences.

Something like this?

I don’t feel lied to because as I said my reasons were ones I came to independent of campaign propaganda.  No doubt there were people who feel duped.  Apparently 7% of Leavers now regret their vote, compared to 3% of Remainers. I think this Leaver percentage small considering the step away from the known that has been taken, the effect of post-referendum reality, the fact that Cameron, Boris and Farage have all stepped down in the last ten day or so and the general post-referendum hysteria.

Matthew: [...] disagreement/disappointment with the result (which I hope you and others can understand is more than just 'sour grapes' -- it's beyond my ability to just 'suck it up'.  I haven't seen you suggest that's the case either, by the way, but it's a running theme amongst some others and it's hard to bear.

I would doubt the opinion of those with that reaction is worth much consideration or that it would lead to much interesting or constructive discussion.

Matthew: I think the winning side just has to be 'bigger' sometimes and let the losing side rail for a while.

"The reaction". This topic is what got us here in the first place.

Journalists, scorn and condescension

The main reaction I saw from Remainers I know - besides understandable disappointment - was outrage.  If I were to patronise Remain voters in a tit for tat, per Remainer to Leaver:  Oh, I realise now it isn’t you, it’s your leaders (you’re just stupid)  then I might say something like:  With easy, self-aggrandizing, irresponsible, hornet-like journalism stinging people into a frenzy I understand the outburst of left leaning liberal outrage;  aka It isn’t you [plural], it’s the absurd stuff you read.   Take for instance the cruel, presumptive vitriol of Laurie Penny in the New Statesman or Fintan O’Toole sneering and blaming in the Irish Times and his failure to see the irony when, having done nothing but himself he says now the English won’t be able to blame the EU any more.   And he is a fairly moderate example. I think at such times no wonder Remainers have been expressing themselves on social media the way I have seen.   Privately I think articles like Laurie Penny look more like toddler meltdown.  When people write like that I wonder what and who it is for.   Is it about making or maintaining a name? Backslapping, from people who think like them?  It isn’t intended obviously for people who don’t think like them because it’s so unbalanced.  A friend said “Facebook has been unbelievable”.  When the journalists and radio hosts and interviewees talk about the divided country, this is what they’re talking about, the personal interactions (of their lack) between individuals - and journalists are to some extent responsible because they feed people the news, very often not in a balanced way. This division isn’t something abstract and out there.  It is something of which millions of people, most of us, now have some kind of personal experience.

That outrage seems to have cooled somewhat into a belief that what has happened is so inconceivable that we are going to call for secession of London /another vote etc.    Such conviction seems to ride roughshod over any acknowledgement that the issue is complex, difficult and multi-faceted though more of that is coming out now.  I by nature shy away from and tend to distrust attitudes that take an “It’s obvious” approach to complex issues.

I seem to be or to have become over time a sceptic.  I live in doubt about many things most of the time.  It isn’t a comfortable way to live and I can’t recommend it.  But I tend to notice when people claim they are right and particularly insist they are right, rather than Perhaps.. or It seems to me….or Maybe...  I saw a lot of that insistence after the referendum and on an issue as complex as this the insistence that one just must be right and that anyone else is varying degrees of stupid is...revealing.

"Hey, stupid!"

People I think are lots of things before they are stupid.  Afraid, often.  Fearful, threatened, lacking, for any number of reasons, perspective.  And surely - unless one was oneself perhaps intelligent yet remarkably misguided - the very last thing one would want to do if identifying that fear in another, would be twist that into something else (like “stupid”) and ram it down the sorry subject’s throat. Stupid (because stupid) or stupid (because lied to) or stupid (because old).   The next less subtle move is the “Don’t worry, it isn’t your fault”. Or “Thanks for thinking it through/admitting you’re wrong”.  I can’t say I’ve seen much in the line of “I understand you had your reasons - what were they incidentally?”.

Learning from children

I understand people were upset.  We in Scotland who voted "No" in 2014 saw how gutted people were for days, weeks, months, are still.   When you say that losers should be allowed to rail, yes I understand expressions of disappointment and frustration. But I often think lessons from nursery are the best and the ones we ought most often recall in much later life. Thus I asked my children, their responses to many things being so instructive.  I said “how do you think the people who lost the vote were feeling?”  They thought for a while.  It’s so revealing when children pause.  They’re actually thinking.  I’ve noticed grown ups don’t pause for thought anything like as long as children.  Then

- “Sad...” said one.

- “Disappointed” said the other.  

- Yes, I think that’s right.  Anything else?  They looked a bit puzzled as in what else could they be feeling?

- Agreeable? said the elder, hesitantly.   I almost choked.  

- Hmmm. Why agreeable?

- As in “It’s over and done with”?

It's easy to see from their responses that - though they hoped for a Remain vote because most recently "the EU will like us more if we're In" - they were not outraged at the time of this conversation.

When people one knows calls or implies that you and anyone who voted like you stupid or (much) worse that is a fairly blunt, decisive, not retractable and unforgivable thing.  It is not something anyone is likely to forget - ever.  One can just decide to not know them but human relationships for most people are complex.  We tend to want to keep knowing our families for instance  never mind how unpalatable some of the things we say to one another can be because there is so much we appreciate in others too. We may in, say, the milonga, keep seeing people who have said things we find distasteful and will perhaps have to find ways in which to acknowledge, perhaps even continue to interact with these people. Fortunately my family and several friends have been interested in and non judgemental about my reasons for voting differently.  

If my seven year old were to be frustrated and cross and punch his brother, call me stupid, slam the door and storm out do I say, Oh well, never mind, leave him be he’s just angry, let him rail. He'll calm down soon enough.  That is indeed one way and perhaps an easier route but my feeling is that teaches a child that that behaviour is the right way to behave when frustrated, that you might well manipulate people into getting what you want and that people who don’t say anything don’t seem to mind too much.  I think parenting is a role of guiding and influencing and I guess I might be sad and disappointed if he grew up that way because I might feel I had failed him.

What I tend to do - depending on how cross I have become myself - is hug him because he is not able to manage his emotions and he knows it. Then I might likely say something like: “I understand you are angry but disappointment and being thwarted is a considerable part of life.  Do you think they are happy grown-ups - the ones who think the way to get what they want or who react to other people getting what they want when it doesn’t suit them is to shout “Stupid” and kick and slam doors?  Would they be happier, calmer and more satisfied it they could say how they are feeling, talk things through and reach agreements?  Do you admire grown-ups or children who are hurtful and call people names or do you think it tends to make the hurtful ones deep down, feel sad and ashamed?”  My elder son at seven left me speechless one day when I discovered him practising a method he had discovered himself that reduced feelings of sadness and anger in such instances as not getting one own way.  His younger brother and I have much to learn from such wisdom and self reliance. I often find there is so much to learn from children.

Consequences of outrage

When people get away with saying things they ought not, with expressing such rancour very unreasonable  things happen.  One is the call to sign a petition because the first vote was “undemocratic”- someone I know made this claim.  I understand the signing of a petition - but not on the retrospective claim that the referendum was undemocratic.  My first thought is to wonder how people believing such claims understand that to be true, and  wonder why they didn’t say so before the vote.  A rerun for a second referendum on Scottish independence starts to look more viable - but circumstances have changed in that the Scottish majority voted to remain in the EU.   Circumstances to require a second referendum have not changed with regard to Britain and the EU.  Not yet at any rate, despite the exit of the its main backers and the prime minister. I don’t see a second referendum with a Remain outcome restoring normality and if it does, I think it will be a normality that only suits some people - back to the status quo so many were unhappy with.  Whether one thinks the status quo right or wrong, it seems to me it isn’t really workable.  

Perhaps people who think the first vote "undemocratic" are retrospectively taking the “old people have fewer rights than young people” approach of someone like Shiv Malik - or something similarly radical such that in a better democracy young people's votes should count for more because...young people are more useful, apparently and useful people are...the employed.  I could ask the woman I saw whipping up support against the “undemocratic referendum” petition among friends on Facebook but I doubt that’s what she was thinking and anyway she seems pretty upset just now so it’s maybe not the time.  Perhaps they are saying referenda shouldn’t be allowed because plebiscites are not today really what we understand by democracy, which for us is representative rather than direct.  I think that is rather more the issue.

Matthew: I am not seeing anyone saying that all Leave-voters are racist, but I so far haven't seen anyone who voted Leave actually state that this is not in their name. It seems the gut reaction is to defend against the implicit accusation that they themselves are racist. 

I think that is natural. Take out the EU context and imagine a scenario where the way you voted is said by some to imply you are a racist because some racists voted that way too.  Try it:  Matthew,  I say because you didn’t vote like me you must be a racist or at least anti-immigrant  [that’s pretty much the implication of the Bristol flowers].  Perhaps a closet racist or if not that you’re anyway standing shoulder to shoulder with racists. I suspect your first reaction is not:  I see that there are racists doing awful things and although I may have voted as they did, my reasons are not theirs and what they are doing is not in my name.  I suspect your more instinctive reaction is the shorter, simpler "I’m not a racist.  I had different reasons”.  

It is for I think the vast majority so obvious it is not in our name, that we have nothing to do with such people that it is not the first thing we would say.  In fact to say "not in my name” actually seems to allow ourselves to be pushed closer to that vile band.  Do most of us think:  Oh, good, some extremists are saying and doing what we secretly wish.  No. Not even those who might previously have been anti-immigrant per: "If you'd asked me last year I'd have said, 'Send them all back' but now I have Romanian neighbours I feel nasty saying that." (From a BBC article about Leeds, divided on Brexit). We all have Romanian neighbours now.  Mine are at the end of our alley.  Their large car parked on the corner there makes it hard to get in now and for a while I wished they’d get a street permit but well, they have lots of kids and the right to live here so we adjust.  Besides, some of their boys invited mine to play football on the field once and apart from the fact we’re neighbours that’s more than anyone else’s kids round by us have done, so while they dress differently and keep to themselves, it isn’t that I don’t mind they have a different approach, what I’ve seen of it, I welcome.

To return then, if Leavers do not say your explicit wording “Not in our name”  it is probably because we are reeling from the shock of the implication that you think it might somehow be in our name, that we have to distance ourselves from racists in case people think we might be if not them then not that unlike them. I think there is something very wrong with the implication Leavers have to prove they are not racist sympathiser.   

Matthew: This leaves me with the uncomfortable result that, in my Facebook bubble, the only people visibly upset about the well-documented increase in racist incidents the last few days are also the people that voted Remain. I would love to see the condemnation be universal, for those few (but not few enough, unfortunately) to see.

I see your point.  But I suppose you see now the problem.  If we feel you think we are racist sympathisers then we are not going to be inclined to join you, even when it accords with our own beliefs.  And it seems to me you do still think that (see my response to your next point).

Matthew: I don't believe that you and other Leave-voters aren't upset about the fact that these hate crimes have increased, but so far I haven't seen a single one actually SAY it. You mention in your previous blog post about them being jailed and punished -- I guess that's close, and it's more than I've seen from any other Leave voter so far. Most have instead accused me (usually indirectly by way of a 'be like BIll' post) of 'stirring up hate and bile' - not my raison d'etre, I hope you agree.

The trouble here is that I don’t see how I could have been clearer about what I feel about racists.

I said your "Not in my name" when the whole reason for my getting involved in any Brexit discussion was because I felt the “Bristol Flowers” people were trying to make people who voted like me stand in a  corner with racists. It was a distancing action, which is what "Not in my name" is.

I can’t see in what way I haven’t been clear.  There were many other things besides the “jail” remark in my earlier  response that condemned racists but you do not seem to have seen them.

Do I care that racists might think they have a silent backing?  No.  I don’t care what racists think.  I care only what they say and do, that they are caught,. tried and jailed.   Anything more simply gives them airtime, discussion time.

I’m sorry if that isn’t clear enough for you, but I feel you want me to use your words not mine.  I am sorry if you don’t understand my words but I think others will.  I’m not the type to go sloganeering and chanting and I couldn’t imagine trying to convert someone to it.  I don’t like the sort of imposed control that implies.  And I won’t be anybody’s parrot.   Influence is one thing; influence can be chosen, but coercion never can. People choose themselves to say what they feel and  thank goodness, I think, for that.

Matthew: I'll try to summarise in one sentence what I guess I'm asking you to do: I would be more comfortable if you, as a Leave voter, would clearly say that the people using the referendum results as an excuse to attack and intimidate don't do so in your name. You might say it's obvious, but it would help me rest easier.

Perhaps you have a reason not to be comfortable with doing that, but at the moment that's the part I don't understand and am finding so frustrating.

I hope my last response clarifies this.   Besides, I don’t have as far as I know, racists friends.  There is no one I know who I could imagine suspecting of that.  I don’t see what benefit there is in my chanting “Not in my name” on Facebook or even here. If one wanted to take a real stand against racism perhaps the thing to do would be to take a train ride up to those protestors with the Go Home banners and face up to them.  I hope if it happened in my community I wouldn’t walk on by.  I hope I would do more than say from behind a screen “Not in my name”.  I hope we all would.