EU referendum and Brexit

Opinion

In Brexit Britain, being a foreigner marks me out as evil

Joris Luyendijk

Since the referendum, the tabloids have whipped up racist feeling by creating subtle links between non-natives and crime – and the government has done little to counter it

 ‘When I came to live here five years ago, the word ‘foreigner’ felt so different from how it does today. Britain was the country that would give the governorship of the Bank of England to a Canadian, Mark Carney …’ Photograph: Matt Dunham/AFP/Getty Images

Thursday 3 November 2016 09.00 GMT

Irealised it only after having done it. On Tuesday I was watching my kids playing with other children in a London park. I was about to call out to them when I intuitively caught myself. Having lived here for most of their life, my children speak flawless English. I, however, have a clear Dutch accent. Yelling to them would suddenly single them out as foreigners to the other children. Only six months ago none of this would have occurred to me. Now I find myself lowering my voice.

Something is rotting in England and the Brexit referendum result seems to have given the rot a boost of oxygen. The problem is not that a majority of English people or their government are racist or xenophobic; they are not. The problem is that those English people who are racist seem to think they have won the Brexit referendum and that now is open season. The government is doing precious little to counter this impression, while the powerful tabloids are feeding it, day in day out.

Yesterday’s Daily Mail splash was a new low. Featuring nine small photos of lorry drivers on their phones, the tabloid claims to have caught “17 foreign truckers using their phones at 50mph”. The key word here of course is “foreign”, establishing an unconscious link in people’s minds between “foreign” and evil. The Daily Mail has been at this for a long time, with my personal “favourite” its front page about “EU killers and rapists we’ve failed to deport”.

Recent research suggests that humans are predisposed to “learn” negative stereotypes. Our brains are more likely to remember negative information than positive information, especially about groups of whom we already hold negative views. Such a harmful cognitive feedback loop would call for extra caution when reporting, making sure ethnicity or religion is included only when relevant to the story. “Foreign lorry drivers using their phones while driving” does not pass that test, unless you believe English drivers never use their phones on the road.

“Foreigner”. When I came to live here five years ago that word felt so different from how it does today. Britain was the country that would give the governorship of the Bank of England to a Canadian – try to imagine Germany making a non-German head of the Bundesbank. London’s financial sector, where I had come to do research, was teeming with European immigrants telling me that it was in the City that for the first time ever they no longer felt like a foreigner. “It’s like they don’t see my skin colour,” a French-Algerian, Turkish-German or Surinamese-Dutch banker would say with genuine emotion. “It’s all about what you can do here, not how you look or where you are from.”

Fast forward a few years and a woman of Polish origin goes on BBC Question Time to say she no longer feels welcome in Britain. The audience boos her, proving her point better than she ever could. This is now a country where a minister calls for firms to publish lists with the “foreign” workers they employ, and where another government ministry tells the London School of Economics to no longer put forward any of its “foreign” academics for consultancy work on Brexit. Those two statements were rescinded, but the same is not true of another, made by a minister who described UK-based EU nationals such as me as among Britain’s most valuable bargaining chips in Brussels.

Meanwhile, the Daily Express and the Daily Mail seem to compete for the most outrageous incitement against migrants, refugees, “foreigners”. Indeed, in some quarters of England today, calling somebody “foreign” is enough to win the argument. The European court of justice? The European court of human rights? Well, they are staffed by foreign judges, so case closed.

It is strange how these things get under your skin, when you realise that for millions of tabloid readers you are a “foreigner” rather than a fellow European. It suddenly feels significant that in the English language “foreigner” and “alien” are synonyms. When I have to fill out a form for the NHS, having to choose between “British white” and “Any other white” no longer looks so innocent; the same with schools having to report their pupils’ racial and ethnic backgrounds.

When I now see somebody reading the Daily MailI can’t help thinking: why would you pay money to read invented horror stories about people like me? I am a supremely privileged middle-class Dutchman who can always return to his homeland – an even more prosperous place than England. But what must it be like for a 13-year-old UK-born girl of Kosovan descent growing up in Sunderland?

Usually a piece like this concludes with a sanctimonious warning of what history tells us xenophobic incitement ultimately leads to. But we are well past that. Jo Cox is dead. Hate crime figures have soared. Some people simply seem to have taken the Daily Mail at its word: our country is flooded by evil foreigners. The politicians are in cahoots with them. Who will speak for England?

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/nov/03/brexit-britain-being-foreigner-evil-tabloids-racist#comment-86757128

RobertBleeker  

01

1. Luyendijk is right in his remarks regarding the manifestation of racism and xenophobia in the UK (before the Brexit campaign, semi latently, but fiercely moldering just under the surface of UK society) and the variety of existential social-cultural and economic consequences, that those sentiments might load upon the non-UK population within the UK.

2. But I also might suggest, that (in this article at least) he shows himself a little too preoccupied with his own - "non-UK, white European male" - position in England, seemingly refusing to expand the subject up to its true international contextual proportions.

3. After all, one can easily observe a more general development of steeply increasing, unequivocal racism and extreme xenophobia, noticeable as well as "on the continent", as "trans the North-Atlantic", where the exponents of overt ultra-nationalism are gaining power, practically on a daily base.

4. Of course the (politicians and (foreign (!)) media-moguls behind the) deceitful Brexit campaign openly declared anyone - significantly more than "only" people from NON-EU origin - "foreigner", that does not live up to the rather primitive, narrow-minded definition of a kind of pseudo-medieval / imperial UK archetypal citizen.

5. But the tendency to emphasize (or exempt even) the assumed eternal geo-political rights of the WASP like creatures in the UK, does not stop at Dover as anyone with even the slightest dose of basic-objectivity can easily establish.

6. Because anyone can observe, that these dangerously centrifugal forces of neo-nationalism / isolationism / racism / xenophobia are flooding the entire western world.

7. Forces are partly being fed by the fall-out of the neo-colonial wars, that the west are waging in the Middle east and North-Africa.

8. In that respect, (a certain number of members of) the political classes behind the existence of those wars - often the very same classes that are referring to the extreme-right neo-nationalist movements as political and economical "counter-productive" - might be considered rather hypocritical.

9. One of the most disturbing developments within this apparently unstoppable massive social, cultural and political revolution in our western world indeed is - as Luyendijk is rightfully pointing out - the overwhelmingly contagious and toxic tendency, that the generally accepted barriers of basic decency and ditto rationalism seem to be gradually lowering, in reaction to the vicious tactics of repeating over and over again of the same prejudices against "foreigners" by all those, who are consciously working at the various neo-nationalist projects in our world.

10. Luyendijk also might have included here, the derailing moral-ethical and political influence of the economical and financial globalization, being the very same destructive workings he so brilliantly described in his industriously investigative efforts, to comprehend and expose the corrupting and distorting dynamics of the (too big, to fail) financial institutions on our societies, that rocked the world so harshly only eight years ago.

11. So one might be justified to conclude, that both the (inner-related) market led one-dimensional economic and financial globalization plus the neo-colonial expansionism of the west are mainly responsible for the dreadful phenomena of racism and xenophobia, that are engulfing our societies and destroying the spirit of global citizenship in (for example) the ecological sense.

12. Ultra-nationalism - as Luyendijk seems to be experiencing in today UK - eagerly speculates on ever-growing inter-human and inter-state hostility, that ultimately will strengthen the ever-present political-military-industrial complex, that in itself, has a self-propelling need for armed conflict....

13. Incidental or not, but Luyendijk is not only an expert on the destructive effects of the financial institutions (often assisted by eagerly employed political-legislative powers), but he also can be considered an expert on geo-political matters in the Middle-East, so I will challenge him, to broaden up his perspective on the matters of social inconvenience that he is experiencing in post-Brexit UK, and surprise us with a thorough analyses of cause and consequence behind the daunting contours of a new Dark Age for modern humanity.

14. He, I and everyone of good will and bright (in)sight, will be eagerly needed to finally and persistently withstand the many evil threats - of violent neo-nationalism, racism and fascism - that are brutally injected by dark entities into our society, thereby fundamentally undermining the humane fruits of our modern civilization and the ecological pre-conditions of the human habitat.

Forget the FBI cache; the Podesta emails show how America is run.

Thomas Frank

WikiLeaks’ dump of messages to and from Clinton’s campaign chief offer an unprecedented view into the workings of the elite, and how it looks after itself

 Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton arrives on her campaign plane at Martha’s Vineyard Airport on 20 August 2016. Photograph: Carolyn Kaster/AP

Monday 31 October 2016 11.00 GMT

The emails currently roiling the US presidential campaign are part of some unknown digital collection amassed by the troublesome Anthony Weiner, but if your purpose is to understand the clique of people who dominate Washington today, the emails that really matter are the ones being slowly released by WikiLeaks from the hacked account of Hillary Clinton’s campaign chair John Podesta. They are last week’s scandal in a year running over with scandals, but in truth their significance goes far beyond mere scandal: they are a window into the soul of the Democratic party and into the dreams and thoughts of the class to whom the party answers.

The class to which I refer is not rising in angry protest; they are by and large pretty satisfied, pretty contented. Nobody takes road trips to exotic West Virginia to see what the members of this class looks like or how they live; on the contrary, they are the ones for whom such stories are written. This bunch doesn’t have to make do with a comb-over TV mountebank for a leader; for this class, the choices are always pretty good, and this year they happen to be excellent.

They are the comfortable and well-educated mainstay of our modern Democratic party. They are also the grandees of our national media; the architects of our software; the designers of our streets; the high officials of our banking system; the authors of just about every plan to fix social security or fine-tune the Middle East with precision droning. They are, they think, not a class at all but rather the enlightened ones, the people who must be answered to but who need never explain themselves.

Let us turn the magnifying glass on them for a change, by sorting through the hacked personal emails of John Podesta, who has been a Washington power broker for decades. I admit that I feel uncomfortable digging through this hoard; stealing someone’s email is a crime, after all, and it is outrageous that people’s personal information has been exposed, since WikiLeaks doesn’t seem to have redacted the emails in any way. There is also the issue of authenticity to contend with: we don’t know absolutely and for sure that these emails were not tampered with by whoever stole them from John Podesta. The supposed authors of the messages are refusing to confirm or deny their authenticity, and though they seem to be real, there is a small possibility they aren’t.

With all that taken into consideration, I think the WikiLeaks releases furnish us with an opportunity to observe the upper reaches of the American status hierarchy in all its righteousness and majesty.

The dramatis personae of the liberal class are all present in this amazing body of work: financial innovators. High-achieving colleagues attempting to get jobs for their high-achieving children. Foundation executives doing fine and noble things. Prizes, of course, and high academic achievement.

Certain industries loom large and virtuous here. Hillary’s ingratiating speeches to Wall Street are well known of course, but what is remarkable is that, in the party of Jackson and Bryan and Roosevelt, smiling financiers now seem to stand on every corner, constantly proffering advice about this and that. In one now-famous email chain, for example, the reader can watch current US trade representative Michael Froman, writing from a Citibank email address in 2008,appear to name President Obama’s cabinet even before the great hope-and-change election was decided (incidentally, an important clue to understanding why that greatest of zombie banks was never put out of its misery).

The far-sighted innovators of Silicon Valley are also here in force, interacting all the time with the leaders of the party of the people. We watch as Podesta appears to email Sheryl Sandberg. He makes plans to visit Mark Zuckerberg (who, according to one missive, wants to “learn more about next steps for his philanthropy and social action”). Podesta exchanges emails with an entrepreneur about an ugly race now unfolding for Silicon Valley’s seat in Congress; this man, in turn, appears to forward to Podesta the remarks of yet another Silicon Valley grandee, who complains that one of the Democratic combatants in that fight was criticizing billionaires who give to Democrats. Specifically, the miscreant Dem in question was said to be:

“… spinning (and attacking) donors who have supported Democrats. John Arnold and Marc Leder have both given to Cory Booker, Joe Kennedy, and others. He is also attacking every billionaire that donates to [Congressional candidate] Ro [Khanna], many whom support other Democrats as well.”

Attacking billionaires! In the year 2015! It was, one of the correspondents appears to write, “madness and political malpractice of the party to allow this to continue”.

There are wonderful things to be found in this treasure trove when you search the gilded words “Davos” or “Tahoe”. But it is when you search “Vineyard” on the WikiLeaks dump that you realize these people truly inhabit a different world from the rest of us. By “vineyard”, of course, they mean Martha’s Vineyard, the ritzy vacation resort island off the coast of Massachusetts where presidents Clinton and Obama spent most of their summer vacations. The Vineyard is a place for the very, very rich to unwind, yes, but as we learn from these emails, it is also a place of high idealism; a land of enlightened liberal commitment far beyond anything ordinary citizens can ever achieve.

Consider, for example, the 2015 email from a foundation executive to a retired mortgage banker (who then seems to have forwarded the note on to Podesta, and thus into history) expressing concern that “Hillary’s image is being torn apart in the media and there’s not enough effective push back”. The public eavesdrops as yet another financier invites Podesta to a dinner featuring “food produced exclusively by the island’s farmers and fishermen which will be matched with specially selected wines”. We learn how a Hillary campaign aide recommended that a policy statement appear on a certain day so that “It wont get in the way of any other news we are trying to make – but far enough ahead of Hamptons and Vineyard money events”. We even read the pleadings of a man who wants to be invited to a state dinner at the White House and who offers, as one of several exhibits in his favor, the fact that he “joined the DSCC Majority Trust in Martha’s Vineyard (contributing over $32,400 to Democratic senators) in July 2014”.

(Hilariously, in another email chain, the Clinton team appears to scheme to “hit” Bernie Sanders for attending “DSCC retreats on Martha’s Vineyard with lobbyists”.)

Then there is the apparent nepotism, the dozens if not hundreds of mundane emails in which petitioners for this or that plum Washington job or high-profile academic appointment politely appeal to Podesta – the ward-heeler of the meritocratic elite – for a solicitous word whispered in the ear of a powerful crony.

This genre of Podesta email, in which people try to arrange jobs for themselves or their kids, points us toward the most fundamental thing we know about the people at the top of this class: their loyalty to one another and the way it overrides everything else. Of course Hillary Clinton staffed her state department with investment bankers and then did speaking engagements for investment banks as soon as she was done at the state department. Of course she appears to think that any kind of bank reform should “come from the industry itself”. And of course no elite bankers were ever prosecuted by the Obama administration. Read these emails and you understand, with a start, that the people at the top tier of American life all know each other. They are all engaged in promoting one another’s careers, constantly.

Everything blurs into everything else in this world. The state department, the banks, Silicon Valley, the nonprofits, the “Global CEO Advisory Firm” that appears to have solicited donations for the Clinton Foundation. Executives here go from foundation to government to think-tank to startup. There are honors. Venture capital. Foundation grants. Endowed chairs. Advanced degrees. For them the door revolves. The friends all succeed. They break every boundary.

But the One Big Boundary remains. Yes, it’s all supposed to be a meritocracy. But if you aren’t part of this happy, prosperous in-group – if you don’t have John Podesta’s email address – you’re out.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/oct/31/the-podesta-emails-show-who-runs-america-and-how-they-do-it