Discussie: Brexit
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Oud 12 oktober 2017, 07:56   #5159
parcifal
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Joris Luyendijk eerder deze week in Prospect Magazine :

Citaat:
How I learnt to loathe England
A Dutchman reflects on what he’s learnt by living in Britain for the last six years—it isn’t pretty
https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/m...loathe-england

Auch. Slechte titel, geweldig artikel.

Luyendijk richt zijn pijlen dit keer op de rotslechte private media in het UK :

Citaat:
Why would you allow a handful of billionaires to poison your national conversation with disinformation—either directly through the tabloids they own, or indirectly, by using those newspapers to intimidate the public broadcaster? Why would you allow them to use their papers to build up and co-opt politicians peddling those lies? Why would you let them get away with this stuff about “foreign judges” and the need to “take back control” when Britain’s own public opinion is routinely manipulated by five or six unaccountable rich white men, themselves either foreigners or foreign-domiciled?
En op de klassenmaatschappij die tot nu Engeland verdeeld en die maakt dat
vele Engelsen zich nog altijd zien als 'exceptional' en met recht op een speciale behandeling en concessies allerhande.
Het kán toch niet dat Engeland een bijdrage betaalt aan de EU zoals andere landen dat doen en meestapt in de Euro en alle regels opvolgt die ander EU leden opvolgen. It just won't do obviously.

Citaat:
I began to realise that there are powerful people in England who actively want the EU destroyed. They are full of aggressive contempt for everything the Union stands for. Even David Cameron could not bring himself to go to Oslo with other EU leaders to receive the 2012 Nobel Peace Prize. Given the deep competitiveness of the English, it may be that they need the EU to feel superior; we may have lost the empire and be less than 1 per cent of the world’s population but… at least we’re not “Yurup.”

This attitude then justifies the enduring ignorance about the EU, its member states and European culture generally. “We don’t even know who they are,” shrieked Brexiter Andrea Leadsom during a televised debate about the EU’s so-called five presidents. You could tell she thought this was a really good argument to use: we don’t know who they are, so that must be their fault.

The superiority complex feeds a sense of entitlement, which Cameron played to by demanding “concessions.” The word says it all. Apparently membership is a favour of the English people to the EU and in exchange there must be rebates, opt-outs and special status. Every “Remain” as well as “Leave” supporter that I have spoken to automatically assumed I would be against Brexit.

Consider that Brexiteer line—the EU “needs us more than vice versa.” It’s abject nonsense, as was the presumption that after the Brits voted to leave, other EU countries would follow.

In October last year Peter Foster, who is the Europe Editor and an increasingly-rare measured voice on the Daily Telegraph, wrote an article calling on Theresa May to “accept publicly that the European side has as much right to guard their interests as the UK does.” He then continued that, “It might also be worth acknowledging, that, on balance, the EU27 also has more power to protect its interests in these negotiations than Britain does.”

Just imagine the French centre-right newspaper Le Figaro or its German equivalent Die Welt publishing an opinion piece pleading with its readers to understand that “the British people have national interests, too.” The thought would never occur. That is the difference between England on the one hand and serious European countries on the other.

This, then, was how, for the first time in my life, I began to feel European. Though no pro-EU federalist, I was suddenly being defensive over something I had never actively supported. In fact, I think there are good reasons for the Netherlands to leave the EU, just as there are good reasons to stay. The EU is a dilemma full of trade-offs. But what I do think is that if the EU is to become truly democratic it needs to conduct an honest and open debate about what it wants to be, and then build the structures to go with it. An existential debate of that kind followed by either dismantling or reinvention requires good faith. This is almost entirely missing from the English side where “Remain,” too, campaigned on the promise that the UK could veto any further integration. Hence my support for Brexit.

Laatst gewijzigd door parcifal : 12 oktober 2017 om 08:02.
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