You seem to be arguing both that the EU doesn't have enough influence over its member states, and that the UK should be free of that influence.
Moreover, how is Brexit supposed to help gay people in Poland and Hungary? Or Syrian refugees in Greece and Italy? What actual concrete good can it do them? It's a movement spearheaded by the very people who care the least about vulnerable groups, whatever the EU's failings may be.
Yes of course we can agree on that, but let's examine the implied causality here. It's not the economic bloc that's handing down diktats about abortions and gay people, is it?
To be clear, I think that slavery and colonialism were bad.
Yeah sure, I get that - I was being half tongue-in-cheek when I made that comment about what John thinks the EU "should be". Obviously anyone with tendencies towards anarchism isn't going to be a big fan of another, even bigger bureaucratic authority above the level of national governments.Jon's politics as I understand them is that politics will work best when it enables individuals to take control of their own lives and manage their own affairs. As such, he's never going to be in favour of a huge bureaucratic mutinational trading block, unless it was legislating itself out of existence.
None of this depends on believing the EU to be this great progressive, democratic, humanitarian utopia. John always seems to be spoiling for a fight with someone who thinks this, but he knows that isn't my position and has even admitted this in his own posts.
All that is true. I think it might be useful to tease apart "Brexit" and "the EU" in these discussions. To be appalled by one does not mean supporting the other. In fact, a consistent positions you can oppose both from is anarchism with skepticism towards both of these projects because of their scale, and big government nature.
Europe pretends to itself that this crime against humanity is no one’s fault. The Greek authorities blame the EU for not providing funds, the EU blames Greece for not doing enough with available funds, and large NGOs are preoccupied with maintaining their own line of command and funding.
Yes, I think that's fair - although it's worth bearing in mind that the end game of Brexit is the smallest government, or smallest state, possible. At least it looks that way to me (minimal taxation, minimal spending, total deregulation, completion of the hatchet job on the NHS and welfare state, just enough infrastructure left to keep the proles in line via quasi-militarized policing - basically a massive acceleration of everything that's been going on for the last decade).Well I would say there's a big difference between engineering a small state presumably because of ideological commitment to free markets (+ an opportunity for the guys you went to school with to make loads of money) and the kind of critique of big states and state institutions you'd find coming from anarchist positions.
If the criticism of the EU is that it isn't doing enough, then that doesn't really wash with anyone who opposes big, powerful bureaucracies, does it?
But that's a criticism of the EU by Greek government and who knows what layers of realpolitik and blame/counterblame that's filtered through.
My point in posting that article (I also posted a podcast that's really worth listening to if you have the time - I think the link may appear a bit to greyed out to see) isn't to argue for the abolition of the EU - it's instead to show that it can be a profoundly illiberal institution in a way that'd be shocking to a lot of the people waving EU flags on demos. That's all.
I also would like the EU's institutions to do much more for refugees. To close those camps and to maybe allow the movement of people across borders in a way that doesn't kill, endanger and cause so much suffering - and it's not going to do that if it's abolished. But it's nowhere doing that at the moment. It's doing the exact opposite.
Meanwhile, Brexit voters are “less likely to prepare as they don’t believe in any potential negative consequences of leaving.”
The new approach will use behavioral science to make people feel they should act and make them feel capable of acting. It will use some nongovernment channels to convey messages because “people have a higher level of trust in third parties and peers than they do in government.”