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Jesus I despise Brexit.
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tjj
tjj
3606 posts

Edited Feb 22, 2019, 22:31
Re: Brexit from Ireland - a thought experiment
Feb 22, 2019, 20:13
nigelswift wrote:
Irrational nationalism is ever-present within a proportion of English people and it can be summoned up in a moment by The Sun and The Mail. Remember "Up yours Delors"? Maybe that was the moment a percentage of us turned against Europe in our guts, and once a prejudice is there it can't be changed by mere logic.

It's very useful if your paper wants to promote its owner's agenda or simply to sell more copies. Remember the Sun's headline announcing Thatcher's murder of 1,800 eighteen-year-old Argentinian conscripts on the Belgrano which had been sailing towards its home port for 24 hours: Gotcha!

Incidentally, being anti-Irish over Brexit doesn't need hypothesising that the boot was on the other foot. It seems to me that Europe as a whole and Ireland, in particular, has been far more grown up and dignified than Britain yet the press constantly portrays them as unreasonable and scheming. I seem to remember several years ago on here I said, before it had happened, that we'd end up demonising Europe. Now it happens every day.


I always read your posts Nigel and generally agree with you. I have never bought or read the Sun or the Mail but just lately find myself looking at the front page headlines. Yes, appalling. No wonder the French press say we are a dreadful country. I haven't actually been aware of any anti-Irish sentiments though - spent the evening on Wednesday with a friend who is visiting from Derry. She said the dissidents back home are just waiting in the wings for an opportunity to start something up but the people do not want that awful conflict back again.

Have been thinking about Nationalism a bit - where does loyalty to the place you have been brought up and lived most of your life cross over into xenophobia and dislike/distrust of 'other' peoples. Earlier in the week I had spoken about the Honda/Swindon situation. Got me thinking about Japan - I had been told by someone who spent many years there that the Japanese have an innate mistrust of foreigners. Now they have the freedom to build and export cars directly from Japan I guess they can't get out of the UK quick enough. As a race they are known for 'honour' - how must our shambolic, self-serving, incompetent government seem to them - who can blame them for calling time. Sad for the Honda workers - collateral damage I'm afraid but then the workers always were. Incidentally, did you know (according to Wikipedia) 98.5% of Japan's population is Japanese.
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