Semi-Partisan Politics

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Hand-wringing, self-pitying Remainers see racism and xenophobia on every corner of post-Brexit Britain, and publicly fret that the country has suddenly become an “unsafe space” for European immigrants

We knew things were bad, but not this bad.

Apparently Britain is such a seething hotbed of overt, suddenly-legitimised racism since the EU referendum took place that it is no longer safe for Germans living in London to openly speak their native language, lest they meet a violent end.

Peddling an extraordinarily irresponsible piece of hysterical speculation originally published in Die Welt, the Evening Standard reports:

Germans have been advised not to speak their native language in London following the Brexit vote.

Lawyer Carmen Prem, who has lived in the capital for 13 years, offered the advice for an article in German newspaper Die Welt.

The piece claimed foreigners were feeling “stronger xenophobia” since the referendum.

According to the article, there is now “a new bitterness, an anger which hardly any of the countless non-British on the island expected”.

And Carmen Prem, a mother-of-two, told the paper: “If you are out with the children, maybe don’t speak German too loudly at the moment.”

Yes. Britain is now so unsafe and hostile to foreigners that it is dangerous for parents to speak German to their children while out in public. In London, that great bastion of euroscepticism, nativism and xenophobia.

This is ridiculous. The absurdly, unthinkingly high level of support for the European Union within the nation’s capital was the only thing that made this referendum outcome a remotely close result for the Remain campaign. Take London away and Britain might actually be living in some kind of Nigel Farage funland right now. And yet we are supposed to believe that the capital city of the early 21st century world, which staunchly voted to remain in the EU during the referendum, is somehow hostile to European foreigners who live and work here?

Well, somebody needs to tell the half of France who seem to be living in my own corner of London, West Hampstead. None of them seem particularly perturbed by the oppressive air of racist doom which apparently now hangs over them; nor have they been reduced to only speaking their language from within the safety of secret societies or covert meeting places in cellars and basements – French is easily the second most spoken language on the high street and in the cafes.

More:

In the same article, German professor Mischa Dohler, who works at King’s College London, said he was seriously considering moving abroad.

The academic said he had received countless job offers but had turned down a role in Cambridge because of uncertainty following the Brexit vote.

He said: “Many non-British academics simply see no future here.”

No future. Okay. Sure, because there is simply no way that immigrants can live in another country unless those two countries are bound together as part of an ever-tightening supranational government, right? It simply couldn’t happen. The EU is the only thing which makes friendly cooperation and immigration between countries possible. I myself would never have been able to work in Chicago for a year were Britain and the United States not part of the same continental political unio — oh wait. Yes I was.

And the fact that so many weepy British europhiles and EU residents of Britain see their lives and futures as being dependent solely on the EU, of all things, only shows how effective forty years of relentless pro-EU propaganda, toothless media coverage and incoherent political opposition have been in making their creepy supranational project seem central to European peace and prosperity when in fact it has been marginal at best and an active drag at worst.

The idea that there is some kind of imminent pogrom against foreigners living in Britain is ludicrous – and all the more so when the people making the charge live in London, the most cosmopolitan corner of the UK (and probably the whole of Europe). But that’s not to say that there have not been isolated and deplorable acts of referendum-related bigotry and even violence.

Tragically, my hometown of Harlow, Essex managed to distinguish itself by playing host to what some people rather hysterically termed the first Brexit-related murder in the country, a young Polish factory worker set upon by a group of teenage hooligans and beaten to death. However, from my recollection and personal experience of being set upon by feral youths in that town, the kind of mindless young thugs who wander around Harlow late at night looking for a brawl are so completely brain-dead that I would be surprised if any of them even realised that a referendum had taken place. Current affairs tends not to be their forte.

And so we find ourselves in an absurd situation. We have been continually told – quite rightly – that we must refrain from forming any negative opinions about immigrants based on the bad actions or non-assimilation of a few. Yet apparently immigrants from the EU are being encouraged to form negative opinions about the whole of Britain based on one or two rather dubious-sounding anecdotes offered by by German professionals?

If anything is harming Britain right now, it is the ongoing attempts to catastrophise Brexit being fomented by bitter Remainers – people who would seemingly rather Britain descend into some dark, dystopian future and be vindicated in their doomsaying than help their own country to present a positive, open and internationalist face to the world.

We should not be surprised. In an age where looking good (and signalling virtue) is more important than actually doing good, there is every incentive for Remainers to continue seizing on every morsel of bad news, overlooking every positive development and generally acting hysterically, so long as their precious internal narrative – that They Virtuous Few stood alone against the “dark forces” of racist Brexit – is not disrupted.

Personally, I find it despicable, but good luck to them.

 

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