Thailand’s referendum and the lessons of Brexit

One of the first social consequences of the UK vote to exit the EU has been an increase in race-based hate crimes perpetrated by Britain’s far-right movements. The Leave campaign employed excellent arguments, such as corruption in states benefiting from transfers from wealthier countries. However, the social consequences of the vote reflect a discourse of polarisation and hatred of the “Other” which underpins extremist organisations, not just in Europe, but throughout the world, including Thailand. 

This discourse was evident in the 57 per cent increase in hate-based race crimes against immigrants after the vote, such as racist graffiti on the Polish Social and Cultural Association in London. The increase has affected Poles, South Asians, Asian Muslims and Africans, provoking responses from the Polish Embassy and Board of Deputies of British Jews. In one disturbing incident, cards bearing the words “Leave the EU/No more Polish vermin” were distributed in Cambridgeshire, including outside schools, targeting Polish children of families who have resided in the UK for decades.

 

Deplorable

This campaign is shocking given the cooperation between the UK and Poland in World War II, when the Polish, supported by Britain, established one of the largest partisan forces in the European theatre. Its Home Army of 400,000 was seen as one of the UK’s greatest continental allies. Additionally, the Polish Air Force fought in the Battle of Britain.

The card is also deplorable for its use of “vermin”, which was used by the Nazis to describe “inferior races”. In one Nazi propaganda cartoon, Nazi “exterminators” killed Jewish “rats” to restore the fortunes of Germany. 

In Thailand, the ultra-nationalist National Trash Collection Organisation, which wages a witch-hunt over lese-majeste cases, also systematically uses degrading vocabulary, terming some fellow Thais human “rubbish”. Moreover, the “red versus yellow” colour wars regularly saw the use of dehumanising insults. 

The Leave campaign would not have won if it had not campaigned against immigration. Yet, Britain’s far right does not simply want a halt to immigration. What it calls for is anyone “foreign” to depart, as evidenced in a banner calling for repatriation by the far-right National Front in Newcastle.

How fear polarised Britain can be seen in the Welsh town of Ebbw Vale, where 62 per cent of 18,000 people voted to leave despite being recipients of EU aid totalling hundreds of millions of pounds. The main factor in the vote was not financial benefits but immigration, despite the town having almost no immigrants. It was fear, therefore, which pushed Wales to vote Leave, despite it being a net EU financial beneficiary.

Moreover, Britain’s far right is deliberately building a discourse that those who voted Remain are somehow not “good”. In his victory speech the leader of the UK Independence Party stated: “This is a victory for ordinary people, for good people, for decent people. The people who’ve had enough of the merchant bankers.”

Given the fact that 1 per cent of the planet now owns 99 per cent of the wealth, there are valid reasons for resenting London’s financiers. However, the implication that the 16,141,241 million people who voted Remain are not ordinary, nor good, nor decent is the politics of polarisation. It applies a categorical system of thinking which demonises. It is a first step to spreading hate-based racism.

Unsurprisingly, Europe’s far right, including France’s National Front party and the Dutch Party for Freedom, have celebrated the result and pushed for referendums. Worryingly, an Ipsos Mori poll from March-April 2016 revealed that in Italy and France, traditionally core EU members, over 40 per cent of the population could vote to leave, with over 30 per cent in Sweden and Germany.

The politics of emotion drove another underlying cause of the exit vote, the North-South divide in the UK, as more Northerners voted to leave than Southerners. This is due to a long-standing mutual dislike, centring on the role of London already mentioned and the wealth gap. Yet the North’s loss of wealth due to de-industrialisation was the result of Conservative party policies begun in the 1980s. In 1979, manufacturing was almost 30 per cent of the UK’s national income, falling to 11 per cent by 2010. Over that period, the UK went from a Gini coefficient of income inequality of 0.27 to approximately 0.35 throughout the 2000’s, significantly above the Nordic Block average of 0.26. The North’s vote to leave overlooks that it was not the EU which caused cuts to the UK’s industry and infrastructure but decades of policies which failed to upskill Northerners and redistribute wealth.

Our emotions are constantly and deliberately being targeted by far right radicals, whether US-based white supremacists, European neo-Nazis, or Thai ultra-nationalists. All share the same sentiments, centring on an “Us vs Them” division which flourishes by encouraging fear and hatred of both internal and external minorities. This can be seen in these groups’ desire to subjugate women, target ethnic minorities for genocide or repatriation, or favour ultra-nationalism and militarism over human solidarity.

Such groups readily leverage the politics of immigration, with 2014 recording the highest number of Internally Displaced Persons since records began, 38 million, with nearly 20 million refugees. Millions of refugees have resulted from the ongoing Middle East conflict, itself the result of policies implemented by Western governments. Thus, elements of the Leave campaign demonstrated convenient amnesia regarding the socio-political causes and consequences of the conflict. 

The same elements asserted that patriotism and fear are normal human sentiments. However, this is a shortcut to an ahistorical politics of emotion dominated by hate. This is the real lesson for Thailand’s coming referendum, that a “No” vote will, as in the 2007 referendum, expose regional versus metropolitan ethnic divisions, as well as class and wealth differences, which the present government has failed to either recognise or reconcile. Meanwhile, especially in the absence of any domestic legislation on racism, a ‘”Yes” vote will merely paper over Thailand’s own North-South fault lines, deep South insurgency, and treatment of migrant workers.