An unelected faceless bureaucratic bully hell-bent on establishing a Union of European Soviet Republics and populating these vassal entities with foreign peoples speaking in strange tongues whilst plotting and scheming to bamboozle the enslaved natives out of their last grain of self-respect – and whatever loose change they carry.

It’s either that or the other extreme: A pitiful, vengeful, and small-minded pencil pusher, a stickler for rules, haunted by insecurities, and presiding over an ugly rickety edifice that may collapse any day now, dragging all and sundry back into the dark pits of history.

Opponents, and there are plenty, of the most ambitious nation-building project the world has ever witnessed come in two broad categories, both motivated by all the wrong reasons: those who consider it a cunning German ploy to belatedly win ‘The War’ by other means, and those of little faith who espouse a distrust of any cooperative pursuit that transcends the borders of their cosy nation state.

The keen observer may, after some perseverance, identify a much smaller third category that displays a clear understanding and deep knowledge of the issues, and raises mostly pertinent questions only to find the common undertaking ‘quite interesting’ – i.e. the gentleman’s way of describing anything or anybody not worth pursuing.

Stumbling whilst Sleepwalking

If there was ever a case against direct democracy, Brexit is it. Winston Churchill, the last of the British lions, reportedly once remarked that the “best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.” Possibly a red herring, the quote in no way detracts from the great man’s lifelong dedication to the “worst system of government except for all the others.”

Stumbling or sleepwalking towards the exit of the European Union, Great Britain has put its national fate and destiny into the hands of voters who, for over forty years, have been spoon-fed a sheer interminable succession of half truths and outright lies about a body nearly everybody loves to blame for whatever ills the nation is suffering. Some politicians of note, such as Boris Johnson, the former secretary of state for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, have actually made a career out of peddling misinformation about the EU.

Mr Johnson’s fanciful writings from Brussels, laced with pseudo-intellectual gibberish to lend an air of credibility to his reporting, touched on topics as diverse as manure (‘Brussels recruits sniffer-dogs to ensure Euro-manure smells the same’), food (‘Snails are fish, says EU’), architecture (‘Euro headquarters to be blown up’), and taste (‘Europe to abolish prawn cocktail flavour crisps’). Never one to let facts interfere with a good story, Mr Johnson’s reporting for The Daily Telegraph between 1989 and 1994 did break new ground: it introduced the euro-myth genre, and – amazingly enough for someone sacked from The Times for making up stories – set the tone of the domestic debate.

Fake News Pioneer

Recognising the awesome power of fake news, eons before anyone had even considered the phenomenon as an actual ‘thing’, Mr Johnson readily admitted to enjoying the ‘amazing explosive effect’ of his words on the Tories and the ‘weird sense of power’ they afforded him. Those words, though mostly made up and not grounded in any discernible reality, set him up for life and launched not only his own career in politics but those of others as well. The euro-myths invented by Mr Johnson, and expanded upon by the countless imitators that soon followed in his footsteps, directly sparked the emergence of the UK Independence Party (UKIP) in the early 1990s.

A political environment that allows habitual liars to rise to the top and set the agenda, even after their fraud has been documented and exposed, is a toxic one indeed and cannot be trusted with minding, let alone steering, the ship of state. Whipped into a very un-British frenzy by Mr Johnson and all those who eagerly helped erect a parallel reality on the foundation he laid, voters bought into the rambling yet seductive discourse, happily heaping blame on, and venting their frustrations at, Brussels for nearly all perceived societal shortcomings.

Proponents of the status quo realised much too late that Brexit is not about reason, logic, or even the economy: it is an emotional state fuelled by both nostalgia and a desire to upset the creaking apple cart – a stick-it-to-the-man kind of attitude which quite often prevails when voters are invited to make a binary choice. Referendums usually provide answers that do not even remotely relate to the question asked and are but crude political tools easily manipulated.

Courting Disaster

As such, referendums have no place in the parliamentary democracy that they seek to undermine. Entrusting highly complex questions to a barely informed – or even seriously misinformed – public is to invite disaster and court outcomes that are all but impossible to implement in the real world. In modern democracies, voters get to set the general direction of government – left, right, centre – and may partake in referendums on minor domestic issues that do not affect the bedrock upon which their nation was built.

Thus, Brexit offers a cautionary tale of the havoc fake news and alt truths can wreak when left unchallenged. When even secretaries of state parrot lies and fail to stand up for fact, you’re in deep trouble. As of yet, no antidote to the affliction has been found and it is feared the disease must run its full course.

Cover photo: This person wishes to subtly emphasise his national identity.

---

© 2018 photo by Camilo Rueda Lopez