When did Britain turn into a huge national self-pity party?

In this article I'm going to be careful to avoid generalising about all Brexit voters.

If you're a Leave voter there are only two ways it's possible that you feel mortally offended by this article; one is if you are from one or both of the specific Brexiter demographics I criticise (the extreme-right ones, the victim complex whinger ones), and the other possibility is that your comprehension skills are so weak, and your political sentiments so tribalistic, that you consider any any criticism of any Brexiter to be a personal criticism against you.

The influence of the extreme-right

Anyone who tries to deny that the extreme-right had a decisive influence in the EU referendum is clearly intent on denying reality.

Every single extreme-right organisation (UKIP, Britain First, Leave.EU, the National Front, the BNP, National Action, the English Defence League ...) threw their full weight behind Brexit. Even if you have no extreme-right sympathies whatever, if you voted for Brexit you clearly and undeniably aligned yourself with a bunch of bigots and fascists to get what you wanted.

It's difficult to estimate how many Brexit voters were primarily motivated by extreme-right views, authoritarianism and bigotry, but very few people would try to claim that it was below the winning margin of 1.27 million.

A poll of Brexiters shortly after the referendum found that 23% of Brexiters are such delusional extreme-right authoritarians that they actually believe that UK citizens living elsewhere in the EU should be forcibly repatriated back to the UK!

If this result is extrapolated that's an incredible 4 million Brexiters who actually believe that the UK government should be forcibly repatriating British people who have made their lives overseas! That's an awful lot of bonkers right-wing authoritarian people who think they, or the government, have the right to kidnap people back to the UK based purely on their nationality.

You might not have voted Leave because you had bigoted, right-wing authoritarian or outright fascist views, but in voting to quit the EU you undeniably helped these extreme-right fanatics achieve what they wanted.

Don't try to deny it

Even though I've been a strong critic of the EU over the years I thought Remain was the safer option because I was sure that Brexit would empower the hard-right fringe of the Tory party, and that the ensuing shambles would cause appalling suffering for millions of ordinary people who don't have the wealth to insulate themselves from the economic ruination of a chaotic Tory strop out of the EU.

I thought voting to quit the EU with the Tories in power and absolutely no plan of action would be a classic case of "out of the frying pan into the fire".

In adopting this position I ended up on the same side of the binary Brexit debate as detestable self-serving establishment elitists like David Cameron, George Osborne, Tony Blair and Nick Clegg. I obviously didn't like being on their side of the debate, but I fully accept that I was, and that had they won I would have helped them to achieve what they wanted.

If you're a Brexiter with any regard for reality you need to be honest with yourself and accept that you sided with the revolting extreme-right fanatics and helped them to realise their dreams.

The victim complex

Massaging people's victim complexes is one of the main propaganda tactics of the extreme-right. Once you've convinced someone to indulge in regular bouts of extreme self-pity and inflated their victim complexes to the size of hot air balloons, it's possible to convince them of pretty much anything as long as you frame it as the solution to their woes.

Nigel Farage was a master at this kind of pathetic victimy whinging. According to him it doesn't matter what the problem is, it's always someone else's fault, and most commonly it's the EU's.

Farage and UKIP established this piteous victim complex whinging as a fundamental component of political discourse in the UK, and an awful lot of people bought into it and keep doing it.

The extreme-right never blame the hard-right economic policies of the ruling political establishment, it's always the fault of the EU. They never admit that it's right-wing economic dogma that has ruined working class industries and communities up and down the country; distributed hundreds of £billions in public assets to private interests; repressed your wages; underfunded and undermined the services and welfare system you pay for through your taxes; turned a blind eye to the tax-dodging of corporations and the super-rich; and allowed the bankers to go on one reckless gambling spree after another resulting in an over-inflated housing market that has put home ownership beyond the means of millions of ordinary workers.

Farage openly worshipped Margaret Thatcher who was the one who introduced hard-right economics in 1979, describing UKIP as the only party "keeping the flame of Thatcherism alive", as he simultaneously blamed the EU, immigrants, liberals, lefties, political correctness ... for the consequences of four unbroken decades of hard-right Thatcherite economic dogma from the Westminster political establishment.

The victim complex whinging is still going on!

Even after they've won and got the chaotic and shockingly negligent "let's make it up as we go along" Tory administered stagger out of the EU that they voted for, an awful lot of Brexiters are still putting on myopic displays of self-pitying victim complex whinging as if they're the poor innocent victims in all of this!

Take the angry Brexiter on Question Time who almost reduced himself to tears by working himself up into a self-pity tantrum and blurting out how much "hurt and distress" he's suffered because Dianne Abbott thinks a lot of Brexiters were motivated primarily by bigotry and racism.

As far as he was concerned it's him who deserves pity because his poor feelings have been hurt by the truth (that he sided with extreme-right bigots to get what he wanted).

It's not the 3 million EU citizens in the UK who are under intense stress because Theresa May is using their lives as gambling chips in her recklessly complacent "negotiating strategy"; It's not the million+ UK citizens in the EU whose lives and livelihoods are in doubt because they know that Theresa May and the Tories don't give a damn about them; It's not the 2.7 million workers in the manufacturing sector whose jobs will be under serious threat if Theresa May does a "no deal" strop away from the negotiating table; It's not the victims of the disgusting increase in racist hate crimes since the Brexit vote; It's not the High Court judges who were disgustingly abused by the hard-right press for daring to stand up for the concept of parliamentary sovereignty; It's not the people who have been subjected to barrages of abuse, intimidation and death threats by angry Brexiters for daring to try to hold the Tory government to account during the Brexit process;  And it's not the millions who are furious that they are being stripped of the rights and liberties that derive from EU citizenship against their will. 

No!

In the mind of the Question Time self-pity tantrum guy these people and their concerns are utterly irrelevant. The big victim in all of this is the guy who got exactly what he wanted, but hates to be confronted with the truth that he sided with a massive pack of extreme-right bigots to get it.

Conclusion

It's extraordinary that people who actually won, and got what they wanted are still whinging about being victims. They've enabled the hard-right fringe of the Tory party to go on a chaotic anti-democratic rampage, they've subjected millions of families and businesses in the UK and across the EU to severe anxiety inducing uncertainty, and they're stripping millions of UK citizens of their rights and liberties against their will. Yet they're still feeling sorry for themselves and crying victim!

Britain was once a proud nation that withstood the horrors and deprivations of the Second World War with stoicism and determination, now, thanks to the malign influence of extreme-right victim complex whingers like Nigel Farage, we've become a nation where absolutely pathetic public displays of baleful victim complex blubbering get big rounds of applause from other self-pitying snowflakes.

How have a once stoic people been reduced to the state of a lamentable national self-pity party where public displays of self-absorbed victim complex blubbering are actually celebrated and applauded?

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