My reaction to the Brexit. Is it the start of something bigger?

Leave supporters celebrate the Brexit. NBC/AFP. 

As you know the United Kingdom has decided to leave the European Union and have voted in favor of the Brexit. 52 percent of voters chose to leave the EU. Now I am no expert on the EU and the UK, but I do think that there are some pretty obvious trends to talk about here.

Do I think the Brexit was the right thing to do? I'm not completely sure. I think in the short term it will probably hurt the economy of the UK and the EU, and may have a global effect on the market. Long term though, it could go either way, but my guess is that it will be good for the UK in the end. The EU is on the way out and getting out now is probably for the best. If I had been in the UK, I probably would have voted for Brexit. How things will work out long term though is still very unclear. There is a decent chance that whatever negative consequences of the Brexit will be worsened by retaliation from the EU.

With the Brexit happening I do think we can extrapolate a bit of information from it. There are some global trends going on and I think the Brexit is a clear game changer. Right wing ideas are on the rise and left wing ones are on the decline. Here's what we learned from the Brexit:

1. The EU is a fundamentally weak union. The cracks began to show with the Greek debt crisis. It showed how one weak country could threaten the economy of the entire union. Though the crisis eventually lessened it did not change the fact that the EU is an economic basket case. Greece is hardly the only state in the Union that has economic problems. 

But the real disaster was the reaction to the migrant crisis. Germany basically decided that they wanted to take in millions of migrants, to be distributed throughout the EU. This created a huge burden for the rest of the EU, and effected poor countries disproportionately, including the the already economically unstable Greeks. This showed that one country making a baffling descion could greatly damage the entire union.

Already, right wing politicians across Europe are calling for referendums in their own countries. Though I don't know how many of those efforts will be successful, it certainly seems like the dominoes are falling. I would not be surprised if a decade from now the EU will no longer exist. 

2. Leftist propaganda is becoming less effective. From what I understand the BBC and other UK news outlets supported the stay campaign pretty much exclusively. Though the British newspapers had a lot more diversity in opinions, the news media was clearly biased against the leave campaign.

Though 48% of people were convinced, it's still shocking that 52% of people were able to ignore the propaganda. Why? Because of social media. Pro-leave campaigners were able to get their message out through facebook, twitter and various forums. Even though the stay campaign dominated the traditional news media it seems as though many people weren't listening 

3. People aren't anywhere near as afraid of being called racist anymore. Though there were many other arguments for not leaving the EU, the one I heard the most was that doing so was racist. The claim was that the only reason people wanted to leave the EU was because they hated brown people. And that argument was repeated ad nasuem. It's a poor argument anyways, but in the past it's been very effective.

In the past an accusation of racism would be enough completely shut down an argument. Now people are no longer so scared of such things. The success of the Brexit, after such claims shows that the word racist is losing power due to overuse. For a very long time the left, regardless of where the left was found, would call anyone who disagrees with them racist. Slowly the word stopped meaning people that hate other people based on race. With the meaning shifting it's almost as people are reclaiming the word. At the very least people aren't as afraid of being called racist.

4. Polling was wrong. Though Leave and Stay had been fairly close in terms of polling, most showed people supporting Stay. Especially after the murder of Jo Cox by a Leave supporter. Obviously the polls were wrong, but why? 

My guess is related to the above point about "racism". Even though many people no longer care about the "racist" label some clearly still do. And when those people got called by pollsters they lie because even though they supported the Brexit they did not anyone to know about it. Right wing ideas appealed to them personally, but they didn't want to pay the price if their views became public knowledge. 

Incidentally, I think the same thing is going on in the United States with Donald Trump. Though Trump is down in the polls, how many people are just lying to the pollsters about him because they don't want to be labeled? From what I understand Trump consistently does better with online polls then phone polls where they actually have to talk to someone. Are people really hiding their support of Trump? If the Brexit is any indication it may be about a 5% difference, which means that Clinton and Trump are probably tied. 

5. Immigration is the major issue of the day. I already talked about how the EU made a huge mistake with the migrant crisis, but I think that immigration needs to be talked about further. The massive wave of mostly Islamic migrants is causing great fear throughout the world. With the massive terrorist attacks in France and Belgium and the rape crisis that exploded with Rotherham scandal and the Cologne attacks, there is good reason to be concerned. With camps of migrants across the channel at Calais demanding to be let into the UK, you can't tell me that Islamic immigration wasn't a major factor.

But it wasn't the only factor. I would be a mistake to present the Brexit as a referendum on Islamic immigration. There was also a lot of anger at non-Muslim migrants from the EU as well. Workers form Poland and Romania often travel to the UK for work. This depresses wages and creates more competition for native born UK workers and even for their other migrant communities. Is it any wonder why people were angry? 

So what did we learn? I think that right wing ideas are becoming more popular throughout Europe and the world. People aren't as vulnerable to left wing propaganda as they once were and are less afraid of being attacked by the left wing. And even those that still are afraid, are more willing to show up at the ballot box. And, of course, immigration is a huge issue that will greatly effect elections in the future.

My opinion is that the Brexit proves that the Overton Window of acceptable ideas has shifted to the right. The real question is if this is a trend or if the Brexit is a one off thing. I think the next tests will be the election of Donald Trump and the success or failure of other exit campaigns. We will see in due time... 

The immigration crisis in Europe is getting worse. 10,000 migrants stuck on Greek border. AP

Iraqi and Syrian men protesting the closure of the border. AP.

10,000 migrants are stuck in Greece as the European migrant crisis grows worse. AP. A new tent city has arisen on the Greece-Macedonia border after Macedonia stopped accepting refugees. The closure happened after many other EU countries, including Austria, closed their borders and instituted caps on how many refugees they will accept. Greece is furious with the move and are calling for humanitarian aid to be delivered. Greece expects as many as 100,000 migrants to be stranded in the country if conditions don't change. Macedonia closed their border after migrants attacked and attempted to cross into the country illegally. The country has detained around 70 illegal immigrants from Pakistan and wish to deport them back to Greece, but Greece will not accept them. Greece has also started to deport a small number of economic migrants from Africa. 

My Comment:

The European migrant crisis is still going on and will probably get much, much worse as time passes. Winter is almost over and as the temperatures warm, even more migrants will attempt to make the passage to rich countries like Sweden and Germany. Last year more one million people entered Europe, claiming asylum. Most of these people were granted it, or were simply allowed in anyways. People from all over the world think that Europe's doors are wide open and anyone seeking a better life or easy money will come. I wouldn't be surprised if the number of new migrants passes two million by the end of 2016. 

Of course this is an utter disaster for Europe. The economic strain alone from housing, feeding and educating these migrants will cost countless billions of Euros. Europe doesn't have enough money to take care of the migrants they have already, let alone a million more of them. And these migrants will contribute very little to the economy. They won't be able to work, not at first, and in the meantime they will be a huge drain on every aspect of the economy until they learn the local language and customs. That is assuming that they ever assimilate at all. If they don't then they will never be anything other then a new permanent European underclass, displacing the native Europeans unlucky enough to be on the lower rungs of the economic ladder. 

And they will bring crime and violence, with the possibility of terrorism, with them as well. We all saw what happened in Cologne on New Years Eve, and College was simply the incident that made the news the most. All across Europe, citizens were robbed, groped and even raped by these migrants, and there is evidence that at least some of the attackers in last years huge terror attacks in Paris came in with the migrants. ISIS could very easily send in terrorists but even if they don't the behavior of these young men (and the vast majority of them are young men) has been almost as bad as the terrorists anyways. 

Given the economic, national security and cultural consequences, is it any wonder that Eastern Europe is trying to close their doors? Not all of these countries are wealthy and they simply can't afford to open the floodgates, even if the vast majority of migrants are going to Germany and Sweden. They still pass through these countries and some of them even stay. That's a hard pill to swallow for people already suffering economically. Closing the borders make sense, and I am surprised it took them this long to do so. 

Greece is the one that is suffering the most right now though. Their economy is a basket case as it is, and they simply can't afford to house 100,000 migrants. Why not deport them? Well, I am sure they would like to, but that costs a lot of money as well, money the Greek government does not have. Remember, this is a country that almost destroyed the EU's economy in the last couple of years. They don't have a well run government. They are completely out of their depth dealing with a crisis that would be hard for a functioning government to handle... 

I'd also like to point out how bad of a partner Turkey is in this situation. They have the ability to stem the tide of refugees coming from Syria, and to a lesser extent, Iraq, but they are not closing their borders with those countries. Indeed, they seem to welcome these refugees and are more then happy to send them to Europe. 

Why? Because they want Europe to support their war against the Kurds and help to overthrow Bashar al-Assad's government. The Turkish government hates the Kurds more then anything else and want to bring them to heel. To accomplish that goal, they see no problem with setting Europe on fire. The Turks are using the refugee waves as a weapon against Europe, and I wonder if the Europeans even understand that fact.  

Of course the European Union deserves the lion's share of the blame for this debacle. Germany and Sweden opened the doors to migrants, in a misguided attempt to reverse low birth rates. Both countries have aging populations and are well below the replacement rate when it comes to births. Both countries also have generous welfare and social programs that they will not be able to pay for unless they have a large, young workforce. Instead of encouraging young Germans and Swedes to have children, they opened their doors to migrants. I don't know about you, but I think encouraging young people to have children would have been a better way to go about it... 

I am really starting to believe that there will be no happy ending for this crisis. The best case scenario is that the EU breaks up and countries start deporting these migrants en masse. That seems almost impossible right now, especially with no safe place to deport them to, and even if that happens, Germany, Sweden and France are unlikely to go along with it. The middle scenario is that Europe is wracked with unrest, violence and terrorism as these migrants realize that Europe isn't the paradise they were promised. The worst case scenario, and one I am starting to find much more likely, is an all out war. Either between the pro and anti immigration countries in the EU or between the native Europeans and the Muslim migrants. It might take a decade or two to erupt, but it certainly seems like it is coming. Either way, Europe is in serious trouble and I don't know what can even be done at this point. 

Russia imposes more sanctions on the west. -Yahoo/AFP

Vladimir Putin. -Yahoo/AFP

In response to western sanctions Russia and Vladimir Putin have new sanctions of their own. Yahoo/AFP The new sanctions ban all food and agricultural imports from countries that have imposed sanctions on Russia. The ban effects 28 EU nations and also impacts U.S. imports. Analysts say the move may backfire on Putin because it will increase food costs for Russian civilians. However, the move may result in closer ties between Russia and both China and South America. 

My Comment:

Interesting move by Putin. These sanctions won't have much of an impact on the U.S. but it will effect the EU. Russia is a huge customer for the EU so these sanctions will bite. Will it hurt the Russian people? Maybe, but I think they will be willing to take the hit. The western media are either not picking up or are deliberately ignoring the fact that Putin is popular and so  are his policies. Russians feel, with good reason, that the world is against them and they are circling their wagons. Having fewer choices for food and higher prices will probably be a small price to pay compared to the alternative. 

Back and forth sanctions between Russia and the EU. Yahoo/Reuters

Putin at a government meeting. Yahoo/Reuters

Russia fires back at EU sanctions with sanctions of their own. Yahoo/Reuters. The European Union has imposed sanctions on the Russian oil and weapons as well as banning Russian banks from raising capital in EU markets. Eight Russian civilians had their overseas assets frozen. Russia has, in response, banned some fruit and vegetable imports from Poland and may extend the ban to all of the EU. The EU has been reluctant to impose sanctions on the Russians due to the importance of trade and the dependence of Russian natural gas.

My Comment:

Russia is far more able to absorb these sanctions then the EU is. The fruit ban on Poland is really going to hurt them because over half of their exports are to Russia. And all Putin has to do cut off natural gas supplies to bring the EU to their knees. This is a dangerous game for the EU since Putin has all the cards. American sanctions are probably less effective, but cost America little to nothing. Either way, Putin isn't going to care too much.