Fifty-two per cent of UK voters chose to leave, 48 per cent to remain in, the European Union. Those of the former type are called Farage, those in the latter Nigel.
Like many, I was surprised at Friday’s result. My gut feeling in the run-up to the referendum was that, white cliffs of Dover notwithstanding, British practical good sense could be relied on to deliver the good and sensible. Except it couldn’t.
Now history teaches us that things will not inexorably march in the direction of unity. There is no grand plan, no inevitable final outcome. The 19th century, for example, was a time of great mobility and interaction. As someone put it, the response by many was ‘Stop the world, we want to get off’ – a response also known as nationalism.
Things got so rabid that, by 1917, shops in London that had German-sounding names had their windows smashed in the middle of the night. Sausage dogs were stoned on the streets, and the royal house of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha scrambled to rechristen itself a more English-sounding ‘Windsor’. On the commoner side, over 15 million people died.
Things looked considerably brighter in the 1920s. Berlin became such a cosmopolitan place that a new word had to be invented to describe it. Berlin was called a Weltstadt, a ‘world city’. The term became redundant in the 1930s, by which time the Nazi party had gained enough popular and democratic support to jackboot it all out in the name of a stronger nation.
The point is that there is no shortage of examples of people closing ranks when they least need it. Fascism and extreme nationalism have been on the rise in Europe for the past two decades or so. An Italian colleague of mine has carved an academic career out of describing the trend. He tells me his main problem is that there are so many examples he finds it hard to stay focused.
Still, Friday’s result surprised me. I couldn’t understand why a thriving country like the UK had chosen to get off the bus. Until I realised that Farage & Co. were simply a continuation of something much bigger, and very mainstream indeed.
It was right there on television on Friday night. I’ll limit myself to two examples. First, the crowds of football fans wearing the national colours and getting all ecstatic because their country had scored. Second, a fundraising telethon on Maltese television that went on and on about ‘il-qalb kbira tal-Maltin’ (the big heart of the Maltese).
I don’t think there is anything necessarily fascist or extreme-nationalist about Brexit. Nor do I think that the people who voted for it are stupid or special in any way. Rather, they share their basic political model with those who voted to remain, and with the multitudes who are falling over each other to voice their anguish. It is that political model, not stupidity or extremism, that is really to blame for Brexit.
The problem with the EU is that it can’t seem to decide on the fundamentals
The problem with the EU is that it can’t seem to decide on the fundamentals. We are told there is such a thing as a European project, but not what it entails. Is it a kind of family of nations that stick together for practical purposes, or is it rather a political project that seeks to supersede the nation and root localities in something else?
Some years ago my affinity was for the first model, which is why it was with tremendous reluctance and soul-searching that I voted Yes in our own referendum in 2003. Thirteen years on, I have no doubt I did the right thing. That’s because I have, or hope to have, rejected the first for the second model. I am now convinced that the EU and nationalism cannot coexist. I choose the EU because anything that brings together as many people as possible to do politics and manufacture peace, is intrinsically a good thing.
Two examples will help me make my points, which are that Nigel Farage has no monopoly over nationalism, and that nationalism is the worm that will ultimately kill the EU. The disclaimer is that there is nothing atavistic about nationalism, and that it exists only inasmuch as we continue to cultivate it.
First, the language of benefits. My experience of pro- and anti-EU people is that the former talk about gifts, the latter about losses. In both cases, however, the ultimate recipient or loser is some or other country. Thus, for example, the Brexit camp did a good job describing what went out, the ‘Bremain’ one a not-so-good job describing what went in. Their shared assumption was that British interests were what really mattered.
The EU can never fully work as long as this assumption persists. Imagine a nation in which categories of people (the gay lobby, dockyard workers, hunters, university students) had debates over secession every time they felt they were being shortchanged. That this is unthinkable is why nations are such strong and functional political entities.
The second example is education. Among the people whose friendship and intellect I value highest is someone who would murder me if I named him. He is a strong supporter of the EU project. It is no coincidence that he is also a classicist, because he thinks that the future of a strong EU must lie in an educational system that takes our common classical heritage as the point of departure.
The opposite of that, and Erasmus be damned, is the present educational system that privileges the nation at every turn. Take University, which insists on the Maltese language as a basic entry requirement. In so doing it asserts its vocation vis-à-vis the nation, a point made ad nauseam in a million graduation orations. I’d suggest that a truly European (if not world) university ought to be the very negation of that.
I am not saying we should put up EU flags all over the place and swear our allegiance to the Commission every morning over breakfast. My argument is that there is much room for locality and what it entails, only it ought to be grounded in a framework that is not that of the nation. I would not want to live anywhere other than Malta, but the sight of Eurovision fans waving Maltese flags, or the mention of a big Maltese heart, makes me undo my pants and rush to the bathroom.
The much bandied-about ‘unity in diversity’ can never work, as long as that diversity is defined by nations. Make no mistake, Farage is no exception. He may be extreme, but he is nourished by a general and mainstream idea that tells us that our nation is what properly holds us together, and that all other comers are, in truth, European outsiders.
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