I remember our referendum. I was too young to vote, so the whole experience was torture. I had to sit there and watch old men tell me that they were not in favour of my future, or that they weren’t going to vote at all. Powerless, my friends and I, at the ripe old age of 16, went to ralliesand waved that EU flag like our lives depended on it.

Well, our lives did depend on it. I am Generation Y. We grew up on Sister, Sister, Different Strokes and whatever other show Nickelodeon had to offer. Our world was not only Malta. We saw what opportunities people in the UK, US, Paris and the world had, and we all wanted the same.

We came of age in the chat room, where random conversations with someone from Japan, Argentina, and New Zealand chipped away at the imagined barriers and differences older generations thought existed, and needed protection from.

The EU was and is the very embodiment of all things Generation Y: connected, diverse and outward looking. It is many different countries working towards a common goal, like a better environment, better opportunities, and better rights, just like we had been taught at school.

However, talk to a British person about the EU, and it’s like they are talking about something out of Star Wars. Take back control? You have no control over fish. Fish swim, and you need a platform where different countries can set common regulations to avoid overfishing. Without the EU, there would still be such treaties in place, so what’s the problem? Why would a treaty to prevent overfishing be seen as a reduction of national sovereignty? Or do you want to sign a treaty you can just tear up when you feel like?

You are up against a brick wall as you try to communicate that, as an MEP, Nigel Farage is a representative of British sovereignty in Europe. He and all his colleagues are the people who are supposed to be getting things done for you. Farage, the man who has one of the worst attendance records in the EU, keeps getting voted for but does absolutely nothing.

You are left scratching your head as to what it is that has brought people to believe the things they do.

That is, until you listen to them. One telling comment I heard was: “I hate the EU because my butcher is forced to sell French sausages.”

Well, you don’t go to a butcher and see 28 different types of sausages on display, so such a statement is blatantly not true. However, here is one of the main problems: people believe their butcher more than they do their politician or any expert that points the truth out. Brazen statements like that go unquestioned.

Then the topic of immigration comes up. This is directly connected with their argument on sovereignty. No, they cannot refuse an EU citizen entry into the UK, that was the deal: you get the single market, and the people get to move around it freely. Stories of people showing up to claim benefits fill the comments boards, most likely by people who have no idea how difficult it is to claim benefits in the UK, and how little you end up getting.

Anyone smart enough to navigate the benefit system in the UK, after only just arriving and not being able to speak English, is probably smart enough to just get a normal job.

This discussion leads you to their favourite trump card: “Out of touch politicians.” Politicians aren’t out of touch because they don’t hold bigoted views. Politicians aren’t out of touch because they don’t believe the Daily Mail. Politicians aren’t out of touch because they use fact not fear.

People believe their butcher more than they do their politician or any expert that points the truth out

By mirroring the sentiments of these Brexiters, politicians are not being ‘democratic’. They are merely enabling the far right; a mostly undemocratic group of people with a dangerous outlook. It is a politician’s duty to defuse such irrational concerns.

Essentially, Britain has a generation that was brought up after the war, and during the Cold War, that was taught a set of values that have since been discarded by my generation. In fact, the EU has always been a discarding of the past view of the world, and the vehicle by which a new view has been brought into reality.

It is the difference between Obama and Trump, between what the world once was, and what it is today. The divide has little to do with money. You are more likely to find a Brexiter among the pro-death penalty camps, and the more old- fashioned.

It would appear that these are the voices of those who opposed the changes in the past, and now is time to bring things back. What other changes do they want? Gay rights? Women’s rights?

The press should have informed the public, not shocked it by playing on symbols and cultural references of the past that were there for a whole different reason altogether.

British politicians, and the British public, failed to recognise this. You can’t treat the Press’s habit of exaggerating and fuelling the ‘outrage industry’ as a fact of life with little to no consequences, when in fact it has direct consequences and serious ones at that.

It’s not business as usual. It’s dangerous.

Yes, I remember the EU referendum in Malta being a life or death situation. Thankfully we voted to enter the EU. Since then, I have had the opportunities I was promised, and which are available to everyone else here.

However, I imagine that many Brexiters felt the exact same urgency. If you are fed such a scary picture of the EU, you would want out too.

Brexiters aren’t stupid, they are just lied to. Farage and Le Pen are not stupid either. They are very intelligent and calculating individuals out to pull the world back. We underestimate them at our own risk.

Brexit says more about the UK than it does about Europe. Let’s make this break-up as amicable as possible, learn from the UK, and make sure other countries don’t make the same mistake.

Edward Caruana Galizia is an actor and studied psycho-social studies at Birkbeck University of London.