Brexit Is Not A British Revolution; It’s Part Of A Global Revolt

I’m not much of an expert on Great Britain;  when I took my doctoral exams at the University of Wisconsin in Western European History, the Brits weren’t included.   We “Europeanists”  did the continent, not the Isles.

The same divide is still with the intellectual class.  Brexit is overwhelmingly analyzed as a British phenomenon, to be “understood” in narrowly British terms, even though, through the eyes of a Europeanist like me, it’s just one more event in a much broader story:  the transition from the bipolar Cold War world to something different, something that remains to be created and institutionalized.

Something more traditional.

I don’t see Brexit as a revolutionary event.  It looks rather like a continuation of the end of the post-war world, which itself was a most unusual period:  there was no major war, and two superpowers could dictate major world events.  In that unusual period, various myths were generated, of which the most important (and most misleading) was that, henceforth, international conflicts and disagreements would no longer be military, but economic (one of Bill Clinton’s favorite mantras).  This myth went hand in hand with the notion that liberal democracy was henceforth the model for the whole world.  You remember “the end of history,” don’t you?

That being the case, it followed that borders were anachronistic, and national character could be undone.  The European project was based on these fantasies.  Helmut Kohl, the driving force behind the creation of the eurozone, embraced the ugliest stereotype of his own people.  Left to their own devices, he thought, the Germans would kill again.  Therefore they must cease to be Germans and transmogrify into Europeans, and the solvent that would dissolve German national identity was to be the euro.

If you ask the French, Italians and Dutch how that worked out, they will tell you that the Germans now rule Europe thanks to the euro;  military force is no longer necessary.   All over Europe, you will find people intensely disgruntled with German power, who bridle under Ms Merkel’s diktats, and yearn for greater independence.  For extras, the Brussels bureaucracy turned out to be obnoxiously intrusive and corrupt.

Finally, there’s a revolt against political correctness.  The people despise the current elites, both because things are tough and getting tougher for most people, and because the political class is manifestly afraid of the self-declared enemies of the West.  Listen to Pierre-André Taguieff:

The elites also face the accusation of being blind, complacent, or powerless to manage new threats to nations: first, massive and uncontrolled immigration; and, second, what looks like a new Muslim conquest, backed up by various Islamist movements’ theories (from pietistic Salafists to Jihadists^[14]). These two reasons for fear and self-defense take on a broader significance, even a tragic sense, in a context marked by the crisis of the welfare state and the failures or the pernicious effects of human rights based politics. On both fronts (immigration and “Islamization”), strictly “humanitarian” politics are impossible. They are pseudo-politics, or, more accurately, they belong to the impolitic, because they disregard the fundamental fact…that it is not us who designate the enemy, it is the enemy that designates us, regardless of our “genuflections, bows and other claims of benevolent understanding.”

The resentment with the new Europe and its failed ruling class has been widespread and politically powerful for several years.  Brexit is hardly the first time an EU member voted against Brussels;  on several occasions, recalcitrant countries were forced to repeat referenda that came out the “wrong” way.  Here’s the lead from Reuters’ report on European legislative elections two years ago:

Stunning victories in European Parliament elections by nationalist, Euroskeptic parties from France and Britain left the European Union licking its wounds on Monday and facing a giant policy dilemma.

Across the continent, anti-establishment parties of the far right and hard left more than doubled their representation, harnessing a mood of anger with Brussels over austerity, mass unemployment and immigration.

While the center-right and center-left will continue to control more than half of the 751 seats in the EU legislature, they will face an unprecedented challenge from noisy insurgents determined to stop business as usual in the 28-nation bloc.

The pattern was clear enough in 2014, and has not fundamentally changed.  Insofar as things have changed, it has been in the direction of rejection of the EU.  While Reuters identified Italy as a major exception to the trend, that has now changed.  In local elections two weeks ago, the pro-EU center-left lost two mayoral votes, in Rome and Turin;  the big winner nation-wide was the anti-EU Five Star Party.

Nor is the revolt against the ruling classes restricted to Europe;  it’s a global rebellion, running from the Middle East to Latin America.

I insist on seeing Brexit in a broad context.  It may be that my limited knowledge of things British prevents me from seeing that it’s truly unique, and that I am wrong to argue that it’s just the latest manifestation of the global transformation and attendant conflicts that characterize our time.

But I don’t think so.  Eventually we’ll get tired of looking at the details of the British vote and the personalities of British politicians.  Then I think it will be easier to see Brexit in its proper context.

Michael Ledeen is the Freedom Scholar at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.