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June 24, 2016 - Sargon of Akkad - Carl Benjamin
16:49
Britain chooses Freedom over Fear
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So Britain has voted to leave the EU.
I thought I'd have a bit of a ramble about what I think this means and some of the other things that are on my mind regarding this because I'm seeing an awful lot of salt coming from the Remain camp as one might expect.
But I'm seeing an awful lot of people from the leave camp saying we should now pull together.
So instead of being bitter, my advice to people who want to remain is you need to realign your ideas now.
You thought staying in the EU was the better idea.
We understand.
We thought it was not the better idea.
We put it to the vote and democracy has worked.
One side has a clear margin of victory over another.
And so that's the position we're going to take.
It doesn't mean that you can't support Europe.
It doesn't mean that we won't interact or trade with Europe or anything like that.
What this means is that a principle has won out over pragmatism.
Because you have to remember that that was your entire campaign.
Everything about your campaign was a pragmatic argument.
Well, we're going to lose money.
Oh, it'll make it more difficult to move around Europe.
Oh, what about this?
What about that?
The markets.
These things are all pragmatic ideas and definitely worthy of consideration.
But they are roadblocks on the path that we are traveling down.
They are not a branch to turn from the path that we are on with the EU or that the EU itself is on in general.
Throughout the course of the EU's existence, all it has done is centralize power.
Constant proposals, constant expansions, constant overreach in almost every area.
It's looking like an imperial project.
The way that Italy and Greece have been treated by the EU looks like an imperial system.
I don't want to be a part of that.
It's looking worse and worse as we go along.
And they keep saying we want things like a centralized treasury.
We want to control the laws.
We want an army.
It's not a good model.
And so yes, if you are looking at this, you might think, well, in the short term, yeah, sure.
I'm going to maybe lose some money.
But in the long term, I will avoid ending in a very dire state where I probably will lose money anyway.
The EU is not growing.
It's not doing well.
Even Jean-Claude Juncker turned around a few months ago and said Europe's best days are behind it.
And it's okay, well that's a scary fucking idea, isn't it?
You know, the idea that you can literally have people at the top of this trade block, this economic area that is rapidly becoming a sovereign state, and then they say, yeah, and it's not going to be very good.
Because that's why the leave campaign, the remain campaign wasn't based on, look how great things are going to be with us in Europe.
If you could make that case, then you would have done a thousand times over, and it would have been persuasive, I'm sure.
But that's not the case that we can make with what we think the future of Europe is going to be in the EU.
For the European Union, the Euro is the future, and for the poor countries in the European Union, the Euro is also the problem.
And when the people in say Greece democratically reject austerity that they didn't cause, the government caused, and they now have to pay for, and then the EU forces these terms on them anyway.
You are looking into the future.
Even when it gets as bad as it's going to get, and when the obvious solution is to leave the Euro, And in Junker's words, that means leaving the European Union, they will choose to cripple your economy rather than let you leave and grow and rejoin.
This is what they do now.
Who knows what they'll do in 10 years' time?
I don't want to find out.
This is bad enough.
This whole project is authoritarian.
They are authoritarian and they don't care about your vote, which is why you don't get to vote for them.
The system was designed to protect them.
The EU has the facade of democracy.
Yes, you might, for a period of time, be able to vote for people who disagree with the will of the council for long enough to keep blocking proposals.
But you have to get lucky every time.
They only need to get lucky once, because once a proposal goes through, we can't reverse it.
Our MEPs cannot propose legislation.
The MEPs and the Council can only act as an advisory body to the Commission.
If the Commission doesn't propose it, it doesn't happen.
You don't vote directly for the Commissioners, so you can't make it happen.
If you find yourself in a position where the EU has snuck through some, I don't know, TTP, TTP, IP style bullshit, which was negotiated with the European Commission, I just want to remind you, in secret, try and keeping it away from you, then you can't make them do anything about that.
At best, you will have to be rioting in the streets before they listen.
And then, do you think they're not going to be able to justify to themselves using force to stop you, especially if they happen to have their own fucking army?
Alright, I'm so sick of people going, oh, this is just a conspiracy theory.
No, this is the nature of power.
People who have it never want to give it up.
And any of these justifications can be used to suppress your rights to be heard, to have the consent of the governed in your government.
Do you want to fucking stand this?
I am so sick of the supposedly high-minded bourgeois intellectuals of my Facebook feed completely missing that they are arguing only for their own self-interest.
That's it.
They're saying, oh, it'll be more difficult for me to move around Europe.
I'm very sorry about that.
Oh, but it's going to cost me a bit of money.
My groceries are going to be a little bit more expensive.
Oh, I'm so sorry to hear that.
Everyone on the Remain side was xenophobic and racist.
Do you know them?
Are you a mind reader now?
Fucking hell.
Or my favourites, but we don't know what will happen if we leave the EU.
None of these are arguments.
None of them.
Do you understand?
None of them are arguments.
None of them are arguments against the fact that we can see how the EU is going.
It's going badly.
It's being run badly.
It's being run ideologically for the United States of Europe.
And it doesn't care how it gets there.
It doesn't care what it has to ruin to get there.
And they know that they are.
The top guy, the head of the commission, is saying Europe's glory days are over.
And it doesn't have to be that way.
We are massively well populated.
We have some of the smartest people in the world working in our countries.
We have major international corporations.
We have fucking finance centers, the world literally that dominate world finance.
We have the best education.
We have hard fucking working people who have been through trials in their lives.
They're not just insulated millennial babies.
Europe already has systems of world trade set up.
The world speaks English.
It's so advantageous for us.
And yet you honestly are sitting there going, yeah, but I mean, why don't we shackle ourselves to a dying trade block?
Because the alternative might not be any better.
It's the most incredible thing I've ever heard.
I mean, do you understand that being in a declining financial position and being in control of the direction you then take to solve this problem is way better than being in a declining financial situation and not having any control over the people who are making the decisions.
I can't believe I have to be saying this.
You sound like you have Stockholm syndrome.
You sound like you have been in prison for 20 years and are afraid that you might be poor or in a tiny cell, in a tiny room with no money and no real freedom at the end of it.
You still have that.
You may as well take the opportunity to try and get some kind of prosperity instead of just declining the idea altogether.
For Christ's sake, the Eurozone's problems are not going away.
That means the European Union's problems are not going away.
They're just getting worse.
We're not changing things from the inside.
Again, Juncker, the fucking head of the European Commission, I'm not bringing him up because he's a nobody.
He said there will be no more renegotiation.
I think he's right.
I think he knows what he's talking about.
I think he's actually someone that needs to be listened to.
And I think that he is speaking so plainly because he thinks it will help people understand what's going to happen in Europe.
And he's right.
It's going to get worse.
There are going to be more foisted on other people without their consent.
This is a bad system and we should get out.
I don't care if it costs some money.
We're looking at a future where it's going to cost us an awful lot of money anyway.
So if we're going to be losing money in some way, I would like to at least say, right, I'd rather lose more now and then dig ourselves out of this hole later than just slowly decline indefinitely.
And I'd just like to address the people who are saying things like, oh, this is anti-intellectualism.
Oh, this is old, uneducated people without degrees making decisions for my children's future that they're just so selfish.
Shut up.
Just seriously, shut up.
You don't, you haven't even thought this through.
You don't know what you're saying.
These are people who have direct experience from before and after the European Union.
They have lived through the European Union's effect on their lives.
They can see how it's going.
I thought the baby boomers would be good for nothing.
I thought they were going to be a completely wasted generation who completely selfishly indulge themselves at the future's expense.
But they have at least performed one useful function.
They accrued wisdom.
We're talking about human character when we talk about power, politics, and the EU.
We're talking about the nature of human beings.
Something that the millennials clearly don't understand.
Because the younger generation seems to be totally out of touch with other humans.
If you think that generations are getting more empathetic as they go along, you're fucking wrong.
Millennials are some of the most selfish, narcissistic, pathetic human beings I have ever seen.
I'm not all, hashtag not all, but huge numbers of them.
And I want you to remember that I'm not saying that it's their fault, but it is the reality.
I don't want these young people making long-term decisions for which they clearly do not understand the ramifications.
Older people clearly understand more.
They have had more character pounded into their heads, I guess.
Because all of the statistics in the world and all of the lovely little factoids that the Remain campaign would bring out misrepresent, but it wasn't quite as bad as the Leave campaign's misrepresentation.
Don't matter when you are starting from a point of principle that is distinct from the one you're advocating for.
You're saying, yeah, but we should just pragmatically just continue on this, and in the future it won't be so bad because the future for yours, we can't predict.
It's like, well, we can predict it in one way.
We can predict a lack of tyranny in the future that we want in Leave.
British countries, the English-speaking nations, don't produce tyrants.
This is a matter of historical fact.
I'm sorry, and I know I sound petty when I say this, and I know people are going to vote, oh, that's just nationalism.
No, I'm not being nationalistic.
Any nation could adopt these ideas.
I'm not Australian, but they are in exactly the same position as we are.
I'm not American.
And they may well be losing their Republic and they don't have the exact same system.
But it's the same principle, the same mindsets.
That the educated know what's good for the poor and they end up coming to despise them.
To have contempt for them.
And that's what the Remain campaign is demonstrating now.
It's naked, disgusting contempt for people who have their own interests separate to theirs.
These people's lives are getting worse.
The Remain camp are generally bourgeois as fuck.
And they don't seem to understand that this is putting them out of touch from people who are actually directly on the ground experiencing the realities of the policies they're advocating for.
These are the builders who have been put out by Polish workers.
These are people who have had to deal with Eastern European migrants and migrants from other places.
They want control of the borders.
They want reduced immigration because it's making their lives tough.
And when you're living in bath, in a lovely two-bedroom flat at the top of a fucking skyrise, you're not dealing with the same problems.
You don't have 13-year-old fucking kids who have no fucking respect chucking shit at your house in the middle of the night.
You don't have their problems.
They are different to you, but they are still citizens.
They still get a vote.
And your contempt will just make them resent you.
You will not be leaders.
You will be bitter exiles from the public sphere if you carry on like this.
And believe me, you are alienating those lower class people that you had brainwashed into thinking into voting against their own fucking interests.
Alright?
They will see how you are acting and think you petty for it.
Again, I don't care if you think X or Y or Z.
This is about character.
This is about principle.
You have to understand, we're not having the same conversation as you.
The Remain camp always said, yeah, well, we know it's not perfect.
Yes, exactly.
That's the point.
It's so not perfect.
In fact, it's the opposite of perfect.
It is, in fact, a terrible idea, and we can choose a less terrible idea.
Yeah, sure, it's not going to be a fucking bag of fucking bag of sweets or something leaving.
No, it's going to be fucking difficult.
But it just starts from a better idea than the remain.
And then, yeah, acting like petty children.
Having temper tantrums all over Facebook and all over Twitter.
Oh my God, just...
you're a disgrace.
You're a fucking disgrace.
I'm so sick of it.
And I'd like to just thank all of my friends who voted Remain who didn't do that.
Well done.
I mean, you are clearly the adults who are obviously informed and just had a different opinion to me.
I can completely respect your opinions, completely respect you.
I can't respect the fucking people who are just spazzing out like children.
Stop it.
Just fucking stop it.
And the people calling for a revote.
Well, there we are.
I think we found the fifth column.
You seem to be entirely on board with the EU's method of making democracies revote after getting the wrong answer.
I can tell why you want to stay in Europe.
But no, we've had the votes.
You cast your lot, we cast ours, and you wouldn't be asking for a recount if you fucking won.
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