The pernicious petition to hold a second referendum is being investigated for fraud, but not rigorously enough. For example, this document has been signed by 39,000 residents of the Vatican, whose census population is a mere 800.
At the same time some petition-mad woman published a postal code on The Guardian website, saying that anyone without a British address of his own is welcome to use it. One is tempted to think that the 77,000 fraudulent signatures already thrown out don’t even begin to scratch the surface.
This is much worse than just old-fashioned political corruption. The response to the referendum is fascism in action.
The other day I commented on the fundamentally fascist nature of the EU, arguing that arbitrary power may well flourish even in a seemingly democratic soil. Hence the classic question asked by political scientists: What if the people vote to sell themselves into slavery? If the government ignores the vote, it’s no longer democratic. If the government abides by the vote, it’ll never again be democratic.
We routinely accept the Lockean fallacy that government can only draw legitimacy from consent. In fact, it’s just government that forms consent, not vice versa. An idealised picture Locke must have had in mind was that of ‘the people’ coming together in the past and voting consent to the liberal, secular state.
Alas, this never happened. In fact, no modern attempt to replace a traditional monarchy with a ‘liberal’ republic, be that the English revolutions of the seventeenth century, the American and French ones of the eighteenth, or the Russian ones of the twentieth, involved asking ‘the people’ for their consent.
What they all did involve was an attempt by an impassioned and devious elite to impose their rule on the people in the name of the people. Unlike the democratic element in, say, the traditional English polity, modern unchecked democracy is always bogus: the demos doesn’t really have a say in how it’s democratically governed. It only thinks it does.
The difference between modern ‘democratic’ and ‘totalitarian’ states is that of method, not principle. The latter impose their will by an amalgam of propaganda and violence, the former relies on more subtle forms of manipulation. Consent is claimed in all instances, which goes to show how easily it can be falsified or, that failing, coerced.
Obviously anyone would rather be manipulated than killed. Fair enough – unless he thinks that, if he succumbs to dishonest manipulation, he remains free.
Modern governments all have seeds of fascism in their makeup. In the EU, boosted by its quisling viceroys in member countries, the seeds have sprouted luxuriantly. Witness the current events in Britain, a textbook picture of fascism in action.
First Cameron dangled the plebiscite carrot before the electorate. Both he and his EU overseers arrogantly believed they were offering nothing tangible: the combined weight of their lying, scaremongering propaganda would carry the day easily.
The plot has backfired: the British, those same hoi polloi our elites despise so much, are still a sturdy lot who don’t scare easily. We had the temerity to “confound their politics” and “frustrate their knavish tricks”, to quote the second, never sung, verse of our national anthem.
Thereby we showed our ignorance of modern democracy: we thought it was real, whereas it’s only a make-believe simulacrum. People are welcome to vote as long as their ballots don’t upset the applecart. Now that apples are rolling all over Europe, even simulacra aren’t good enough. Fascism rules, okay?
If the people vote wrong, they must be told to ponder and vote again. The British are children who’ve proved to be naughty. It’s time for the grownups in Islington, Notting Hill and Brussels to spank them.
The methods employed by said grownups are frankly fascistic: a massive – and massively mendacious – propaganda push, combined with mob action and stigmatising all opponents as stupid, racist bigots. But million-strong mobs, be that Lenin’s komsomol, Hitler’s SA, Mao’s Red Guards or the asinine youngsters in London streets, don’t gather by themselves. They must be organised, brought together and told what to bray.
Meanwhile that Blair creature is leading the chorus screaming that the disastrous consequences of the referendum are so blindingly obvious that it’s self-evidently invalid.
What consequences? Some initial turbulence in the markets that every half-intelligent commentator had predicted? No, the only disastrous consequence is another unleashing of the fascist beast lurking inside modernity.
When Gen. Pinochet, commonly described as a fascist, rather than the national saviour he really was, lost a national plebiscite in 1988, he accepted the result and graciously stepped down – even knowing this would entail criminal prosecution against him.
The EU lot, democratic in jargon but fascists at heart, aren’t like that. If a referendum goes against them, it must be repeated until they’re happy with the result. This has happened in Ireland, Denmark and France. Why should Britain be any different?
I’m opposed to plebiscites on principle, finding them an inadequate way to settle serious issues. But the EU lot don’t mind a referendum – they just aren’t prepared to accept any result they don’t like.
I smell logical and moral rats on a rampage, but fascism has logic and morality all its own. One just hopes there’s enough spunk left in the British to “frustrate their knavish tricks” irreversibly.