The march of the mob
By Pete North - January 11, 2021
There’s a hugely insipid video by eighties action hero, Arnold Schwarzenegger, doing the rounds on Twitter. I’m almost suspicious of any political speech set to rousing classical music – and especially one drawing parallels between Trump and the Third Reich. What we saw last week was ugly, and no doubt frightening given the context, but it was hardly Kristallnacht. A bunch of far right morons marched on Capitol Hill and found their way in because the security was virtually non-existent.
What made it out of the ordinary was the location and the symbolism, but it was never in any danger of becoming a full blown insurrection. They didn’t have the numbers for starters. It’s an outrage that it happened, and shouldn’t have been allowed, but we’re not looking at a national movement of fascists akin with 1938. The violent and idiot minority get the media attention and exaggeration but the majority of Trump voters never liked him; they just hated the Democrats more – and with good reason.
That is where Trump has parallel’s with Brexit in that in both cases, the losing side was the side that deserved to lose, abstract of any of the actual arguments.
As to why events from the other day took place, it’s a result of a sustained campaign by Trump to weave a narrative of a stolen vote. It’s a highly seductive and almost plausible narrative – especially with so much conflicting media against a backdrop of a mainstream media that long ago cashed in its objectivity to participate in partisan activism. They enabled it as much as anyone else.
What’s worth mentioning, though, is whether the vote was stolen or not (and I do not believe it was) the mob is bloody dangerous if it believes it was. During the rampage, the Washington Post reports that rioters came “perilously close” to penetrating the inner sanctums of the building and there was every chance we might have seen actual lynching.
This is what I always feared if remainers had been successful in overthrowing the Brexit vote. It wouldn’t have mattered if such a move had an air of legitimacy by way of proper parliamentary process. The fact would remain that a public vote was held to leave the EU, a verdict was given and not implemented. From there, the social contract would lie in tatters.
I therefore find it especially galling that Green, Labour and Lib Dem politicians are earnestly retweeting the Arnold Schwarzenegger speech. As political speeches go, it’s very American, calling for all to unite and put democracy first and wish the President elect the very best. “If you succeed, we all succeed”. All very trite – especially since the Biden administration will do nothing whatsoever to heal rifts and will instead engage in a campaign of industrial scale gaslighting.
For remainer MPs to proliferate this waffle is breath-taking hypocrisy. They had no intention of respecting the outcome of the vote, and in true Trumpian/Clintonian style set about weaving an elaborate web of conspiracy theories to convince remainers that their vote had been stolen – either by Cambridge Analytica brainwashing or Russian hypno-toad bots on Twitter. The mode of Brexit we are now living with is the cumulative result of parliament dragging its heels hoping to force the process into a stalemate.
To their credit, remainer protests were entirely peaceful, largely because they were very very middle class affairs. Moreover, for whatever innuendo Carole Cadwalladr managed to spin, there was still no evidence whatsoever of physical vote tampering. The British system is still relatively clean. They wouldn’t have had a leg to stand on if they were to escalate their protests.
Had it gone the the other way, and remainers by some procedural shenanigans managed to overturn the vote (which they’d have done without a second thought), I rather expect we would have seen authentic protests not unlike the Poll tax riots. The trend is for EU referendums to be ignored, but having fought for decades to secure the 2016 one, only to have it overturned by parliament because they didn’t like the result, could very easily have triggered something quite ugly. And unlike Trump’s fantasist followers, their grievance, if not their actions, would be wholly legitimate.
It is, therefore, not beyond the realms of imagination to envisage a march on parliament, and if the plod were insufficiently prepared for it, I could see them ransacking parliament in a similar fashion. At that point the only thing standing between MPs and a good old fashioned lynching is a British sense of restraint that our American cousins lack. But I wouldn’t bet the farm on it.
Schwarzenegger’s speech is all good fluff but democracy isn’t all holding hands together singing Kumbaya. By its very nature it is ruthlessly confrontational but it exists as a substitute for violence and a contract to underwrite the peaceful transfer of power. If either side chooses to rip up that contract then violence will fill the void.
We should therefore be thankful that, though Johnson’s Brexit is a dogs’ dinner, we did at least leave the EU as per the mandate of 2016. Had we not, a government would sit without legitimacy. It would be far harder for it to revoke freedoms the way it has under Covid. The violence may not have been instantaneous but the scene would be set. It perhaps would not manifest in the same way as Capitol Hill, but I expect it would be open season on those who made it happen. MPs have been murdered for less.
That said, Schwarzenegger’s sentiment is certainly one I share for Brexit. The deed is now done, and it’s up to our politics to make of it what we can. Keir Starmer has now realised the futility in trying to wind back the clock, and if the rest of his party can move on as he has then we can get to work on building a viable relationship with the EU. Those who steadfastly refuse get with the programme have more in common with the Trumpians than they imagine.