"Brexit as Nostalgia for Empire"

"The run up to the EU referendum has shown Britain for what it is. Woodwork: the washed-up bracken of the British Empire, and the ugly flotsam of its legacy of racism. From this woodwork the Brexiters have emerged. They have long romanticised the days of Empire when Britannia ruled the waves and was defined by its racial and cultural superiority. It is no coincidence that Farage has a preference for migrants from India and Australia as compared with East Europeans, and has advocated stronger ties with the Commonwealth. This referendum has not been about Europe, but about Britain and its imperial legacy. For Brexiters, turning their back on Europe and turfing out their neighbours is a step toward salvaging the shipwreck of the British Empire, which saw the exploitation of peoples, their subjugation on the basis of race, a system that was maintained through the brutal and systematic violence of the colonial authorities. The violence in the Brexit rhetoric of “taking back control of our borders”, of excluding others for self-interested goals at a time when thousands of refugees are dying at sea, is resonant of the racism that pervaded imperial Britain at the time of the 1781 Zong massacre which saw slaves thrown overboard by their captor to save a British slave ship and in the interest of profiting from an insurance claim. If what we want is to live in a more equitable society, it is dangerous to begin by voting for an outcome which has been driven by racism. A nostalgia for empire is no starting point for emancipatory struggle based on solidarity with the oppressed."

http://criticallegalthinking.com/2016/06/19/brexit-nostalgia-empire/

I pull this because I see if happening in American politics too, with the references to "making American great again" clearly being full of nostalgia for the post-WWII world in which the US was comparably unscathed and, while the rest of the world recovered from the War or struggled to overthrow its colonizers, it self-righteously assumed a position as "#1" and spun myths about how it had gotten there. And then our relative privilege faded and our myths were revealed for what they are and people feel like something has been taken away from them.

It's like that truism, that when you are used to privilege, equality feels like loss.