I have seen pretty nasty stuff posted (second hand) on my facebook about Polish people go home and the like since the result. On the other hand when you question open door policies and what we are going to do with the immigrants arriving, many of the intolerant left shout you down as being racist.
UK is NOT the number one immigration country and did take NO responsibilities during the ongoing European immigration crisis.
In other words, my argument is that in order to maintain internal peace, a society needs to be mostly homogeneous. Multi-cultural societies throughout history have always had major racism and other form of group-oppression. Traditionally, in order to maintain internal peace societies have exported that conflict in order to rally the citizens around the flag (example of this would be the US).
I might be wrong about this but I have never heard, read about or seen a single multi-cultural society that have managed to remain in peace for too long. The only exception to that are societies that are ruled by dictators with an iron fist (ex. Syria prior to the war). Groups did co-exist peacefully but they had to be forced to do so.
The areas that voted leave seem to demonstrate xenophobia in its fundamental form: fear of the other.
Leave voters clearly are not all racist. Unfortunately, though, a vocal racist minority has taken the referendum result as validating their views.
Racism should absolutely be called out where it exists.
Your argument that homogeneity invoked a social survival instinct needs strong references, otherwise it sounds like hand-waving legitimising of xenophobia. We're smarter than that.
What do you think explains it?
Of course there is.
It would be truly astonishing if there wasn't.
Finding it might prove hard, though. And anyway, so what? If we did find those neural correlates and genetic components we'd... do what, exactly? Invent a pill, a therapy?
In the meantime, we can rationalise simply that xenophobia is destructive, and we can determine effective interventions.
Should we tackle what our understanding currently allows, rather than waiting to uncover an explanation?
If we go further fighting racism, what are those effective interventions? Can we even trust that current relatively good situation will continue? Is there any way to reliably export western anti-racism?
Alternatively we just accept the current levels. Maybe express disappointment on Facebook.
If this scapegoating phenomena is somehow built in feature of human beings, what/who would be the healthiest possible target for it?
If it's not built in feature, how can it be eradicated?
This is why I can't take the leftist arguments seriously. You refute phenomenon that have been taking place for thousands of years in order to glorify an ideology that you believe in without a single shred of evidence...
If you think that the fact that certain cities voted X compared to others who voted Y describes the sudden rise of nationalism across all of Europe AT THE SAME TIME, then you sir are in for a ride.
I didn't claim to be "leftist". I'm not "glorifying" anything. I'm not sure what you think I'm "refuting".
If by "refute phenomenon (sic) that have been taking place for thousands of years" you mean "racism" I'm not refuting the fact that it exists, what a strange claim that would be. I don't really follow what you're saying here at all.
I certainly didn't claim that Brexit voting patterns describe (do you mean explain?) the rise of pan-European nationalism. So again I don't follow what you're saying here.
In fact, I believe quite the reverse direction of influence: that the rise in pan-European nationalism influenced a vocal minority of the vote who now feel legitamised.
I suspect that the rise in pan-European nationalism is due to people being worried about recession, austerity, crumbling national institutions, etc etc. and immigration has become a surrogate for that: There's only so much cash in the coffers; there aren't enough {houses,schools,hospitals,whatever}; immigrants consume a non-zero fraction of these resources; therefore reducing the number of immigrants will improve the capacity of these services.
The problem being, of course, that you could pick any scapegoat and substitute it into that equation equally well. Consequently, when people do pick immigration as their scapegoat of choice, I consider that xenophobic.
But that's what the anti-immigrationists were claiming - that the UK was taking in far too many immigrants and that the country was being flooded with immigrants.
Only about 5% of the population of the UK is an EU immigrant.
EDIT: London voted to remain. London is about 40% immigrant. Multi-culturalism isn't just about immigration, it includes different religions (London has a Muslim mayor) and other stuff, all of which London does pretty well at.
There are easy fixes to these problems (build more houses), but its silly to say that immigration doesn't contribute to the problem.
I can't quite see how you can't see that remaining homogenous and accepting immigrants are opposite sides of the very same coin?
No matter how you interpret that, there is something fucked up:
"The figures lend themselves to extremist interpretations: at one end, some accuse the criminal justice system of being brutally racist, as either intentionally or unintentionally destructive to the interests and well-being of Māori as a people. At the other, there are those who dismiss the entire Māori race as constitutionally 'criminally inclined'."
NZ has quadruple incarceration rate compared ton Finland, Japan or Iceland, which you could claim to be homogeneous.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_mass_(disambiguation)