We've spoken about Corbynphobia plenty of times. The very prospect of Jeremy Corbyn entering Number 10, if only to oversee the calling of a general election, requesting a delay to Article 50, or piloting a second referendum through the Commons (which isn't straightforward), is far too much for the likes of Jo Swinson and the "ex" Tories. They know full well that Corbyn as Prime Minister crosses a Rubicon. The sky won't fall in, the top 100 monopolies won't be nationalised, and suddenly he becomes a much more credible statesman figure. Incumbency robs them of one of their most potent, scaremongering weapons.
This is not a post about them, but rather the ordinary rank-and-filers who attended the protests, shared the Jolyon Maugham tweets and have kept a shrine to Lord Pannick since last Thursday. And the rest. So where's this non-elite Corbynphobia "from below" coming from? Some of it can be written off as LibDems, but to put it all down to them is as stupid as those who trying explaining Corbynism by mass Trot entryism. Some can be put down to political disagreements with Corbynism. Not of the polite 'I think this policy has problems, old chap' variety, but visceral disagreement that cuts to the bone. On foreign policy specifically, Corbynism reminds some that transatlanticism is not necessarily a force for good in the world, and that you can usually find the British state in the corners of many an unsavoury regime - provided their interests and "ours" coincide. This disrupts the fiction of a rules-based international order that has never existed. If you take Clinton and Blair as paradigm centrists who respected the rule of law at home and abroad, Clinton was not averse to cruise missile diplomacy and bombing medicine factories to generate headlines. And Blair? The word 'Iraq' will suffice. Because Corbyn draws attention to the power relationships under the piffle of high diplomacy, and shows Britain and the US to be as self-interested and cynical as Russia, China, and the other bogeymen of the international order, it grates. This applies to the near abroad, and the EU specifically. Corbyn has long refused to respect the utopian fantasies of sundry centrists for whom the EU is the incarnation of the spirit of reason. Coupled with a long record of scepticism and solidarity with the EU's victims, especially those suffering unnecessarily in Greece, that is enough to cast him into the outer darkness, and especially so if the only two coordinates of your politics are leave and remain.
This uneasiness on sacred cow politics is compounded by the successive hit jobs undertaken on Corbyn. Because he doesn't share the same conservative goals as centrism, it follows he does not respect the same rules either. And so the fall out of the anti-semitism crisis, suggestions Jezza is a puppet of Stalinoid functionaries, and every single smear story from the last four years feeds this unease, this angst. It's not that media content brainwashes people, but exposed consistently over long periods of time it sediments into the consciousness. Their frames become your frames, their natural assumptions, without you noticing, become your assumptions. They can be resisted, but no one is totally free of how they condition our outlook. Least of all liberals and remainers and their emotional attachments to the BBC.
Therefore for a layer of people, Corbyn is an instantiation of the political instability we've seen since 2015. It does not matter how many hoops he jumps through - a second referendum, cancelling Brexit, shacking up with Guy Verhofstadt, changing his name to Remainy McRemainyface - nothing will ever suffice. Corbyn is a barrier against where they want to be, the past. A place they knew their place and could relax, leaving the business of ontological anxiety to others away from the public eye. Even if Britain under Corbyn ends up staying in the EU and properly funds the kinds of things they affect to care about, they are still out of joint, their heroes dethroned and the cognitive map of their social environs completely skewed, out of time and irrelevant.
This is why there are hundreds of thousands of "progressives" who can never countenance back Corbyn's Labour, despite the party accepting the second referendum position. It's more than a question of identity. It is a matter of being at ease in the world. And these people are very uneasy, to the point political realities have melted for them. They can't go back, but trapped in the past they can't move forward either. Stuck, their hard remain stubbornness symptomatic of a paralysing longing for a world doomed never to return. It means their politics are fundamentally reactionary and self-destructive, a mirror image of the Brexit zealotry they affect to despise. Such figures don't deserve your anger or your social media invective, they are piteous and beyond reasoning. Nevertheless understanding the roots of their extremism is useful for getting to grips with weaker forms of Corbyn-scepticism and left phobia, and how we can go about addressing them.
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25 comments:
"the cognitive map of their social environs completely skewed, out of time and irrelevant"
Pot calling kettle? Another post written as if Corbyn were a heartbeat away from No10 - I'm beginning to wonder if this is part of the longest job application to the Labour party in history - when his personal ratings are lower than any opposition leader since records began and Labour is facing election wipeout.
This is the contemporary reality, so who is 'out of time'?
I don't care about 'whataboutery' - the skewed media, whatever. Actually, I'm quite happy with Labour's policies and would vote for them as I always have. But that's not the point. And you are making a category error by identifying that amorphous bloc of Remainers with labour voters. They hate Corbyn because whether they are Labour or Tory he comes out with:
Asked whether the U.K. would be better off inside or outside the EU, the opposition leader told the BBC's Andrew Marr it “depends on the agreement you have with the European Union outside.”
Let's not be naive - Remainers know he is a Leaver and have watched from the beginning as he has obfuscated with some ardour, leaving the ground free to Leavers.
Any true friend of the working class or any class would see that membership of the EU is better than what lies outside. This is why the likes of Dipper, Farrage, Rees-Mogg et al are so pro. You just have to be, quite literally, stupid, a Maoist (Milne) or right-wing, to think ordinary people will be better off outside.
The EU is the progressive choice. Brexit is reactionary, for god sake Phil. The EU may be of the 'past' - but it is also a future to strive toward, FFS.
I hardly think basing your stance upon that of Harold Wilson in 1975, is the mark of radical left wing leadership.
As for "Corbnynphobia": it may have escaped your notice, Phil, that the most militant pro-Remain group, Another Europe Is Possible, is led and largely made up of people who, while rejecting his regressive stance on Europe, otherwise support Corbyn.
PS: is Andrew Fisher part of the anti-Corbyn conspiracy, when he slams the leader’s team for their “lack of professionalism, competence and human decency” and says he is sick of their “blizzard of lies and excuses”.
"Well, Jeremy Corbyn is where you wanted him: calling for a second EU referendum with an option to remain. But it's not enough, never enough. Some have moved the goal posts and now only revoking Article 50 will do."
He's not where I have always wanted him to be. I never thought that another referendum was a good idea, I always thought Labour should have outright opposed Brexit as reactionary, and said it would revoke Articel 50 having been elected in a General Election, and that it should have been building a social movement (what happened to Corbyn's promise to build those) on that basis. In reality, the demand for another referendum was always code for scrapping Brexit, and Remainers were wrong not to have simply opposed Brexit.
But, your argument is specious, because time and events have moved on considerably from when some were arguing for a referendum, in the absence of a possible General Election. Paul Samuelson said, "If the facts change, my opinions change. What do you do?"
The facts have changed. Far from a general Election being unlikely, as it was when the referendum demand was raised, it is now a certainty. So, if Labour can stand in such an election, on a progressive and principled position of just scrapping Brexit, why on Earth would you not do that?
"So where's this non-elite Corbynphobia "from below" coming from?"
What you have failed to address is the "elite" Corbynphilia in the Leaders Office from those from aristocratic backgrounds, and their Winchester and Oxford privileged education, whose actions have led to Andrew Fisher's resignation, and have caused Corbyn to be isolated from that 90% of the rank and file, and 70% of labour voters, whose hostility to Corbyn's Stalinoid, reactionary pro-Brexit stance you seem so woefully unable to comprehend!
"This disrupts the fiction of a rules-based international order that has never existed. If you take Clinton and Blair as paradigm centrists who respected the rule of law at home and abroad, Clinton was not averse to cruise missile diplomacy and bombing medicine factories to generate headlines. And Blair? The word 'Iraq' will suffice."
This doesn't disprove the existence of a rules based system; it simply demonstrates a system in which the rules are ones that socialists do not like! Capitalism itself is a rules based system, founded as Marx describes upon natural laws. Again the fact that those rules and laws have consequences we dislike does not prove the rules and laws don't exist.
In fact, wars like The Falklands, or Iraq where those that undertook them obtained neither economic nor strategic advantage (the major beneficiary of the Iraq War, for example, has been Iran, and from its consequences in the region, for example in Syria, has been Russia) shows that they were undertaken because in the one case Galtieri, in the other Saddam was seen to have breached the rules of an imperialist world order based upon a hierarchy of states, and the rules that go with it.
"This applies to the near abroad, and the EU specifically. Corbyn has long refused to respect the utopian fantasies of sundry centrists for whom the EU is the incarnation of the spirit of reason."
But that has never been the basis on which Corbyn opposed the EU. The basis of his opposition has always been his inveterate economic nationalism, which follows from a Stalinoid mindset based upon the theory of socialism in one country. You mention Greece, but the Greek workers themselves seem to have realised that the actual cause of their problems had nothing to do with the EU, but was caused by Greek national capital and capitalists, who failed to develop Greek capital, and instead speculated in financial and property assets, and a corrupt Greek government that for years allowed and encouraged those capitalists to do that whilst avoiding paying tax.
The Greek worekrs themselves were clever enough to recognise that just as the EU was not the cause of their problems nor was leaving the EU a solution to it, which is why they they chose to stay both in the EU and in the Eurozone.
And, they recognised that had they left the EU, their condition would have been even more dire, a lesson that workers in Britain should take heed of.
"Jezza is a puppet of Stalinoid functionaries"
The problem is not that he is a puppet of those Stalinoid functionaries, but that his own Stalinoid politics, seen from his long association with the Morning Star led him to surround him with Stalinists who share his ideology. The blame can't be foisted on to the functionaries - other than as Andrew Fisher has set out in their role in general within the organisation - but is attributable to Corbyn himself. he doesn't need his advisors to feed him reactionary economic nationalist ideas, he has had them all of his own from the beginning.
"Their frames become your frames, their natural assumptions, without you noticing, become your assumptions. They can be resisted, but no one is totally free of how they condition our outlook. Least of all liberals and remainers and their emotional attachments to the BBC."
The problem with this narrative that it is all fake news, and conditioning by the nasty Tory media, is that those of us who have known Jeremy going back forty years, long before he was Labour leader, and before he was put in this media spotlight, knew all along that he held these ideas, as did many more on the Bennnite left going back to the 1970's. We knew that that particular left nationalist, reformist strand were always susceptible to taking a less than critical stance in relation to the Stalinists of the CP, just as some within that milieu were apt to suck up to reactionary Third Worldist regimes, and reactionary "anti-imperialist", anti-working class organisations like Sinn Fein, Hezbolla, Hamas and so on. None of this is new or some invention of the Tory media. Its why I warned about simply turning Corbyn into yet another saviour and cult figure back at the time of his candidacy for leadeship.
Its not construction of the Tory media, or coincidence that for years Corbyn had a regular column in the pages of the hard Stalinoid Morning Star, or for years has associated with the reactionaries of Hamas, Hezbolla etc. It flows from the politics he has always had.
"Corbyn is a barrier against where they want to be, the past. A place they knew their place and could relax, leaving the business of ontological anxiety to others away from the public eye."
For a tiny group of Blair-rights, that is undoubtedly true, but how can you with a straight face pretend that that is the case for the hundreds of thousands of new members who joined labour in 2015 and after, for whom that is clearly not the case, and who joined precisely because they saw Corbyn's candidacy as a sharp break with that past. Yet, it is that group which are the ones most angry about Corbyn's failure to respond to the wishes of the vast majority of labour members. It is they that have tabled the motions opposing Brexit that Corbyn and the bureaucracy have continually tried to block from even being discussed, and whose requirements they have continually flouted.
By contrast, the Blair-Rights like Kinnock, Flint, or your man Snell in Stoke South are quite happy to go along with Brexit, in fact they are more than happy to go along with the Tories in trying to vote through not even a Labour Brexit, but Theresa May's Brexit, and on current reports also Johnson's Brexit, even a No Deal!
"This is why there are hundreds of thousands of "progressives" who can never countenance back Corbyn's Labour, despite they party accepting the second referendum position. It's more than a question of identity."
So, although Corbyn is not a puppet of Stalinist advisors, what you are arguing here, is that the hundreds of thousands of labour activists who joined Labour after 2015, as part of the "Corbyn surge", and in opposition to the years of Blair-right domination, are today opposing Corbyn, and Brexit only because they are the puppets of the Blair-rights, and other centrists! Go figure.
Wow Boffy is bit worked up.
Even more worked up now, having just witnessed the worst bit of Stalinist vote rigging I've ever seen, as the conference Chair call Composite 13 passed, before being told to reverse her decision, and then refuses to hold a card vote!
This looks like a banana Republic. It spells the end for Corbyn's Labour, but the Stalinists are no doubt pleased, because it guarantees a Johnson Tory government who will be able to push through the Hard No Deal Brexit that the Morning Star have wanted all along.
Everyone has a hobby.
“The basis of his opposition has always been his inveterate economic nationalism, which follows from a Stalinoid mindset based upon the theory of socialism in one country.”
As opposed to neo liberalism on one continent! I think Boffy lacks a basic understanding of the nuances of class warfare. Marx wanted the UK broken up to weaken the British rentiers. Because that was the main focus way back then. Suggesting we hand the class enemy the institution of their dreams on a plate is a bit daft! It is a common tactic to sow divisions in the enemy. Of course Boffy gets around this strategic imbecility by saying the class struggle is between industrial capitalists (workers) and so called fictitious capitalists and I suppose for Boffy the EU represents the dictatorship of the proletariat (for Marx and Engels the Paris Commune was their shining example)!
Apparently this is what passes for Marxism. And apparently those who deny this just don’t understand Marxism. Well to paraphrase Marx if that is Marxism I don’t understand it!
Does anyone seriously doubt that Corbyn is an internationalist? Corbyn opposes the EU not because he is a Stalinoid, whatever that means, but because he thinks he can’t deliver his programme within its current confines, he is correct about that! What political movement would accept a situation where their programme was basically illegal! Imagine Marx writing the programme of the French workers party and saying, well they won’t let us actually do any of this but hey ho, that is life.
It is actually Boffy who is the Stalinoid and the nationalist because he puts the interests of little old Britain before that of further EU integration. If Britain stays in the EU as Boffy wants, then further and closer EU integration will be voted down by every British government. So the irony here is that Boffy is actually an enemy of the EU and his whole logic falls to pieces on this point. But he never addresses this because he has no answer to it. Anyone who has any genuine support for the EU would not want Britain to be a part of it, at least not in this period of history.
“And, they recognised that had they left the EU, their condition would have been even more dire, a lesson that workers in Britain should take heed of.”
It should be noted that Greek workers did not sit down at a computer and work all this out using data and logic. At best it was a gut feeling. Hardly scientific analysis is it!
“Yet, it is that group which are the ones most angry about Corbyn's failure to respond to the wishes of the vast majority of labour members.”
Corbyn is not unpopular with the members. I think Boffy is lapping up too much of the bile from the unfree press he loves so much. Boffy is wildly popular.
Boffy has actually invigorated politics, at last people have a genuine choice, politics is moving back to its proper gravitational position, for example Chukka going to his natural home (can’t be long surely before Boffy joins him!)
Corbyn after all the mountain of abuse directed at him, after all the witchhunts, after the Blairite plot to destroy him still gets 20% in the polls. I thought the left at best represented 2%. This is a time to be positive and a time to be excited about politics.
The reason we get endless streams about how bad politics has become these days is because the Middle Classes no longer have a monopoly on the political opinion, they are upset that they don’t fully control all major political parties.
Boffy of course wants to hand then back full control, another example of his strategic imbecility.
Sniff some smelling salts, Boffy.
Labour's is for a second referendum between remain and a renegotiated deal.
Obviously, a Stalinist position worthy of Uncle Joe himself.
Corbynphobia amongst the general population is probably not as extensive as it seems. The BBC goes out of its way to find it and imply that it is ubiquitous and prevalent. It probably took them as much effort to find as it took Alison Fuller Pedley to fill QT audiences with Britain First and UKIP supporters and pro-Theresa May actress vicars (remember?).
Then, the 'shy tory' effect kicks in - especially with people in the presence of pollsters and whenever cameras are rolling. When Corbyn is only ever presented in a bad light, then people are pleasantly surprised if they ever get to see, hear or meet him away from it. Until then, of course, you never want to admit that the devil incarnate is someone you respect and might vote for in an election.
GE2016 suggests that whenever editorial standards necessitate that fairness and balance is achieved by the BBC and broadcast media (even if for only a few weeks), then straight away Corbynphobia reduces Why? Because it is a created result, an intended outcome of (non GE) news and current affairs reporting.
Also, when value statements and policies expressed by JC are anonymised and presented to Daily Telegraph and Mail readers, they achieve much higher levels of approval than those of a Labour leader ever should.
I'm not suggesting that Corbynphobia does't exist, or that it will not be a factor in the imminent GE, just that it is mis- and over-reported and that we might overrate it as a result.
Except we know that Corbyn's position is for a fantasy Labour Brexit deal. Corbyn's friends from the Red-Brown coalition in the Morning Star, told voters to abstain in the elections earlire this year, which was the closest they dared get to telling voters to support their friends in Farage's Brexit Company without telling them to vote against their friend Corbyn. Some of their ilk like Galloway went the whole hog in seeking to stand for the Brexit Company itself.
The morning Star has said all along that it wants a faragist No Deal WTO Brexit. Now it will get it by destroying Labour, and ensuring a Boris Johnson government. They, Corbyn and those that have supported him will have to answer to workers for the consequences.
"Obviously, a Stalinist position worthy of Uncle Joe himself."
I think you give Stalin too little credit. You are well aware Boffy was referring to the process at conference, which was seriously manipulated in very much a "Bolshevik" manner - given the margins were so tight it should have gone to a card vote.
This is incrementalism. I have always said Corbyn would prefer a hard Brexit over none, if only to display Toryism raw in tooth and claw - no matter the human cost. This is also Bolshevism. And he and his pals strike me as far more Bolshevik than Stalinist. But look where it led.
Poor old Britain - caught between two extremes, and decadent politics on both sides (only you seem incapable of recognising your own decadence). Slouching towards Jerusalem indeed.
"Sniff some smelling salts, Boffy.
Labour's is for a second referendum between remain and a renegotiated deal.
Obviously, a Stalinist position worthy of Uncle Joe himself."
When I said I was even more worked up that was just a literary device to link to the previous comment. In fact, I don't get worked up. I have inner peace, and I view events with equanimity, and in that way I am able to assess them calmly without the influence of the passions affecting my judgement, the better thereby to plot a forward course. However, if you didn't see what happened yesterday and fail to recognise the typical manifestation of Stalinist intimidation, cult worship, a demand for blind loyalty over reason, outright bureaucratic manipulation, and blatant vote rigging - indeed pretty much all the things that Andrew Fisher has described about daily life at the hands of Corbyn's Stalinist cabal, then I think that you need to add some praxis to your sociological theory. If you didn't view that with an understanding that a sociologist should have of what it implies then there is something wrong with your sociological compass. It puts you in a similar position as George Bernard Shaw and the other apologists for Stalinism, who saw nothing to disturb them as the Show Trials executions and assassinations proceeded all around them.
The point about a referendum is facile, because the reality is that what the Stalinists have done is ensure that Labour cannot win the election. The Stalinists have said openly in the Morning Star that they wanted a No Deal/WTO Brexit. Labour stood in the way of that. Earlier this year they advocated an abstention only because they could not be seen to be openly calling for a vote for Farage without it being seen as a vote against their friend Corbyn. Their fellow travellers like Galloway had no constraint and argued for a vote for Farage, and tried to stand for the Brexit company.
The Stalinists have got their way. They have now made it impossible for labour to win, and thereby more or less guaranteed a win for Johnson. Johnson will implment the No Deal WTO brexit that the Stalinists have wanted all along, so as to meet the needs of their masters in Moscow and Washington. As on so many occasions in the past, the Stalinists have screwed the working class in the interests of foreign masters. And, this time they have destroyed the labour party in the process.
"GE2016 suggests that whenever editorial standards necessitate that fairness and balance is achieved by the BBC and broadcast media (even if for only a few weeks), then straight away Corbynphobia reduces Why? Because it is a created result, an intended outcome of (non GE) news and current affairs reporting."
The problem with this argument is that half those who came over to Labour in 2017 on this basis - and actually many were Liberal and Green votes who tactically supported labour as a means of stopping a hard Tory brexit - have now deserted it, precisely because they have seen what Corbyn is doing in relation to brexit.
The same logic that brought a load of tactical votes to Labour in 2017, will now see labour's vote collapse for the same reason as it floods to the Liberals. Unfortunately, its unlikely to be enought to allow the Liberals to win, meaning the tories will get a clear majority. But, seats like Stoke north and central will now almost certainly go to the Tories, because if half of Labour's vote disappears, as all the polls and surveys now indicate, and as the EU elections indicate, then Labour in those seats will drop from its current 50% vote share in 2017, to around 35%. The Liberals will rise to around 18%, but the Tories will win on 45%.
There is no way I would campaign for Smeeth or Snell, who are the two right-wing nationalist labour MP's who have voted repeatedly with the Tories, and said they would do so again. I would go to campaign for Labour candidates elsewhere with a clear Remain position, preferably ones standing on a revoke Article 50, and progressive social-democratic platform. If not them then at least for a Remain candidate like my MP Paul Farrely.
I would not support the Liberals, if I lied in Stoke, but I would probably vote for them, as a Liberal Remain supporting MP is a better option than either a Labour or Tory Brexiter, and on this issue they amount to the same thing.
Why does Boffy continually talk of Socialism in one country when referring to the USSR?
And why does he talk as if Stalin would have been a Brexiter?
The USSR was a massive collection of states, the clue is in the name. An economic block. Stalin would not countenance any breakaway from any Soviet republic; he would have sent the troops into London to stop Brexit. No way on Stalin’s watch would one of the republics have gained ‘independence’.
In fact if Stalin had been in charge Donald Tusk would have been president of the United Democratic States of Great Britain.
So Boffy is the fucking Stalinoid, a deranged one at that.
I imagine him, like a berserk robot stuck in a loop ranting Stalinoid in his sleep.
Game, set and match to Boffy
"Game set and match to Boffy"
.....said no one ever ;)
"And why does he talk as if Stalin would have been a Brexiter?"
It was Stalin’s opposition to the US’s Marshall Plan from June 1947 that fully crystallised Russian hostility to European integration. The USSR set out to persecute and “purge” any trace of the all-European idea, calling it a “manifestation of bourgeois cosmopolitism”, as well as to denounce West European integrationists as “lackeys of US colonialism”. Soviet Cold-War propaganda denounced West European integration as imperialistic, reactionary, doomed to failure, and a harbinger of the final crisis of capitalism (Wolfgang Mueller, ‘The Soviet Union and Early West European Integration, 1947-1957: From the Brussels Treaty to the ECSC and the EEC’, Journal of European Integration History, 2009).
Three common elements — “US control over Western Europe”, “remilitarisation of West Germany” and “preparation of a new war” — remained the leitmotivs of the Stalinist assessment of the early integration process. The birth of the Council of Europe in 1949 was greeted by Pravda as “an auxiliary tool of the aggressive North Atlantic Pact” [i.e. NATO] and its pan-European agenda regarded as “demagogy”. The true aim of the Council of Europe was “camouflaging the imperialist colonisation of Western Europe by the United States and the destruction of national sovereignty among independent European states in order to implement their plans of global domination”.
The Schuman and Pleven plans (1950) were perceived by the Soviet Foreign ministry as ploys to legalise, “under the cloak of ‘European integration’, the creation of a US-controlled military force and arsenal in Europe”. In 1951, the planned coal and steel community was denounced as a “hyper-monopolistic association”, created by US monopolies in order to “revive the military industry of West Germany, to exploit the economies of the participating countries for carrying out their aggressive plans for a third World War, and to create an economic basis for the aggressive North Atlantic Bloc in Western Europe under American hegemony” (Mueller, 2009).
This attitude, laid down under Stalin’s tutelage, persisted after his death. The Russian assessment of the founding of the EEC in 1957 regarded the Treaty of Rome as a “temporary” alliance being used to temper the competition between capitalist states that had come under pressure as a consequence of the successes of socialism and the independence movements in the Third World. In view of “massive contradictions” between, on the one hand, “revisionist” West Germany and “protectionist” France, and, on the other, between the EEC, Britain, and the United States, the USSR government predicted the failure of the Economic Community.
The USSR juxtaposed the Comecon bloc of Stalinist states as the alternative to the EEC. Pravda (11 March 1957) denounced the Common Market as a “ploy of US leading circles for deepening the division of Europe and Germany and for subjecting Western Europe to the rule of West German monopolies and militarists”. On 13 March 1957 the CPSU Presidium approved a note to all EEC member states condemning the Rome Treaties as a “threat” to all-European cooperation and peace (Mueller, 2009).
Is Jim Denham being deliberately disingenuous? Or is he just an unthinking supremacist and a nationalist!
What do Stalin’s actions against what he considered his enemies have to do with the fact that Stalin himself presided over a vast economic block and would not tolerate anyone breaking away from the Soviet economic block; he would and did send in the tanks to stop that! The Soviet Union was not a single nation but a collection of states; we know that because once the Soviet Union collapsed a score of new nations appeared!
The argument that Brexiters are Stalinists is based on the idiotic assertion that the Soviet Union was one country. The lame argument goes that because Brexiters want to go it alone that must mean they are Stalinists. This is just lazy claptrap of the highest order, taking no account whatsoever of facts, history, differing circumstances and let’s say it again, facts!
Stalin would have shot anyone proposing going it alone!
Incidentally, every member of the EU wanted to destroy the economic block that was the Soviet Union, does this mean the EU are Brexiters too?
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