I grow tired of the whining of the bluekippers when they claim not to be anti European. They are simply against all thought from the Renaissance, through the Enlightenment and onto the rebellions if the 20th century. The leave outlook is simply a disguise for their ignorance, xenophobia and the knowledge of history. Their outlook is white, right and male sealed in a prison of binary oppodition.Being European is quite clearly about not being simply a remainer and being pro EU. That outlook is reductive and simplistic and lacks nuance. In the end it comes down to who you are really deep inside. Its the emotion for me of seeing my son and seeing my partner. It comes down to reaching outwards, it's about knowing the history, literature and culture of Europe. It's about experiences of travelling, knowing the smell of the air in the countries of Europe, it's about smiling about our own odd little ways and theirs. It's about Florence, it's about knowing Dante, Petrarch and Boccacio it's about the smell in the Cistine chapel and the hot warm sand in Sicily as you look across the African sea.
It's knowing that there is more than one book, that there is no us and them. It's about knowing that Tom Paine prior to his pamphlet “Common Sense” reminded the English that they were always part of Europe, its about knowing that Europeans want equal access to knowledge and education. It's about knowing that the French think one way, the Germans another, it's about knowing that the Magna Carta was imposed by French Knights, and the Glorious Revolution by a Dutch Army, and that Christmas Trees were a Victorian tradition tradition that came from Germany. It's about Goethe and knowing about the demons of Faust. It's about knowing that Chaucer travelled in Europe. As did the Romantic poets fleeing a narrow bigoted "stagnant fen" of a Tory government. Keats died in Rome, Byron in Greece. It was Europe that inspired the reforms of the 19th Century .
It's about knowing that even if you have done wrong, your argument is still as important and emotional and uplifting. It's about knowing that we are all immigrants, that we all came out of Africa, that our ancestors were all economic migrants, that James Dyson that great saint of the Brexiteers refused to place his factory in Wales and that now getting your country back means the freedom to relocate to Singapore and the promise of even cheaper wages and costs.
It's about knowing and feeling in your heart, tolerance, understanding for the refugee, the victim of domestic abuse, the broken and the outcast. It's about daring to think in new ways it's about crossing over to new solutions and new perspectives. It's about not liking self assurance, those who are blaming the other, the little Englander and the simplistic Kipper analysis or the Daily Mail.
It's about seeing how Shakespeare was influenced by those European ideas stretching back to the Greeks. It's about seeing how the latest Edition of Big Brother shows how important the works of Freud, Nietzche and Darwin are. It's about celebrating both popular and high culture and finally its about seeing how good it is to see Wales win the match and thrash England.. it's about knowing that the Glyndwr rebellion was part of a European backdrop. It's about knowing that the UK is a country of numerous nation's and not an English state. It's about appreciating that Nietzsche was not a Nazi and that Margaret Thatcher was no friend of the Welsh. It's about seeing situations with new lenses and new filters. It's about understanding that we make new wines in both new and old vessels. It's about seeing the Mediterranean Sea and smelling the air. It's about the Friday feeling as the x6 drops me in Glanrhyd. And finally its about possibilities, hope and respect. That is why I am Welsh and European by choice and why I will not give up and except this vile Brexit and it's clusters of prejudice...just as in 1975 the leavers did not give up. It's about running away when in Europe from the leavers wearing white socks with sandals.. and explaining that Wales is not England...its also about not excepting the narrow pro÷business model of a certain section of the remainers with its bland centralised ersatz of liberal democracy. It's about not excepting their economic policy that caused 2008. It's about the Europe of Marx, Gramschi, and Rosa Luxembourg. Long ago she talked of "true freedom being the freedom to think differently. It was Luxembourg who accused Lenin of creating a "nightwatchman state" and talked of the spontaneity of revolution. Her criticism of Lenin could equally apply to the theocratic fantasy state of the ERG and of the authoritarian attitudes of the bluekippers afraid of everything different as they experience their ontigical insecurity locked in the aspic of conformity.
Its about how by looking at the threat of Isis, that we do not forget the evil and poison of the far right. Its about what will come next now we are to leave. Its about the fact that the majority of Brexiteers worship the “free market” and the privatisation of the NHS.Look at Farage, Johnson and Gove and my head rather than my heart is convinced...its about thinking clearly ; reading widely and avoiding the Daily Mail and the Express. It's about the shame and regret at the intolerance; bigotry and ignorance of so many of your fellow subjects...and knowing historically that there is no such thing as a British citizen. rather than a British subject.and also knowing historically why...."if a clod be washed away, Europe is the less"... As the bus crawls down the bypass towards Morriston in the darkness of a late January morning I remember another morning sailing down the Grand Canal in Venice as the Sun rose over marble of its buildings and was reflected in the water.. I will not go into the Kipper darkness and the the theocracy of Jacob Rees Mogg...I am in the European Resistance. I hear the music of the "Ode to Joy" as celebration and not as the music played reductively as the waiting signature on the phone system of the DWP. In essence this reduction perfectly encapsulates the difference of understanding truly a European outlook free of both the reductive categories beloved of kippers of either being remain or leave. The true distinction is far more essentially realised. in the phrase of Shakespeare's " like Hyperion to a Satyr" And it certainly not the Europe of Merkel, Macron, Clegg or Cable. Clegg the remainer has fled to Silicon valley and Lawson the leaver to France .The Europe to come is of Varoufakis, Corbyn, Melanchron and Zizek and of Socialism. A Europe that is multi racial, multi ethnic and of multiple faiths and philosophies.. .and when we return it will be to a Socialist Europe...I might just live long enough to see it...
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