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Back in the early 2000s Burnley elected a number BNP councillors and everyone was pretty much derided as racist and that was it.
There's nothing wrong with calling a racist out. One of the strange things from this referendum is the reluctance to call Xenophobic Racists, Xenophobic Racists and it's lead to a culture of fear and hate being allowed to prosper.
Of course you need to understand where that culture has come from - chiefly due to a succession of Neo-Liberal politicians pointing the blame for working class problems elsewhere, rather than towards themselves as they increasingly siphon money upwards under the guise of austerity.
So call a racist, a racist. Don't allow a culture of fear and hate to grow.
However try to educate people and vote for politicians who promise to deal with poverty
Ste_S-
The biggest gem on this was a white English women on my mate's facebook saying "I'm voting out, cos immigrants" OK.. "And it's racist to call this racist".
Clearly a sore point to be seen as a supporter of a racism campaign for her. I don't know if she actually is not racist and buys all the fearmongering, hence the defensiveness, or doesn't want to fess up to it.
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True, I agree, some are undoubtedly racist. The point was more that just simplifying all voting Leave, UKIP, BNP down to "it's because they're racist" misses out a whole range of other issues.
@radmich Corbyn just doesn't seem to have taken off, I've heard various reasons why.
I think his difficulty in getting his message across and the presence of very few politicians who appear to actually be anything other than professional politicians (with the exception of a few who started off in law, marketing, etc) make today's politician's very difficult to relate to.
Also, his views on defence don't enamour him to a lot of traditional working class people I know.
JWestland
aggi
I think a lot don't realise how disenfranchised a lot of working class voters are with the people they have to represent them, and the labour party in particular.
There are (or at least there seem to be) far fewer politicians making their way up from working class backgrounds to represent the people from their area and much more the professional politician who did PPE at Oxbridge.
Back in the early 2000s Burnley elected a number BNP councillors and everyone was pretty much derided as racist and that was it. In reality there were a lot of people who were pissed off with the local situation (huge job losses, threats to close the A&E) and the lack of engagement and support from Labour politicians and they weren't willing to support Labour anymore if Labour weren't supporting them.
Voting Tory would have been too much but the BNP capitalised on the local sentiment and got a lot of votes, many of which were protest votes to "teach labour a lesson".
I'd say this is fairly much the way things are going again and part of the reason the Leave vote is so popular.