I personally think balkanization of the imperial core is a good thing, no matter what the route is. Of course the EU is an imperialist organization whose stronger members dominate the economies of weaker ones, even inside the EU, and people in the UK are seeing that fact quicker than some other EU members.

You occasionally get rumblings that the rest of the EU is on pretty shaky grounds, after new countries realize that membership is more of a detriment than a boon. Let it break into a million pieces and disempower one of the imperial core’s main managing bodies.

There was a lot of talk about how one of the main reasons for Corbyn’s loss, was that he ultimately sided with the neoliberal blairites and refused to push for a Lexit, bc the neolibs want to continue their alliance the mainland capital. They sell this to the masses as “european unity / internationalism”, which the people soundly rejected (for both good and bad reasons). Its the left-wing of labor’s fault for not pushing harder for Lexit, on the basis of self-determination and anti-domination via EU capitalists, whilst rejecting the xenophobic basis for a lot of it.

Overall I think that despite a lot of the xenophobia around it, there’s also an element of self-determination that’s important; people are really pissed off at british finance capital, and its alliance with european finance capital, but the population is so heavily propagandized by the UK media that it only outlet is through xenophobia and chauvinism.

We’re basically seeing latestagecapitalist UK eat itself through incompetent leadership, a completely decapitalized service / financial services economy, extreme inequality, rapidly worsening standards of living, the loss of empire, and a heavily propagandized, chauvinist press.

It also harmed the working class in the UK, for example my friend’s dad lost his job as the company decided to leave the UK.

This is what has happened to any country, or city that refuses to play ball with deregulation, refusing to cut social services, refusing to dismantle unions, etc. The export of work is then meted out as a “punishment”, in this case for the UK’s population massive support for brexit. Don’t let capitalists create this victim-blaming narrative, that its the worker’s fault for rejecting domination. Corbyn’s correct response would’ve been to nationalize it and prevent the export of capital, had he not been so smeared for his support for Palestine.

I typed up a long thing on this, then realized I contradicted myself, and that I didn’t really say anything unique. I mirror what @muad_dibber@lemmygrad.ml said in their comment, the EU is an imperialist structure in Europe that gives European countries control over one another. And this imperialism has been used to bully and exploit smaller and newer European nations, as well it’s been used to exploit Africa. One of the big beardtubers did a video on this (i think it was finbol, but he’s a paedophile so I won’t be hunting for the link) where he went into length about how the EU repeatedly acts in favour of regulations that endorse exploitation of African countries by European governments and businesses. Finland, some of the Balkan states, Some of the ex-SR states, and the UK are some of the countries that are leveraged against repeatedly by EU members like Germany and France, EU regulations are usually geared towards the wealthier nations - which forces the poorer nations into bad spots, the EU’s open travel policy makes illegal immigration easier - which negatively impacts poorer European countries (much like how Western Germany stole Eastern Germany’s population, by promising wealth and better lives, which left DDR in a really bad position.). It’s a bad situation for everyone but the wealthy that needs to be addressed.

The argument for Brexit was brought up to me early in my radicalization into Marxism-Leninism, and it was used by the same comrade who introduced it to me to explain the concept of local imperialism. So, I’ve come to support Brexit critically as a means of depowering the European imperialists. Though, the argument against Brexit is valid too. And the argument that Brexit doesn’t matter towards breaking down the imperial core unless other EU contributors leave too is valid as well. I will say though, the argument that the EU can be fixed to be a solid leftist platform is about as silly as the argument that the same can be done with the government of the American Empire.

To get antidotal, my younger sister was born and raised in Poland and she wanted to do her University in the UK, but had to forget about that dream do to the strong anti-Polish sentiment in the pro-Brexit crowd, and she’d quite like to keep her life. Which is upsetting, she’s a very bright individual and her mind will likely be wasted with Poland’s bullshit policies. RIP sister’s future.

I live in the UK (Scotland) and I hate Brexit. Voted against it.

I was conflicted when I voted, because I am aware that the EU have done and continue to do shit things, such as the economic measures against Greece and supporting imperialist intervention in third world countries, such as Syria and Libya. I remember a document being released by Wikileaks showing them discussing how to stop refugees being able to cross the Mediterranean sea from Libya so that they could seek safety. This was discussed under the guise of stopping human trafficking.

Both before and after the referendum, I’ve heard comrades on the far left supporting of Brexit. I believe that it is extremely naive to assume that it will advance the defeat of capitalism or imperialism. Most of the arguments I’ve heard appear to me to be accelerationist. I am not an accelerationist, I don’t believe it makes any sense to hurt ordinary people in first world countries in order to advance socialism. That is the opposite of socialism. And hurting ordinary people is what I believe Brexit will do.

I perhaps may be in favour of Brexit if we lived under a socialist government, or even a slightly left-leaning government, because stepping out of their rules could mean that we would be more free to advance the reforms or changes that we want. There is an article (article 93) in the EU’s constitution which says member states mustn’t nationalise railways (provided that it is understood correctly, the way it’s written is not very legible). Whether they would actually enforce a rule like that is a different matter. Being in the EU also puts pressure on us to take part in economic imperialist actions, such as sanctions against Russia/Iran/Syria/Venezuela/Country X. But our far-right government is hardly going to disagree with those sanctions even outside of the EU.

I’m first going to state that I am a white male who has always lived in my own country. I will by no means be the hardest hit by Brexit, because the people who will be hardest hit, will be immigrants, asylum seekers, and refugees. These are mostly people from not so well-off countries as the United Kingdom. They already have it difficult.

Now, even people who have lived here for most of their lives, have had to apply to the government for “indefinite leave to remain” status. What this means is, if you aren’t granted this, you can be deported. To apply for this, you have to download an Android app (not available on iOS) created by the government. That is a huge problem for people who don’t understand English well, have disabilities, are not technically literate, do not have access to the documentation they need for any reason (possible reasons include that they are being withheld from them by an abusive partner, they have been lost or destroyed, or can’t be obtained in a timely manner), iPhone users, people who do not have reliable internet access, people who can’t get a hold of someone else’s android phone, people with mental health issues, and/or are too poor to purchase an android phone specifically for that purpose. (Sorry for the overlong sentence)

The app also had technical issues, such as extremely restrictive limits on the file sizes of the documents they were expected to upload. There was also so many claims to be processed that it was practically impossible to go through them all before the deadline, with the number of staff available. Initially, they also had to pay money (£2,389) out of their own pocket in order for the claim to be looked at and processed, with no way to get that money back after the claim has been either approved or declined. This (I believe) however was somewhat abolished after pressure from the EU and opposing political parties in the UK. As the process is so complicated, many people have had to contact solicitors so that it could be sorted out. Which of course, adds additional fees for the legal counsel.

As I have already gone on for long enough, I see the need to wrap this up. I haven’t even gone into more detail about the hostile environment or the new “points based system” being implemented. I haven’t talked about how the Home Secretary (Priti Patel) recently tried to deport an 11 year-old girl to Sudan after rejecting her asylum request to prevent herself being inflicted with type 3 Female Genital Mutilation. Of course, empowered by the racists and Islamophobes who voted for her, her government, and Brexit.

I can’t support Brexit. Just, fuck Brexit.

A necessary step but not sufficient on its own

Yugoslavia is the best example of how criminal the EU/Nato is

The EU could not tolerate an independent Socialist (largely market revisionist) economy on its own doorstep, that produced a lot of goods that were exported worldwide and had one of the largest standing armies in Europe.

Nato/EU demanded Yugoslavia was bombed round the clock for 78 days with depleted uranium making Serbia the cancer capital of Europe

Despite ‘accidentally’ bombing the Chinese embassy Nato was not to bomb a single multinational corporation although they repeatedly bombed state run organisations. (Parenti, The Attack On Yugoslavia).

The Eu supported the US in its designs to fracture Yugoslavia - turning it from a prosperous socialist nation into a bunch of right wing little statelets where they Yugoslavs would never rise again - not even as a bourgeois nation.

A once thriving nation turned into an export markets for German/British and French capital and the people turned into a cheap labour pool for above countries.

Which is why the Yugoslav nations are now exporting their children who are forced to move to the centres of capital for work due to the destruction of their industries.

It is the same thing in Ex-USSR states where their populations have been turned into cheap labour pools.

https://www.ft.com/content/c5d3e0ae-36eb-11ea-ac3c-f68c10993b04

https://dailynewshungary.com/un-report-population-hungary-drastically-decreasing/

Ultimately you should be supporting the balkanisation of the EU and UK as they are the capitalist centres who rely off the capitalist gulags all over the globe

From the chocolate they eat farmed by children to the prawns in their ready meals being harvested by Burmese slaves who are filled with amphetamines and murdered to Congolose children mining the coltan in their electronic devices under the threat of warlords to their clothes sewn in horrendous sweatshops in India or Cambodia etc. etc.

I voted to remain at the time, mostly for economic reasons, but also from a rather naive belief in the much touted “European values”. At one point I even believed a USE would be a desirable outcome from the EU, as a way to both conclusively break with the endless wars of the past and also as a way to shore up the geopolitical strength of European powers going into the future, as they stand to be otherwise dwarfed by other powers on the world stage, namely America, India and China.

Of course, I’d never counted on institutions like the ECB and who really wore the trousers when it came to controlling the European currency. So long as an unaccountable central bank holds sway over the currency, Europe will remain a fortress for the bourgeoisie. The moment you take a closer look and realise that the inclusion of Romania and Bulgaria in 2007 was simply a method to push downwards pressure on wages by flooding the internal market with a cheap labour source you finally realise the sad reality of the EU. For all the pretences of progress espoused by EU supporters, they still can’t argue with the reality of a double standard whereby the less developed countries are preyed upon in order to prop up cheap agricultural goods and essential services in the advanced countries.

Brexit is exposing that particular dynamic of the European single market as we speak with Britain’s struggles to provide a labour force to it’s farming barons, as well as sliding ever more precipitously down the drain with the NHS’ ongoing nurse shortage. It is being starved of it’s old source of cheap labour, so now it is clamouring for anything else it can sink it’s teeth into, including the recent pledge to allow 3 million Hong Kongers to settle in the UK in the wake of China’s national security law passing.

At this point, I would wait until it actually happens. Might be delayed so long that Sir Keir wins and cancels it