Brexiters often say we hate Britain. No! It is they who hate Britain. They hate our open, tolerant, diverse and European Britain. They want to destroy all that and return us the 1950s. And they support a politics of hate, lies, corruption and law-breaking to get their way.
Nationalism when it rears its malign head in established nations doesn't reflect love of the nation, but hatred of it. In order to maintain their pretence of loving the nation the nationalist places everything they hate in the box labelled 'foreign', 'alien' and 'traitor'.
Nationalism of this kind therefore relies not on a disagreement of ideas, but on the division of people into the 'real people' - the 'quiet people of middle England' and the others - the foreigners, the chattering classes, the liberal metropolitan elite...
And by dividing society into the 'real people' and their enemies this kind of nationalism undermines democracy which relies on the idea that we all belong to a single bickering democratic community sharing the same rights and duties.
For the dogmatic nationalist, those who are enemies of, or simply outside the people, are denied the rights of the people. Lies, abuse, hate, cheating, crime and violence can all be legitimately used against them. Hence the tolerance of Tory lies and Brexit law-breaking.
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