英國脫歐公投（Brexit）結束多月，英國最高法院即將裁決英國政府是否需要先獲國會同意，才可展開脫歐程序。Brexit衝擊當然遠不止於帶出「政府大還是國會大」難題，它背後的民粹怒潮如今撲向歐陸，在上周日意大利修憲公投再度發威，令歐盟分裂風險再增。推動這場民粹革命的「主力」固然是在濃厚反移民氛圍下膨脹的右翼勢力，但也獲得許多左翼人士支持，導致左翼陣營內出現思想危機。該如何看待在左翼滋長的排外主義？曾於全球多間著名大學如牛津大學及哥倫比亞大學任教的人文學者Julian Vigo特別為《香港01》撰文，就英國左翼脫歐派與排外主義表達意見，以下為文章的英文原文，如欲閱讀中文翻譯請參見今期（12月9日）的《香港01》周報。

Lexit and Brexit: Xenophobia as Symptom

While filming around St. Pauls’ during the LSX Occupation in the Autumn of 2011, I met hundreds of protesters who all had told a similar story of the political left. It went something like this:  the world is controlled by the Federal Reserve, the Rothschilds, and the IMF and the reality is that one day robots will do all our labour and all we need to do is sit back and enjoy the revolution.  Every single one of these individuals considered themselves part of the left and yet, bizarrely, used the nearby Sainsbury’s to do their grocery shopping with zero concern for how shopping at a mega chain works counter to their ostensible political beliefs. Invariably, these individuals often quoted tracts from the Zeitgeist (2007) series of films, mindlessly parroting what Naomi Klein had written, without any larger contextual or historical knowledge. It was evident early on in the LSX Occupation that this was no revolution—it was yet another wing of neoliberal ideology falsely improvised as homespun resistance cum individual ego as saviour.   Never before has the far left known such neoliberalism as that which it utilises to save itself from the right while paradoxically mirroring in spirit the very sense of entitlement and privilege that this left claims of the right.

Rinse, repeat and skip several years and here we are following the Brexit vote where the same sort of brocialism has emerged.   As someone who is a Marxist, I am troubled by the alarming amount of ego that has infused itself within the Lexit, the left’s campaign to exit the EU.  Go online and try to have a discussion and trolls emerge suddenly from Facebook walls telling you how “ignorant” you are because, quite simply, you point out that there is far more nuance than a world conspiracy dating back to the 17th century or that you show how the IMF and World Bank have long been indicated as a source of political and economic injustice throughout Latin America and Africa, hardly an orchestrated cabal that uniquely targets the UK.  But herein lies the problem within the Lexit community—everything is a conspiracy, everything is foretold by Naomi Klein, a YouTube min-series, and the sensationalist publications like Express which reveal the secret plans for all EU nations to become one “superstate.”  This community paradoxically coalesces the once religiously-inscribed god-figure replacing it with the “perfect” conspiracy theory whereby the elite have exerted their control over all governments and elected leaders, orchestrating our every thought.  What’s not to believe about this new god where paranoia becomes a sign of one’s religiosity to the greater good?

Not surprisingly, a major survey demonstrates that a large chunk of the Brexit support base was composed of working class people who feel disenfranchised from a system which they view as having rewarded an elite class while neglecting their needs.  William Davies expands upon this disconnect between the Brexit voters and New Labour:  “Brexit was never really articulated as a viable policy, and only ever as a destructive urge, which some no doubt now feel guilty for giving way to.”  Yet, there is a deeper story to be told here which takes into account the disconnect between those communities which once coalesced the working class throughout industrial England and Wales who voted for Brexit and the educational elite of the left which marks the Lexit strategy.  It is all fine and well to argue that publications by Naomi Klein or films like Zeitgeist present a conspiracy of corporate takeover truth from the masses, it is another to argue that Lexit advances these arguments for a working class and for the poor beyond a very theoretical basis with no plan as to how to shift this conspiratorial takeover of the world’s governments and finances into a Realpolitik.

In an ethnographic essay chronicling his on-foot journey from Liverpool to London, Mike Carter notes how it was the public from former industrial England which has largely voted for Brexit. He described aptly the landscape that is quickly encompassing most small to mid-sized English towns:

In Wolverhampton, the Express and Star newspaper was reporting on the fury from Wolves fans at the football club’s new shirt sponsor. It was to be the Money Shop, a payday lender. In Walsall, where I went to college, I walked around a town centre unrecognisable from 30 years earlier. Everywhere there were betting shops, dozens of them, and right next door to every betting shop was a pawnbroker or payday lender. It was a ghoulish form of mutualism, or symbiosis, the “natural” market at its most efficient.

Where Carter’s prose describe the perfect storm of post-Thatcherism, neoliberal economic practices and the coincidence of immigration (a coincidence in name only since the 2008 economic crisis is where financial dire straights began), another picture is forming: that of the economically and intellectually disenfranchised. To paraphrase a gentleman with whom I spoke recently, “The vote to leave was a cry for help.  What I want to know is why nobody is speaking with the working class!  They are hurting and like anyone who imposes self-harm, we must ask as a society what is wrong.”

The xenophobia which has been cultivated by the far-right, largely ignored within the ranks of the left, needs to be addressed by both parties because it is a product of the partisan politics which ignores these inconvenient voices pretending it is unique to the other party. It is a truism that xenophobia is not uniquely a sentiment of the right and any quick visit to social media will quickly disabuse this notion rather quickly.  For the first time since political blogging began in the late1990s, I am witnessing an invigorated surplus of political commentary being churned out at a pace impossible for any one human to absorb, one idea ricocheting of the other, each steeped in a new conspiracy. And should you doubt this new “god,” should you question the coalition forming behind the likes of Jeremy Corbyn, you will either be labelled a “Blairite” (a twenty-first century appellative for political skeptic) or you will be sent a link to the The Canary.

Unless Corbyn examines the xenophobia within his movement (which many in Labour pretend only resides within the Tory Party) and the reasons behind such narratives, the neoliberal elite will remain in charge and it will just be another faction of this bipartisan entity. This will be particularly true of Labour, simply because Team Corbyn refuses to answer to the problems of Brexit: where voters were misled, where tacit xenophobia in both parties formed a basis of the Leave vote, and where the far-left is not addressing the needs of the working class manifested by a growing class divide and economic hardship. In short, xenophobia is not the underlying problem of our political system which refuses to address workers’ rights.  It is its symptom.

現居英國的人文學者Julian Vigo曾於全球多間著名大學如牛津大學及哥倫比亞大學任教，既是學者也是電影人、藝術家、社會運動者，專研當代人類學、文化研究、後殖民理論、性別研究等。