Introduction
Recent events in developed countries, such as Brexit, at first glance may be deemed both nationalist movements and patriotic movements. While the terms nationalism and patriotism are frequently believed to be synonymous there are subtleties between the two, so initially these concepts need to be defined properly and separated from each other. Nationalists take pride in their country, much like patriots do. However, the crucial difference between them is that nationalists also think their country is superior to others and are inclined to be violent and aggressive to this end. On the contrary, patriots are devoted their country but do not necessarily believe it to be superior to others. Patriots believe in their country’s values but also want to make it better, and they generally seek friendly relations with other nations. In light of the above it can be said that patriotism is a passive feeling whereas nationalism is active and hostile and can eventuate violence. Brexit, the example I have chosen, was a very crucial event around the world and was not expected to happen, and I will argue that this was the result of nationalism rather than patriotism.
Brexit
The European Union should be explained in order to understand what Brexit is. The definition of the European Union according to their official website is as follows: “The European Union is a unique economic and political union between 28 European countries that together cover much of the continent.” This definition may seem very basic, but when it is researched deeply there are various things to learn about it. The EU was established after the second world war, around the 1950s. Firstly, it was only for economic agreements, and it was called the “European Economic Community”. After a while, it developed a political aspect, too. The European Parliament was created, and all member nations sent their representatives to the parliament. According to European Union official website “Purely economic union has evolved into an organization spanning policy areas, from climate, environment and health to external relations and security, justice and migration.” It is clear that the Union has evolved. Although this Union still sounds fine, why did Britain vote to “exit” it? There are numerous reasons for this, such as economy, security, and independence. To start with economic reasons, immigrants - especially from Syria – represent a threat to the working class in the UK. These immigrants are in huge need of basic, very minimal life conditions such as food, shelter, clothes etc., so these people are ready to do whatever is necessary. One of the MP known David Davis admitted that it was not plausible that Brits would immediately take jobs in the kind of low-paid sectors like agriculture and social care currently staffed by migrant workers (Rampen,2017). One reason is probably because British workers’ real wages fell sharply between 2008 and 2014, with those on low wages suffering the biggest falls(Tilport,2016). Thanks to those two citations, it can be clearly interpreted that British people are already suffering from low salary so if they stayed in the EU, the amount of money they earned were going to decline dramatically. Immigrants do not care as much about being misused by companies because they were going to die if they stayed in their home country. Since the United Kingdom has its own passport, it may seem these people would not be able to go there if they were not permitted to be in the United Kingdom to begin with. However, it is not that simple unfortunately. If a country is a part of the European Union, it is obliged to take the amount of refugees the EU states. Therefore the working class British people may not be hired by companies because they are not desperately looking for a job like their refugee competitors, who are bringing a lot of cheap labour into the country. This would result in discontented citizens, which no government would want. Another grounds for voting to “leave” the EU is the idea that the immigrants do not have anything to lose and that this will lead them to be violent in order to get what they want. Unfortunately, according to news reports some Germans do not feel safe on the streets anymore, due to the flood of immigrants. Germany can be seemed a very specific example but the situation is the same all over the EU states. If some of the numbers were given this could be understood quite easily which I intend to do in the following sentence. The number of crimes by immigrants rose in comparison over 2014 to 2015 by 79 percent, the number of refugees increased at the same time by 440 percent(Hall,2016). Some join gangs in order to earn money easily, willing to put their lives on the line because they were already in danger anyway. In developed countries they can at least get paid. However, this lead to some unpleasant situation too. not merely refugees join gang the opposite side of them which are far-wing extremists join gang or at least they become violent in order to so called “protect themselves and prevent to be bullied”. In May, more than a thousand far-Right activists held a rally outside Berlin’s main railway station protesting Mrs Merkel’s refugee policy by chanting slogans such as “no Islam and German soil” and “Merkel must go” while others donned T-shirts with messages such as “Rapefugees not welcome.”(Rothwell,2016) Hence, it can be dismissed that the exactly opposite side of refugees are becoming violent too. There is a very famous saying by Albert Einstein which is “peace cannot be kept by force; it can only be achieved by understanding”. From this sentence this can be emphasised that in order to make a peace, there should not be coercion, there should not be crime or violent, it can only be attained by understanding so guns cannot bring peace. This causes insecurity in the countries that are part of the EU. Last but certainly not least, British people voted “no” to staying in the EU because they started to think European Union is threating their independence. Since the EU has been more political rather than economical, the British people concerned that they are not an independent country anymore. As a person stayed in the UK and been there in the Brexit time I can guarantee that they are very devoted to their independence. It is like in their DNA. Thus, they literally hate the idea of becoming a vassal state. Brexit is driven by right-wing nationalism and it places sovereignty and the limitation of immigration above all other goals – above economic prosperity, above geopolitical solidarity, and even above the unity of the UK itself. (McFadden,2017) From the previous sentence, it can be observed that during the campaign of Brexit, British people really did not contemplate their economy or anything, they cared about their sovereignty. Their strong sense of national pride led them do this in the first place. The rates of votes categorising by people need to be showed in order to understand some facts about the Brexit. In England, leave voters (39%) were more than twice as likely as remain voters (18%) to describe themselves either as “English not British” or “more English than British” (Breuilly,2016). As it can be seen interpreted from the previous sentence that the people who voted for leaving the EU were not feeling they are British. This situation was very similar in Scotland too. This looks like a proof that nationalist people’s votes decided the future of Britain. However, if this was a patriotic movement, people would consider their country’s economy and the security of the country rather than sovereignty.
Conclusion
Recent events in the countries which are developed are not patriotic movements, they are nationalist movements and done by nationalist people. In this essay The event called Brexit was concentrated on and explained more detailed. Even though this topic is very controversial the essay was based onto prove that these are nationalist movements.
References
Breuilly, J.(2016). “Nationalism and Brexit” retrieved from https://blog.oup.com/2016/12/nationalism-brexit-identity-referendum/
European Union retrieved from https://europa.eu/european-union/about-eu/eu-in-brief_en
Hall, A.(2016). “Germany's migrant crisis: Refugees committed more than 200,000 crimes last year” retrieved from http://www.express.co.uk/news/world/644827/refugees-committed-crimes-Germany-migrant-crisis-last-year
McFadden, P.(2017). “Nationalism is driving us towards a hard Brexit that puts Britain at risk” retrieved from http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/article-50-theresa-may-brexit-nationalism-driving-us-to-hard-brexit-pat-mcfadden-labour-a7656151.html
Rampen, J.(2017). “The Brexit ministers who just realised reducing immigration is a problem for them” retrieved from http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/staggers/2017/04/brexit-ministers-who-just-realised-reducing-immigration-problem-them
Rothwell, J.(2016). “German far-Right extremists teaming up with gangs in America and Europe to plan attacks, intelligence chief warns” retrieved from http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/11/16/german-far-right-extremists-teaming-up-with-gangs-in-america-and/
Tilport, S.(2016). “Britain, immigration and Brexit” retrieved from https://www.cer.org.uk/sites/default/files/bulletin_105_st_article1.pdf