BREMAIN and Brexit. Since the 2016 referendum Dr. Thomas Daffern has been very busy organising intellectual and practical resistance to the folly of brexit, and proposing instead the wisdom of Bremain, via a second referendum and the revocation of article 50. He has been giving weekly televised addresses each Sunday since January 2019, and fasting one day a week against brexit, which to him appears a monstrous stupidity for many reasons. If nothing else, the situation in Ireland, which was secured for peace by the Good Friday agreement in 1997, and in which behind the scenes both Thomas and Dr Sean English of Ireland played a small part, is now in jeopardy. As chair of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission for Ireland and Britain, Thomas has a special duty to try to prevent brexit, and being partly Irish adds fuel to this cause. The talks are on YOU Tube at IIPSGP1. In addition, Thomas has recently launched the Centre for Bremain Studies and Action (CBSA) which has its own website at: https://centrefor bremainstudies.weebly.com/blog In August 2019 he has also published a book after 9 months hard work summing up all the arguments why brexit is folly and Bremain wisdom. One of the most disturbing features of the debate in the UK right wing media, has been the attacks on intellectuals. Just about every single academic and intellectual of any note in the entire UK political spectrum has been opposing brexit, yet their voices are being drowned out by a populist mob of media hacks and BBC state media functionaries who seem to share a common delight in dumbing down debate to the lowest common denominator. We have a spectacle of anti intellectual MP’s unable to make coherent arguments for brexit, prideful in getting up in the Commons and saying “I am proud not to be an intellectual” (Mark Francis) and we have seen daily rudeness by Tory party right wing brexiteers, even if performed with a veneer of politesse as thin as shoe polish (Rees-Mogg). Scottish intellectuals oppose brexit with one voice. Welsh intellectuals are increasingly speaking out against it and even arguing in favour of Welsh independence. The Scots are convinced they must go for complete independence from the English government whatever happens with brexit and are organising plans for a second independence referendum swiftly, and have been promised a swift and easy re-entrance into the EU if the UK government hijacked by the Tories takes them out. Meanwhile Boris Johnson tries every trick in his and Dominic Cummings anti democratic playbook to impose hard brexit on the nation, including pro-roguing parliament (shutting it down completely). This is taken from Carl Schmidt’s extreme right wing advice to Hitler – to govern through plebiscite the shut down the Reich parliament – which is how the Nazis seized power “constitutionally”. All liberal and social and Christian and green democrats throughout Europe and the UK should be opposing this nonsense. The right wing Faragists, backed by Steve Bannon, Boris Johnson, Dominic Cummings, Aaron Banks and secretly funded with corrupt international offshore finance, are trying to do exactly the same thing. This has all the hallmarks of a right wing coup going on on my watch, and as European coordinator of WIF, and Director of IIPSGP, I have taken a resolute stand to expose and oppose it, through the power of reason and argument. Hence the book, which is available at http://www.lulu.com/shop/dr-thomas-clough-daffern/towards-a-centre-for-bremain-studies-a-critical-review-of-brexit-opposition-studies/paperback/product-24223713.html With help from Babette Brands of the Netherlands and Italy, many political scientists and experts in international relations and peace and conflict theory have been informed about this new book and sent the Press release.
On September 23, 2019 the Supreme Court of the UK authorised Parliament to reopen and declared that Boris Johnson’s prorogation of parliament was illegal. So the Uk parliament was set to resume its business of holding this non-elected minority Tory dictatorship to account.
Unfortunately Boris Johnson was able to exploit the inability of the opposition leaders to work together and when the excellent speaker stood down, John Bercow, the Tories were able to push through an immediate general election fro December 2019 which they went on to win with skilful propaganda and social media targeting. A whole clutch of excellent MP's then lost their seats, such as Dominic Grieve, Sarah Wollaston, etc. and it gave the Tory party a ruthless majority to push through their brexit plans. This only succeeded because the opposition of liberal democrats, moderate conservatives, labour party, Greens SNP, Sinn Fein and Plaid Cymru parties did not fight yhe general election united as one constant and determined opposition to brexit. Their members would have wanted this and people up and down the country were calling for it, but because the media is controlled by the Tory Government, these voices were marginalised.
Thus we find ourselves in a horrific situation in 2020 where we are set to exit from the EU on December 31st with no deal or agreement in place, nothing to safeguard and cushion the lives of British citizens living in continental Europe, nothing to safeguard the lives of European continental state citizens living in the UK, nothing to help with the innumerable problems that a hard Brexit will bring. It appears the Tory right wing ERG group and its cronies have been angling for this all along..
This is where intellectuals come in and why the European branch of the WORLD INTELLECTUAL FORUM supports the coming into being of UOB without hesitation. Brexit was from day one an anti intellectual project. Some of the people running the Brexit project have been mere populists, with only a street fighters instincts. Others have been clever and highly educated but lacking in vision, empathy, imagination and moral intelligence. These half-educational and semi-intellectual brexiteers are the most dangerous. As Sir Francis Bacon said: "This is an axiom in physics, but holds equally in politics; for the preservation of states, as is well observed by Machiavel, depends upon little more than reforming and bringing them back to their ancient customs. A putrid malady is more contagious in its early than in its more matured stages, holds in natural as in moral philosophy; for wicked and desperately impious persons do not corrupt society so much as they who blend with their vices a mixture of virtue."
There are many clever, intelligent and morally aware thinkers behind the various opposition parties in the UK Parliament, but they hardly ever come together. They are divided into liberal democrats, socialists, Scottish Nationalist, Irish independence supporters, Green activists and social democrats. We are offering UOB as a forum for their key thinkers to come together in confidential meetings, on zoom and thrash out a common intellectual Opposition to Brexit. Unless the right wing Tory plot for Brexit is prevented and reversed, the hope for the future generations of the UK citizens is going to look bleak. Every single indicator shows that Brexit is a catastrophe for our country. There is no hiding the destruction it has already brought to our moral fabric as a nation. As intellectuals we have a duty to unite to stop this nonsense and to present the facts to the masses who have been duped by the media into thinking brexit means good news, or who have been subtly manipulated by propaganda into just "getting it done". Intellectuals who are loyal to the UK also have a duty to expose and oppose the infiltration of the UK's ideas space by foreign intelligence agents who have taken control of areas of our social media and have been pumping out a continual litany of brexit-brexit-brexit as if it is the panacea to all our difficulties. To do this they have stoked up racism, Europhobia, anti- intellectualism, Islamophobia, anti christian and anti- religious memes. Extremist conspiracy theorists have spread lies and propaganda against the European Union and been allowed to get away with it. Now intellectuals have a special duty to end all this and oppose this misuse of human intelligence which has led to the corruption and contamination of the wellsprings of UK democracy.
To do this intellectuals have a duty of careful analysis and concrete forensic dissection of the Brexit memes and to insist on properly examining how this catastrophe has come about, and ow it can still be reversed, by recovering our collective intelligence as a nation.
For an update on the role of the European Branch of the World Intellectual Forum, please go to our website at: https://worldintellectualforumeurope.weebly.com