I continue to struggle to express my frustrations with the status quo while also presenting the election results. Here I'll start with the facts, hoping that the rest will transpire effortlessly.

Before elucidating what “Eurosceptic” means, let’s have a quick look at the election results. Seemingly, the “Eurosceptics” nearly doubled their numbers, but who are they and how are they defined? Is it fair to assume that some countries have no Eurosceptics whatsoever?

“Eurosceptic” parties are apparently nationalists who respond to their electorate’s anti-immigration feelings. In this context, “immigration” is an umbrella term for xenophobia, racism and, more specifically, antiziganism. One might be tempted to see this semantic substitution as hypocritical or, at the very least, an euphemism. However, we need to be honest and admit that the amalgam of prejudices lower-income or merely dimwitted voters feel is deserving of a name. Today’s Eurochauvinists claim that they are disturbed only by the very visible Eastern Europeans (mostly Gypsies) who beg on their streets and set up camps in their parks, eating their protected fauna, such as swans. This is dishonest because in the past there was a backlash against other Eastern Europeans such as Poles when that country gained the same rights Romania and Bulgaria recently did. Most Romanians and Bulgarians respond to this nonsense by emphasizing the difference between Roma (Gypsy) and their respective ethnic majorities (“it’s not US, it’s THEM, and we don’t like’EM either”). In reality, both SE European countries have extremely poor people in their ethnic majorities, people who were left behind in the transition from communism to a free(er) market and it stands to reason that they may have joined these “periphery” camps as well. Though we are all tempted to categorize them as “anything but not us” that’s a coward’s response. We need to assume them for who and what they are (Eastern European citizens) and counter racism with logic.

In the previous instalment I detailed how even youngsters who find themselves on a “work and holiday visa” in Canada are still prejudiced against foreigners who mirror their situation in their respective home countries. Depending on how you define logic, this may be illogical / logically inconsistent or hypocritical. It makes rather little sense to deny others the right to be and work in your country while you yourself are taking advantage of another country’s tolerance and openness. The fact that you see nothing wrong with this state of affairs should worry you. It is precisely this unresolved conflict that informs the Eurosceptic position as well as Eastern European antiziganism, for people in the countries “where Gypsies come from” tend to be even less tolerant than the poor in the West.

The main trigger for increasing intolerance is a shrinking “circle of care” – think of it as a variable Dunbar number, aka monkeysphere. When the going is good, people tend to be more tolerant, and increase their “circle of care.” When the going is tough, as it’s been pretty much since the Great Recession, people feel they have less to share with others and their “circle of care” is shrinking –after all, “look for the number one” is the motto of those who haven’t had it so good for most of their lives.

Even before the Great Recession, the Western low-income population’s “circle of care” did not keep up with the new European reality. A lot of these individuals, though they enjoy easy travel across Europe, have never really come to see themselves as “Europeans” – their “allegiances” stayed within their national state. Their “circle of care” has never gone beyond national boundaries. Many of them have not even traveled much and this expansion, which they felt was done without them being consulted threw them in the midst of a new, hostile world, filled with foreign aggressive beggars and people with dark skin and bright clothes who yell a lot and smell.

The low-income Westerners are not persuaded by arguments that “immigration is good for the economy.” To them, poor newcomers are there to take their jobs and reduce the pool of government aid, notwithstanding the fact that such aid is only available to newcomers at the meagre levels from their respective home countries.

Let’s assume, for a moment, that the low-income voter’s idea that “immigrants are bad” is true. What if instead of “immigrants” from outside their national state, at the periphery of their city were camping people from a neighbouring town or even their own house neighbours, who had lost their homes due to the market crash? Would they still be asking for their removal and “sending them home”? It’s a hypothetical question and I do not know the answer, but I’d venture to say that even though for the most part they’d still be intolerant, they’d be far less so when they are dealing, more or less, with what they consider to be a neighbour.

Here, the low-income intolerant Western European voter has more in common with the racist whitey from the US “Bible Belt”, who sees nothing wrong with wrongfully imprisoning and executing blacks because they are “different”, they are “not our people.”

As such, Eurosceptic victories are failures of those countries’ elites to bring on board their low-income voters and convince them that Euroexpansion is good, or to simply share with them the fruits of that expansion. Yes, the poor and the destitute from Eastern Europe (or North Africa) have come to the West and are having a better life (at least that’s what they probably think), or else they would not be there. But Eastern European countries have also had to make certain sacrifices in order to join. Firstly, it is obvious that their poor had a better life behind the Iron Curtain, it’s only a minority that benefitted disproportionately from the fall of communism and Euroexpansion (the two milestones must be considered together). Entire industries had to be dismantled and destroyed in the name of economic integration, whether by euro bureaucrats directives or because they were simply uncompetitive in the absence of protectionist barriers, resulting in many people losing their jobs, forever left out of civilised society. According to some reports, over one third of Romanian land is now held by foreigners. Though there are funds available to Eastern Europe, these countries don’t always have the ability to make use of them. Let us not forget that also while some of the best and brightest Romanians (such as Doctors, Engineers, IT specialists) go to work in the West, the West seems to send as ambassadors its convicted pedophiles.

In short, though it may seem that way, Eastern Europeans didn’t have only to gain by joining Europe. Denying them certain rights is breaking the contract they joined under and cannot or should not be done without dismantling the Union. And this last step, though disastrous for the newcomers, would definitely not be pain-free for the West. The advantages of staying together far outweigh the downside (as sexy as that may seem to some), and the Western elites, who benefitted the most from the expansion, need to share such benefits with their poor and do a better job at making them feel included.

Sources / More info: ec-graph, cracked-monkeysphere,