Brexit: PragerU vs. Reality

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Great: Arrows Video

Not so Great: Physical effort to maintain sanity listening to even parts of pragerU

👍︎︎ 322 👤︎︎ u/nikolai_stocks 📅︎︎ Mar 12 2019 🗫︎ replies

I fucking lost it when he was talking about the fishery management. "It's true however that how much fish Britain is allowed to catch is subject to a quota negotiated on an EU level. Britain's share in this quota is about 30%, and that is because there's no such thing as a British fish. That implication is a red herring."

👍︎︎ 190 👤︎︎ u/cristalmighty 📅︎︎ Mar 12 2019 🗫︎ replies

Lol Farage making a Video on Brexit.

👍︎︎ 121 👤︎︎ u/[deleted] 📅︎︎ Mar 12 2019 🗫︎ replies

I would've loved it if there was a more in-depth leftist critique of the EU besides "but muh meeeemz".

Still, it is always good to trash on fash.

👍︎︎ 84 👤︎︎ u/ALaCarga 📅︎︎ Mar 12 2019 🗫︎ replies

It shocked me how fast he gained subscribers. After watching some of his videos, the quality of content explains it all.

👍︎︎ 34 👤︎︎ u/b_lumenkraft 📅︎︎ Mar 12 2019 🗫︎ replies

I really love these PragerU breakdowns. There's no way to better understand the opposition than systematically tearing apart their flimsy arguments.

👍︎︎ 30 👤︎︎ u/primus202 📅︎︎ Mar 12 2019 🗫︎ replies

I thought he was a social democrat, Is he officially a socialist?

👍︎︎ 7 👤︎︎ u/IansHappyHandhelds 📅︎︎ Mar 12 2019 🗫︎ replies
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Heey, whats up everyone. Welcome to my Brexit video, alternative title : “Reality is often disappointing”. The video we’re looking at today is from fake university PragerU. And ist not about why the UK should leave the EU, that's an old hat by now, but why it voted to leave. I’ve chosen this one because as soon as the referendum was over, a lot of talking points from the pro-Brexit lot got dropped and exposed as the obvious lies that they were. But this video, because it came out after the referendum, only features the bare bones of the pro-Brexit side. It also asks bigger questions like “Is the EU undemocratic?” or “What does sovereignty really mean?”. To top things of, it's made by Mr. Brexit himself, former UKIP member Nigel Farage who has been doing nothing but agitating for the UK to leave the EU, so ideally, he should offer the best arguments. So, without stalling or endlessly prolonging what will ultimately be a very painful experience, lets dive into the video: If one big government is bad, imagine how much worse two big governments would be. But that’s what people living in Europe have had to deal with: their own nation’s bloated government and the super-national government of Europe, now known as the European Union. Bureaucracy times two! How’s that for a horror show? Well, actually, you’ve no idea. It’s worse than you think. Believe me—I know, because for seventeen years, I’ve represented South East England as a member of the European Parliament, the EU’s legislative body. Okay, big government. And this is actually another reason why I like this video about Brexit so much. It becomes pretty clear from the get go that this video is designed as propaganda, targeting an American audience. This is why the video starts out with the “big government” talking point although the dichotomy of small vs. Big government usually isn’t used as a political slogan in Europe. Its predominantly a pejorative in the American lexicon and doesn’t make much sense in the context of European governmental bodies since they’re pretty much all big by American standards. But Farage uses the slogan nonetheless, because he wants to paint a picture of an overarching giant bureaucracy wasting tax money by shoving papers around. That doesn’t really work with the EU though. The percentage of the EU’s annual budget that goes towards administrative costs is about 6%, which is way less than what other national governments spend. Comparing the EU to any national governmental body in terms of efficiency is going to end up in a win for the EU, because its way smaller and fulfills different functions. A look at the EU’s costs per capita, makes this blatantly obvious. The EU doesn’t pay out social benefits or any of that which allows it to pour the majority of its budget directly back into its member states, with the biggest chunk going towards furthering economic development. If you’re curious where the money goes that your country pays in, you can just look it up by selecting a country in the EU’s Budget at a glance tool. Or if you want to know how it might affect you directly, you can visit “what-the-eu-does-for-me.eu” and check out what local projects have been supported with EU funds. It's also wrong to think having the EU as a super national body means significantly more bureaucracy for its member states, let alone times 2. For instance, because of the common market, national governments don’t have to negotiate trade agreements with one another and because of free travel there are no border checks anymore. The Big government slogan is put in this video to cause a gut reaction from an American audience to view the membership in the EU as bad, without having to justify that claim. And you could easily use the same big vs. Small government dichotomy to justify any kind of separatist cause. Imagine having to deal with a city administration, a state government and a federal government on top of that! Bureaucracy times three. Ludacris, I tell you. Let's get Germany back to when we had real freedom as a patchwork of feudal city states. But that was just the intro, so let's see what Nigel Farage has in store for us. I was also leader of the UK Independence Party, or UKIP, where I lead Britain’s efforts to leave the European Union. To their everlasting credit, that’s just what happened on June the 23rd, 2016: The United Kingdom left the European Union. The world knows it as “Brexit.” Just a minor nitpick and some additional information here. It's worth mentioning that Nigel Farage has left UKIP since this video came out of the parties “anti-Islam fixation” and for cuddling up to racist fraudster Tommy Robinson or Andrew McMaster or whatever pseudonym he goes by these days. I’m also not sure why Farage claims the UK left on June 23ed 2016 or why the video is titled in the past tense. The UK hasn’t left the EU, they just had a non-binding referendum on if they should do it but then again, minor nitpick. Brexit is a statement of national sovereignty. Don’t misunderstand me: I like nations. I like borders. I like the people that live within those borders making their own laws. But I don’t like it when faceless bureaucrats make laws for nations they don’t even live in. But that’s what they do in the European Union. Imagine a Belgian telling a Brit how much he can charge his customers—or the reverse. The EU bureaucrats do this in a myriad of different ways, all day, every day. Okay. First real point, sovereignty. And what sovereignty actually means can vary a lot depending on who you ask, but for the sake of argument, let's use it as a standing for self-governance. So the question is “will the UK have more self-governance outside the EU than inside.” Well, it definitely will have in some regards. Brushing aside that there are no EU laws on the books, to whom the UK has not agreed, there won’t be other nations involved in the making of laws and regulations. Or will there? Looking at the trade talks that have been going on since the referendum, it becomes clear that the former supposed “shackles” the UK had a say over, will be replaced by new ones, with much less leveraging power on the side of the Brits. The US. For instance, knows that the UK is in a weak position at the moment and uses that to push for de-regulation of British markets and to get rid of consumer protection guidelines. The most recent example being the US insisting on lifting UK regulations on agricultural goods as part of a post-Brexit trade deal. This could also reduce the quality of food for UK citizens since local industry might have to lower its standards as well, to stay competitive with US companies. And this is not project fear, its reality. It's happening right now. The US to UK ambassador recently even felt obliged to publish and op-ed defending the practice of bleaching chicken meat with chlorine, a practice that has been banned in the EU since the late nineties. And because these regulations are not linked to access to the world's largest trading bloc anymore, the UK doesn’t have much to combat these demands. How's that for sovereignty. And if the UK wants to continue to sell its goods on the European market, its will still have to abide by EU rules but without having a seat at the table in terms of what those rules actually are. Or take immigration for example, which I know was a hot button issue prior to the referendum. Again, brushing aside that the UK already had complete control over outside EU immigration and also asylum policy, it looks like leaving the EU will have the exact opposite effect of what a lot of Brexiteers hoped for. While it's safe to say that immigration from EU countries towards the UK will decline, in fact that is already happening, immigration from outside EU countries is rising, at the same time. And here is where we get back to leveraging power. Countries like India or China, will couple trade agreements with easier access to visas for their citizens, something we are also already seeing. Regarding those “faceless bureaucrats". If I want to check who represents me in the European parliament for instance, I can pretty easily look up not only their faces but contact details and parliamentary activities. But, in all fairness, people from other EU member states are involved in drafting and passing legislation that affects the UK. But it's not like those laws only affect the UK. They affect the entirety of the EU. Similar to how MPS in British parliament get to vote on legislation that not only affects the district they represent, but the rest of the country as well. You see it right now with Brexit itself. Scotland for instance voted to stay in the EU but now are forced to leave regardless. And sadly there is no body like the EU commission in the UK in which Scotland could veto important decisions. But I don’t want to get ahead of myself. It is a conspiracy of the elites. Who are those elites? Well, they’re a bunch of self-important, overpaid, social engineers with useless college degrees who have never done a proper day’s work in their lives and have no connection with ordinary, decent people. I’ll take the good sense of an Italian farmer or a French baker over the arid intellectualism of an EU bureaucrat any day. Now, there isn’t that much to say here except that it's trying to frame Brexit as a “ordinary people vs. Elites" issue, when I would say it’s the exact opposite. The winners of Brexit will be rich people, who due to the weak pound, will have it way easier snatching up property in the UK. But regardless, if that prediction turns out to be wrong it's not like Farage’s talking point holds much water in the present. A 2013 study on the EU’s MEPs has found that the number of elected officials who have never been employed outside of politics, comes in at about 10%. And while I had a hard time finding matching data for the British parliament, a 2018 paper by the House of Commons library puts the number of MPS formerly working in politics at 17,1% as of 2015. It's true however, that the EU parliament has a large share of people from the upper categories of the social space, like all parliaments really. But there are also exceptions like former President of the European Parliament Martin Schulz, who was a bookseller prior to becoming a politician. Compare that to Farage himself, who is a former Broker, definitely a real job there. BUT if comrade Farage wants to make the case how financial inequality translates into political inequality, I’m all for that. Power to the people and all. I doubt that’s what he is going for though. And this is kind of unrelated but looking up Farage’s background I got curious about some other top Brexiteers, you know, the vanguard against the out of touch EU elites and what I found was reeeeaaally entertaining. For instance, while Jacob Rees Mogg was out campaigning in his mid-twenties driving his mother's Mercedes Benz he took the family nanny with him. *sigh* what a joke this all is. And I say these things not as an anti-European; I love Europe! It’s a fantastic, exciting, great continent: different peoples, languages, and cultures. But these peoples, with their languages and cultures, have effectively been hijacked by a giant, ever-expanding bureaucracy: the European Union. People will say, “but isn’t there a parliament, a European parliament, that represents the people of Europe?” Well, yes, but this body has got no real power; it can’t make its own laws. Rather, the power resides with the European Commission. They’re unelected and they can’t be removed, and that’s how absurd the whole thing is. Before we jump into the EU’s political system, if “highjacked” means, they joined out of their own will to do so because they benefit from EU membership, I would agree, otherwise it's just a lie really. Here is where we get to the big one. The EU commission and parliament. And the commission has been a target for the Leave campaign pretty much from the get-go portraying it as the tool with which unelected EU officials rule over EU citizens, who can’t even vote them out of office. I don’t want to get into too much detail on how EU legislation is drafted but it is correct that the EU commission ultimately calls the shorts. While laws can be requested by the parliament, the European central & investment bank, 25% of member states or the citizens themselves by gathering signatures or submitting petitions, the commission doesn’t have to comply with that. The parliament for instance can’t push a law through the commission, no matter how big the support is. And as far as I can see this argument has been one that convinced a lot of people that the EU is ultimately undemocratic and strips its member states of their sovereignty. In my opinion that viewpoint stems from a fundamental misunderstanding of why the commission exists in the first place, and what might that be. Drumrolls please. The EU commission exists to protect the sovereignty of its member states. For instance, if a couple of member states would push for a legislation in parliament that is to the disadvantage of another state, that state can just veto the law via its seat on the EU commission. It's true that the members of the commission aren’t elected directly, but they have about as much democratic legitimacy as a minister on a national level. In addition, if the commission wants to pass something, it has to be agreed upon by every state representative. In the EU parliament, it's not that way. Germany for instance has 99 MEPs, proportional to the number of its citizens. A much smaller country like Estonia only has 6. But through the commission, it could block legislation it didn’t want to pass despite its much smaller representation in the EU parliament. Further the Commission can only propose laws in areas where the national governments have unanimously agreed to allow it. Put another way, the Commission can only propose EU laws in areas where the UK government has allowed it to do so. And naturally the EU parliament as well as other stakeholders also have to approve laws put forward by the commission. It's also not true that EU commissioners can’t be removed. The European Court of Justice as well as the EU commission president can force a member to resign and the EU parliament can even make the entire commission resign via a vote of no confidence. But just so you know, that doesn’t mean there isn't a case in reforming the system with for instance letting the commission president be elected directly by the people. There is actually a lot of stuff about the EU that sucks and I’ll talk about that a bit later in the video but the sheer idiocy by Farage and other Brexiteers doesn’t even allow for that kind of nuance. The European Parliament meets in Brussels. At least, that’s what I thought when I was elected there. But once a month, do you know what happens? They load the contents of our offices and papers into big, plastic trunks, and they put those trunks on lorries, and they drive them nearly 400 miles down Europe’s motorways to a French city called Strasbourg where, for four days, the contents of our offices, and our papers, are put into a new office, and the parliament then sits there. Twelve times a year this back-and-forth happens, and this from an organization who say they want to reduce their level of carbon footprint! This, from an organization whose accounts have not been given a clean bill of health by the auditors for the last twenty years! This…a parliament? It’s more like a traveling circus. Now, all of Europe knows that it’s costing nearly €300 million every year to move this back and forth from Brussels to Strasbourg. Sorry I have to chime in here folks but with these PragerU videos it's very hard to take everything point by point. What is described here as the traveling circus is actually true. Although the costs are closer to 114 million euro annually according to a recent audit. It’s a waste of money that I think should not happen. Funnily enough this was initially done to save money. Back in the fifties, there was no suitable building available in Luxembourg, the seat of the European coal and steel community which was the predecessor to the EU. So, they picked Strasbourg and were able to use the seat of the European Council, to save money. Since then, a lot has happened and more and more EU institutions have been concentrated in Brussels but France does not want to let go of their only major EU institution. That said, the EU is not a monolith, most MEPs actually oppose this and sometimes even boycott gatherings in Strasbourg. So, we’ll see where it goes, I guess. But just to insert a sense of scale here. If you take the annual costs for moving to Strasbourg and multiply that times three, you roughly have the estimated costs for Brexit according to a study by the Centre for European Reform. Although these numbers are hard to determine, this estimate falls in line with the ones from officials at the bank of England and the UBS group. And when I say costs for Brexit, I mean costs each week from the time of the referendum to September 2018 resulting in roughly 20 billion euros up until that point. That’s just the estimated loss in GDP growth by the way, not the money the British government spends directly. Be that as it may, I genuinely have no idea why they decided to include the records of the EU’s court of auditors at that point in the video. This court doesn’t judge what money is being spent for, but the reliability of the financial records. So this money being spend on moving to Strasbourg, in itself has no effect on their assessment. For the last few years, the court has judged the records of the EU to be fair and accurate but also found that more than 2% of payments contain errors. And these errors usually boil down to stuff like EU funds not being spent according to established guidelines like awarding a EU-funded contract directly without holding a proper bidding process. And guess who is responsible for that. It’s the member states. In the UK’s example a 2014 public accounts committee criticized the following: “Over the last decade, the UK Government has incurred at least £650 million in penalties to the European Commission because of errors in how UK public bodies have spent European Union funds. EU rules and regulations for spending EU funds are complex, and this in itself contributes to errors; however, UK governments have chosen to design programmes which have added to this complexity, driving up the risk of errors and penalties further. UK government departments have exhibited a distinct lack of urgency in tackling complexity and reducing the levels of penalties incurred. HM Treasury has not done enough to hold departments to account for spending EU funds, nor to encourage learning from best practice, nor to lead by example by improving the quality of information available on how well EU funds are spent in the UK” So much for that. Now let's listen to what Nigel Concludes from the fact that France is able to block the moving of parliament to Brussels entirely. So why isn’t it reformed? Well, the way the EU has been structured, to change that would require changing the treaties, and to change the treaties would need all 28 member governments to agree not to go to Strasbourg twelve times a year. And do you know something? The French are never going to agree to that, ‘cause it’s in their economic interests for the traveling circus to go to Strasbourg. And it shows you that a system of law-making has been devised where not only can the voters not change anything, but the institutions themselves are pretty much incapable of reform. Now if you’re like me, you might be a bit confused by now. Because apparently, it’s a big problem for Nigel Farage that member states can dictate law to other member states (which they can’t, for the record) but it's also bad that every country has the ability to block changes that are not in their interest. I’m starting to think a large portion of EU criticism by right-wingers is just a inner political tool and lacks any kind of substance or consistency. But were about to be served a real example of supposed EU tyranny so let's listen in: The United Kingdom is an island; it’s surrounded by the sea, and yet, as members of the European Union, we were only allowed to catch 20% of the fish swimming in territorial British waters. What that meant was tens of thousands of jobs were lost in Britain’s coastal communities as we effectively gave away the ability to look after one of our greatest resources to a bureaucracy based in Brussels. This is the last point Nigel brings up and it's also a very common one. But the way this is framed should make your ears ring from the start really. Because if Britain was only allowed to catch 20% of the fish swimming in British waters, implying other EU states take the other 80% there wouldn’t be any fish left would there. It's true however that how much fish Britain is allowed to catch, is subject to a quota, negotiated on an EU level. Britain's share in this quota is about 30% and that is because there is no such thing as a “British fish”. That implication is a red herring. Fish don’t respect national boundaries and depending on the fish and time of year they move in and out of British waters. In the case of North Sea herring for example, most of the juveniles live in the south east corner around the German bight, whereas the adults tend to congregate around the Shetland Isles prior to spawning at various sites along the British coast. This is why EU countries strike agreements on how much each member state can catch. It's also not like it's just 30% that Britain gets, it depends on the fish really. For example, the UK gets 84% of the North Sea haddock quota, 81% of the North Sea monkfish quota and 98% of the west of Scotland prawn quota; but only 4% of the North Sea sprat quota. Adding to that, these quotas are largely based around the agreements that existed prior to the EU, some even date back to the middle ages. So leaving the EU does not mean the UK will have more control over how much fish they catch, they just opt-out of the existing agreement and will ultimately have to strike another one. But wait, I hear you say. Can’t the UK just say, these are our waters, we will catch how much we please, and we don’t care about other countries, they can just stick to their own waters. Theoretically speaking that’s possible but here’s where we get to what actually destroyed a significant part of the British fishing industry. It's called the “cod wars” which were a series of disputes over fishing rights between the UK and Iceland. Mostly they were kicked off by Iceland going: “See these waters over there? Yeah that’s our fishing territory now”. At one point it even escalated to ships intentionally ramming in to one another, British fisher boats requiring protection from the royal navy and Iceland allegedly demanding the US to send fighter jets and bomb British ships. Isn’t history amazing. In the end all these disputes ended in favor of Iceland, resulting in thousands of British fishermen becoming redundant. Here you might be asking yourself how a nation like Iceland, was able to force a naval super power like Britain into submission. It was actually pretty easy for Iceland. They just threatened to pull out of NATO. And since Iceland is placed in the Greenland Iceland UK Gap which was a submarine warfare chokepoint during the cold war, the UK had no choice but to back down. One more thing regarding fishing rights tough. It's true that even after the cod wars, small fishing business that make up the engines of a lot of coastal communities have been declining. But this is much more likely down to the fact that the splitting up of the quota, which the UK government is responsible for, is mostly ending in favor of large companies, rather than small ones. Now why am I telling you about the cod wars? In my opinion this is the perfect showcase why “sovereignty” is such a useless term surrounding the Brexit discussion. Britain isn't an empire anymore. They will have to work with other countries in an increasing globalized world. Understanding that is one of the reasons the EU exists in the first place. Together, we have a much better chance to make our own rules and not become prey to other world powers imposing their will onto us. That's why the domino effect that Nigel Farage predicts at the end of the video didn’t happen. I want good relations between all the European nations. I want prosperous, free, and fair trade between those nations. But I’ll be damned if I’m going to give up my rights as a British citizen so that some Eurocrat can tell me how to live. I won’t do it, and I’m certain that across the continent, ultimately, the French and the Italians won’t put up with it either. I’m Nigel Farage The leave camp seems to have miscalculated who the dominant power in Europe really is and that this power will do everything to protect its member states and demonstrate that being in the EU actually means something. F.I. prior to the referendum when the subject of the Irish border came up, as rarely as that happened, prominent Brexiteers seemed pretty confident to be able to struck a deal with the EU, despite its red lines on the issue. Now, it turns out that the EU won't throw Ireland under the bus and the UK slowly starts to realize what being outside the club really means. And don’t get me wrong there are aspects about the EU that are genuinely worth of criticism. We see it right now with the huge opposition to article 13. And if you’re mad about that, here’s what you can do. Keep that anger inside, grow it, care for it like some kind of rage baby and then let it out at the ballot box during the European elections in May. Here’s a handy breakdown of which party voted in favor of it. Besides that, I would even go as far as to say the EU project will fail if it doesn’t find an alternative to its dysfunctional monetary policy. Setting up the EU like I would like to have it would not only require changing several treaties but also the shift away from neo-liberal politics. And although movements a springing up that push for a change like this, it remains a gigantic challenge. But even if the UK would take a significant swing to the left after leaving the EU, it cannot escape the gravitational influence of Europe. 21st century socialism requires trans-national cooperation. Brexit as a project of nationalist retrenchment offers nothing to combat the effects of global capitalism. I always felt like I missed my chance to make a video about Brexit since I wasn’t making videos while the decision was made but as seen in this video, even now the people who pushed for Brexit deny to accept what has become an obvious truth. Brexit was and is a giant con. It’s a dangerous fantasy that won’t solve Britain's problems and will also make life worse for the average person. And the people who pushed for it and remain to push for it despite this reality, deserve to be hounded out of their political careers for so willingly deceiving the people they are supposed to represent. So that was that. What kind of put me of about making a video on Brexit was that the timing always seemed wrong since so much is happening and there are new developments every day. And with Brexit possibly being postponed now and Labor backing a second referendum, who knows what will happen? Maybe there will really be a second chance to decide. Or perhaps I’ll have to set up some kind of refugee commune for British left-tubers here on the mainland. Another thing that I couldn’t find a right spot for in this video is that non-Brits who oppose Brexit should keep in mind that a bunch of people didn’t vote for Brexit or have since changed their mind. With Europe’s growing frustration at Brexit I’ve repeatedly seen anger over Brexit being expressed as sort of casual bigotry and we shouldn’t ever let that slide. I think that’s it for today. If you listened to me ramble over the credits, you’re probably extremely impressed by the names rolling by. Luckily you can get in on the action by becoming a Patron via the link in the description. My last couple of videos we’re light on history unfortunately but I’m going to make it up with the next one, when we’ll talk about the Crusades. How exciting! Until then, let's just all try to stick it out and I hope to see you the next time. Have a good one.
Info
Channel: undefined
Views: 550,193
Rating: 4.7210064 out of 5
Keywords: Brexit, three arrows, 3 arrows, PragerU, UKIP, Nigel Farage, Brexit Debate, Theresa May, Brexit vote, Jacob Rees Mogg, meaningful vote, Brexit explained, no deal brexit, hard brexit, article 50, article 50 extension, soft brexit
Id: I_HdqYCDcVE
Channel Id: undefined
Length: 26min 0sec (1560 seconds)
Published: Tue Mar 12 2019
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