BREXIT: NOT QUITE A DISASTER FOR EVERYONE

By Matt Heller

The EU has won. The tumult and chaos that has been left in wake of the UK’s inability to work out a Brexit deal, and Parliament’s continued failure to find a way forward is nothing but a wholesale victory for the EU in their handling of Brexit negotiations. Why, one might ask, would the EU seek to make a process so difficult that greatly affects the economies of its now 27 Nation bloc? Simple, to send a message.

When the British unexpectedly voted on June 23rd, 2016 to leave the EU, they were not alone in their Euroskeptic opinions. The alt-right had been rising in Europe, ever since the migrant crisis of 2015 brought out vitriolic, nationalist rhetoric as a form of backlash against the largely nonwhite, Islamic immigrants. The alt-right rallied behind anger at Muslim immigrants whom they felt threatened their way of life, and largely opposed the EU and the liberal ideas of free movement across borders that it embodied. Well before the Trump Presidency in the United States brought fear of the alt-right into the minds of most Americans, it had been surging in Europe. By 2015, UKIP was a powerful political force in Britain, in opposition to the EU and a perceived threat of rising “Islamization” at home. Similar groups rose up throughout Europe, notably PEGIDA in Germany, and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who further increased his anti-EU and anti-immigrant rhetoric as the migrant crisis continued.

Then, following the Leave victory in the Brexit vote, these right-wing groups surged further. French politician Marine Le Pen’s National Front came a strong second in the 2017 elections, as did Dutch politician Geert Wilders, who called to ban the Quran in the Netherlands, the same year. Other right-wing movements grew too, Poland’s Law and Justice Party took the majority of the Sejm (Parliament) in 2015, Germany’s right-wing populist party Alternative for Germany came in third in the 2017 Bundestag elections, and just recently Italy’s Euroskeptic, populist parties Lega Nord and the 5 Star Movement entered into a coalition government following their victories in the 2018 Elections.

The rise of these groups posed an existential threat to the EU, one they hoped to stop by making an example to dissuade nationalists from pushing further exits from the EU. They did this by hardballing negotiations as much as possible with Britain, taking almost two years to get a divisive agreement with May’s government. During this time of uncertainty about the future, the pound sterling took repeated hits, Britain lost foreign investment, and their economic growth slowed to a trickle. To any other country considering their own EU exit, this would have proved quite daunting. Further considerations that Britain had such a troublesome divorce in spite of having only a single land border with the EU, an independent currency, and a diverse array of non-European trading partners, would make it even harder for a smaller, more interconnected country, like Hungary, to ever dream of escaping from the EU.

By using Britain as an illustration of just how challenging an EU withdrawal agreement is to make, the EU is successfully able to stop anti-EU sentiment from politically dividing the bloc further. Even with their rising right-wing parties, EU members like Italy and Poland are shying away from an attempt at an EU withdrawal anytime soon; with all the trouble Britain is going through, the risk is simply not worth the reward.

Britain is the case study for EU-withdrawal; they were the first and best-positioned country to do so and from the moment the ballots came up “Leave,” the rest of Europe was watching them. Given the current chaos, it is clear that other nations in Europe will not be following their lead, representing a victory for the European Union.

THE ACCESSIBILITY OF SOCIAL MEDIA

By Daisye Rainer

This day and age, social media rules most of the things we do. It’s often how we keep in touch with friends, how we find strangers, how we spread messages, and how we get information from anywhere in the world. We often think of social media as a tool that makes the world a little smaller and one that connects us to people and helps us form communities. Put simply, social media is powerful. Because at its foundation, social media is easily accessible. However, sometimes this accessibility can be manipulated. Anything, no matter its verifiability, can be amplified.

The most poignant example of this is that of Facebook in Myanmar. Facebook is widely used in Myanmar, with almost 18 million users. According to the New York Times, it is “so broadly used that many…confuse the Silicon Valley social media platform with the Internet” (Mozur). Needless to say, Facebook is a major source of information for many people in Myanmar. But when social media becomes the Internet, any message or post is a little bit more credible or believable.

Therefore, when military officials in Myanmar began to use Facebook to spread messages of hate, hostility, and lies about the Rohingya people in August of 2018, much of the public continued to read into and spread the messages. In short, the anti-Rohingya propaganda proliferated across Facebook and played a large role in encouraging hostility and violence towards the Muslim minority.

This manipulation of the media was only a part of a much larger tension between the Buddhist majority in Myanmar and the Rohingya minority, which led to the exodus and displacement of over 700,000 people last August (McKirdy). Discrimination of the Rohingya people has existed for years, ranging from policies that deprive Muslim people of complete citizenship to arbitrary arrests, killings, rapes, and abuses of Muslim people.

But Facebook gave that discrimination and hate a voice. It manifested itself in a more dangerous way because many were taking these false posts as plausible— as news. Facebook, then, was a tool that aided a genocide, as the UN describes it, and violence against the Rohingya people. A platform this broadly accessible obviously has serious implications on the messages we are receiving and the information that governs our decision making.

The way that social media gives a voice to anyone demonstrates how it can be manipulated for political gain, personal agendas, or in this case, “ethnic cleansing” (Mozur). Myanmar is an extreme example of the manipulation of social media, but it illustrates social media’s innate power over users and the public at large. In truth, it appears that the media has a much tighter grasp on the workings of politics, culture, and society than we’d like to admit.

THE IRISH BORDER QUESTION

By Landon Holben

After the Irish War of Independence and the Irish Civil War came to a close in 1923, the United Kingdom and the newly ordained Irish Republic were left to decide how to go about creating and maintaining the 499 km border that divided the two nations. In 1926, a boundary agreement was lodged with the League of Nations and thus became international law. In the following decades, customs and security checkpoints were few and far between along the border. The only exception to this came during the Troubles (1968-1998), when British military forces placed checkpoints at every entry point along the border to reduce cross-border paramilitary activities. However, the largest threat to maintaining an open border has actually recently arisen within the last three years.

After the highly contested June 23, 2016 referendum in which the UK voted to “leave” the European Union, all parties involved reassured the citizens of Ireland and the UK that they would maintain an open border. This assurance came despite the fact that the boundary between Ireland and Northern Ireland would technically be an external EU border and thus require some form of security. The concept of the Irish “backstop” has come into play, which essentially would protect cross-border trade from being impacted if the UK and the EU do not agree upon an all-encompassing withdrawal deal. The kicker, however, is that this backstop agreement would allow only Northern Ireland to remain in the EU customs union and other parts of the single market. Therefore, Northern Ireland could continue unrestricted trading with Ireland, but it would be essentially separated economically from the rest of the UK.

British Prime Minister Theresa May has been caught in a difficult impasse, in which the European Union and Ireland are pressuring her to accept the Irish backstop agreement while many members of May’s parliamentary coalition are pressuring her to form a deal that protects either the entire UK or none of it at all. May’s recent comments that she would not move forward with Brexit unless a comprehensive and open border policy was achieved angered many citizens and officials who are in favor of Brexit. Just recently, the German Finance Minister, Olaf Scholz, announced that the European Union stands behind Ireland, affirming that the EU will not budge from promoting the Northern Ireland backstop agreement.

To make matters even worse for May, there have been reports that sentiment for Irish unification if Brexit occurs has been rising steadily among the Northern Irish public. Irish Taoiseach Leo Varadkar has received plenty of calls to stand up to the United Kingdom and to be open to unification talks regarding Northern Ireland. It seems that Brexit could very well lead to the reunification of Ireland after nearly a century of separation.

An open border between Ireland and Northern Ireland seems to still be in the best interests of both nations. However, this can only be the case if done correctly, and the current administrators of Brexit do not seem to be capable of compromising on the issue. This has been one of the main reasons that the European Union has refused to review the British government's proposals for a total UK backstop agreement; there is simply a lack of communication and cohesiveness regarding the implementation of Brexit.

Regardless of the outcome, the backstop negotiations are beginning to have real-world effects as Northern Irish freight companies are scrambling to apply for, and often being denied due to the unfinished negotiations, permits that would allow them to continue normal operations if Brexit is completed. With Prime Minister May’s March 29, 2019 exit deadline steadily approaching and continued incoherence of political messages from London, Ireland and the rest of the European Union have decided to hold their ground and let the “Brexiteers” drag themselves to the negotiation table.