Hey there.
My name's Rob.
I run a YouTube channel that is largely dedicated to the proposition that the world is nowhere
near as scary as we're told.
Things like ISIS and China are certainly terrible for Syrians and Tibetans, but the idea that
they pose some kind of real threat to world peace or to the United States is largely made
up.
It's designed to sell you on cable news and to sell you on constantly growing military
budgets.
That's sort of where I come from.
I generally think the world is OK and getting better.
That said, there is something happening this week that legitimately terrifies me.
On Thursday the United Kingdom is going to vote on an in or out referendum on the European
Union.
Now this is called Brexit, and many people have explained this much better than I have.
I'd actually recommend a very cute amusing video that John Oliver just did on the topic.
You can find the link for that around here somewhere.
But I have a real problem with the way that Brexit is being discussed.
It's looked at as if it's just a question of economics or philosophy, or just a thing
we have to deal with.
Sure it's important, but it's not really that big a deal and nobody's really paying that
much attention.
I think this is crazy.
Brexit, whether or not Britain leaves the European Union, is not about numbers or money,
it's about peace.
It's about the difference between European war and European peace.
And that question gets to larger world peace.
Now I have a suspicion that if Britain votes to leave the EU, that may be the end of the
European Union.
Other countries may decide to leave in a chain reaction.
The rest of Europe may decide that if it's no longer an organization run by the UK, France
and Germany, and it becomes more and more of an organization run by just France...
Ok just by Germany, people are going to resent that, and it may all fall apart.
But even if that doesn't happen, there's no question that Britain's leaving the EU would
result in a dramatic fall in the EU's prestige and power and most importantly a dramatic
fall in the EU's money.
Now I don't think Germany and France are going to go to war any time soon.
But, the rest of Europe, in the rest of Europe that question isn't quite so clear.
I've pointed out elsewhere the incredible service that the European Union has done.
By inspiring the countries of the rest of Europe, it has convinced multiple countries,
literally a dozen countries, to adopt democracy, and a peaceful way of doing things.
A peaceful way forward.
This isn't something that was going to Automatically happen.
So if we're going to look seriously at the true potential cost of Brexit, we don't need
to look at refugees or the economy, or anything like that.
We need to look at Hungary.
Let me explain.
Last year, I visited Hungary.
And I'm a tremendous museum dork.
When I went I found a map.
In a sort of national history museum, funded by the government, pretty standard, and it
was a description of Hungary and what had happened to Hungary after World War I. It's
a fact that Hungary lost a great deal of population and lost a great deal of territory.
But they lost it because theses countries, this land, this territory was filled with
people who wanted their own countries.
But this map didn't really concede it.
Once again, this is in the national museum of Hungary.
And it was referring to this change as if it was a theft, as if it was something that
was done to Hungary.
Now Hungary already has a kind of crazy nationalist government.
But that government is still restrained.
It's restrained by the European Union.
It's not a hard power kind of constraint, it's a soft power kind of constraint.
There's a lot of inspiration involved, but also there's a lot of bribery.
It's just flat out the European Union can offer funds and can offer capacity building
expertise that helps Hungary become a better, saner safer, more modern country.
If the EU has less money to do that.
If the EU has less money to invest in keeping countries like Hungary sane and of the crazy
hyper-nationalist path, that could be a real problem.
And Hungary I think is probably the worst example, but it's not the only one.
Not at all.
Poland I think, has similar issues.
If you're a Polish nationalist, you can pretend that most of Eastern Europe belongs to you.
I mean good luck with that, but there are people in Poland and Hungary today who believe
this.
More terrifyingly there are people in government, in Poland and Hungary that believe this.
Now I am very confident that the vast majority of Polish people, and a comfortable minority
of Hungarians have absolutely no interest in this kind of weird hyper-nationalist history
gobbledygook.
Not their problem, they've got lives to lead, and why would they be interested.
The thing is, I'm pretty sure that in 1985 in Yugoslavia you could also say that the
vast majority of Yugoslavians had no interest in ethnicity based wars.
Unfortunately that's exactly what they got in the 1990s.
It is tremendously frightening what can happen to a country when the people in power, the
people who are supposed to be in power, appeal to a country's worst urges.
They can get away with a lot.
We've seen this in European history over and over and over again.
What the European Union does, is stop that process from happening.
If a country veers too far off the path, then they lose money.
They get all kinds of other sanctions.
That makes it less likely to happen.
But if the EU disappears, and I think that's what the true stakes of this Brexit question
is, then everything becomes possible.
History could return to Europe.
And I mean that in the worst way possible.
It's a terrible, terrible, terrible prospect.
It's legitimately scary.
Much more scary than ISIS or China's actions with islands somewhere.
But nobody's really paying attention.
Nobody's really discussing the true stakes of Brexit.
That's very sad.
So cross your fingers.
I'm hoping that this video will be completely unnecessary, and none of this will happen,
because the British people will show some sense and vote against Brexit, and vote to
stay in.
Fingers Crossed.
Thanks for watching, please subscribe, and if you'd like to help me make more videos
like this one, please click on the Patreon link here to find out how.
It's the crowd-funding dollars that come in that are the vast majority of my income from
this project right now.
You may have noticed some of the videos have been getting quicker or a little more ad hoc
lately and I hate that, I do.
But the fact is that I need to freelance, I need to do some freelance work to eat, so
more Patron dollars mean better videos.
Thanks so much.
And thanks for all your support.
If you watch this, if you share it, if you even like it I'm tremendously grateful.
Thanks.