Plebphobia – that was the bigotry on display in our referendum

Plebphobia – that was the bigotry on display during Brexit, writes Brendan O’Neill. Picture: AFP

Here we go again. Yet another mover and shaker in the establishment looking down her nose at her opponents. Yet another sneer from on high at the dumb people.

That was my first thought on reading about the Marcia Langton controversy. The distinguished professor, Aboriginal activist and leading light of the Yes campaign in the voice to parliament referendum has damned the No movement as bigoted and brain dead. In a discussion in Bunbury she said the No lobby’s arguments were fuelled by “base racism” and “sheer stupidity”.

It sounded so familiar to me. My mind raced back to the Brexit referendum of 2016. Back then there were daily defamations from the Remain-leaning elites, those who wanted us to stay in the EU. The Leave movement, they roared, was racist, regressive and “low information”. “Low information” is PC-speak for dumb as hell.

Those who were planning to vote for Brexit – especially the non-university-educated working classes in the north of England – were mauled by the posh media day in, day out.

They were referred to as “gammon”, a classist slur hurled mainly at working-class white men who have reddened faces – hence gammon – because they’re always so spittingly angry with Brussels or wokeness or whatever. Gammon, of course, means pig. It echoes Edmund Burke’s elitist derision for the “swinish multitude” of the late 1700s who were rising up for their democratic rights. Swine, gammon – show me the difference.

Brexiteers were written off as racist. “Fat old racists”, one Labour MP called us. The Guardian published pained guides to “Brexit racism” and said the Leave movement had unleashed “a frenzy of hatred”.

Oh, there was a frenzy of hatred, for sure. But it was coming from the establishment. Plebphobia – that was the bigotry on display in our referendum.

We were accused of “sheer stupidity” too. “Ignoramuses should have no say on our EU membership”, said the headline to a Richard Dawkins article. Charming.

A few days after the referendum, Foreign Policy magazine published a piece that summed up the hopping fury of the establishment. “It’s time for the elites to rise up against the ignorant masses”, the headline said.

There you have it: we are stupid, racist, reckless and also fat, while they, the elites, are clever, calm, nice and thin, presumably. So it is them, not us, who should decide the fate of the nation.

Having lived through this extraordinary outburst of elitist rage for people whose only crime is that they are not big fans of the EU, I found Langton’s comments shocking, yes, but not surprising.

Langton insists she was only talking about the No lobby, not No voters.

It’s the right-leaning politicos on the campaign trail for No who she thinks are pushing base racism and dumb politics, not Joe Public who’s planning to put an X next to No on his ballot.

I’m not entirely convinced by this. I heard the same during our referendum.

“It’s the toffs at the top of the Leave lobby who are the real problem, not the little people who are falling for their lies,” some said. It came off as a desperate attempt to camouflage snobbery.

Indeed, behind these critiques of the Leave lobby’s lies and demagoguery there lurked a contemptuous pity bordering on hatred for the targets of those lies and demagoguery: us voters.

If Langton thinks the arguments of the No movement are driven by “base racism” and “sheer stupidity”, then she must think voters who are embracing these arguments are, at the very least, failing to do their political and moral due diligence. If the leaders of a movement are thick as a brick, what are we to make of the movement’s followers?

In a way, we should be grateful for Langton’s outburst. For it confirms something many of us have suspected for some time – that the voice to parliament referendum is no longer just about the voice to parliament.

This is now about so much more than tweaking the Australian Constitution to allow Indigenous peoples to make representations to the government.

It’s about who really rules Australia. It’s about who can be trusted to steer the fate of this nation. Clever professors, businesspeople, celebrities and the liberal media, most of whom are backing Yes? Or the man and woman in the street, the everyday citizen?

This is what Brexit became, too – a battle not only over the constitutional question of whether Britain should stay in or leave the EU but also over democracy, class, power.

During our referendum, the elites’ burning distrust of the masses was exposed like never before. And take it from me, many here are still reeling from the realisation that the great and the good view them as pig-ignorant bigots.

A vote for No is not just about saying No to the voice to parliament – it’s about saying No to the new elites and their intolerance of difference of opinion.

Most Australians might not have distinguished professorships, Ms Langton, but they have darn good instincts when it comes to deciding their country’s future. Let’s trust them. There’s a word for this kind of trust: democracy.